From A To Z

Chapter 1

"Yeah, where is Sienna?" Victor scanned the tables.
"Having a European emergency," shrugged Cody.
That made Marisol smirk.
"A damsel in distress."
Victor waved his fork at me.
"You don't have to run to the rescue, you know."
I dropped my lunch box into my backpack.
"I'm not running."
I straightened my ponytail pointedly slowly and peeled my jeans jacket off the back of my chair.
"See ya."
"Zoe, what was that number again?" Cody called out after me.
"Stay with the program, Cody," I answered without turning. "One mouth, one nose, two eyes. 1-1-2."
"Yeah, Cody, stay with the program and Sienna might just notice your existence," snarked Victor, loud enough for half the cafeteria to hear.

I elbowed the door open and stepped into the bright afternoon air. In the distance, the serrated edge of the Cascade mountains pushed against the cobalt sky. I shielded my eyes from the sun and traced the tiny dot of an airplane speeding west towards the Pacific. Bound for Seattle or Portland, or maybe Vancouver, full of people with places to be. Seen from all the way up, Bruler was a dot of no significance and I was a tiny speck within it.

Bruler Pass started off as a logging camp some 200 years ago. The settlement grew and when it graduated to an off-the-beaten-track mountain town, the name was shortened to Bruler. Easier on the tongue, prettier on the map, except it meant 'burn' in French. Sienna told me that. Her mom was French, her dad owned the town's car dealership and the gardening center. My mom was a dental hygienist, my dad owned the trailer he lived in down in Florida.

Sienna and I met in grade school. She was the new kid no one wanted to play with. Her family had just moved to Bruler and she didn't have any friends. She was toothy, wore her hair in two stringy braids tucked behind her ears, and was afraid of horses. I mean, who is afraid of horses? Despite the odds, she grew up to be the most popular girl at Bruler High. Her skin glowed, laugh tickled, her voice drew you in. She was fun to be with and she was pretty. Sienna might no longer be the shy girl with the pigtails but she was still my best friend.

I found her under the bleachers, hugging herself and kicking the dirt. She had been crying - I could tell from the smudged mascara under her eyes - but now she was just angry.

"Got your message," I said.
She gave me her back. Yup, I was right. She was angry.
"What's wrong?"
"I hate him!"
I pivoted around her.
"Who?"

Instead of an answer Sienna stubbed the nose of her tennis shoe against the ground and sent a few pebbles flying. One grazed my ankle.
"Ouch!" I cried out with exaggerated pain.
"Sorry," she mumbled automatically.
Sienna stomped the dirt once more and looked up.
"Dixon, that's who."

Mike Dixon taught English and drama. He had been a first-rate snowboarder until a bad fall during a race in Vale resulted in two shattered legs. His fateful face splat was on Youtube, I've been told but I haven't had the heart to watch it. He spent months in a hospital in Colorado and had to pretty much learn to walk again. Getting back on the slopes was out of the question. That's when he decided to come home to Bruler and became a teacher.
I couldn't imagine what he could have done to upset her.

"Come on, Sienna, tell me what happened!"
"He took me off the role. Apparently, I'm not right for Miss Scarlet."
The drama club had chosen Clue as their end-of-year production. It was a big deal because Bruler High had put on A Midsummer Night's Dream for as long as I could remember.
"Why?"
"He says I am not invested or in... terested, whatever."
"But you are."
"Exactly! So what if I don't know my lines yet? I have like a whole month to practice. I'm trying to get in character. Parroting words is easy, bringing a fictional heroine to life - now that takes talent!"

So, she had shown up to a rehearsal unprepared. Still, I was surprised by Dixon's gutsiness and so was she. Sienna was used to getting her way. She was pretty, privileged, and popular. She had more followers on Instagram than Bruler's got citizens and to some, that mattered.
"So you're off the play?" I asked.
She looked at me as if I was slow.
"No, he made me an extra. C'est moi, Yvette!"

I had to give it to him. That was actually brilliant. Sienna was half-French, so who better to do the fake accent? And she would rock the maid outfit. She got the legs and the curves, and the pout. Yvette got snuffed early on, so she didn't have many lines. Of course, I didn't say any of that.
"Yvette's not an extra," I pointed out instead. "And she's got sex appeal."

Mollified, Sienna pushed a few errant wisps of blond hair away from her face. Her hair was silky and looked sun-kissed even under the bleachers. This was a professional job, compared to which, the highlights my mom gave me using leftover hair dye and aluminum foil from the kitchen drawer, mimicked orange ribbons.

"It's not fair," she sniffed, enjoying the sulk. "How am I gonna show my face at school? Everyone knew I had the role."
What seemed a gigantic personal setback to her, would be forgotten in a fortnight. A non-event but this was Sienna, the golden girl to whom nothing bad ever happened.

I unzipped my backpack and rummaged in it for tissues.
"Nobody's going to care,"I said and handed her the pack.
"You think?"
"Yup."
"But I really wanted the lead."
"Best not to get too hung up on things you can't change."
"You're right," Sienna pulled out a tissue and tossed the rest back at me with a renewed sense of purpose. "I have better things to do with my time."

I wasn't sure what she meant but it has nothing to do with homework. She probably had a new admirer. Sienna got all mysterious when she was being wooed.I wished that I had something to be mysterious about.

I decided not to press her; she would tell me when she's ready. We spent months overanalyzing Tyler, her last boyfriend. His word choices, his clothes, his taste in music, other girls he might be into, everything. In a way I was glad when she dumped him in March. I couldn't bear talking about him any longer.

Sienna wiped the mascara off her cheeks and studied her face in her phone, pouting as if she was readying to take a selfie. Satisfied with the result, she turned to me.
"Let's go."

I followed her into the football field but instead of continuing towards school, she swerved towards the parking lot.
"Where are you going?" I asked, confused.
"I need to get out of here."
"Why?"
"Because," she tossed her perfect hair in place, "the cast hasn't been updated yet, so I have some time to decide how to spin this." I could virtually hear the wheels in her head-turning, the synapses firing. "I need to get ahead of the news. When word gets out, it'll be too late."
"Sienna, relax. This isn't the fallout of a nuclear disaster. Nobody-"
"So you're not coming?"
"I got Health next period. And you got..."
She rolled her eyes.
"Who cares? I'm in no state to go back to class. I need to clear my head. It feels like one of my migraines is coming."
Sienna's migraines were notorious for arriving precisely when she needed alone time.
"Au revoir!" she exclaimed.
I cringed. If her European act was getting to me, then it must be driving the rest of Bruler crazy. I thought of saying something about it but now wasn't the time.

Sienna pressed on the key fob and her car blinked in response. When she got a Mini Cooper for her sixteenth birthday, she insisted that it was not an extravagant gift because her dad owned the car dealership. Extravagant would have been a boat. In my case, extravagant would have been a phone. But I didn't mind having less. What I hungered for was a life away from Bruler. I had a plan. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to become a doctor. I would go to college and study medicine. I would travel the world helping people.
There was only one thing that stood in my way - blood.

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