Into the Fire (The Elemental Wars, Book 1)

Chapter Two

Two hours later, twilight dimmed the small apartment Mieshka shared with her father when she got home. She took a step in, closed the door behind her,and dropped her keys on the floor.

She stared at them. Tears blurred her eyes. As the sob rocked through her chest, she smothered it with her hand and leaned her forehead against the wall. Closing her eyes, she started to count. When she got to ten, she rubbed her wrist against her face and peered down through the blur.

Most of the light came from the balcony door at the far end of the apartment, filtered through a series of vertical, gray fabric blinds. It wasn't much, but it glinted on the metal sitting next to her foot.

She left the keys where they were.

Shrugging her pack from her shoulder, she walked through the hall. To her left, the kitchen opened through the living room, along with a bisecting hallway that led to the washroom, laundry room, and both bedrooms on the right. She glanced to its end, wiping her nose on her sleeve. The last door had a dim line of light between it and the floor.

Dad was home.

She slumped her backpack onto the couch, missing the junk mail and magazines that had piled on the arm. Unsorted laundry occupied the rest. On the coffee table, old pizza boxes stacked like a bachelor's block tower game. Some were starting to smell.

Reeling back the blinds on their balled cord, she slid the door open and stepped over the sill. Their view was of the next apartment and the narrow alleyway between. Every week, the sanitation department emptied the dumpster sat the end.

The dead remains of a few potted plants also welcomed her into the chill. The Balcony Garden Experiment had been short-lived. Plants couldn't live with neglect.

She hunched over the rail and watched the light fade from the alley. It was a gradual process, and one that made her huddle more and more into her hoodie as the chill rose. Eventually, the alley's lights switched on, beaming an industrial yellow-orange into the gritty shadows.

Behind her, the shuffle of socked feet announced her father's arrival. He slid the door closed behind him and joined her, the railing wobbling as he leaned against it. She watched the flicker of a television set in the opposite building, one floor up. A car alarm went off, its sound muffled by distance. Eyes wandering to the dumpsters seven floors down, she thought of the pizza boxes. If she threw them, maybe she could get them in.

"Cold out." Her dad's breath rose in a mist, backlit by their sidelong neighbors.He wore an old, pale blue work shirt, the top two buttons undone, and his sweatpants had food stains on them. The orange alley light glinted off the thin metal frame of his glasses.

She nodded, jaw tightening. She'd drawn her hood over her beanie long ago, though the chill still seeped in through the neck. Her cheeks had gone numb,and her nose. She did not shiver.

"How was school?"

"Fine."

"Any homework?"

"Of course." Her tone was snippy. She gritted her teeth as a lump slipped back into her throat. The cold pricked at new tears, but she forced her voice to stay even. "Robin showed me the fire mage's temple."

"Temple?"

"Yeah. Turns out it wasn't a temple." She drew a breath, feeling the pain inside her. "It was a memorial instead. Probably for all the people they lost in their old world."

The quiet thickened between them for a moment, and she felt a hard lump stick to her throat. The railing trembled under her arm. Bitterness grew in her chest.

"Why did we come here?" Her question hung in the cold. She didn't look at him, knowing what his answer would be. The bitterness quickly turned to anger, fueled by an old rage that collected in her stomach like dead blood. Her nerves frayed like a bad firework.

"It's safer here," he said.

"I can't visit Mom,"she said.

"She's with us—"

"—in our hearts? There's a lot of things in my heart right now, and she ain't one of them."

"Mieshka—"

"No! What can you say? What can anyone say?" She was yelling now, not caring how her voice echoed through the alley. Above them, a neighbor closed a balcony door loudly.

"I'm sorry that—"

Rage flashed ahead of her thoughts. "Sorry? Sorry doesn't help! Fuck!"

Her hand smacked against the railing. The cold numbed the pain.

"Mieshka, calm down," he whispered, hissing across the two feet that separated them. "We have to get through this. Remember what the psychologist said. Count—"

"I'm sick of counting. It doesn't help. Who are you to tell me what to do? You just hide in your room all fricking day. And order pizza. I can't live on pizza!"

"Mieshka!" His voice rose. "Keep your voice down. I know it hurts. Believe me, I know. I lost her too."

She choked, the alleyway blurred around her.

"I lost both of you."

A sob hiccupped through her as she turned away. She slammed the door open on its tracks and sped into the dim, dark room, past the couch with its piles of laundry and junk mail, past the stacked, moldy pizza boxes on the coffee table, and straight into her room.

She slammed the door behind her, breathing hard. Tears slid down, carving raw streaks into the cold of her cheeks. She ripped a tissue from her desk, nearly taking the box with it. Sinking onto her bed, she curled into the mess she'd left the quilt in this morning.

It was starting to smell too.

God, I'm sixteen. Mom was supposed to be here.

She clawed the quilts up to her and hugged them to her chest, lowering her head into the top and closing her eyes. After a few minutes, she heard the balcony door slide open again. Her dad shuffled in, his feet pausing outside her door a few seconds later.

She twisted around to stare at it.

He moved on. She listened as his bedroom door opened, closed.

She rested her head back into the quilt, eyes closing against its familiar softness. The cold had followed her in, and it numbed her skin for a long time afterward.