It started to rain in drizzling sheets. There was some cover in Zone A for those of us lumped together there but not enough for everyone. Since I had been one of the last of the large group to join Zone A, I was left exposed to the rain the most. I shook my head again and sniggered. I thought again about my friend, as I'd chosen to think of him lately, rather than his actual name, because somehow thinking of him as my friend had a much more satisfying and ironic ring to it.

I wondered what he would think about my choice to allow my photo to be taken by the Pied Piper Officers. It didn't matter. I was here and he was wherever he was now. More than likely he would be a fugitive for less than a week, realize he wasn't cut out for it, then return home to meet the consequences of trying to dodge the evacuation effort. Maybe the Pied Piper Officers had a plan in mind for people like my friend, surely they had accounted for people going AWOL on them.

There wasn't much to do standing in the rain and I was too tired to entertain myself with people watching. Instead I just stood and watched the gravel on the ground. There were large wet patches, small puddles. It was nice watching the rain fall into the little puddles and the frequent splashes caused by everyone else coming and going. Nature, I told myself, somewhere remote.

About a half hour passed. By this time my brain had reached a zombie state of cognition. I didn't care about getting to sleep anymore. I didn't care that I was cold and wet. It was oddly nice having no thoughts worth anything going around in my head for a change. I wondered if life would be easier if I could always walk around with such an easy, emotionless vibe. Perhaps I would have made more friends at school and college that way. I smirked, and not for the first time; being so sleep deprived I'd started to find random things funny for no particular reason.

Then I saw a familiar face. It belonged to someone who was good looking in a boyish kind of way, with hair so blonde it was almost white. He was thin, and a few inches taller than me.

"Alex?" I said.

He recognised me. There wasn't any particular enthusiasm from him at seeing me however, not that I expected any. He nodded at me but didn't say anymore than that.

A fresh bout of anxiety and inner anger welled up in me. This was Alex Landly, someone who I had been in the same year group as me ever since we were eleven, up until the end of secondary school. We had never known each other particularly well because we had only shared a mutual friend (Arthur Turnhouse). Alex had been popular at school, the girls loved him, and he got excellent grades; three things which were the exact opposite for me.

When I was in year nine, my third year of secondary school, I had managed to be nearly friendless. This meant roaming the playground with not much to do, no friends to hang out with. There was another group that tolerated my presence so long as I remained on the fringe, but beyond that I really was a sad case of not having any true friends to call my own.

I had been a member of the scouts as a child, and through the boyscouts I had also managed to not make much in the way of friends. That is, except for befriending Arthur Turnhouse. Arthur was a boy that liked rugby, and aspired one day to join the military. Neither of those things interested me at all, but having a friend did. At Arthur's invitation I had agreed to join up with the local rugby team. I was terrible at it mainly because I had no aptitude or enthusiasm for sports. I was small, scrawny, and I rarely, if ever, was chosen to play any games by the coach. The only reason I stuck out playing rugby for a period of two years (despite the boys in the team also giving me a cold shoulder as far as comradery went), was because of the car rides to and from the games with my Dad. I hardly got to spend any time with my Dad, particularly because I cared very little for his great passion in life: football. So having an hour's drive to a rugby game and back was a price I was willing to pay to spend some time with him.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I hung out with Arthur a fair bit for about a year outside of school. One time I had seen Arthur and his two best friends, Alex and Tom, walking across the playground. Alex had never given me the time of day friendship-wise, and neither had Tom, but at this point I had no reason to suspect they couldn't potentially be friends with me. They were both good looking boys (Arthur wasn't, but he was charismatic in other ways). I had walked up to the three of them and I had said, "Hey, how are you?"

Tom had been the one to answer, "Not good."

Naturally, I said, "Why's that?"

Then he said, "Because you're here."

Ouch. That comment hurt enough to stick in my brain for years after, becoming a core memory for me. Alex and Arthur had both sniggered but said nothing in my defense at this comment. They kept walking. I was so unused to this particular kind of crap from someone that I had just kept pace with them across the playground. My friendship with Arthur eventually petered out.

So seeing Alex in front of me brought back a wave of anxiety and inner rage all of a sudden that I wasn't expecting to feel. I turned away from Alex, understanding well enough that despite us both being part of the evacuation, despite us both being in the same zone at this depot; despite us both being familiar faces in a sea of strangers…the guy still had no interest in even an idle conversation with me. Was I really that bad a person to talk to? Was it such a chore? Yet again I found myself asking the same question…what was fundamentally wrong with me that people just didn't like?

A coach pulled up in front of Zone A. A Pied Piper Official, this one wearing one of the dark uniforms and not a high visibility jacket, stood at the entrance. The officer began to call out names from a clipboard.

A dozen teenagers shuffled towards the bus, had their IDs checked, then went up the steps and into the coach proper. I watched them go through the bus towards the back.

"Alex Landly," said the Pied Piper officer.

Alex, hands in his pockets (he was normally dressed in a jacket and tight black skinny jeans), walked quickly to the coach at the sound of his name. I watched him board and go through the coach with the others.

Several names later mine was called.

"Burgess O'Bannon"

I moved onward towards the coach. I stepped into the puddle I'd been staring at earlier as my own little goodbye to that spot, then continued on quickly to the Pied Piper officer. He was a tall man, African, with an uncompromising face of sterness. I handed over my ID which he checked and then handed back to me.

"Go to the first open seat you can find at the back," said the officer.

I did as he asked. I did my best not to slip on the wet coach steps and at last felt a rush of warmth once inside. The warmth made me more aware of how wet I was in comparison to the dryness inside. The isle was slippery thanks to the wet shoes of the other teenagers. I spotted Alex, who was already sitting next to someone; he'd gotten a seat by the rain spattered window and had the same idle look on his face.

The next available seat on the coach was on my left. I sat by the window, thankful to be sitting again. Shrugging my coat off a dark thought leapt into my mind; if anyone is going to blow up on this coach, I hope it's Alex Landly.