The hotel room was horrible, which was pretty much what I’d expected. My sneakers were quiet on the dirty beige carpet as I walked in. The bed springs creaked in rusty protest when I sat down on the bed, which was outfitted in mustard colored sheets with white flowers.
Yuck. Well…beggars can’t be choosers.
I let out a relieved breath and flopped over onto my back, running my fingers over the threads in the comforter. What did I do now? I was safe for tonight, but what about after that? I needed to find my aunt before tomorrow night, because there was no way I was going to be able to pay for another night at a hotel. I stared at the ceiling, thinking absently that the stucco was starting to go yellow.
Why couldn’t I be one of those kids who carried a cell phone with them everywhere? Then I would have wireless internet and I could look up my aunt online.
You have to have money to have a cell phone.
But if she wasn’t in the phone book there was no guarantee I would be able to find her online. But I might as well try, maybe I could find an internet café tomorrow or something. If there was one in this miniscule town.
I grew bored of looking at the ceiling and sat up, spotting the remote control on the night stand beside the bed. Guess there’s nothing else to do, so it’s time for a little network television.
At first the TV just hissed and spat, until I found a channel that actually worked. The news broadcaster – a blonde woman with a thin, pinched looking face – was droning in a flat voice about a liquor store robbery. I turned over and propped my chin in my hands, watching with eyes half open. Local news was better than nothing.
More boring news stories. A nursing home was running out of money. There was a rash of break-ins in a quiet neighborhood….
I let myself drift a little, eyes shutting, listening to the sound of the reporter’s voice.
“…and in another story, a seventeen-year-old girl from Victoria is being listed as a missing person, after burning down her local high school…”
The bed springs screeched as I shot upright, heart suddenly thundering, eyes fixed on the screen. There, beside the reporter in the upper-right hand side of the screen, was a picture of me.
Oh shit!
The picture was a bad one. I had my head tilted to one side as if I was giving the photographer attitude, and my mouth was a flat line, no cheery smile there. The dark hair framing my face was messy and tangled, and dark eyes peered out from beneath too-long bangs, staring cold-heartedly forward. The girl in the photo was hard, stony looking. A face that held no remorse.
Icy fingers had my heart in a strangle-hold, and I stared wide eyed at the screen, struggling to catch my breath. They were making me look heartless. They were making me look crazy.
I remembered that picture. It was a school photo taken last year. That day was blazed into my memory forever because I’d had a screaming fight with dad that morning, and virtually as soon as I’d walked into the school they were pulling us all aside to do photos. So of course, I’d sat there staring bleakly at the camera, making awful faces whenever they’d asked me to smile. Finally they’d settled on a blank expression, stating that it was better than a grimace.
So now here I was on TV, in all my sulky glory.
Crap! Why couldn’t I have smiled that day?
The news reporter was still talking, her straight rows of white teeth flashing behind cherry lips, perfectly plucked brows creasing in fake concern, “Jessica Parker has been missing for a full day, and is wanted for questioning. If you see her you can call the police hotline. She is unarmed, but possibly dangerous.”
My mouth dropped open. Possibly dangerous?
“Are you kidding me?” my voice came out in a squeak, and I found my fingernails biting into the palms of my hands. I tried to breathe deeply. This couldn’t possibly be happening. They couldn’t be putting a news bulletin out on TV and saying I was some kind of dangerous lunatic.
The screen flicked briefly, showing footage of my school, and the hand that had been squeezing my heart tightened its grip. There were three fire trucks and two ambulances outside the school, and groups of firemen were running back and forth, rolling out hoses, while another group had already set one up and were shooting a thick stream of water into upper windows, drowning out the orange glow. Black smoke was pouring out of every door and window of the brick building, and students and teachers stood in groups together, dirty with smoke, eyes wide with shock.
The reporter’s voice sounded too calm and matter-of-fact, “the fire was put out, and everyone managed to get to safety on time. Only one student needed medical attention for smoke inhalation, but doctors report he is recovering quickly.”
Jon.
I groaned, leaning forward onto the bedspread with my hands over my eyes. I didn’t want to see the video anymore, the firemen running back and forth, and the hot orange glow of the fire I’d started. I’d put Jon in the hospital. It was my fault.
What if someone had been killed, what if some little kid had died of smoke inhalation or had been trapped in one of the classrooms...Don’t think about it, I told myself firmly, just stop it. Everyone is fine. Think about you now, how to avoid doing this again.
How to control it.
The reporter was talking again, nothing interesting anymore, something about puppies or something. I sat up slowly and stared down at my hands, grimacing as I remembered the tingling feeling. I’d had it again today, just before I’d caught fire on the dock.
Just before you set that guy on fire, a nasty voice whispered in my head, remember? You’re obviously not safe. The news was wrong about one thing. You ARE armed and dangerous.
I ground my teeth together and pushed myself off the bed, stomping across the ugly beige carpet to the bathroom, which was every bit as ugly and cramped as I’d expected. It didn’t matter though. There was a bathtub, and that was all I needed.
I stuck my hand under the faucet as the bath filled, trying to get the faulty plumbing to keep a steady stream of warm water running, having to adjust the rusted hot and cold taps a dozen times to make sure my bath wouldn’t be freezing cold or burning hot. From where I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I could turn slightly to my right and see my reflection in the foggy mirror. The face reflected back at me made my chest feel tight, little tendrils of panic were working their way up my body, muscles tensing, fingers white on the edge of the bath. The face in the mirror was the stone-cold mask of the news woman’s photograph. Flinty black eyes and straight dark hair. Remorseless. Was this the face of a killer? Was I going to be responsible for someone being burnt to death?
No! I’ll control it. I’ll learn how. That’s what this is for.
The tub was almost over flowing when I turned back, and I cranked the hot and cold taps to their off positions and shot to my feet, heartbeat hammering in my ears. Trying to push my fears down I stripped off my sweatshirt and the t-shirt I was wearing, and wiggled out of my worn blue jeans, listening to clack and jingle of the belt hitting the floor. Socks came off next, inside out and lying on the little pile of clothing on the tiles. I grimaced, scooping the clothes off the dirty floor and transferring them to the counter by the sink. Maybe not a lot cleaner, but at least not next to the toilet.
Then it was only me, standing there in front of the mirror in a cotton bra and walmart undies. The florescent light doing hideous things to my complexion. If a peeping tom had been standing outside the hotel window, they would have been sorely disappointed. There was no smooth, voluptuous figure here, only angles and bones, scars and bruises, hunched shoulders and knock knees.
I was no magazine girl. There was no grace to my tall, gawky frame. There was no raw sexuality to my dark, hungry look. What was reflected back at me was just hunger, and animal rage. Not something to be shared in the glossy pages of vogue. Not even something socially acceptable.
America’s top model will be so disappointed.
I turned away from myself and stepped into the bath, sighing as the warm water slid over my skin, lowering myself in carefully, keeping my hands on the sides of the bath. I don’t know if I needed to make sure they were dry, maybe I wouldn’t ignite if I was always wet.
Great, I’ll just haul around a bucket of water everywhere I go.
Now I took a deep breath, trying to tell myself I couldn’t possibly hurt myself, couldn’t burn down the hotel around me, because if anything happened I would just plunge my hand into the bath water. Somehow I had to recreate how I felt back on the dock. I shut my eyes and let myself slide back a little bit, resting against the wall, trying to figure out exactly what I’d been feeling.
Fear, had of course, been the overwhelming feeling, but back at the school, I’d been angry, on the verge of acting. I’d been about to punch someone. Okay, it was probably easier to try to make myself angry than scared.
I tried to think about Caleb, how he took my walkman and taunted me. How many times he’d been a total dick to me before that. I tried to picture his face in my mind, but all I could see was Caleb running out of the burning building, chasing me across the field and staring after me from the edge of the chain link fence. He’d been the good guy then, the guy who was chasing the crazy person who set the school on fire.
I groaned, sinking lower into the bath. Clearly this wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t even feel a slight tingle in my hands like I had before, just the beginnings of a headache behind my eyes. I wracked my brains for something else to think about, something that would make me good and mad.
It was obvious, when I finally thought about it.
Laying my head back against the wall, I shut my eyes tight and pictured Dad’s face. Thinking about his features, his eyes, dark like mine and usually bleary. His cheeks, always rough with three of four days growth, his mouth, an ugly slash in his face. The mouth opened and began spewing words,
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It won’t happen again.”
Lie after lie. I force myself to remember everything I can. From the earliest memories, falling down the stairs at eleven and having him tell me to “suck it up”, to the shocking sensation of my jaw shattering under his fist, to the last exchange I had before all this…
Rage was burning in every part of me, so it took a little while to feel the tingling that was starting in my shoulder, shooting down my arm all the way down to my fingertips, a sensation of pins and needles that was growing alarmingly sharp. My eyes snapped open.
Orange flames were flickering between my fingers, traveling down onto the palm of my hand.
I’m burning again!
I bit off a shriek, trying to scramble into a sitting position, and my right elbow slipped on the side of the tub, sending me sliding backwards with a splash. I fell over sideways, snorted in a bunch of bath water in my panic, and then sat bolt upright coughing and choking, hair streaming water down my back.
“Shit!”
I rubbed at my ear, trying to get the water out of it, and glanced down at my left hand. Obviously I’d plunged my hand in and the fire had gone out. Crap.
Leaning forward I yanked the rubber plug out of the drain and stood up. The water was almost cold now anyways. I stood up, carefully stepping out of the tub, reaching for the towel on the rack and catching myself in the mirror as I did so. I froze, and my reflection stared back at me with its mouth hanging open in shock.
The water droplets that clung to my shoulders and chest were disappearing, and tiny curls of white steam were rising from each one. It looked like my skin was smoking.
“Oh my god….” I braced myself on the counter top, knees feeling a bit wobbly, thrusting my face closer to the mirror, hardly believing what I was seeing.
It was steam, the water droplets were literally evaporating off my skin.
“What the hell is happening to me?”