The Fire Artist (9 page)

The shrimp arrives and it’s delicious. We never eat like this at home. At our house, it’s rice and beans and pasta Jana makes because my dad decided cooking meals is her task. As the youngest and the only one without a job, she must have dinner on the table when my father returns home, smelly and greasy, from the junkyard.

He orders a steak and I opt for a garden salad, even though I really want the roast chicken and mashed potatoes. But I have a feeling Imran wants to know I have control over what goes in my body, that I will stay trim and tight. Imran asks for water for all of us, then hands the menus to the waiter.

His brown eyes land on me. He clasps his hands together. “Aria, have you ever been to the M.E.?”

“No, sir,” I say. I haven’t been anywhere. I haven’t been on a plane. I’ve never left Florida.

A light laugh, then he tells me I can call him Imran.

“Yes, sir.”

He shakes his head, bemused.

“It is the most beautiful land in all the world,” he begins, telling me of the mosques and temples, of the desertscapes, and the mountains, and most of all how the towns and cities there have all changed. The M.E. used to be a land of disparate countries, torn apart by wars with the United States, with Israel, with each other. There once was a time when you could say, wryly, “What do you pray for?” and people would answer, “For peace in the Middle East.” Unrest could be traced back thousands upon thousands of years; this was biblical territory, after all.

But after multiple oil crises and myriad occupations, a miraculous thing happened. The fighting stopped. The wars ended. Not overnight. Not with a snap of the fingers. But over several years, it was as if all the bad will there had unwound, drained itself out, and been replaced by peace and prosperity for all.

A treaty was signed, a manifesto of goodwill.

It’s long been rumored that this harvest of peace came about through the region’s current leaders. That deals were made with granters, that wishes poured forth like wine. Of course, the M.E. is home to the very first legends of granters. Long ago they were called genies or jinni and were said to be kept in bottles, or lamps, or rings. Once upon a time, storytellers spun tales of magic woven by genies across a thousand Arabian nights.

The genies in those tales never granted peace though. They never granted anything but the most personal wishes of those asking. Money, knowledge, power. I don’t know that granters could bring peace to a land, but maybe there’s some special clause for wishing for something altruistic, wishing for the thing all your citizens have wanted for years. Or maybe the stakes
were simply higher than usual. Every wish comes with a price. Pay now or pay later.

I wonder if the M.E. is rife with granters. If you find them in caves laid with riches; caverns encrusted with rubies and emeralds and golden goblets, or inside dusty, tarnished lamps in the marketplace, tucked into carts, next to baskets of dates and figs. But then again, granters aren’t really found in lamps or bottles. Xavier once told me they’re found behind doors and hidden in tunnels. I suppose they could be anywhere.

But whether through granters or good fortune, the M.E. is now a land where freedoms of all kinds are embraced and wealth has spread out to nearly all citizens. The M.E. also operates the most talented elemental arts teams around the world, including in the United States. The M.E. Leagues here in the United States have the best stadiums, the most devoted fans, the highest payrolls, with teams in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles all part of the system, and the recruited artists start their training in Miami.

“I am lucky to call it home,” Imran continues. “There is no better place in all the world to live, to be young, to perform than the M.E., especially since the treaty.”

“Well, yeah. It’s the top of everything,” I say, because every elemental artist who performs dreams of being called up to the M.E. Leagues.

“That is also why it’s so important that the Leagues be pure,” Imran says.

I freeze. This is the moment when I’ve been found out. Someone saw us, Elise and me, on the beach a few days ago. Or someone’s been watching us for years. Maybe some other
elemental artist, waiting for his or her big break, needing to snatch mine away from me, figuring it’s unearned. Figuring I’m a fraud.

Which I am.

“We have the strictest rules of any of the Leagues and we’re tightening them even more,” Imran continues.

I gird myself to show nothing. To register no reaction to what he’s saying. I don’t want him to read me, to be able to tell I’m a thief. But inside, I’m twisted and turned, and terrified of what my father will do to me if he knows I’ve stolen fire. I begin plotting an escape route, first from the restaurant, then from this town. I’ll spend my life on the lam. I’ll be a runaway. Xavier would help me, shuttle me from safe town to safe town, protecting me, protecting Elise.

“You see,” Imran continues, “there have been accusations of granter use.”

“Granter use?” my father asks, and there’s the strangest sound in his voice. It’s higher and it wavers for a moment.

Imran nods. “We’ve been looking into it and have found no evidence in any of our teams, but we have to maintain the highest standards of purity. We have to make sure our talent does not use granters.”

“In what way?” my father asks.

“In any way. But especially not to enhance their powers. To wish for more powers. To buy their powers in the first place.”

I breathe again. I’m safe.

“Has that happened?”

“The possibility always exists, and so we are implementing
new safeguards to ensure all elemental artists are clean,” Imran continues.

“How can you do that?” my father asks, and that same note of worry repeats in his voice. I sneak a look at my father, his jaw tense. Why is he so worried about granters? Granter use can’t be monitored.

“We have ways,” Imran says, giving my father the barest courtesy of an answer, then moving on. “And of course, we will expect Aria to uphold our fine standards for purity. I trust you will,” he says to me.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I have so much faith in you,” Imran says to me. “In fact, I spoke to my superiors last night. I told them what I had seen in you. I told them of your great potential. I showed the videos I made of the show. They were particularly impressed with your fire twin, as you can imagine,” he says to me, capping the sentence with a flourish at “twin.” “It’s the sort of spectacle that can bring down the house. That audiences will talk about for weeks. Can your twin do more than bow? Can it last longer than a few seconds?”

“I’m not sure,” I say quietly. “I just started working on it.”

Imran doesn’t blink; he doesn’t flinch. His confidence is electric. “We will train that talent then,” he adds, though I wonder if the Leagues
can
train that talent. If they even know how. “We have the best talent and we have the best trainers. And so we want to move you up quickly. We have tutors and schooling on-site, so you can finish your senior year of high school while training and performing. Should you choose to accept
our offer, and we very much hope you will, we have decided we are going to skip Miami and send you straight to New York next week.”

All my borrowed time drains in a second, in the shimmery outline of my replica.

I study the number of days in between my renewals, but the numbers don’t add up. There’s no obvious pattern, no way to predict when my fire will wane.

I crouch by my bed in the late afternoon and stare at the numbers again on my sheet of paper, wishing they’d reveal a secret, tell me the only number I need to know—when I’ll start to fade. But even if I know when I’ll ebb, how are Elise and I going to engineer a rendezvous for a lightning strike? Miami would have worked, since she’ll be in college nearby. But now I’m going more than a thousand miles away, and we can’t drive an hour and meet in the middle. Will I have to secretly jet back to Florida? Will she fly to New York? I can’t picture us chasing lightning in Central Park for all the millions in Manhattan to see. Call me crazy.

A horrid thought lands in my head: What if Elise dies? Oh God, I can’t even go there for so many reasons.

An idea flashes before me. What if we reignite my fire well
before it runs out? What if we got on a schedule? I study the numbers once more, then the training schedule Imran gave me. In sixty days I’ll have my first break from training. That’s late August, right before Elise goes to school. We’ll meet up then. I have to be highly strategic now about everything. I’ll schedule renewals with Elise, and I’ll make sure my brother keeps a close watch on Jana. I hate leaving her, but it’s the only way I can help her in the long run.

I text him, telling him I have to see him even though he’s working an all-day shift. I leave the house, hopping on my bike to head to the burger stand by the beach where he works. The sun bakes me as I ride, turning my already tanned skin even darker. My tank is drenched with sweat when I reach the bike rack and lock up my wheels.

I walk to the screen door.

French fries snap in hot oil.

Xavier gives the metal basket a quick shake, then dumps the sizzling and greasy fries on a metal tray to cool them off.

“Be right back,” he tells his coworker. He steps into the alley behind the shack. We’re next to a Dumpster. It smells like all the fried food in the world and like the sea too.

“What’s up? You okay?”

“Xavi, when I’m gone I need you to do something, okay?”

“Name it.”

“I need you to look out for Jana. I need you to keep her safe. Keep her away from Dad. Don’t let him hurt her.”

“How would he hurt her?”

I never told Xavi what our father did to me. I trust my
brother with my life, but I’m terrified of what he’d do to our dad if he knew about the nights in the garage. Xavier is locked and loaded. He’d fire without a warning shot, and he’d burn my father alive. If Xavi did that, my brother would be locked up forever. I can’t condemn my brother by laying at his feet a temptation that he could not resist.

So I don’t reveal. I tease it out.

“I worry that he’ll think she’s ice and he’ll do anything to bring it out of her, okay?”

I press a palm against his chest, flattening my hand against my brother’s flimsy T-shirt, so the scars can be felt through the fabric. Like everyone else, he thinks they are fire-art scars.

“You have to protect Jana. Promise me. Promise me. Promise me,” I repeat the plea, until my voice hitches. But he’s already said yes.

He says it again.

“I promise,” he says, and I have to believe him, even as the guilt over leaving Jana gnaws at me.

I hold on to that guilt as I unlock my bike. I can never let go of my self-loathing, to the possibility of my father taking Jana to the ocean, of him pushing her head underwater and my not being there to prevent it. I think of him dipping her hands in buckets of ice. I don’t stop the reel in my mind as I ride to the empty practice field, head out to the bullpen, and let flames fly from my hands to form my mirror image.

I raise my hands high in the air. She follows suit. I bend down to the ground. She does the same.

I look at my fiery copy, then stalk toward it. She stalks back,
marching right up to me. I freeze. What would happen if I kept walking through my twin? Would her fire hurt me? I snap my fingers, like I did earlier.

She’s gone.

I should be happy that I did it again.

Instead, I am exhausted and entirely twisted up inside.

The Mud Dogs shortstop finds me as I walk through the echoey concrete hallway after my last practice before I leave. “Hear you’re getting out of town,” he says. Though I’ve admired his body, the muscles of his arms, and the trimness of his waist from afar, this is the first time we’ve spoken. I’m not even sure of his name. Jake, maybe? John?

“Yeah.”

He stops walking, and I do the same, out of courtesy. He shakes his head. “Do you have any idea how …” But then his voice trails off.
How lucky you are? How much I want a ticket to the show too?
Pick any option to end the sentence, and they all add up to envy. I have what they all want, and yet I can’t help but think I will spend the rest of my life holding my breath, waiting for the moment—the phone call, the summons, the knock on the door—that I’ve been caught.

“Yeah. I do,” I say, and nod. “I hear you’re a great shortstop,” I add, even though I’ve heard nothing of the sort. But this fabrication can’t hurt.

“Yeah?” He raises an eyebrow, and the corner of his lips quirk up in that tiny smile I’ve seen now and then. Suddenly my opinion matters. Suddenly what I’ve heard means something.

“Totally.”

He holds out his hand, fingers curled in tightly, so we can bump fists. I oblige. “Hey, can I have some of your luck?”

“What do you mean?” I ask cautiously.

“Let me rub your head or your hands or something. You’re legend now. Not just because you’re leaving, but because of that trick.”

I don’t know what to say about that, so I lean toward the superstitious ballplayer, tipping my forehead. He places his palm against my hair and rubs. It feels nice, like I’m a cat and he’s stroking my fur.