The Burning Man (7 page)

Atta girl
, Tony thought, smiling to himself.

Guess she wasn’t such a helpless victim after all.

The Deerborn Academy was like a ghost town during the winter holiday. The familiar quad was blanketed in nearly virgin snow, marred only by a single lonely trail left by a custodian’s waffle-tread boots. The gargoyles lurking above the entrance to the James T. Fenwick Library wore white caps and icicle beards. The venerable old science building and the more modern, glass-fronted arts center were both dark and silent.

The four dorms were nearly empty. Most of the students and teachers were home with their families, leaving behind a skeleton crew of bachelor staff and a handful of kids with nowhere else to go. Everyone else would start tricking back in the next day, January 6th, for the start of the new semester. But that night, Olivia and Rachel pretty much had the whole campus to themselves.

Which was the way Olivia liked it.

Rachel had been camping out in Olivia’s room while their respective roommates were home for the holidays. They’d celebrated a quiet Christmas together, and now it was time for another family celebration.

“Happy birthday to you!” Rachel sang, holding out a homemade chocolate cupcake with a single pink candle stuck in the center. “Happy birthday, dear Olivia, happy birthday to
youuuuuu!”

“Thanks, sis,” Olivia said, squeezing Rachel into a sideways hug.

“Mrs. Lehman let me use the oven in the cafeteria,” Rachel told her. “Make a wish!”

Olivia didn’t really have a wish, other than a generalized desire to make sure that Rachel would always be taken care of, no matter what. But she blew the candle out anyway.

“Do you feel sixteen?” Rachel asked, setting the cupcake on Olivia’s desk.

Olivia shook her head, and smiled.

“Feels the same, I guess,” she said.

She didn’t tell Rachel that she had felt thirty since she was thirteen. That she didn’t even know what being a teenager was supposed to be like. She also didn’t tell Rachel that she hated her birthday. That she dreaded it every year. While everyone else was celebrating New Year’s Eve, making resolutions and toasting to the future, Olivia was haunted by the past.

Randall.

She hadn’t opened his annual birthday card yet, because she didn’t have the stomach. How had that bastard managed to find her at Deerborn? Would she never be rid of him? She kept telling herself that she should just throw the envelope away unopened, but somehow she never did. Every year she opened that card, and just the sight of his childish, semi-literate handwriting made her physically sick.

He never wrote anything negative or overtly hostile inside those sappy, generic cards, just the phrase “Thinking of you.” But the unwritten message was loud and clear.

I’m still here.

Just a few inches to the left, and that second bullet would have hit his femoral artery, causing him to bleed out before the ambulance arrived. In the years since that terrible night, Olivia had become a champion skeet and trap shooter, and was the current co-captain of the Deerborn Academy Rifle Team. She was driven to excel at the sport—so much so that Coach Lowenbruck had recently started pushing her to try out for the Olympics.

But for Olivia it was too little, too late. Because she’d been so scared that night, so overwhelmed with emotion—and when it really mattered, she’d failed.

It was a failure Randall would never let her forget.

His yearly reminder sat on Olivia’s desk beside Rachel’s charmingly lopsided cupcake. She reached for the pastry and casually slid the envelope under her history textbook, so her little sister wouldn’t see it and get upset. Rachel was sensitive and deeply superstitious. A girl who loved birthdays and cupcakes and presents. Olivia didn’t want to ruin that for her, so she never told Rachel about the cards.

Olivia made herself smile and took a bite of the cupcake, leaving chocolate and sprinkles smeared across her lips.

“Delicious,” she said. “Thanks, Rach.”

There was a tentative knock on the half-open door, and she jumped involuntarily. Then Kieran McKie stuck his shaggy head into the room.

Kieran was a tall, lanky senior who looked kind of like what you’d get if a teenage mad scientist had joined a grunge band. His unruly brown hair was at that awkward, still-growing-out shoulder length, and his bony wrists always stuck way out of his too-short sleeves. He wore heavy, vintage horn-rimmed glasses and the eyes behind them were the exact same shade of green as Olivia’s.

He wasn’t an orphan, but he may as well have been. His single mother was Kristie McKie, the celebrity fitness trainer. She was always busy jet-setting all over the world, shooting her bestselling workout videos and whipping her famous clients into shape. Holidays were her busiest time, since everyone was being tempted by all that wicked holiday food, and needed to work it off.

As a result Kieran was stuck there at Deerborn with the rest of the holiday orphans. Olivia met him during the Thanksgiving break, and he had quickly become her one and only real friend. She was actually kind of glad to have him around, although she would rather die than admit it.

“Hey,” he said, holding up a festively wrapped package. “Happy birthday!”

Olivia set the half-eaten cupcake down and accepted the present. She could tell from the feel and weight that it was books. She smiled.

“If my powers of deduction serve me well...” She carefully removed the wrapping paper and grinned at the cloth cover revealed beneath. “Oooh, nice.”

“They’re from the 1920s, I think,” he said. “Not fancy first editions or anything like that, but they’re in great condition. That’s
A Study in Scarlet, The White Company,
and
The Sign of Four,
plus a few extra short stories, too.”

Kieran always joked that she was Sherlock Holmes, and he was her loyal Watson. He wanted to be a writer and she wanted to be an FBI agent. She would solve crimes, he said, and he would write about them.

“Wow, that’s awesome,” Rachel said. “But you know what, I’d better...”

She made a wordless gesture toward the dorm room door, then swiftly made herself scarce, flashing a conspiratorial wink on the way out.

Olivia rolled her eyes. Ever since Thanksgiving, Rachel was endlessly scheming to get Olivia and Kieran together—even though Olivia had told her sister a hundred times that they were just friends. Then, when Kieran’s girlfriend had dumped him right before winter break, Rachel had redoubled her efforts.

True, Olivia really liked Kieran. Trusted him and enjoyed hanging out with him, but she just didn’t have time for a boyfriend. Rachel had a new crush every other week and seemed to think life wasn’t worth living if you weren’t in love. But Olivia had her studies to worry about—maintaining her grade point average, organizing meets for her shooting team and, of course, keeping an eye on her little sister.

There just wasn’t room in her head for romance.

But she was starting to get the feeling that Kieran had other ideas. She saw it in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t looking. She was pretty sure that was part of the reason his previous girlfriend had dumped him. Because she didn’t want to share him with another girl.

She set the books on her desk. She could still see the corner of Randall’s card sticking out from under the history book. Without thinking, she scowled.

“What’s wrong?” Kieran asked, a concerned frown creasing his pale forehead.

Damn him for being able to read her so easily. She steeled herself, deliberately smoothing her face to a calm, blank mask.

“Nothing,” she replied, picking up the cupcake. “Want some of this? It’s delicious.”

“Okay,” he said with a funny little half-smile, obviously not buying her dodge, but graciously allowing her to change the subject.

She broke off a piece of the cupcake and held it out to him. To her surprise, he bent down and ate the cake out of her hand, his lips brushing against her fingers.

“It’s good,” he said, knuckling some stray crumbs from the corner of his mouth.

For a long, awkward moment, neither of them said anything. Olivia was still holding the last sticky chunk of cake in her other hand. She didn’t really want to eat it, but didn’t know what else to do with it. All she could think about was how close Kieran was standing to her, and how there was hardly anyone else in the entire deserted dorm.

“Do you want more?” she asked, because she couldn’t come up with anything else to say. She must have been blushing, because her face felt like a frying pan. “Cake, I mean.”

This was getting way out of control, way too fast.

He took a clumsy half step closer to her, big feet shuffling in his battered Chuck Taylors. He was blushing, too, green eyes like hers overflowing with something raw, intense, and unnamable. She looked away, heart racing.

“Listen, I...” he began.

There was a sudden sharp
pop
, like a small caliber gunshot, and the light on Olivia’s desk blew out in a shower of sparks, throwing the room into darkness. Without even realizing she’d done it, she dropped the rest of the cupcake and shoved Kieran protectively behind her, even though he was four inches taller than her, and thirty pounds heavier.

“Jeez, Liv,” he said. “It’s just a lamp.” He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Stand down, soldier.”

She turned to face him in the dark. They were even closer now, almost touching, and she could feel the heat of his body burning through that scant inch of space between them. His hand was still on her shoulder, but it had started sliding tentatively up under her hair to cup the back of her neck.

Oh my god,
she thought.
He’s gonna kiss me.

I want him to kiss me.

“Olivia? Is everything all right?”

Light from the hallway spilled into the room as Mrs. Gilbert picked that moment to push the door open. From the moment Olivia had arrived, Mrs. Gilbert had taken her under her wing, and while Olivia had been suspicious of the older woman at first, she had quickly warmed up to her.

Now she was the closest thing Olivia had to a mother—even more so than her own fragile and helpless mother had been when she was still alive.

Mrs. Gilbert reached in and switched on the overhead light, then frowned dramatically.

“You,” she said to Kieran. “
Out!
Olivia, you know male visitors are
not
allowed in dorm rooms.”

“Sorry, Mrs. G,” Kieran said, backing away from Olivia and showing his palms. “I just came by to give Olivia her birthday present.”

“Well,” Mrs. Gilbert said, blue eyes sparkling with barely suppressed mirth. “It’s a good thing I arrived before you had a chance to deliver. Now get the hell out of here, before I kick your scrawny ass into next week.”

Kieran nodded quickly and moved to obey.

“See you later, Liv,” he said, lingering for a minute in the doorway before turning to go.

Once he had gone, Mrs. Gilbert turned to look at her, a concerned expression on her face.

“What happened, honey?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Olivia said, crouching down to clean the dropped cupcake off the floor beside her desk. “We’re just friends.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, you know,” the older woman said. “I’ve got three grown kids and a pretty good idea where they came from—but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about that firecracker sound—like a little explosion in here.” She waved a ringladen hand in front of her face. “Do you smell that weird metallic odor? Sort of like... ozone.”

“My desk light blew out,” Olivia told her. “Must have been a short or something.”

Mrs. Gilbert frowned, looking from the burnt-out lamp to Olivia and back again.

“Tell me exactly what happened,” she said, sounding very serious.

“I don’t know,” Olivia said, feeling inexplicably defensive all of a sudden. “It just... blew up.”

“What happened right before that?” Mrs. Gilbert pressed.

“Nothing,” Olivia said warily. “I opened my birthday present, and we had some cake, and then...” She shrugged. “How should I know what caused the light to blow up? I’m not an electrician.”

“Okay, okay,” Mrs. Gilbert said, unplugging the lamp and winding the cord around the base. “I’ll get you a new one. And I don’t want to see that boy in your room again, or you’ll get Saturday detention.”

“Don’t worry,” Olivia said. “It won’t happen again.”

* * *

Lorna Gilbert sat in her office with the phone receiver stuck between her shoulder and cheek. She had wrapped the broken lamp in newspaper and was carefully placing it in a box filled with packing peanuts.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m sending the lamp over to the lab right now. She’s unwilling to admit it, but I suspect sexual activity of some kind was occurring in the minutes leading up to the event.” She paused, sealing the box and applying a pre-paid sticker addressed to the New York offices of Massive Dynamic. “I understand. Of course. Will do.”

She hung up the phone.

* * *

Rachel didn’t know what her sister’s problem was. She loved Olivia more than anyone else in the world, but sometimes she wished that she would just lighten up.

Olivia had always seemed different than other girls, but Rachel could never put her finger on the difference. When she was young, she used to pretend that she and Olivia were actually magical elves who had been left with human parents by accident. But as boring and ordinary as Rachel really was, there had always been something a little otherworldly about her sister. Something in her eyes, in the way strange, inexplicable things sometimes happened when she was around.

Rachel always thought that their stepfather had been able to sense that otherness in Olivia, too. He sensed it, and he hated her for it. He’d been mean and violent toward Rachel, of course, but Olivia had been like a magnet for his wrath, and always got punished twice as hard.

They’d been through so much together, Rachel and Olivia, but that was over now. Things were better— perfect, really. Rachel had never really liked school before, but she actually looked forward to going to classes now. Especially art class, which was her favorite. Her art teacher, Ms. Dandine, was really cool. She had a tattoo and swore a lot and drove a vintage purple Karmann Ghia. She let the kids draw comic books and taught them how to make monster masks. Plus there was a really cute boy in her art class named Nathaniel who was from England and had this fantastic accent. Which she probably shouldn’t be noticing, since she’d been casually, sort-of-but-not-really seeing Brandon Ardmore since last Tuesday.