Chapter 42

• I fell unconscious for a moment, the shock of the explosion having stunned me. When I opened my eyes, however, all I could see was dust—dust as thick as you could possibly imagine—all round me. It filled the air like thick smoke, and I could hardly breathe and could not see past a few feet in front of me. I was hearing ringing in my ears, and my head was pounding, but I could barely think. I coughed and caught the dust, and gradually I started moving.
• I threw away the rubble on top of me—broken woodwork, bricks, pieces of glass, and bits of the ceiling that had fallen. The pain in my body surprised me, as I can feel the pain in places that I did not know were hit. My limbs shook, and I pushed myself up off the ground. There I stood up cautiously, very slowly, keeping my footing with difficulty on the pieces of floor that Clarissa left behind her. Standing there, still gasping to get my full breath back, I turned around to look around, and that is when I noticed that the back of the house was a complete blaze. The smoke was rising high up in the air in dark columns of smoke, and the fire was spitting and crackling and devouring all before it.
• I began screaming to my friends, my voice ragged and desperate, over and over again screaming their names. My heart sank further into the panic at the fact that I was not answered immediately. I could hear my heart beating. I limped across the ruins without much attention to my aching legs or even the warmth of the fire near me, and I shouted. And again.