A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) (16 page)

 “I am not here to answer your questions,” her teeth grit audibly and I
shudder.

 “Why are you here then?” I whisper.

 The woman becomes still, as unmoving as a statue. She grins crookedly,
the emotion not quite reaching her eyes. “Now that, little lamb, is a very,
very good question.” At this she drifts away, disappearing slowly from my
vision. After that I am thrown back into whatever dream I had been in before
the woman dragged me to her. Without a single memory of the conversation that
has just taken place.

 It is not until days later, as the week comes to a close and I am eating
a bowl of cereal for breakfast on Friday morning that I recall the bizarre
dream I had on Monday night. It tickles at my brain, the memory itching to
break free. The first thing I remember is the idea of a person shifting forms,
instantaneously changing from one body to another. A highly evolved chameleon.
At first I wonder if it was a scene from a movie I might have watched earlier
in the week, but then I remember the dream in its entirety. The whole thing slowly
unravelling itself in my mind, one piece of information returning and then
another and another until the whole puzzle is finally complete.

 Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much to soothe me once I have reassembled
my memories. The woman hadn’t made much sense, but she had hinted at the idea
that maybe
she
is the one who has been following me from time to time
since I came to live with Gran. Is this the case? Had the mystical entity that
has been stalking me entered my dreams and spoken to me while continuously
changing appearance?

 No. Sadly not. I would like to imagine that I’m coming closer to
discovering who or what exactly it is that is pursuing me. But the fact of the
matter is that the subject had been preying on my mind before I’d gone to sleep
that night, so it was only natural that I would dream of my stalker visiting me
in my slumber.

 I munch on my cornflakes, Gran has already finished her jam on toast and
she’s going about cleaning up the kitchen. Dishes rattle and water flows from
the tap at the sink on and off as she does so. It’s actually kind of
fascinating to watch her, she’s as blind as a bat yet she knows every nook and
cranny of her kitchen, she doesn’t falter once. Her cleaning routine is well
practised, mechanical to the point where she wouldn’t need her eyes to tell her
where to go even if she did still have the proper function of them.

 I haven’t had the most pleasant of weeks. On Tuesday I made a promise to
myself that I wouldn’t speak to Frank any more at school. I’d messed things up with
him altogether and I was too mentally exhausted to try and fix them. Too many
mistakes had been made on both of our parts.

 One: I’d told him about how I can see auras. Two: He’d gone and told his
brothers I’d slept with him when I hadn’t. Three: I’d acted like a strait
jacket case when I’d sensed my invisible stalker and run away from him. Four:
Did I mention I’d told him I could see auras?

 In my world, information means power. Frank holds secret information
about me which in turn means he holds power over me. I don’t like that one bit.
I have a phobia of being under the control of others, because my dad had always
controlled my entire existence with an iron fist and I had been powerless to
break free.

 Now I feel as though Frank could reveal my secret to anybody at any
moment. Not that they’d believe him of course. People are quite cynical these
days, nobody believes in anything other than science any more. I console myself
with that fact. Frank can tell who he likes, I’ll deny everything and he’ll be
the one who looks mentally unstable, not me.

 I didn’t sit with Frank at lunch despite him approaching me in the queue
and asking me to. Flat out I told him no. In Business Studies, of course, I had
to sit with him. But we didn’t speak. Well, he made an effort to broach a
conversation several times but I didn’t do much to encourage it and soon we sat
in silence while the teacher demonstrated how we were to carry out an exercise.
At the end of the day I found a piece of folded up paper in the front pocket of
my bag that I knew didn’t belong to me. I waited until I got home to open it up
and read it, all it said was:
Florence, something strange
happened
yesterday outside of school by that tree. I can tell you’re determined to
ignore it but we need to speak about this. Try not to be so distant tomorrow. I
miss your voice. I miss talking to you. Frank.

 Try as I might, it was very near impossible to resist his words, so
charming, so well-meaning. But I wanted to stick by my promise. I steeled
myself. The next day I practised the same reserve, the same inaccessibility.
Unlike the day before, Frank didn’t persist so enduringly. By mid-morning he
left me alone.

 I should have felt triumphant, instead I felt empty, my mind a
scrambling of contradictions. Was I losing my
mind
? I’d been so
embarrassed by what had occurred between us, which in the grand scale of things
wasn’t very much at all. I’d sunk back into myself. Not allowing him to breach
the defensive wall I had constructed around me.

 On Thursday evening as I left the school I was shocked to see Alex
standing at the gates, apparently waiting for me. His face a hard scowl. Most
of the students were gone, only a small few still in the process of leaving.

 “Why are you ignoring him?” he demanded.

 Stupid as it was, I decided to play dumb. “Ignoring w-who?” I asked,
mustering an expression of ignorance.

 “Frank, who else?” said Alex, seeing right through my attempt at
appearing oblivious.

 “Oh. I – I’m not ignoring him,” I answered pathetically, there really
wasn’t any way around the accusation.

 “You are. Stop lying, and stop being a bitch. I don’t know why you’re
suddenly not speaking to him, and honestly I don’t want to. He needs you Flo,
and you need him too, you just don’t realise it yet.”

 “He d-doesn’t need me, he barely knows me.” I said in a quiet voice.

 Alex raised an eyebrow. “I think you and I both know that he knows you a
lot better than anybody else does.”

 “What do you mean by that?” I asked, nervous of the answer. Had Frank
told Alex my secret? Surely not, surely...suddenly I remembered that day in
English when Alex had extended his aura, almost taunting me with it. That was
long before I’d told Frank anything. Had Alex known all along?

 I narrowed my gaze, while Alex shrugged and fixed me with a look that
said,
You know exactly what I mean
. I lost my voice for a minute, unable
to reply. Then I gained my composure.

 “You know a-about me, don’t you, you’ve known all along,” my voice
quivered with fear.

 “Hey look, I don’t know the specifics, I only know that you aren’t
“normal”. I knew that the second you walked into class on your first day, Frank
knew it too. We all did.”

 “H-how?” is all I could say.

 Alex was silent a moment, as though deciding what to tell me. Then he
began, “Me and my foster brothers, we aren’t “normal” either. Of course, not in
the same way that you aren’t, but you get my drift. Because we aren’t the same
as average people, we can sense those who aren’t too. It’s instinctual. It’s
like we can smell it, a blasting, fierce sensation in comparison to the bland,
barely noticeable scent we get from ordinary people.”

 “That’s – okay, that’s really w-weird,” at this I went to sit down on
the curb at the side of the road. It only took a second for Alex to join me.

 “It’s not that weird,” he said, nudging me with his shoulder. “Aren’t
you happy? You’ve discovered some people with a common trait to yours:
otherness. Don’t you feel less alone?”

 “Not really,” I replied. “For a start, I don’t even know what you guys
are, when I told Frank what I can do, he never said anything about himself,
never told me that he was different too. So what exactly
are
you guys?”

 Alex smirked. “Ah, now
that
I can’t tell you.”

 “What!? You know about me, so what’s the big deal if I know about you
lot too?”

 “Well, the big deal is that I don’t actually know about you. I know that
you’re different, but I don’t know what makes you different. Frank’s the only
one who knows that because you told him, and he won’t tell anyone else unless
you allow it. He’s kinda trustworthy like that.” Alex smiled.

 “He didn’t tell you?” I asked, dumbfounded.

 “Nope, and he won’t, not unless you give him permission. Or, if you
decide to tell me yourself, care to share?”

 “I think having one person know my secret is enough, thank you very much.”
I told him, though I was inclined to tell him in return for him telling me what
he and Frank and the rest of their brothers were. I couldn’t imagine what could
account for their fire.

 “Damn shame,” said Alex. “Now you have me wondering.”

 “Well you’ll just have to keep wondering.” I told him, getting up and
dusting myself off. Alex rose with me.

 “So, are you going to cut Frank some slack now?” he asked, pulling his
bag up onto his shoulder.

 I sighed. “Well, what we’ve just talked about isn’t actually the issue I
have with him. That’s something else.”

 “What is it?” he asked, a quizzical expression on his face.

 I really was getting sick and tired of his questioning, so I decided to
just go ahead and give him what he wanted.

 “God. You
are
persistent, you know that? Somebody told me that
they overheard Frank bragging to you and your brothers that he’d – that he’d
s-slept with me.”

 Alex appeared momentarily taken aback, then, of all things, he laughed.
“That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Frank would never say
something like that, and I know for a fact that he didn’t tell me or any of the
others that he’d, you know, that he was with you that way. So whoever told you
that was lying.”

 I was about to question him, and then felt like an idiot for even
considering it.
Of course
, Josh had been lying. What else could I have
expected from someone so slimy, so snakelike?

 I stood there for a moment, silent, as it all fell into place in my
head. “I suppose it might have been silly of me to believe it, well, I’ll take
your word for it that my
informant
hadn’t been telling the truth.”

 “You do that,” said Alex, winking at me before he turned around and
strolled down the pathway, headed for home.

 Now it is Friday, and although I’m fidgety as hell about going to school
today and facing Frank after blanking him all week, I am forcing myself to go
through with it. I could just fake sickness to Gran, I’m sure she’d let me stay
home. But I want to be courageous in this, and I do owe Frank a massive apology.
If he even listens to it. I stand at the mirror in Gran’s hallway and run a
brush through my scruffy hair before I walk outside and head for school, a lump
in my throat that I can’t seem to swallow.

Frank isn’t at school today, and I can’t tell if I’m disappointed or
relieved. I do want to talk to him about my behaviour, but I’m also extremely
uptight about doing so. Uptight and edgy and neurotic, not a good combination,
and I’ve been listening to
Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want
by The Smiths on my earphones all day. By lunch time he still hasn’t shown up,
so I take it that he isn’t going to. Oh well, I suppose it’s nothing that can’t
wait until Monday.

 “So,” says Caroline, as we sit down in the canteen. “Are you still
coming with us tomorrow, Flo?”

 “Tomorrow?” I ask, only really half listening to what she’s saying, my
head is all boggled down with thoughts of Frank and how badly I’ve treated him
this week.

 “Yeah, we’re volunteering at the hospital, remember you said you’d come
along?” she urges.

 “Oh – right yeah, sorry I remember now. Sure I’ll be there.”

 Caroline appears momentarily disheartened at the fact that I completely
forgot about agreeing to go with her, but she quickly recovers. “Okay, great.
Well, we need to be there by ten so I’ll pick you up outside your place at
around nine-forty, that all right?”

 “Perfect,” I tell her before taking a bite out of my sandwich.
Predictably, my gaze wanders across the room to where Frank’s brothers and
Layla are sitting. Ross and Layla sit side by side as usual, Alex is sitting
opposite them with the two younger boys, Kevin and Benji. I wish I were closer
so that I could interpret his colours, discover if it really is true that he’s
in love with Layla. What would I see if got near enough to study him? Jealousy?
Heartache? Longing? The multitude of human emotions fascinates me. So deeply
seated and complex and all consuming.

 Later on, the last class of the day is PE, and I really am too tired for
anything physical since I didn’t sleep very well last night. Unfortunately,
this week our teacher makes the effort to show up and divides us into two teams
of fourteen to play a game of soccer out on the pitch across from the
basketball court. Caroline is on my team and we stick together, her arm linked
through mine as we walk out to the grassy area. The other members of our team
include Josh, Alex, Marley and Christian. Ingrid and her “girls” are on the
other team alongside Layla, Ross and Steven.

 I admit I have no clue what I’m doing as Caroline and I step onto the
pitch and pick a random position on our side of the playing field. Our teacher,
acting as referee, walks to the centre of the pitch and places a ball in the
middle of the field. Josh and a boy I don’t know from the other team step up to
the ball, bodies ready, legs anticipating to kick, preparing for the opening
whistle. A second later the teacher raises the whistle that has been dangling
around his neck to his lips and blows, before stepping back off the pitch.

 Josh takes the lead, scooping the ball with his foot and kicking it
towards the goal at the opposite end of the field. Even though he’s on my team,
I feel a certain sense of satisfaction when he doesn’t score. A tiring match of
to-ing and fro-ing ensues, while myself and Caroline hover back and forth with
the motion of the game, just so as to appear as though we’re taking part.