Mean Girls

Mean Girls

Alesia walked down the littered corridor of the bomb shelter, her head buried in a book and her gas mask bouncing against her leg. They had been at war for months now and her private school had taken permanent shelter in the basement bunker as the bombs started to fall. She approached the dorm room she shared with twenty other girls. As she walked through the doorway, she tripped and fell flat, her glasses flying off her face and her book tumbling in front of her.

She pushed herself up to the laughter of her fellow roommates.

"You're so clumsy, Alesia," Margery giggled. "If you weren't such a nerd you wouldn't be tripped up so easy."

She patted the floor in front of her, felt her glasses and put them on. She looked at the doorway and noticed the cause of her fall: a piece of string, broken now, had been strung across the doorway at ankle height.

Alesia looked at Margery and her gang of three nay-sayers, their faces distorted with laughter. She sighed, holding back tears of frustration, picked up her book and stood.

"What were you reading, Alesia?" Margery managed to spit out between peals of laughter.

She looked at the cover of the book and was about to reply when the air raid siren warbled. They were knocked to the ground as the building was rocked from an explosion. The lights flickered out, then the emergency lighting responded. Alesia immediately started to don her mask.

Margery laughed. "You're already ugly..." She sniffed. "What's that strange smell?"

Alesia smiled into her mask as she saw the other girls look for their own masks.

"That's almonds, Margery. Hydrogen Cyanide. It's all in the book I was reading: 'Emergency Preparedness during a Blitz'."