The Fire Artist (20 page)

But at the tail end of practice a fireball skitters away from me. Mattheus grunts, tells me to pay more attention. I nod, like it’s just a gaffe. Then my chest tightens hard, like a fist gripping my heart. Another sign that the unwinding is near. Soon I’m going to spit up all my sputtering fire, only this time it’s taken me less than two months to come undone, and this time the consequences are far worse.

I manage to fake my way through my fear, like I’ve faked my way through most of my life. I make it through the final ten minutes without flubbing any more moves, and it’s enough to give me a speck of hope that I can pull off tonight’s show without any problems.

Gem and I are about to leave and grab something to eat when Raina appears in the locker room, her sculpted arms on display in a sleeveless silk top. I imagine inking her bicep with a cartoon cat stretching its back luxuriously. But the cat’s tongue will stick out. It will have forgotten to pull its sandpaper tongue back into its mouth.

Raina says nothing, just walks close to us. Her nose twitches when she passes me. It’s as if she’s smelling me.

“Let’s go get those sandwiches,” I say to Gem.

After we eat—I opt for a salad instead of a sandwich, back to my good-girl ways—Gem stretches out her leg across mine. She’s wearing shorts, and she points to her muscular thigh. “Now.”

I take a pen from my backpack, lean over, and begin drawing a don’t-mess-with-me daisy. This daisy scowls. This daisy would wear a leather jacket and light matches on the bottom of her boots. This daisy would toss her desk over in one fell swoop to knock out a bully.

As I color in the petals, Gem presses for details of my date.

“We kissed,” I say, grateful to tell her, and then I’m suddenly sharing all details, and I sound like a schoolgirl, not a badass daisy, and definitely not like the fire thief who on her last night in Wonder made out with a guy whose name she didn’t know.

“What’s his name?”

“Taj.”

“Cool name,” she says. “Where’s he from? It’s kind of unusual.”

“Not here,” I tease.

“Obviously. But where?”

I mention Taj’s home country. “His family is from there. But they’ve been here for a while.” A white lie, but it’s close enough.

“So does he go to school?”

School. Such a foreign thought. But those of us who haven’t graduated yet—like me—will be tutored come fall and go to school a few hours a day.

Thinking about the fall reminds me of other things about the fall. Like where Taj will be. Where I’ll be. What will happen to him if I wish for myself. What will happen to Jana if I wish him free.

Because I’m going to have to make my wish soon enough.

Sooner than I want.

Hi. It’s starting again. I can’t wait till August. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry. I would swim to New York right now if I could.
Xoxo, Elise

At the show tonight, I ignite several magnificently tall flames that reach for the sky, that dare to stretch to the stars. I unfurl a series of successively larger canopies of fire that rain over my head, causing gasps and cheers among the thousands here. Then I unveil my twin, my heart and lungs twitching with nerves. What if I lose control of her again? But she behaves, mimicking me as I craft two plumes that howl and hiss and coil around each other. Hers do the same. Then the tip on one of my streaks of fire snaps off. No warning, no shudder in my heart to tip me off. Just a careening, crashing flame that turns into a very ordinary-looking fire when it hits the ground.

I do what I always do.

Improvise.

I fall to my knees and coax the fire back to my hands. Even though I’m fading, I somehow find enough in the reserves to turn the flames back into an arc above me. Then I see my twin. She’s started to wander away from me, heading into the audience. Some stare at her in shock, bend away from her.

I close my hands and kill my twin.

They cheer. As if I meant to do that.

I take a bow, and I see Imran is in the front row again, and he doesn’t look as happy as he did last night.

Gem and I walk to the dressing room in silence. Words are bottled up in my throat. I want to tell her how I feel, to admit that this insufferable fire is choking me from the inside out. That my fire is sick and twisted, but I don’t have time to say that, because Imran is waiting for me. I can’t read his expression—whether he’s upset or concerned.

His arms are crossed and his honeyed voice is bare as he tells me, “Aria, we need to talk.”

Gem meets my eyes, tries to ask silently
what’s up
and
are you okay?
But there’s no way to answer and no way to know. All I can think of is Reginald Cramer, the boy from Chicago who was made an example of by the Leagues. Will they make an example of me too? Or will they shoo me away, shut me up, a hush-hush case they won’t want talked about? The thief who slipped into the system.

Leaden and heavy, I follow Imran, a prisoner being escorted to her own trial.

I have feared this moment for so long, and now it’s here. I’ve ridden my chances to the edge, and now I have to pay.

“For starters, Raina has told me you are clean and I am pleased to hear that. I know someone with your abilities might have been tempted to use and to enhance them, especially seeing how powerful your creations are. And we’ve kept a close eye on you, given your family history.”

The last few words are pointed and cutting. It seems unfair to my brother that they’re eyeing me suspiciously because of him.

“But that’s not why I called you in tonight. I’m afraid I have bad news.”

I swallow, a nervous animal backed into a corner. But I steady myself, keeping my feet planted firm, my hands at my side, my head held high. Whatever he says, I’m going to take it. I’m going to take it like I know how to take bad news. I brace myself, ready to hear the words Reginald Cramer heard.

“It’s about your brother.”

All that steadiness rushes away. I feel blindfolded and turned around. What is he talking about? “What do you mean?”

Imran continues. “There were some new car bombings in Winter Springs. He was caught in the act.”

My brother. My wild and careless brother. The brother I looked up to, the brother I loved, the brother who should have protected his two little sisters but in the end couldn’t even look out for himself. I picture visiting him in prison again, talking to him through bars. My eyes grow hot and prickly, tears forming behind them. I try to blink them back, but one tear slides down each cheek.

I will miss him like crazy.

I have
always
missed him.

“Ordinarily, I’d give you some time off. I’d even arrange for a flight and let you spend a few days with your parents. But I really think it’s best for you if you stay here and focus.”

Imran doesn’t want me near my brother. He thinks my family is tainted, that they’ll rub off on me, on the Girl Prometheus. “Sure,” I say, just to say something.

“I know it’s hard,” he continues. “But we believe in you, Aria. And even in spite of your family history, given all the things that they’ve done, we want you to stay and we know you can rise above.”

“Of course,” I say through tight lips that want to quiver, through eyes that want to pour out tears.

Soon he dismisses me, and I check my phone to see that Xavi called and there’s a message too telling me he’s sorry and he hopes I’ll come visit him in prison.

My mother answers. I imagine her expelling a withering
oomph
as she reaches for the phone, a plaintive sort of moan to underscore the gigantic effort of making a movement.

“Hello?” Her voice is wavering. I suppose learning your eldest child is going back to prison for the rest of his life would be a little unnerving.

“Hey, Mom. It’s me. I just wanted to check in on you. I heard the news.”

She gulps and I hear tadpole tears in her throat.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” I’m sitting on a stoop, on the steps outside someone’s Upper West Side apartment building. The stoop is dark brown and the paint is cracked. The windows on the first floor have green shutters, and are dirty.

“Ohhhh.” That’s the only sound she makes. A sad and defeated
ohhhh
that loses steam.

“Are you sad?”

It’s an obvious question. Of course she is sad. But in my
family, we have to ask the obvious question if we even want to circle the answer.

We talk about Xavier some more, and she cries deeper tears this time, big sobby ones that swim upstream through rivers and fling themselves on shores. I tell her it’s okay, that she can cry with me, because I have a feeling she doesn’t cry in front of my father.

“I wish I could be there right now. Do you want me to come visit? I can see if I can get away for a weekend or something,” I say, even though I know I can’t.

“Of course I do, sweetie. But your father’s gone for his fishing trip, and I’m sure you’d want to visit when he’s in town.”

I snort. Hardly. This actually sounds like the perfect time for a visit, if only I could get away. “How long is he gone?”

“For about a week.”

“Does he even know about Xavi?”

“Yes.”

“And he went away anyway?”

“Well, there’s nothing he can do about it, honey.”

“Except maybe be there for his son, but that’d be too much to ask,” I say, kicking the ground with my boot, wishing it were my father.

“Oh, darling. Don’t say that about your father. He loves Xavi.”

“Yeah. Well,” I say, and suck in a breath. “Are you sure you don’t need me? How are you managing on your own?”

“You need to focus on your job now. Don’t worry about me. Never worry about me.”

“I always worry about you, Mom.”

She is small and shapeless. A tiny stain in her papasan chair.

“Hush, that’s silly.”

“How’s Jana?”

“Oh, you know,” she says, as if that constitutes an answer.

“No. I don’t know. How is she? Her birthday is coming up soon, Mom. Her thirteenth birthday. We’re going to know soon if she’s something.”

“Yes, in a week. Her birthday is in a week,” she says, stating the obvious, avoiding the implications.

That’s her answer? “Mom, how is she doing? Do you even see her? Is she staying with Mindy a lot, like she’s supposed to?”