Stranded in Thoughts

Chapter 9—The Edifice

This might be some kind of mistake. Or a dream.

The behemoth just five meters ahead of us—the one we found unrealistic—was a dilapidated edifice stretching from one side of the woods to the other. We couldn’t see the other end as it was heavily enshrouded with coconut-looking trees—which we all agreed to call “cocohair trees”—from the windows and cracks, but memory-wise, we might know how massive it was.

The cry that we heard—and still going on—was of a fire alarm. It was still functional and noisy despite the stature of the building.

I was about to tell everyone to be cautious with it when Chevonne, again, sprinted toward the main facade, entering through the wide-open main entrance. Shards of glass littered the threshold where glass doors should have been. We followed suit to avoid losing sight of her.

The sound finally ceased. She might have turned it off already.

We tiptoed our way in awe as we entered the main gate—ironically, without the gates themselves—and proceeded through the main entrance with caution. We examined each run-down furniture and ceiling with ancient-looking cobwebs and vines that slithered their way through the cracks and holes of the walls, which were covered by some antediluvian-ish niter. Each step we took elicited a cloud of dust and pollen that were then mixed in the air. A pungent smell smeared the atmosphere, crinkling our noses as we try to verify the facts about this farce. 

I believed everything here was a farce.

“Chevonne! Where are you going!” I shouted up the main staircase where we last saw her went through, which was almost crumbling.

“I’m going to check something upstairs.”

“Be careful with your steps. I think those stairs might give way with your weight,” I replied without thinking, immediately regretting it. “No, um, that’s not what I mea—”

“Is that your way of calling me fat?” Chevonne screamed back with her head sticking out from the small gap between the U-shaped staircase. She was already up on the third floor.

“No, just as what I’m about to tell you, that’s not what I meant! I’m telling you that this building is old-enough to crumble any minute from now!”

“I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t worry about me. I know the way.”

“Yes, of course, all of us here know the way if this is what I think it is! Just be cautious!”

“Stop with your whining! I told you, I’ll be back in a minute!” she screamed with much effort and louder than earlier, pulling her head in. Were we fighting? I knew I should be worried about it because our friendship was in the line, but I couldn’t just help thinking that we kind of looked like a couple that was having an argument.

“No, just… We’ll be there, so wait for us,” I weakly responded, which I doubted had reached her.

No reply. Damn. She might have gone to the next floor already.

Finlay popped out of nowhere, holding something that looked like a human bone. “Cher, is this real?”

I snatched it away from him and scrutinized the structure. I couldn’t tell if it was authentic. Chevonne could lend us a hand here if she only didn’t hurriedly go up the stairs.

That woman.

Well, I couldn’t afford to get mad at that new attitude she had shown. It was the other side of her, being cute and all.

“Where did you find it?” I asked.

“There, near the elevator. Lots of them inside and a handful of dust around.”

We trudged through some underbrush, which somehow found their way in here, until we reached the elevator. I shot my head inside and noticed different leafy plants sprouting from the cracks and holes of the once-functioning lift. The bones were not difficult to find as they were all piled up in one place at the corner. Some were even pulverized, reduced to a grain of sand. They didn’t look like human bones, so they might be from the animals which had dwelt around here. 

We checked the other areas of the first floor and found out there were approximately a hundred square meters of open space full of underbrush and overgrowth with some rubble that might have been part of the ceiling before. We saw a big hole in the ceiling. We could see the roof of the next floor right through it. As we went in, we stomped through things that cracked, and I found it oddly satisfying. Finlay scooped up something from my tracks and held it out for me to see. I immediately grabbed it from him and kneeled to the ground to check the place where he got it.

God, another pile of bones.

After checking the wide space, just making sure that it was what I thought it was, we climbed upstairs and skipped the second floor. The staircase was slightly crumbling; some pieces of cement were detaching off the steps as we moved on even with how slow and careful we made it to be. We set foot on the third floor, and I immediately noticed that the ceiling here was higher compared to the first floor, which I found strange and invalidating. All rooms here were not tall enough to reach the ceiling: they only reached up until the middle part of the wall, leaving a wide gap from there up to the ceiling.

This was not correct. It didn’t fit in the puzzle at all.

We walked through the lobby wherein we saw a lot of rubble obstructing the rooms, except the first one adjacent to the main staircase, which we approached and checked.

There was no roof in this chamber. 

It might have collapsed long time ago, leaving it wide open where we could see right through the high ceiling. Finlay went inside first, who almost shoved me aside, to check and pick things randomly in which, I believed, had something to do with him. The curves of his mouth went up in a melancholic way and he stashed the object—which looked like an unsuspicious, palm-sized piece of wood—in one of the pockets of his gray trousers. His uniform looked more worn the more we stretched this farce that we were investigating, looking for some clues that might give answers to our questions.

This building was a big mystery to us even if it was nowhere relevant in contacting someone outside the island, but somehow, deep within us, we were hoping that we could find something helpful here. 

We forced ourselves into the other rooms that were obstructed with some rubble, only solidifying my assumptions of this edifice.

However, the superfluous, high ceiling was something that invalidated the clues that we had amassed so far. If that was the case, then how else was this different?

We went back to the main staircase when something fell from above—almost hitting Finlay.

“Oh, my... That was close!” he exclaimed while holding his chest in surprise, crumpling his sorry-looking uniform, causing some fabric to rip apart. It was too unimportant for him to notice, though.

It was a big chunk of rubble. It was deadly considering how big it was—much more on how high the ceiling it fell from above. I’d be in a bigger problem if that rubble hit Finlay. I could get myself in jail for not looking after my student’s welfare.

The problem was, did it really come from the ceiling?

“Come here, Finlay. You’re such a lucky kid. From now on, I’m going to call you Lucky Kid. Seems like Lady Luck is on your side today,” I replied with a pretentious, monotonous tone. I tried sounding indifferent to avoid him having ideas that I cared for him. But if it did hit him, it could be something that would haunt my conscience my entire life.

He dared to pick the rubble; he put it up in the air and hovered it near his right eye with the other one closed—like a sniper would do to lock on his target. I sighed and humored the kid for a while. I sat on the third step of the staircase and observed him. I felt like a father watching over his growing child.

“Cher! Come here, I found something interesting!” he reported joyfully while still locked on his imaginative target.

“Oh? What could it be? Is it an alien, or your doppelganger? If it’s the latter, then that would be a big problem,” I said.

“No, cher, I think it’s what we’ve been looking for. You think this building’s something? Look at this!”

Now, that information—true or not—got me on my feet real fast. I approached him and asked impatiently what he could be meaning about.

“This rubble is a perfect fit on that edge there. Look at the middle wall.” I followed where he was pointing at and noticed some odd edges on the mid-wall.

Hey, that was something new. So it didn’t fall from the ceiling at all.

I went straight to the right wall and assessed the rough edges of the remaining cement attached to the mid-wall. A realization hit me fast enough that it could throw me off my footing if it was a punch. I went back to the staircase and climbed up until the next landing before curving to another set of steps that were nowhere to be found. The whole thing surely had collapsed, cutting the remaining access to the next floor. I turned and looked at the rough edges just above the destroyed steps and found out that they were aligned to the rough edges from the opposite wall. I sat on the edge of the now-a-cliff landing and dangled my feet in the glory of fitting the puzzle pieces altogether. 

There used to be a floor in the middle.

It didn’t have a high roof at all—we were inside a merged two floors wherein the fourth one had totally collapsed to the third floor, making it look like a spacious atrium. In other words, the fourth floor was nonexistent anymore. Now, it made a lot of sense why there were lots of rubble dotting the decrepit ground below.

I was ecstatic about my achievement that I almost forgot about Chevonne.

“Hey, Lucky Kid, where do you think Chevonne has gone? This looks like a dead-end to me,” I stupidly asked, expecting a child to answer something that even I couldn’t figure out.

“So, is this really the building, cher? If so, teacher Chevonne might have used the fire exit to go up the fifth floor.”

Well, seemed like this kid still had some wits left in him.

† † †

We soon removed all the pieces of rubble that were blocking the fire exit at the far corner of the lobby. It took an amount of time for us to do so because eighty percent of the work was mostly done by me while Lucky Kid barely even carried some off the way. 

It just made me realize that if Chevonne had gone through this way, then surely it would be free of any debris, right? How come I kept on asking questions recently that were nowhere near being answered? Oh, damn, a question again. Anyway, I finally got tired of thinking and just went through the door. Lucky Kid followed suit.

We got to the fifth floor with no sweat. Clearing the fire exit was the most cumbersome so far ever since we had gone inside this building. The whole floor brought a nostalgic smile on my face. We shouted Chevonne’s name countless times without a single reply. 

Lucky Kid lurched aside as a big chunk of cement fell from the ceiling—Lady Luck still didn’t leave him—leaving a hole big enough for us to see the stratus clouds up the sky dipped in rich marmalade. It was almost night time. It would be a huge problem for us—for me—if we would not be able to find Chevonne sooner.

We searched the rooms full of rubble and cracks and vines and cobwebs and molds and everything that was surely not nice. No signs of her. Where could she be? I remembered something out of the blue that this building might have after checking the last room. I couldn’t get it off my mind.

“Lucky Kid! Wait here. I’ll check the rooftop if she’s there,” I shouted, audible enough to be heard on the whole floor. Hopefully, he heard me. The last thing I wanted to happen right now was him getting rained by pieces of rubble or getting eaten by a wild animal secretly lurking around.

Without waiting for his reply, I lurched back to the fire exit and continued my climb to the rooftop. The area was full of limbs of plants and vines and leafy greeneries that I had never seen before. There were some smaller versions of cocohairs as well and holes big enough for me to pass through, or to say, fall through.      

I searched every nook of the area, and there, in the farthest corner of the rooftop, almost at the edge, barring the luminous sunset that cast her silhouette in thousands of degrees of pulchritude—without a doubt—was Chevonne. 

Even her silhouette looked stunning. 

“Why weren’t you answering us? I don’t doubt you can hear us here,” I called out.

“Sorry for that, and thank you for looking for me,” she replied with a side of a smile. I noticed that she was sweating a lot.

“So? What are you doing up here?”

“Something that I must do.”

“Mind sharing it? You seemed to have run a mile.”

“In due time. You will eventually know it.”

“Oh? Is it something like my secret? Maybe you’ve contacted God here to save us?”

“That’s for you to guess.”

“Are we playing a guessing game now? Never thought of you being like that.”

“Are you picking a fight?”

“No, just want to clarify some things here. No, let me try again. I want some clarification about everything here.”

“But why do you sound so irritated and impatient?”

“Look, Chevonne. Don’t get me wrong with this. I’m not irritated about you. I’m not irritated by you. I’m just really—super—tired of all the things that have been happening. We walked for hours thirsty and hungry, hoping to find some locals and get off this island as soon as possible, which might have been uninhabited in the first place, only to end up here, which complicates our situation much more than how it is already. But then again, don’t get me wrong about that. There’s something inside me that makes me happy I’m stranded on this island with y—I mean—the three of us,” I replied defensively without thinking properly. What was I saying now? This was the longest that I had uttered to her ever since. Maybe it was all due to the fatigue that was creeping its way in me. “But not really happy that we were stranded. It’s just that, I, um—oh, never mind. How did you come up here, anyway? Most of the passages were blocked if not all.”

There was a long pause, which might indicate that she was thinking about how she was going to answer me with all the things I had said, before calmly saying: “See that hole there? I went through that using a handsome of sturdy debris, piling them on top of each other until it’s enough for me to reach the edges. I lifted myself all the way through.”

I was kind of relieved she only answered my last question. I hoped she wouldn’t mind the rest that I had said.

“Now, that’s quite creative of you. Ingenious, if I may choose my word correctly.”

“That’s an English teacher for you.”

“And that’s a Science teacher right there standing in front of me. Would you attempt to explain what happened here? Or what’s happening with us? You might know the answer with that look on your face when you came rushing in here. If you were to ask me, though, it’s a total farce. This is just too impossible for me to believe,” I started again. 

What was happening to me? I was starting to lose my cool. I knew I was tired of all this bullshit already and just wanted to go back home and sleep for a week, but I needed to cool my head and be rational, especially in front of her.

“But we’re here, right? We can see it. We can feel that everything here is real.”

“Then, would you care telling me the truth? There’s no need for you to hide things now,” I egged on, bravely challenging her, risking the relationship that I had started building.

“Again, all in due time. Believe me, you will know it, eventually.”

I now regretted what I had said. She was on another level. The way she kept the conversation pleasant and calm made me feel more desperate, which could turn me into a fool the more I egged her on. 

It was my loss.

I tried to smile but failed miserably. I felt my pride slowly kicking in but couldn’t do anything about it with how she nonchalantly talked with me and with these stupid feelings I was keeping from her. I wanted to treasure them more, so I just kept my mouth shut and accepted my defeat.

Minutes had passed before I noticed the whole area being coated with atomic tangerine and a kiss of velvet hue, whooshing over the horizon—romantic enough for a confession.

Finally, a perfect opportunity for me to confess.

I drew myself closer to her and gave a successful but awkward smile in which, I believed, was the best I could do with all the things I had said. The smile she sent back pierced through my heart in a way that made me feel I was being pitied. It was the smile that my friends then gave me after I was told off by my father in front of them about the failing grades I received during our card-giving day.

I backed up a little bit and felt ashamed of myself. Of all the things we had been through, why would I prioritize my confession now?

We were in the wrong place and time. Maybe I’d keep it for a little while.

“Hey, let’s go down,” I said after a moment, eating the words I was supposed to say. My manner of speech regressed to how I used to speak to her before.

We spotted Lucky Kid sitting on top of the remaining intact tables in a spacious room full of overgrown grasses and piles of rubble. The moss here was thick and its smell was strong. He waved as soon as he noticed us coming in. I asked him where he had been while I was gone, and Chevonne asked why I kept on calling him Lucky Kid, which I comprehensibly explained, badly wanting her on my good side again.

“So, chers, what do you think of this building?” He asked the question that I had been wondering all this time, which terrified me now. It made me remember the farce—not anymore the building, but the conversation I had with Chevonne—that I did.

“I still don’t know everything about this island, but one thing I can assure you: this building is what we really think it is. I especially can’t forget that table you’re sitting on, Lucky Kid. How could I?” I replied while tracing my fingers along the beautiful twig patterns of the tabletop.

“Everything here is true, Finlay,” Chevonne added, mysteriously glaring at Finlay that I must have misunderstood.

Lucky Kid hopped off the table and with a childish smile unsheathed the piece of wood that I had seen him pick up from the first room we had checked on the third floor. 

“This is a piece of the cabinet project I’ve worked on when I was in year seven. See it here? There was my name carved on it, still visible enough to read. It’s amazing to see this once again.”

He offered the wood to me. It was true. I could read his name on it. The three of us looked at each other and went to the last room I had checked earlier before I went to the rooftop. The two of them were amazed at how some things were still in good shape here. I went to a table near the door, looking for something. It was still there. I picked it up and blew the dust off and cleaned out the growing molds inside. The spoon was already gone, but I still couldn’t believe it survived.

It was my coffee mug.

This edifice, without a doubt, was Arullina National High School.