TORCH (11 page)

I hurry back to the abandoned video store, and when I finally reach the Jeep, my legs give out. I sprawl against the rear wheel on the driver’s side, with the dog in my lap. The sirens get louder and I see the lights as they pass. I should get out of here now, while the firefighters are distracted, but I simply cannot move. Not yet. The raw feeling in my nose and throat is starting to recede, but my lungs feel like they’re charred. There’s a rasping noise as I breathe, and I cough until my sides ache. My eyes are streaming.

In a few moments, I find the energy to pull back the tarp and expose the dog’s head, hanging limply. I squeeze his ear and he doesn’t respond.

The chill comes over me again and I look up to see Kai standing over me with a flashlight.

“Hi,” he says.

The flashlight beam lingers somewhere between my face and the dog, so I look down. Much of my hoodie and my pajama top have burned away, exposing my chest. Both pajama legs are scorched, with just enough fabric left to keep them together.

Covering my chest with one bare arm, and snatching the flashlight from him with the other, I say, “I’m half-naked with a dead dog in my lap and all you have to say is ‘hi’?”

I train the light on Kai, who is staring, wide-eyed. It’s not an expression I’d hope to see on a cute guy eyeing my exposed body. Then his initial shock gives way to confusion.

"What’s wrong?" I ask, panic stirring. “Am I burned? Is it gross?”

"No," Kai says. "Not at all. You’re... fine."

He pulls off his sodden jacket and tosses it to me. With the dog taking up all the available real estate, I can’t move enough to slip the jacket on.

“I’ll take the dog,” he says. “I promise I won’t look.”

I keep my arm over my chest as he squats and lifts the dog. Turning, he sets him down and kneels beside him.

As I struggle into the wet jacket, the meaning of Kai's words hits me. While my clothes have been incinerated, my skin
is
fine. I should be covered in first-degree burns and unconscious from smoke inhalation. As the daughter of a firefighter, I know how much damage fire can do to a body.

But not, apparently,
my
body.

“I’m a freak,” I say.

“Join the club,” Kai says, running wet hands over the dog’s fur. He squeezes his fist over the dog’s mouth and a trickle of water spills out. The dog twitches, then whimpers.

I crawl towards Kai on bare knees. “Is he okay?”

Kai scans the dog with the flashlight. “He’s lost some fur and one pad is burned off, but it’s the lungs you have to worry about.”

He turns toward me, and I know he's thinking that if the dog suffered that much damage wrapped up in a tarp, I should be in rough shape, too. But there’s no time to dwell on that, now.

“We’ve got to get him to a vet,” I say, stroking the dog’s head.

“The nearest emergency vet is thirty miles away,” Kai says. “Even if we went, how would we explain what happened?”

“I don’t know. We can’t just leave him.”

“Well, neither of us can take him home without answering a lot of questions.” Kai thinks for a second and then checks his watch. “There’s a vet not too far from here and they’ll open in a few hours. How about we tie him up outside and leave a note?”

It’s the best option we have, so I clamber to my feet and help put the dog in the backseat of the Jeep.

“You okay to drive?” Kai asks, as I prop myself against the hood.

“Sure, yeah.” My legs are still shaking, but my lungs are clearing and my vision is fine. Anyway, I can’t leave the Jeep here.

Kai runs off to get his car and flashes his lights at the entrance to the parking lot. He leads the way through the back lanes and side streets to a white, stucco house with a veterinary office sign. There’s a parking lot in the rear, and a porch with cement steps and iron railings.

While I write the note, Kai takes rope out of his trunk and spreads a battered wool blanket on the porch. He sets the dog gently on the blanket, and hands me a dry sweatshirt.

Kneeling beside the dog, I stroke his head. “Poor baby,” I whisper. “I don’t know how he could do this to you.”

“Who?” Kai asks, looping the rope through the dog’s collar.

“I don’t know. Not my dad, if that’s what you’re thinking.” I jerk the rope out of his hand, feeling the now-familiar flare in my chest. If I’m not careful, I could set the blanket on fire and kill the dog myself. “He would never do this.”

After tying the rope to the railing, I fold the blanket around the dog.

Kai touches my hand through the blanket. “All I’m thinking is that this must be hard on you. You’ve had to process a lot lately.”

Shivering from the cool dampness of his hand that penetrates the old wool blanket, I mutter, “Yeah, it’s been a tough few months.”

“I remember how I felt, when I found out what I am, or at least, might become.”

I perch on the stairs, mostly as an excuse to move my hand, because it’s starting to burn. “How old were you?”

“Seven,” he says. “My grandmother died suddenly in an accident, and I asked a lot of questions. My mom didn’t want to tell me anything, but my dad blurted it out. He said he was a Flood, just like my Gran, and that I might turn out that way, too. But my aunt—Dad’s sister—didn’t have the ‘gift.’”

I can tell from his expression that he doesn’t consider his “gift” much of a present, either. “When did you realize you had it?”

He rubs his forehead and groans. “Seventh grade. I was in Math class, and all of a sudden I flooded, head to foot. It looked like a rain cloud let loose over my desk. I got out of there as fast, but kids talked about it for a long time. They called me Wetter.”

“Brutal,” I say.

“Yeah.” After a pause, he adds, “It happened when I got nervous, or mad. Or just randomly. I carried clothes with me, but sometimes it did look like I’d wet myself.”

Dropping a fireball seems somewhat less humiliating. “As if school doesn’t suck enough.”

“Exactly. But my dad worked with me. He helped me to figure out my triggers and how to rein it in.”

“You’re lucky to have help,” I say. “My dad hasn’t told me anything. I had no clue until last month, when I just started sparking. It’s awful.”

He stares at the brightening skyline as he asks, “What happened tonight? Did you torch Dora’s by mistake?”

I shake my head. “I’ve only had a few minor accidents. Nothing like this.”

Glancing at me, he says, “Then why were you there?”

“To rescue the dog.”

“And you knew the dog was there because...?”

Talking to him like this has been a huge relief, but with his dad thinking my dad’s a killer, I know I can’t take the confessions too far. “I just knew.”

“Now who’s being cryptic?” he asks.

“No one’s giving me insider information on these fires, if that’s what you want to know,” I say. “No one’s giving me much information at all, actually. I’m just trying to figure things out without getting into more trouble.” I stroke the dog’s head before adding, “I wish I could hit ‘rewind’ and go back a few months.”

Kai looks at me and I sense he wants to hug me, but of course, he can’t. Still, just sitting in the same vicinity makes me feel a little better.

“Let me help you,” he says.

“How? We’re natural enemies.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe we could be
unnatural
friends.”

I laugh. “The kind of friends who can’t be seen together or trust each other?”

He laughs, too. “Yeah. That type of friendship is completely underrated.”

“Sounds interesting. Except for the fact that you’ve mastered your ability and I haven’t. I’m at a disadvantage.”

“But nothing’s happened. You haven’t burned up my car and I haven’t drowned your dog.”

“This isn’t my dog,” I say. “You might drown my dog if I owned one.”

“I wouldn’t. I promise I will not drown anyone or anything you love.”

I look at him, careful not to hold his glance too long. “Can you really promise that?”

Pushing up my sleeve, he presses his lips quickly to the underside of my arm. The sensation is both unbearable and divine. He feels my muscles tense and breaks the seal before I have to do it. “Yes,” he says, his face streaming. “I can promise that.”

After he releases my arm, I watch as a lip print forms on my arm. “I can’t promise anything,” I say. “I’m a loose cannon right now.”

He laughs again. “Well, I’m your ideal training partner—a walking fire extinguisher.”

“Let me think about it.” I lean over to kiss the dog on the head before getting to my feet. “I’ve got to get home before dad’s shift ends.”

I’m relieved my voice sounds casual, when the emotions surging through me are anything but. For the first time in weeks, it feels as if I am not completely alone in this terrifying new world.

It’s just too bad that the only person who seems to understand what I’m going through could also kill me in the blink of an eye.

M
att Huxley is cleaning up after a class when I find him in the pool area after school. There are a couple of swimmers in the slow lane, but no one to overhear us.

“Hey, dude,” Hux says. “Burn your house down yet?”

“Came pretty close, thanks to you,” I say.

“Bathtub, am I right?”

“So I’m unoriginal as well as well as uncontrolled.”

He shrugs as he wraps a rope around a life ring. “I offered to train you.”

“I’ll take you up on it now.”

“It was a conditional offer, remember.” He hangs the ring on a hook on the wall. “You seeing Kai Seaver?”

“If you mean ‘seeing’ as in dating, the answer is no,” I say. “But I run into him now and then. It’s a small school.”

“And when you run into him, what? You shoot the breeze? Complain about the cafeteria food?”

“We talk, yeah. Kai and I have a lot in common.”

Hux snorts. “You two have nothing in common.”

“We do,” I insist, helping him collect pool buoys from the deck and putting them in a bin. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s for sure,” he says. “But then, I’m just a Torch, who’s seen a Flood take out an entire town in a vendetta with my uncle. I would’ve thought your big lifeguarding save gave you a hint of that. I seem to recall you fainting.”

“I didn’t faint, I just—”

“Swooned?” he suggests, grinning. “Overcome by Kai's hot body?"

I give him a withering look. “Please.”

He gestures to a spinal board on the deck. “Put that away, and stop whining.”

When I lean over to pick up the board, my sleeve rides up, exposing Kai’s blistering lip print. I try to push it down before Hux sees it, but he grabs my arm and turns it to examine the mark. Releasing my arm, he grabs the board himself, and props it onto the hooks. His smile is still in place, but it no longer reaches his eyes.

“It’s not what you think,” I say. “Kai was just trying to make me feel better. He gets what I’m going through.”

“Let me explain something, Phoenix,” he says, and the smile finally fades. “A Flood can’t ‘get what you’re going through.’ He can’t understand you, any more than a cat empathizes with a mouse.” He points at my arm. “That was the cat getting a taste.”

As my anger wells, I feel heat travelling down my arm. I shake my hand to try to dissipate the energy before anything happens.

Watching me, Blake’s smile returns. “It’s like having uncontrollable gas, isn’t it? Only lethal?”

“You’re disgusting,” I say.

He grabs my hand to restrain it. “The heat
ends
here. Where does it start?”

“In here,” I say, tapping my head with my free hand.

“So that’s what you need to cool.”

Easier said than done. I try to focus on chilling, but it’s really the pressure of Hux’s hand on mine that keeps the fire in. It feels as if it’s backing up my arm again, and into my chest.

It’s like he can sense when he’s squeezed the energy out of my arm, because he releases my hand. “I know you’re pissed, Phee, and it’s a lot to take in. But the sooner you accept this, the sooner you can control yourself. If you don’t, you’ll end up in trouble.” He turns to walk to the office. “I think you already know that or you wouldn’t be here.”

Trailing after him, I ask, “Why am I the mouse in this equation?”

He answers with a question. “When fire meets water, which one wins?”

I think about Kai chasing the fire line at the gas station and extinguishing it gracefully, effortlessly. “If Floods are stronger than Torches, how come people are so worried that my dad is after Brett Seaver? Sometimes the mouse must win.”

Hux turns and grins over his shoulder. “Sometimes.”

“Well, how?” I press.

He shakes his head. “No tips while the cat and mouse are messing around.”

“So you’re just going let me twist? No fair."

“I’ve given you the best advice I can: avoid the cat, talk to your dad. Until you do those things, you’re on your own.” He pauses in the doorway of the office. “Lucky you’re in Rosewood.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I ask, following him inside.

He drops into his chair and puts his feet on the desk. “It’s a progressive community. An integrated cultural mosaic. Mostly people live and let live.”