The room was packed full of sweaty bodies and the heat generated was almost unbearable, the suns rays were hitting the outside of the building and this heated the room further. The sound of a fly buzzing around the room along with the droning voice had sent most of the teenagers to sleep. Josh found that each time he closed his eyes to blink they became harder to open afterwards. His eyes heavy and his head resting on his pencil case he fought to stay awake. He looked across the table and saw that Jennifer and her usually giggly best friend had their heads on the table and were breathing deeply. The people either side of him were also asleep, one with a jacket over his head to protect himself from the sunlight coming through the blinds. Josh put his head back on his pencil case, wrapped his arms around his head and fell into a light sleep. His sleep was dreamless. He was blissfully unaware of the goings on in the room next door.
    A Science technician was having a bad time. Tears were running down his face, his phone rested in his hands, he was still looking down at a text on his phone, not reading it anymore. He knew what it said though, because for the last hour he had been reading it over and over, trying to make sense of it. It was from his wife. Asking him to sign divorce papers. Now he didn't know what to do. Life was going to be unbearable on his own and the only thing he thought about doing was drinking himself into oblivion. He had wound and beaten himself up over the past hour and now he stood up. His mind was now clear on what he had to do. He picked up the tape on the desk and taped up the only window and door into the room. The room was near enough airtight. Step one, done. Next he turned on all the gas taps and smashed as many bottles in the room as possible. Next he reached for his lighter.
    Back in the science lesson there were five minutes to go before the bell and some of the teenagers began to stir from their sleep. Stretching, Josh smiled over at Jennifer who had just lifted her head off the table, she smiled back.
    Light filled Josh's vision and the heat in the room seemed to intensify by a thousand times. Then Josh fell back to sleep.
    Sirens filled the air in Manchester that afternoon. A tragic accident they told the parents. The teenagers in the school were sent home and the mums who didn't see their own children that night prayed that they would get a call from the hospital saying they pulled through.
    Josh's mum was called the next day. She was distraught and drove to the hospital straight away. Josh lay unmoving under a crisp white sheet with an oxygen mask covering his face and he was wired up to a life support machine. His hair was shaved off and bandages covered most of his body.
    His mum sat down on the chair and stared. Just stared. She didn't touch him in fear of hurting him; she didn't want to hurt her son. The nurses had told her that his own body put him in a coma to stop the pain and his body was about 85% burns. It was unlikely he would pull through. His fingers had fused together, all his hair burned from his body and the bits that hadn't had to be shaved away. She wanted him to wake up, to stand up and laugh, to jump up and shout "April fools" even though it was the beginning of July. She wanted him to open his eyes, those deep beautiful blue eyes that made him so handsome. And now he looked like an alien, not her son. She thought to herself that it was all a joke, this really wasn't Josh. It couldn't be. Josh would be now sat at home waiting for her, wondering where she was, and she was here staring at an alien boy instead of cooking her son his tea. What a bad mother she was. She started crying. She knew this was him but she didn't want it to be.
    She wasn't the only mother who was willing her son to get better. The sobs came from all around the burns unit that day. The mums banged into each other on their way to get tea. They didn't seem to notice each other. They were just too deeply consumed by grief. Not as much as the parents who lost their children. The parents who, instead of being at the burns unit, were at the morgue. Identifying bodies of lost children. The sobs were terrifying to hear, howls from the refrigerated room where they were held. Parents throwing themselves at their children, holding them and willing them to be alive. Grown men breaking down in tears and cursing towards the heavens.
    The railings of the school were covered in flowers and ribbons, symbols of hope for the parents still sat next to the still bodies in hospital, and signs of respect to the dead.
    Josh was still smouldering when the Fire brigade found him under the science room table with rubble from the wall over him, he had stopped dropped and rolled and then he fell unconscious half way through he was still in this state when he was found but came round in the ambulance. He said one word, "goodbye" and then passed out again and went into a coma. His mum had been told this. No one knew how the fire had started except for the fact that a huge explosion had knocked through the fake wall in between the prep room and Josh's class room and then a fireball had ripped through both rooms seconds later. A full scale investigation was happening. The number of dead had amounted to 21 teenagers and a technician. The teacher had left the room to get some paper towels to clean up a drink and just suffered from small burns on her hands after touching the hot door handle. She was the one who alerted the fire services, the police and the ambulances.
    Five months later and Josh was no better. The only sign of life was his heart beat on the screen of his monitor. He had not stirred since the smile he flashed at Jennifer. He would never remember saying goodbye to the world but his mum always would. And she would tell anyone who listened. The consultant called Josh's Mum in to talk to her about what lay ahead. If he did wake up he would probably never fully recover from it and he would be in intensive care until the burns healed fully. He couldn't do his GCSE's along with the rest of his friends and he would fall behind. And that was if he ever recovered or even woke up. He may die after being taken off life support once he was awake and he would be very weak. The fact he said goodbye to the world showed he wanted to get away from the pain and just die. After one month of thinking his Mum agreed to turn his life support machine off. In a little ceremony she said goodbye to him, she felt a weight on her shoulder, she felt she was doing the right thing, holding his hand she watched the heartbeat on the monitor fade to nothing and he was gone, the weight lifted, she was alone.
    Josh took in a long full breath that seemed to extinguish the fire in his lungs, his whole body cooled down and he sat up. He was in a bed, at what looked like a hospital. He couldn't remember how he got there all he knew was that he didn't come in by himself. He looked around and saw no one. He was in a very white room, dressed in white pajamas laid under a white duvet on a metal framed bed which was in a spotlessly white room. He looked on the white bedside table and there stood a tall clear glass with perfectly clear water in a perfect circle in the bottom feeding white lilies. Everything was perfect. Chaos did not exist. He lay backwards and closed his eyes. He re opened them and there was a woman. Naturally she was dressed in white. She came over to him and placed her hand upon his head as though she was blessing him and said "You have passed."
    Suddenly he was being choked by invisible hands while being pushed backwards through time, his mind whizzing he was sat back in science. As soon as he fell asleep he felt himself part from his body and floated on the ceiling. He passed through the fake wall and saw the technician, saw him smash up the bottles, push over the jars, turn on the gas taps and then reach for his lighter.
    He turned around and floated back to his sleeping body, saw himself stir and smile at Jennifer. Then a blinding light and intense heat flashed through the room setting half the table on fire, classmates and all. He saw himself stand up from the stool, drop to the floor then roll over, the table collapsed over him and debris  from the broken wall scattered around him. He looked over the classroom, his friends were screaming for help, and in pain and he was lay there, unaware.
    He heard sirens and still he floated over his still body, he watched the fire service come in with oxygen masks, running to the screaming. They are trained to go to the moving first, because the unmoving are almost certainly dead. They may as well help the ones who have more chance. The fires were still blazing and floors unsafe so they fought the fires trying not to disturb bodies. Josh watched, unable to remember anything of these events. He floated down and stood next to his body. Looked down at himself and saw his smouldering clothes and he felt panic. What could he do, he bent down, trying to pat his clothes, tried to make himself wake up but to no avail, his hand went straight through his body.
    A female paramedic found him. The next moment he was in an ambulance with an oxygen mask on and his eyes closed, his skin was angry red and he looked like a mummy unwrapped of its bandages, bits of flesh had been charred and burned. He left the ambulance just too late to hear the words "goodbye" being uttered.
    Now he was in a room, a cold room. Freezing in fact. Metal cupboards lined the room and then, far below, the door was flung open and Jennifer's mum came flying through the door sobbing. A lady in a white jacket followed and went to one of the cupboards, it was at about waist level. She opened the cupboard and pulled out the draw that was inside, there lay a white sheet covering something. Josh already knew it was a someone, and that someone was Jennifer, she was dead. Her mum flung herself at the sheet, not wanting too look underneath at her badly burned body but wanting her last memory of her daughter be that of when she was living. It was a simple memory that any mother with a living child would overlook but it would stick with her mother until her dying moment, it would be, in fact, the last thought she had before passing away, of her daughter smiling and looking at her with a cup of tea in her hand. She just wanted hold her daughter for the last time without spoiling that image. She sobbed and wept and prepared for the emptiness that lay ahead of her, that would surround her for the rest of her life.
    Josh felt a bump underneath his legs and he was stood back in the hospital with tears in his eyes and streaming down his face, he couldn't imagine a life without Jennifer. He looked at the woman and asked "How long have I been here, I mean, my burns, they have healed, I'm not stupid but that would take years to heal, and the scars, there are none."
    The woman just looked at him with eyes full of sorrow and touched his head yet again and said "You too have passed."
    Josh felt a jerk and he was lay in a hospital bed, dirtier than this one, with kiddie blue sheets with dogs covering it, he felt like he was asleep, once again he parted from his body and started to float. He looked down. He looked asleep, anyone would have said that. Well, if you took away the mask that covered his face, the drip he was attached to, the life support machine beeping out his heart beat and the fact that he was burned. His mum walked in and just sat on a chair. He looked at the date, 5 months after the day he sat in science. His mum didn't cry, not yet. The consultant came in. He heard the words he spoke but decided not to listen, he got the gist now, he started crying and his tears dropped to the bed below. His mother had to decide whether or not to put him to death. Josh watched as though everything was in fast forward, his mum left, nurses saw him, doctors checked his pulse, his mum flickered in and out of the room and drips were changed. The time started ticking by normally and he saw his mum enter the room again. It was a month later. She talked to the doctor and came and sat by the bed, holding his hand, talking to him. Josh's fears were confirmed, he was dead now, his mum was now explaining why she was going to be turning the life support machine off. She talked to him for two hours, crying all the time, telling him how handsome and brave he was and what a great husband, dad and man he would have been and about how he had been the best son she could ask for. Josh felt himself being lowered to the floor and he stood behind his mum, putting his hand on her shoulder, to reassure her, to reassure himself that she was doing the right thing and, to Josh's amazement it stayed there instead of sinking through her body. He watched as she ran her fingers where his hair should have been and looked at his eyelids as if she was trying to look her son in the eye one last time. The doctor came in and went through the procedure, he unclipped him from everything except the support machine and his mum gave Josh's bodies hand a squeeze and the machine was turned off. Josh felt himself float again and the weight of his hand lifted from his mother. She was alone.