Her destiny is her greatest fear.
Seventeen-year-old Halen Windspeare will do anything to extinguish the flames that spark beneath her fingertips. But, returning to the place where she witnessed her father drown forces the fire to ignite. Refusing...
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Sketching his crooked smile had become a habit for Halen, a madness not easily tamed. Flipping through her worn notebook, the boy's haunting stare glared back from the pages, calling her out for her addiction—cursing her for the hundredth time.
But as much as Halen fought him, she couldn't stop the urge to place her pencil on the page. It was as if the boy were battling to be free from her thoughts; that somehow being captured in her notebook was a far more favorable prison than her mind. How could she blame him? She too wished to be free from the nightmares in her head.
Halen turned to a blank page, not caring if the teacher noticed, and set the tip of her pencil poised for his command. Closing her eyes, she knew the boy would be there. He never kept her waiting.
His face flashed into view; his forehead furrowed, his full lips pressed into a tight line. Halen sketched him quickly. She was familiar with the hollow of his cheeks, which dimpled when he smiled, how one side of his jaw was a little rounder than square, and his nose hooked ever so slightly as if it had broken at one time and not set properly. His imperfections were perfection.
As she shaded the rims of his eyes with deep charcoal halos, she longed to climb into the page and ask what was bothering him. She had so many questions for the boy. If only he were real.
Her skin prickled with thoughts of their first meeting—the day they moved back to Rockaway Beach—the place she cursed the waves for snapping her father's bones and stealing his soul. And when her mom crossed the state line into Oregon, the sparks Halen worked so hard to keep from rising beneath her skin surfaced with a stabbing reminder. So, when she woke with the boy's face etched inside her eyelids, she feared both were a warning.
But from what, she didn't know.
There was more to this boy—more than she wanted to admit. There was more to Rockaway Beach than she cared to face.
The boy smiled knowingly back from the page.
Like you care. With a sweep of her pencil, she drew a long handlebar mustache under his nose. Tearing the page from her notebook, she crumpled it in her fist. Her palm warmed as if she were holding a hot stone. She drew a panicked breath. Please, not here.
She scanned the classroom. Most of her classmates were still filling in the test answers with penciled circles. Her fingertips flickered with heat and she dropped the paper, fearful it might combust in her hand. She hadn't set anything on fire in a long time and she wasn't about to start now. She shook her hands by her sides, hoping the sparks would just leave her alone.
Halen. A whispered voice brushed her ear, raising the hairs along the back of her neck. She spun in her seat to find an annoyed boy shielding his score sheet from her.
Haaaalennnn. The whispers turned with a hiss.
A jolt of shocks gripped her wrists. She inhaled a sharp breath as the searing pain spread up her arms. She whipped around to face the front of the class. The teacher didn't even look up from his book when she gasped. Which added to the sinking feeling—she was the only one who could hear the taunting whispers.
