Soul Fire

helping me to move much, much faster than I was. The momentum of the crowd is impossible to resist. We surge forwards in time to the bangs and crashes, like a dangerously fast
pulse.
    I must be gaining on the others now.
    Where are you, Cara?
    A white hot flash explodes above me, and I can’t tell if I’ve closed my eyes or if the light has blinded me.
    Gradually, shapes form again. I look for my best friend, but all I see are more beasts, and manic grins from the few participants who haven’t covered their faces. There’s one tourist
next to me wearing the thinnest cotton shirt, with nothing over his balding head. Already there are burns on his scalp, like pink confetti, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed.
    As he turns, I smell alcohol: could his breath catch fire, like a dragon’s? He tries to take my hands, to dance with me, but I barge past.
    I’m looking for Cara in Ade’s shirt, or for the black balaclava covering Sahara’s face. If I can only find one of them, everything will be OK.
    The drumming continues, as though the group wants to exorcise its demons. Or summon them up. The constant bombardment has made the air stink of sulphur and flames. Is this what hell smells
like?
    Hell?
    I’m on a shopping street in a modern city. Ninety-nine per cent of me is sure I’m imagining things. But one per cent . . .
    When I look to the right, up the centre of the road, all I can see is red and black and orange. Fire colours. What about the lime green of Zoe’s head scarf, the pale blue of Ade’s
shirt, the bright white of Cara’s hair?
    Please let her be safe. This is my fault. If she’d never met Ade, she wouldn’t be here. And she’d never have met Ade if it wasn’t for me.
    ‘Ali! ALI!’
    Am I hearing things? Or is that Cara, calling?
    I turn towards the voice, but someone laughs loudly, right in my ear, and I can’t hear Cara anymore.
    I’ve come a long way, but when I turn back I can still just about see the yellow phone kiosk sticking up above the crowd.
    Except maybe I’m wrong. Because though the other photographers are twisting around each other to get a shot, there’s no sign of Lewis.
    I don’t have the energy to fight against the crowd anymore. My ears are ringing from the firecrackers and my throat is sore and dry from the smoke. Where is everyone ?
We’re moving faster now, sweeping down towards the end of the road, and the harbour beyond.
    I try to think rationally. Cara’s probably with Ade, snogging in some dark alley. And Sahara’s probably gone back towards the hostel, because she’s realised this is so not her scene.
    And she never saw her boyfriend kissing my best mate at all.
    I relax and allow the crowd to carry me along. Once this is over, we’ll meet back at the Metro station, just like Zoe said, have a drink, a few tapas, and Cara will tell everyone at school
about it. ‘Yeah. It was a riot,’ I’ll say. ‘Barcelona is full of pyromaniacs. One of the maddest nights of my life.’
    Finally, the crush is easing off. There are fewer people ahead, and there aren’t as many bangs and flashes. It’s as though a sudden cool rain shower has snuffed them out.
    Yet it isn’t raining. It’s still midsummer hot.
    A horrible, familiar feeling is overwhelming me, darker and stronger than ever before. The lights are dimming, one by one, till all that’s left is night and death and absence.
    Then the screaming begins.

47
    At first it’s a single voice – a girl’s.
    It’s horribly familiar.
    Cara!
    The scream is so piercing, I’m surprised all the windows in the street aren’t shattering, sending shards of glass raining down onto our heads.
    I push forward towards the scream. I wish I could move faster, but terror is forcing the air out of my lungs, slowing me down.
    Another surge of the crowd pushes me the right way. Now, more people are wailing like banshees.
    ‘CARA! Cara, I’m coming!’
    Apart from the screaming, the sounds of the fiesta have been silenced. The drumming has stopped, and the firecrackers too. What am I going to see? Has her hair caught fire? Or could she have
been blinded?
    ‘Cara?’ I call out, but there’s no answer.
    ‘Lewis? Ade? Is anyone here?’ I push through, with elbows, knees, head. ‘Let me through. Let me through.’
    It’s not Spanish, but people understand me. They’re shouting in a dozen different languages.
    ‘Help her,’ a man calls out in English. ‘Do something .’
    ‘I’m coming, Cara,’ I call