TORCH (18 page)

“Hux?” Kai says. “What was he doing there?”

I consider telling Kai that Hux is a Torch, and possibly has prophetic dreams the way I do. But it seems like I’d be sharing someone else’s personal information—information that could put Hux at risk.

“I guess the best case scenario is that he was just taking a ride in the middle of the night,” I say. “The worst case is that he drugged Bianca and lit the fire. But from what I know of Hux, it doesn’t seem likely he’d be the arsonist.”

“Agreed,” Kai says. “I take his master’s swim class, and he seems like a standup guy.”

That means Hux doesn’t set off any warning signs in Kai. He must be good at cloaking himself.

I spin around on the swing until the chains are twisted. “On the other hand, he hangs with Bianca. I overheard her talking about her parents heading to Berkley to bring her sister back for Thanksgiving, so Hux knew she was alone.”

The thought of Hux drugging Bianca and leaving her in a burning house makes me shudder. It doesn’t fit with his efforts to help me control my abilities and keep the peace in Roseville. Besides, when I call up the vision of Black Hat going about his work, there was nothing in his precise movements that bears any resemblance to Hux’s laid back slouch. Then again, his surfer dude demeanor does come and go.

Lifting my feet off the ground, I release the swing and let it twirl. When it slows, I say, “I want to believe Hux was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, just like my dad.”

“I hear you," Kai says. “But we’d better be careful at school, anyway.”

We already avoid each other at school, so it shouldn’t be a problem. “Whoever set this fire basically flipped the bird at the chief of police,” I say. “That’s major. And what’s really interesting is that I think the arsonist contained the fire so that there was time for someone to try to save Bianca.”

“Meaning?” Kai asks.

“Either he didn’t really want her to die, or he was testing us,” I say. “Giving us time to get there, get in and out.”

"Do you think he was watching?"

“Possibly,” I say, looking around nervously. "Hopefully he didn't follow us." Kai smiles. “Relax. Unless he has wings, I’d have lost him by the second park I cut through. The one with the big puddle.”

I smile back. My shoes are soaked and my back is stiffening from the rough ride over grass and cobble stone streets, but I can’t deny that it was exciting. Still, I’m worried. “What if the arsonist is onto us, Kai? And how much bigger can he go?”

“Well, if he’s looking for a reaction, burning down the chief’s house should get one. The cops will be all over this, looking for every clue.”

I sigh. “I sure hope my dad has his butt covered.”

“He must be as worried about this escalating as we are. My dad sure is.”

“Everyone’s on edge,” I say. “Rosewood isn’t Rosewood anymore.”

Kai takes the chains of my swing and pulls it back until my feet dangle. For a moment, I feel elated, suspended over him. Then he releases me and I freefall for a moment. It’s like the rollercoaster feeling, only I have a pang in my heart as I soar away from him. But then I soar back just as fast. “Catch me,” I say.

“Always,” he says.

It’s exactly what I want to hear, even though we both know it's an unattainable dream.

R
egan and I take our seats to applause after improvising a scene our acting class suggested. I had to play a pregnant woman who unexpectedly goes into labor while waiting at a bus stop. Regan played a bystander who overcame her squeamishness to deliver the baby. It was surprisingly therapeutic to yell and scream, and curse out my absent husband before finally producing my “baby,” a knapsack wrapped in a jacket that I promptly named after Regan.

Drama club has proven to be a huge success for Operation Destiny. There are twelve kids in the group, including Melissa, who decided acting lessons would help her ballet performance. Since we’d all rank around the same on the school “cool” meter, it’s pretty relaxed. In fact, everyone has been supportive as we’ve worked through some awkward lessons in the past couple of weeks.

Initially, I had trouble with the trust exercises. The teacher always pairs me with the tallest guy in the group, and I’ve had to let him lead me around, blindfolded, and even fall into his arms, hoping he wouldn’t let me crash to the floor. He didn’t.

On the other hand, I’m the reigning champion of a game called Zip, Zap, Zop. We stand in a circle, and the first person claps her hands at someone else and says "Zip." That person immediately claps at another and says "Zap," and the third person claps at yet another and says "Zop." The process repeats, getting faster and faster, until someone says the wrong word and gets eliminated from the circle. The last student standing is the winner. It’s like dodge ball, only painless.

The game improves our reaction time, which is a big help with improv. Today, Regan did a great job on “public solitude,” where she had to act out her morning routine, from brushing her teeth to subduing her hair, as if we weren’t sitting in a circle watching.

As we collapse on the floor for ten minutes of mindfulness meditation, however, real life rushes back in.

There hasn’t been a fire for three weeks. It's as if the arsonist seems satisfied with his grand statement of burning the police chief’s house and is lying low. The story got massive coverage in the local media, with Bianca’s face appearing on the front page of the paper.

Destroying the Larkens’ doll collection might scratch Black Hat’s itch for awhile, but since he hasn’t succeeded in killing anyone, I don’t believe he’s done. Not yet.

I remind myself of the teacher’s instruction to acknowledge every thought, and let it go. It’s harder than it seems. Pretending my mind is a factory churning out negative ideas, I pluck them off the conveyor belt one by one, and throw them in the imaginary trash can behind me. The scenario makes me smile, and Regan, who’s obviously struggling with her own mindfulness, sees this when she opens her eyes.

“You’re thinking about it again, aren’t you?” she asks.

She’s referring to Bianca’s chirpy sound bite that cropped up during TV interviews: 
“All I have is this foggy image of dragging myself downstairs and outside,”
Bianca said.
“But I must have defended myself from the arsonist, because I’m covered in bruises. I’m trained in karate, you know.”

Regan and I have replayed that interview thirty times, laughing. It’s better that than Bianca having a “foggy image” of Kai dropping her, or me in a balaclava, tossing her around like a sack of potatoes. Thank god the arsonist slipped her enough medication to sedate everything except her huge ego.

I mimic Bianca in a singsong voice, “I have this foggy image of giving the arsonist a roundhouse kick to the jaw. I wanted to leave a mark so that the cops can ID him.”

Regan giggles, and the teacher calls, “Girls. Meditating.”

Three more minutes on the mental assembly line and we’re free. Smoothing our clothes and hair, Regan and I grab a soda from the machine in the hall and head out to the sunny side of the school. We perch on the stairs to chat before heading home.

Regan turns back to our favorite topic. “I’m so glad your dad turned up on the video cameras at The Corral and the Mini Mart.”

“Yeah, and I know he wasn't anywhere near Bianca's house," I say.

“How?” Regan asks.

I turn to catch her expression. “I put a tracking device on his truck.”

She gasps. “Phoenix!”

“It’s for his own good.”I’ve crossed so many lines now that spying on my dad seems pretty minor. “If there’s a single clue that can lead me to the arsonist, I want to see it.”

“Well, at least it was good news,” Regan says. “The fires have stopped, so I hope this will all be over soon and you can have a normal life again.”

“If anyone who randomly shoots off sparks can have a normal life.”

“You’ll learn to control that. You’re already doing way better.”

It’s true that I’ve had few episodes of spontaneous fire-starting recently, but I don’t honestly feel like I’ve gained control. Rather, I’ve had less provocation, especially with Bianca off on “stress leave.” It’s been an era of peace. I’ve been able to focus on Karate and drama, and hanging with Regan.

It’s been great, except for one thing:  I miss Kai. Without fires to fight, we have no excuse to get together. Dad cracked down on me after the fire at Bianca’s house. He took the car keys, although he knew I hadn’t used the Jeep because he’d checked the odometer. Apparently lack of trust is a two-way street.

I assume Kai’s parents have cracked down, too. At least, that’s what I tell myself must be keeping him from contacting me. Other than a few texts in the days immediately following the fire at Bianca’s, checking to see if I had news, I haven’t heard from him. I’ve seen him a few times from a distance at school and he didn’t even wave. I know that’s because we agreed to keep a low profile, in case Matt Huxley is watching us, but it still feels like a tiny death each time Kai ignores me.

Without our joint mission, I'm worried we’ll go back to being strangers—strangers who happen to have some important inside knowledge of each other.

Regan reads into my silence and says, “Nothing from Kai?”

I shake my head. “I guess we were only hanging because of the fires.”

“Those lip prints told a different story,” she says, tapping my arm where Kai kissed me.

I pull up my sleeve and show her a stretch of freckles on pale skin. The marks Kai left have completely disappeared. It’s like nothing ever happened between us.

“He only did that twice,” I say. “I guess when he got to know me better he didn’t feel the same way.”

“I don’t believe that,” Regan says. “He’s taken too many risks for you not to care.”

“Every risk he took helped someone else,” I point out. “And it gave him a chance to keep an eye on me.”

Regan sighs. “I get the negativity, Phee. You miss him and you can’t just call him and ask him to hang out. It’s messed up.”

I pick at a loose thread on my sleeve. “I’d settle for a few texts. At least I’d know he’s thinking about me.”

“He is. I bet he’s trying to figure out how to make this work.”

There is no way to make this work for the long run, but I find Regan’s line of thinking comforting anyway. “It’s probably for the best, right?”

“I don’t think so,” she says. “At the beginning, I thought seeing him was a terrible idea, but I’ve changed my mind.”

I look up at her, surprised. “Why?”

“Because when you got to Rosewood, you were exhausted and down. Now, despite all that’s happened, you look strong and healthy, and you seem kind of happy.”

I ponder this. If I could go back a year, to when Nate was alive, Dad was okay, and the biggest thing I had to worry about was the next swim meet, I would—even though it would mean not knowing Kai. “I wouldn’t call it happy,” I say. “More like resigned. I guess if I can use this ability to help people, it isn’t so bad.”

“That’s why I think it’s worth being with Kai, despite the risks,” Regan says. “This is who you are, and he helps you deal with that.”

“Except that he isn’t around,” I say.

“He knows you’re not supposed to hang out with him,” Regan reminds me. “He probably needs some encouragement from you. Maybe we could, you know, light a fire under him.”

Kai’s smile when he sees us walking past the door near the pool is all the encouragement
I
need. It took us eight passes to “run into” him leaving after his usual afternoon swim, but he doesn’t need to know that. We can both act surprised and pretend not to notice Regan stepping out of earshot to call someone—or no one.

Checking over his shoulder, Kai asks, “What about Hux?”

“I’ll make it fast,” I say. “I just wanted to know if you’d—”

“Sure,” he says.

“I haven’t asked yet.”

“Whatever it is, it can’t be harder than avoiding you for twenty days, four hours and twenty-six minutes.”

“Don't be so sure,” I say. “What I’m going to propose didn't go so well before.”

“Go ahead and propose,” he says, grinning.