In the Ashes

Prologue

P R O L O G U E - 12 years before

I remember the first day I saw Axel Reid like it was yesterday. 

I was five, scribbling away furiously at a coloring sheet when I felt someone pry my crayon from my grasp. I peered up under my eyelashes at the offender, a wide-eyed kid with gaps between his teeth.

"I need green," he said, and he turned his body away from me and began to draw lines of green all over his paper. I stared at him, a feeling of uneasiness in my stomach. Waiting. 

"Give it back," another kid at the table said.

Gap-teeth and I both turned to look at him. His name tag lay haphazardly next to his untouched drawing, the letters drawn out in red scrawl: A X E L.

"Axel." I formed his name with my lips.

"I'm busy," Gap-teeth responded, giving Axel an incredulous look and fixing his gaze on his paper. I realized he was drawing a dinosaur, with long green talons protruding from its appendages. 

Axel stood up, marched up to Gap-teeth, and glowered at him.

"Give it back," he said again. Gap-teeth shook his head, and Axel punched him in the face.

Gap-teeth's visage contorted into an ugly expression; his bottom lip trembled and his eyes welled up with tears and before I knew it, he was hollering, his voice carrying over all the other tables and attracting the attention of all the other kids once immersed in their drawings and, most unfortunately, our teacher.

"Axel!" Mrs. Meyer left her desk and ran up to Gap-teeth, inspecting his face for any significant damage, and then pulling him into a hug.

"Apologize," she said. "Right now."

"Sorry," Axel blurted out, but he was smiling. Just a little.

Mrs. Meyer grabbed his arm and walked him over to the timeout-chair, the beacon of shame in our five-year-old minds. Gap-teeth was still coloring with my pencil, and Axel sat in the chair, arms crossed, glowering at a wall adorned with stickers of all the months of the year.

The uneasiness in my stomach had morphed into sadness as I glanced over at the seat, noting both the absence of the boy and what should have been life and color over the paper that was once in front of him.

I tried to swallow my fear as I left my seat with my things, grabbed Axel's blank paper, and marched over to where he was sitting. He didn't say anything as I sat down next to him on the carpet, putting his paper and crayons in front of him.

"You didn't finish your drawing," I told him nonchalantly.

He glanced over at me, his arms still crossed. I realized how green his eyes were.

"I didn't know what to draw."

"Really? Not a single thing?" I asked in disbelief.

He shook his head.

"What about your family?"

"No," he said. "I only draw nice people."

I furrowed my brow, but shook off his statement. I scooted closer to him, smiling. "You could draw me?" I said.

He hesitated, then shifted his body and looked at me. "No."

"Um, okay," I said, looking down at my paper to hide my warming cheeks and taking out my disappointment by coloring outside the lines of the tree's trunk.

But when I glanced up, he was staring down the month of June, and although in complete juxtaposition to the boy who had punched Gap-teeth, there, on his face, was a smile. 

Before I knew it, it was dismissal, and I was in the backseat of my mom's car. I looked at the kids milling around, a girl who I had eaten lunch with that day, a boy whose nose was always running, and I saw Axel, seated on a bench, far away from the other kids. But there was Mrs. Meyer next to him and the principal, in a heated exchange, and there was Axel, seated between them, looking at his lap.

I added this to the puzzle piece that was Axel Reid in my mind, but even as the years passed, I never once grew closer to solving it. Some days I swore I did, but on others, I realized that I was trying to fix pieces together that didn't fit. Axel and I were night and day, fire and ice, oil and water; we weren't supposed to mix, but we did, in a way that worked.

Until it didn't.

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Author's Note

Thank you so much to everyone for reading & supporting me! I hope you're as excited about this story as I am! ;)