The Fire Artist (2 page)

Then comes the thunder. It howls in my ears, the sound wave vibrating through my molten insides.

The crack deafens me, and everything goes dark as I collapse to the ground.

My chest caves in and back out. Hands shake my shoulders hard, the back of my head hitting the sand. I cough and gasp and flip to the side.

Elise falls off me, panting, her own chest heaving too.

She pushes her soaking wet hair away from her forehead. “You were unconscious for a couple minutes this time. I was shaking you. Trying to get you to come to. That’s the longest, Aria.”

I cough a few more times, then rub a hand against my chest. It’s burning, like a fever. My toenails are toasty. My kneecap is broiling. Even my eyelashes are hot.

The rain has slowed; it’s merely drizzling now, and the clouds are breaking, making way for the sun.

“Sorry,” I manage to say as I pull myself up, sitting now. I’m always knocked unconscious after a lightning strike. No big surprise there.

Elise drapes an arm around me. “Don’t say sorry. Are you okay?”

I nod.

“God. I’m a wreck. My heart is beating fifty thousand miles an hour. Do you have any idea how awful it is to strike your best friend with lightning?”

I laugh weakly, making a wheezy sound. “Can’t say that I do.”

“It’s totally traumatizing. I’m going to be in therapy for life, you know. I’m going to have some shrink when I’m old, and I’ll still be talking about you and how it was like killing you each time I replenished your fire.”

“I’m sorry I made you do this. But you’re not killing me. It’s just a blackout for a few minutes.”

“You didn’t make me, dummy. I wanted to. I’d do anything for you. You’re my Frankenstein.”

“You’re my Frankenstein’s maker then.”

Elise wraps me in a hug, holds me tight. “Actually, wasn’t Frankenstein the scientist? Didn’t we study that book in English class?”

“Yeah, we did study it, but that doesn’t mean I paid attention.”

“I’m sure you read the SparkNotes online.”

“As always,” I say with a slight smile. Elise knows I’m hardly a model student. I haven’t had the time, and my family hasn’t pressured me when it comes to classes, grades, or school reports. All my pressure comes from my father and has to do with fire and art, not classic literature or trigonometry. My mom used to
care. She used to sit down with me every night to work on spelling and vocabulary, on multiplication tables and long division, praising, always praising, when the grades came home.

Now she’s sick, and she’s stopped caring. I’ve stopped trying so hard. Now I try for one thing, and one thing only—to get out of town.

“Well, as I recall, Frankenstein was the doctor. Dr. Frankenstein,” Elise says.

“I guess you’re Dr. Frankenstein then. I’m the monster.”

“You’re my monster and I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Now, show me what you can do.”

The beach is empty. I stand, clench my fists, then open them, unleashing a gorgeous torrent of flames. Elise laughs wildly as I extinguish the fresh, beautiful, and wholly new fire.

“Daddy will love it,” I say sarcastically.

Elise narrows her eyes, shakes her head. “You should give him a taste of his own medicine someday, Ar.”

“Yeah, I should but I won’t.”

I’m stronger than my father. My fire is far more powerful and potent than his ever was, and now his fire has faded, time suctioning it away as time does.

Elise grasps my hand in hers and we return to her car. She shakes her head at me as she backs out of the spot and turns onto the road. “Someday, we won’t have to do this, right?”

“Yeah. When they stop expecting me to make fire. When I’m in my midtwenties.” I touch Elise’s arm so she’s looking at me. “It’s never run out of me this fast, Elise. Never.”

She squeezes my hand gently and doesn’t let go. “Don’t worry. I’ll always help you get it back.”

“But what if you’re not here?”

“We’ll find a way,” she says, then we return to the mainland, where I take her out for cherry ice cream. I order a lemon sherbet for myself. In a cup, rather than a cone. Even so, it melts quickly.

Soon, we’re joined by Elise’s boyfriend, Kyle. He shows up in his tricked-out truck, tires jacked up high, the rims glistening and shiny.

“Babe, I missed you today,” he says to Elise, and wraps her in his arms. Big and broad with close-cropped hair, he leans in to kiss her, and she kisses him back. I briefly wonder what it would be like to kiss like that, with abandon. Then I look away and tap on my phone, calling up a photo I found the other night, when I was looking at some snapshots of performers in the New York Leagues. One of the girls on the team has been posting pictures of herself with a new boy. A beautiful boy with dark hair and dark, brooding eyes. There’s a distance in those eyes, like he has secrets too.

Secrets he keeps from her.

Maybe I could join the Leagues and find a boy like this. A boy like me.

I trace his face with my fingers, imagining what it would be like to be with someone who knew my secrets, who knew my half-baked heart and didn’t mind.

Elise and Kyle stop kissing. “But I’m right here now,” she says with a smile that’s just for him.

They’re so into each other it makes my chest hurt. It makes me feel hollow all over again because I don’t know how she does it. I don’t know how she gives so much, how she can be so into him, and do so much for me at the same time. It’s as if Elise has this endless reserve inside her and she can keep tap-tap-tapping into it.

“C’mon, lovebirds. We need to get to practice,” I say as I jam my phone into my pocket.

Every inch of me is wet with my own sweat. You could wring me out and there would still be more. There will always be more, because my body temperature is higher than average all the time.

But my fire is back, and that makes me happy, because it will make Daddy happy, and when Daddy’s happy I am safe.

My fire is too intense though, as it always is after a renewal, until I can escape to the canals and let some loose. I spray a fireball at the flame-resistant concrete wall, specially built next to the park’s bull pen. Our little arena is also home to hopeful ballplayers trying to eke out runs and hits and strikeouts for their Triple-A team, even though baseball, like most other professional sports, is dying.

The flames escape from my fingertips, then race toward the wall like a kamikaze fighter pilot. I swear I see the wall shake from the impact.

“Damn, you have some serious power today,” Nava says.
She’s perched on the metal bench. She wears a white T-shirt and pink basketball shorts. Her legs are all muscle, corded and sturdy. Her wild curls flare out from under the brim of her ball cap, a baby-blue mesh thing.

“Too much,” I say under my breath as I throw another explosive fireball.

This is how it goes. When my fire fades, I lose control. When I replenish my fire, I have far too much. I am an unnatural balance, swaying one way or the other. Tonight I’ll go to the canals to restore the precarious balance of me.

“Why don’t we try just a tiny little flicker? You can work on your starlight,” Nava says gently.

I bet Nava never saw these problems in her native Israel years ago. Her mother was a top-tier fire artist for years, performing into her early twenties. Nava is nineteen and she’s fire too, but she suffers from too much stage fright to perform herself, and she’s told me that’s one of the reasons she likes working with me—I don’t have any stage fright. Her family moved here, and she’s the fire coach for all the farm-league teams in southern Florida, traveling from ballpark to ballpark to guide the fire girls and boys she trains. Her mother coaches the rookies at a facility in Miami, where all the teams in the M.E. Leagues start training, even though the M.E. Leagues are headquartered in the former Middle East. There are other elemental arts leagues in the United States and around the world, but the one run by the M.E. is the largest and most prestigious. Those who are good enough to be recruited to the M.E. Leagues are then sent to the biggest cities in the United States, to Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and some even perform abroad. I have
posters on my walls of some of the M.E. Leagues performers. They have stage names like Flame Rider and Night Wind.

I bring my fingertips together as if I’m snapping. When I release my clenched hand, I unleash a huge spray of angry orange flames.

I turn to Nava, embarrassed. I hate that it’s not night. I hate that I have to be here at practice hours after a renewal. “I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re tired. You’re exhausted. This is your body’s way of saying you need to rest. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

I nod, then my stomach twists as I ask the next thing. “If my dad asks, can you tell him I did fine?”

“You always do fine in my book. So, yes. I will tell Mr. Kilandros so.”

All the tension fades away for a moment. “Thanks.”

She tips her forehead to the stands. “But he’s been watching you.”

He is here, picking me up from practice. He paces the hallway outside the locker rooms, his footsteps echoing in the hollow space.

“You were magnificent just then, Aria,” my father says, beaming. Praise first.

He reaches for me, grips me in an embrace. I stand stiffly as he wraps his arms around me. “How did you feel out there today?”

Powerful. Dangerous. Safe. I feel safe when I am coated in the flames I make.

“Fine.”

He releases his hold and turns serious. “Excellent. Because I’ve got some good news.”

“What sort of good news?” I don’t crack a smile, I don’t light up. There is only one kind of good news I’d want from my Dad—the news that he’s commandeered a rocket to Pluto and won’t be seen for 248 years.

“I’ll tell you,” he says, then pauses, careful with his words. “But we need to talk about last night first. I heard you had some control issues.”

He wasn’t at last night’s show. He had to work late. But word travels fast in our town.

“I didn’t have any control issues,” I say. A boxer dodging blows, I’m always darting and bobbing, attempting new tactics to avoid a hit. They rarely work, so I start walking again, the entrance to the lockers in my crosshairs.

He cocks his head to the side as if thoughtfully considering my rebuttal. “Funny. That’s not what I heard.”

“I need to change,” I say. I’d like to get out of this scratchy black leotard, slide on my shorts and flip-flops, and count down the minutes until everyone falls asleep.

“You lost control,” he says, following me.

“No. I didn’t. I was trying out a new trick.”

“I don’t think so, Aria.”

“I was,” I insist. He is so hard to fool, but if I can convince him that I meant to do it, maybe I can avoid
his
fire.

“I’m sure it was beautiful, then,” he says, going along with me. Fine.

“So glad you think that.” I push my body against the swinging door, nearly forgetting he has good news to share.

“By the way, I’m hearing rumors that some of the scouts are starting to track you.”

Everything stops. The door stops. Time stops. I stop. Scouts are diamonds, scouts are the lottery, scouts are the way to everything I’ve ever wanted.

I turn around, looking squarely at the man who raised me, the man who in his own mad way made fire erupt from my hands. “From where?” I ask cautiously, hoping he’ll say not just any league, but the M.E. Leagues. That’s the big time, as high as you can possibly go as an elemental artist. That’s catching a comet and riding it so far away from here.

“Various places,” he says, and it’s clear he’s going to hold this one for a bit longer, hold on to his control.

“When are they coming?” I ask, as hope worms through me. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for since I walked through the swamps more than three years ago to find the legend who taught me how to steal fire from the sky.

“I don’t really know. I don’t even know
if
they’re coming. All I know is you need to be ready. And you weren’t ready. So I will help you tonight.”

A silent scream tears through me.

But I remind myself it used to be worse; it used to be all the time. I tell myself I’ve gotten stronger, better, more powerful over the years, that I can take the heat, that I can handle it.

As my dad drives me home, I picture the M.E. Leagues, and all the photos I’ve seen of their teams. I latch onto the images of the young, the beautiful, the talented who make the earth shake and the air scream with their hands. There’s a girl on the New York team named Mariska, an earth artist, and I’ve seen
videos of her shows, both the official clips the Leagues released and cell-phone captured shots. She can turn the ground into a roller coaster, and the audiences screech in delight. She’s a star, and rumor has it, she’s making serious bank. Oh, what I could do with serious bank. I could escape with everyone but my father.

I’d like to be Mariska for so many reasons.

Not least of which is she’s the one posting pictures of the beautiful boy. When I look up their photos again that night on my cell phone, I find a new one. The boy is wearing a button-down shirt. He always wears button-down shirts, even though he looks to be my age. I wonder why he dresses up. I wonder what they do in New York City when they’re not performing.