A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) (10 page)

 With Frank beside me I can almost
forget about the myriad of unsavoury aromas in this place because all I can
smell is his trademark scent of freshly showered male, with a hint of
aftershave and what I’d imagine the depths of a forest might smell like. I
could drown in that scent. Thinking this, I wonder what it would be like to be
embraced by him, protected by his lean arms and enveloped in his intoxicating
smell.
Okay
, better think of something to say. I spend far too much time
inside of my own head, it can’t be healthy. Really it can’t.

 I note that Frank has a can of
Budweiser, so I say, “Underage drinking huh?” and then wish I’d have kept my
mouth shut. What a ridiculous thing to say.

 Frank smiles down at me. “No, I’m
not under age actually.”

 “Really? H-how old are y....” At
this one of those rare moments hit me. I can’t get the word out, but it’s not
because I’m particularly nervous. It’s just that the pronunciation, or maybe
the way the word sounds, results in me not being able to say it. It generally
happens to me with y’s, s’s and x’s. Normally when this happens I try to think
of a substitute for the word I can’t say, but there isn’t really any other way
of saying “you”.

 I breathe a sigh of relief when
Frank finishes for me. “How old am I you mean? I’m nineteen. I was out of
school for nearly two years so I had to re-do the years I missed when I went
back.”

 I know that the reason for him
missing school for that long must be personal so I don’t question it. Perhaps
it’s something to do with why he’s living in a foster home now.

 “It m-makes sense, I thought you
seemed older.”

 “Yeah?” he asks, pleased with the
compliment.

 “Yeah, you’re more confident or
something.”

 “You think so?”

 “Definitely. You can certainly
put Josh in his place. When I tell him to go away he just ignores me.”

 Frank looks at me with sincerity
when he replies, “You’ll tell me if he bothers you again, promise?”

 “Of course, it’s good when
someone has your back,” I grin.

 “And I’ve got yours, beautiful,”
he continues to watch me after he’s said this, maybe to see how I react to the
compliment. All I can do is crease my brow and look away in embarrassment.

 A different band has taken to the
stage now. They race straight into a cover version of
BYOB
by System of
a Down.

 Frank laughs, and with a hint of
sarcasm asks, “I don’t suppose you want to dance?” gesturing towards the
violent storm of movement taking place before us.

 “I don’t think I’d emerge
unscathed to be honest.”

 “You’re probably right,” he
replies with another laugh. Probably not because what I’ve said is particularly
funny, he just seems happy that I’m becoming comfortable and not stammering
with him so much anymore. In fact, I realise that
is
the case when he
says, “Your speech is improving around me, have you noticed?”

 “Yeah, I’m just becoming more
familiar with you is all.”

 “You see, I told you it was a
good idea that we get to know each other better.”

 “Seemingly,” I reply.

 Caroline has moved from standing
beside me with a moody expression and hostile body language, to sitting with
Alex and Layla and the other boys. She seems delighted when Alex calls her over
and offers her his seat.

 For some reason, while taking in
the scene around me, I begin to wonder about Dad and what he might be doing
right now. What if he’s taken a ton of drugs and overdosed and nobody’s there
to find him and call an ambulance? Or he could be in a bar and gotten into a
drunken fight with some dodgy character who pulls a knife on him. Why does it
make my chest tighten to think of him dying alone and unloved? He doesn’t
deserve my worry, he never loved me, so why should I care for him and what may
or may not be happening to him now?

 He’s never failed to brutalise me
in some way each and every day of my life, and still I can’t help my connection
to him, my inner need to save him from himself. He’d probably love this barn
party; he was always the kind of man who thrived on recklessness and
intoxication.

 Caroline is having a debate with
Alex over which one of them would win in a race. I don’t know how they got onto
this topic because I hadn’t been listening to the trajectory of their
conversation. Again, I’m spending far too much time inside my own head. Talking
to myself. Worrying. Analysing. Dying really. Because caring for a man like my
father will kill you eventually.

 I turn my attention back to
Caroline and the others, Frank has been sitting silently beside me all the
while. I like how he doesn’t try to fill every opening with conversation, he
allows me time to think. I’m a little bit proud of Caroline, admittedly I don’t
know her very well yet, but she just seems so fearless to me. She came into
this situation completely distressed and uncomfortable and now she’s the centre
of attention. But then there are those of us who prefer the shadows, that way I
can watch and study the colours that entrance me.

 The crowded barn house is almost
dizzying to me right now, so many people with glimmering, shifting, changing
auras. The night is young so I’m not yet being bombarded with a sea of white
drunkenness, although it is getting there. Often I like to look at the colours,
but at the moment it’s a little too much.

 Because everybody’s emotions are
high in a situation like this, it’s difficult to keep from absorbing all the
love, hate, happy, sad, aroused, angry, ecstatic, excited, sneaky, sly,
delighted, attracted, dislike, streaming, streaming, streaming out from these
teens in their overly hormonal bodies. Jesus, I go from thinking about my
father to this. These are the reasons why I can never truly enjoy myself, let
go, be free. I don’t want to know what everybody else is feeling. It’s hard
enough having to deal with what
I’m
feeling, never mind forty or fifty
teenage boys and girls.

 A flame flickers over my hand,
Frank’s wondrous, unexplainable fire. “Are you okay?” he asks with concern. I
didn’t realise until now that I’d been holding my head in my hands, perhaps to
block the auras from hitting me in the face. Funny that.

 “Headache,” is all I can say in
reply.

 “You want me to take you to get
some air?”

 “Please.”

 He grips my hand firmly and leads
me out the back way. Once I’m outside the cool air hits me in a cleansing rush.
A minute later Frank is sitting me down on some grass by the edge of the lake,
the water shining and black in the night. There are stars tonight, not like
last night, hundreds and thousands of them glimmer in the sky.

 “Thank you,” I say after a minute
or two. “I’m not good in crowds sometimes.”

 Frank sits down gently beside me,
our knees touching.

 “Why not?” he asks.

 “It’s a very long story.”

 “Enlighten me.”

 For a moment I consider actually
telling him the truth, but then I decide to go the long way around. “Do you
believe people can have psychic abilities?” I ask.

 “Anything is possible,” he
replies.

 “So you wouldn’t think that
people who believe in that stuff are crazy or deluding themselves?”

 “People can believe what they
want as far as I’m concerned, I’m not here to judge them Florence.”

 “I told you,” I say, and nudge
him with my elbow. “It’s Flo, call me Flo.”

 “What has this psychic stuff got
to do with your headache Florence?” he says slyly, not backing down, and
nudging me back playfully.

 “Never mind,
Franklin
.”

 “Hey, how do you know my full
name?” he asks, feigning indignation.

 “Caroline told me.”

 “You two talk about me huh?” he
teases.

 “I just asked her who you were on
my first day,” I reply in defence.

 “So you asked about me?” his
smile is intolerable.

 “Whatever.”

 “You know, you could have just
asked me my name yourself, I wanted you to talk to me.”

 “What? You mean on my first day?”

 “Yeah, I had to introduce myself
in the end.”

 “I didn’t know you wanted to talk
to me. Besides, you know I’m not good with introductions as you saw that day, I
could barely talk when the teacher told me to introduce myself to the class.”

 “Don’t worry about that. I liked
you the second I saw you, your stammer made me like you even more.”

 “It’s a curse.”

 “No it isn’t, it’s just you,
you’re unique.”

 “Yeah, unique kinda like the
elephant man.” I say jokingly.

 Frank shifts a fraction closer to
me, his arm leaning behind my back. “No, not like that, unique like
intriguing.”

 “Stop.”

 “Stop what?”

 “You’re e-embarrassing me,
seriously, with all that kind of talk, just...” I don’t know what to say now,
and it has nothing to do with my stammer.

 “It’s just the truth, Florence,
now we were talking about...psychics wasn’t it?”

 “Oh um, yeah, don’t worry I was
just rambling.”

 Frank deliberately leans down so
that the skin of our fore arms touch. “I don’t think you were, tell me,” he
breathes, and I’ve never smelled a more delicious scent than his minty breath
in all my life.

 “You’ll think I’m insane.” Oh
God, how I want to confide in this beautiful boy, to tell him all of my secrets
and let him keep them safe forever.

 “I would never think that.”

 “You haven’t heard what I’ve got
to say yet.”

 “Just tell me, please…” his words
linger on the back of my neck sending shivers down my spine.

 “Okay, well…” I hesitate, where
to begin? “So I had a headache inside remember?”

 “Yes.” He strokes a finger over
the veins on the inside of my wrist.

 “Well there was a reason for the
headache and it wasn’t because of the noise.”

 “What was it Florence?” Every
time my full name leaves his lips I tremble, no matter how I try to convince
myself that I hate it.

 “I can see things other people
can’t.”

 “What do you mean?” his face is
confused.

 “Colours, I can see colours.”

 “Colours that other people can’t
see? How does that work?” he asks, amused but urgent.

 “It’s hard to explain, when you
look at a person you see their body, but when I look at a person I see their
body, but a bit extra as well.” Why am I telling him this? I’ve never told
anybody before. Well, I told Dad when I was little but he didn’t listen to me
anyway, he probably would have had me sectioned if he did.

 “What’s the extra that you can
see?”

 “Auras, energy, emotions, I don’t
know what it is really. All I know is that I’ve always been able to see these
things, when I was a child I just assumed everybody could see what I see. But
then when I watched movies or television programmes the people didn’t have an
aura, that’s how I began to figure out I was different.”

 I half expect Frank to gape at me
and brush off what I’m telling him as a lie, but instead he brushes a strand of
hair from my face and says, “I knew there was something about you,” his voice
little more than a whisper.

 “You did?” I ask, surprised by
his admission.

 “It’s your eyes, your big green
eyes. It’s like they’re too wise for your age, they know too much.”

 “Sometimes it’s too much to take,
like inside the barn just now, there were too many over excited people, with
overwhelming emotions. In situations like that I start to absorb some of it,
it’s maddening.”

 “It must be hard,” he soothes,
perhaps suddenly realising what a curse this “gift” can be.

 “I can’t believe I’ve told you
this, you aren’t going to tell people I’m insane now are you?”

 “Of course not,” he laughs
softly. “I’m probably one of the few people who would never think you were
lying, no matter how bizarre your story.”

 I wonder at what he’s said. “Why
is that?”

 “I know that there are many
unexplainable things out there.”

 I think of his flames, and those
of his foster brothers, I sit up a little straighter, and study him for a
moment. “Are
you
one of those things?”

 He laughs, but it’s a little too
tense, he doesn’t answer me either, instead he questions me, “Why do you ask
that?”

 “Your aura is not like any I’ve
ever seen before, you and your brothers, you baffle me.”

 “We baffle you?”

 “This is going to sound crazy,
but well, everybody’s got different energy, but it’s only in colour that the
variation applies. But you Frank, your texture is a world apart from anybody
else’s, it’s like fire, always burning bright.”

 He shifts away from me now, his
face troubled. “Is that what you see when you look at me?”

 “It’s what I see when I look at
you and all of your brothers, but you aren’t all related, at least not by
blood, so how is it that your energies are all so similar?”

 “Perhaps – perhaps living
together has caused us to synchronise.” He answers, but his body language has
become closed off, and I get the feeling that our revelatory conversation has
come to an abrupt end. I feel short changed, I’ve revealed so much and he so
little.

 “Perhaps.” I agree, though
something deep inside of me refuses to believe him. Nobody, no matter how
open-minded, could have accepted that I have psychic abilities with such ease
as Frank just has with me.

 He barely even questioned it, but
merely acted as though it made the most sense in the world. His behaviour
tickles at my subconscious, and it also fills me with a kind of saddening hope.
Sad, because he won’t confide in me. Hopeful, because if there is something
different about Frank, then it means that I’m not alone in being peculiar.
Suddenly the world seems to hold so much more for me to learn than I ever
imagined possible.