Soul Fire (7 page)

Delta noticed. “I know a place where we can get out of the cold.”

“Yeah, where?”

“Not far,” was all he’d say.

We turned down a street of older homes, none in good repair. Children’s old toys littered scruffy yards, flags were the draperies of choice, and paint seemed in short supply. We turned up a weedy drive to a small, once green house, and he opened the back door. No key. I looked around. Cleaning supplies were in short supply too. “You live here?” I asked skeptically.

“It’s my uncle’s place. He’s out of town, so I keep an eye on it for him.”

I backed out the door. “Some other time,” I said and charged back down the drive.

“Hey! Wait up.” He caught up to me in no time. “Okay, so I have another idea. We could go to my house, but you have to promise me two things.

“I’ll pass.”

“Come on. It’s a nice place. Not like this,” he said motioning to the rundown neighborhood we were fast departing.

“Where is it?” I asked scurrying back the way we came.

“Vine Street.”

Vine Street was in an okay neighborhood. “What are the two things?”

He seemed relieved. “You’ve got to promise you’ll never tell anyone where I live.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“Just promise.”

“Okay, I promise. What’s the other thing?” He had my curiosity going full roar.

“We have to be really quiet. My mom’s home, and I don’t want her to know we skipped out.”

“So what are we going to do? Sneak into the basement?”

“We can go up to the TV room.”

“What about your dad?”

He grew suddenly quiet and I began to think he wasn’t going to respond. “You don’t have to worry about my dad.”

“Is he at work?”

“He’s . . . gone.”

“You mean he left…permanently?”

“Yeah. The jerk.”

“So, okay, I promise to be quiet.” I cast a critical eye over Delta. What kind of guy was he? Would he get me high and then . . . ?’’

Delta seemed to read my thoughts. “Don’t worry. No funny stuff. I may be a loser, but I’m not a creep.”

No, he didn’t seem like a creep. Never heard anything like that about him. I knew he had a steady supply of drugs, but that was the only story attached to him. Not a bad guy, really, I thought as we walked down Vine Street. This neighborhood was lined with older multi-story homes, well maintained, but nothing fancy. Yards were tidy. A few cars were parked on the road. Again, Delta opened the back door without a key and put a finger to his lips to remind me to be quiet. Inside, I found myself tiptoeing across gleaming linoleum floors, up carpeted stairs, and down a hall ending at a huge room overflowing with mismatched furniture. He closed the door behind us, and I stared at him.

“What?” he asked closing the blinds.

“Where’s your mom?”

He pointed downstairs. “In her room,” he whispered.

“How do you know?”

“Because that’s where she is. Want something to drink?” I thought he meant booze, but he went to a small fridge, pulled open the door, and pointed to water bottles and a couple of cans of cola. I took a water. He grabbed a soda and we each settled into an overstuffed recliner. “Aren’t you afraid she’ll come up here?”

He gave a wry smile and shook his head. “She won’t, don’t worry.”

I found this strange. “How can you be so sure? If my mom even thought she heard a sound in the house, she’d be all over it.”

He shook his head. “Won’t happen.” He reached into his pocket, and dumped the bag of pink pills onto the glass top coffee table in front of us. He slid the zipper open. “Feel free,” he said, popping one.

Am I crazy or what
?

“Go ahead. They’re just X. It’ll cure what ails you. You’ll feel great in no time. Promise.”

I doubted that and considered the pills. X. Ecstasy. I had heard stories about this stuff. I popped one and sent it down with a gulp of water. I wanted to feel anything but what I’d been living with for the past weeks. Delta was right. I felt great in no time. Wonderful, in fact! Things started to look brighter, smells intensified, and I began to feel detached. I felt myself sliding into a kind of time warp. I'm not sure whether I fell asleep or what, but I heard a voice a long way away, “Hey, Ashla, can you hear me?” I was being shaken and opened my eyes to find Delta gazing down on me. “Say something intelligent,” he ordered.

“That’s beyond the scope of this high,” I told him thickly. “This is ‘
a high
’, I assume.”

“I might have thought so if you hadn’t started snoring. You go without sleep for the last couple of nights, or what?”

I sat up and looked around. It was dark outside. “Sleep is optional lately. What time is it?” I got up and looked out the window.

“Almost midnight.”

“You kidding me?” I crossed the room, grabbed my backpack, and started for the stairs. My parents were going to think the worst—an accident or something equally horrible. Not only that, I had missed my first day at work. Had they called the house?

“Wait up. I’ll walk you home,” he said, following me down the stairs.

I wasn’t waiting. “I’ve got to run.” And with that, I fled out the back door. It took a few minutes, but he caught up with me, handing me a woman’s jacket. “Here. It’s freezing out.” The jacket he handed me was pink. I hated pink, but he was right, the sidewalk gleamed with a coating of frost that sparkled under the yellow streetlights. He had stopped to put on his black jacket with the big silver Tarantula on the back.

“You belonged to the Tarantulas long?” I asked, through chattering teeth. I tried to recall when I’d first noticed him.

“Three years.”

“How come you joined? To be a tough guy?”

He smirked. “If that’s what I wanted, I would’ve stayed solo. Regardless of appearances and show, the Tarantulas are anything but tough. Mostly they’re screwed up. Some are just plain psycho, and a few are like me.”

We walked quickly, our breath hanging in air as we hurried through it. “Describe the few who are like you.”

He shrugged. “Loners mostly. A wannabe gang like the Tarantulas can smell us out. They go after loners. We’re their prey, so to prevent that from happening, we have to have something to offer them.”

I stopped and turned to him. “Explain.”

“You need to have a skill they can use.”

He didn’t seem inclined to offer any details. “And you have such a skill?” I looked at him with fresh eyes, trying to determine what that could be. “Drugs?” I proposed.

He shrugged and started walking again. “And other things.”

At the risk of being overly nosy, I asked: “What other things?” But he was quiet.

We passed the school grounds. The buildings were well lit, but the tall cedars cast deep shadows across the expansive grounds. Instantly, I remembered my morning, the taunts and name-calling. How would I get through another day there?

As if he had read my thoughts, he asked, “You ready for tomorrow?”

“I was thinking about calling work to see if they need anyone for the day shift, but they won’t allow me to work during school hours.”

“What do you do?”

“Work at Elenas. It’s a high-end women’s clothing store in the mall. Just got the job, so my being a no-show tonight could lead to problems and possibly unemployment. Too bad. I really needed the work.”

“That is too bad. You need to do something else for a while, besides go to school.”

I looked across at him in surprise. In the yellow light, his skin looked tanned against his dark hair. “Yeah? Why?”

“You know how these things work. Everybody in the whole school has pegged you as open season. You’re the new target. Give this a rest. Let everyone get over it.”

He was right. I had seen that happen to others. Once you were targeted, you were done. There was no way out. Besides, I had no intention of repeating today. As we approached my house, I considered whether to let him see where I lived. He had shown me where he lived, and that had obviously been an issue for him. “We’re almost there,” I told him. "You don’t need to walk me to the door, considering the hour. My parents will probably attack you.” Again, he was silent, keeping pace with me all the way up the front steps to the door. I peeled off the pink jacket and handed it to him. “Thanks, Delta,” I whispered.

He took the jacket, rolled it inside out, presumably so he wouldn’t be seen carrying something pink, and tucked it under his arm. “See ya,” he said and casually descended the steps. I watched him stroll back down the street. He seemed to sense me watching him and glanced back. I gave a small wave. He was a mystery, I thought, as I quietly unlocked the front door and snuck up to my room.

“Where were you, Ashla?” Mom asked anxiously. She’d heard me come in and followed me up to my room. “Dad and I were crazy with worry. Why didn’t you call?”

“Sorry, Mom.”

She bristled. “So, where were you?”

“At a friend’s. Lost track of time. Fell asleep actually. Too many nights without, I guess.”

“And you didn’t call because?”

“It was pretty late when I woke up. Didn’t want to wake you guys.”

Dad came into my room. He had thrown a robe on his strangely thin frame. Had he lost weight? Was I responsible for this too? His face was hollow and there were shadows under his gentle eyes. “Everything okay, Ashla?”

Was everything okay?
Nothing was okay. But of course, I couldn’t say that. “Sure. Everything’s fine.”
Just peachy.
He nodded and poked Mom with his elbow. “Come on back to bed,” he told her. “She’s home. We can finally get some sleep.” Dad took Mom’s hand and dragged her out of my room.

Oops. They had stayed up. Waited for me. And what had I been doing? More guilt. Pile it on.

The next morning Celeste and I were in her car, heading to school, like any other morning. Only today, I asked her to drop me at the mall. She flipped me a Celeste look. “You’re going to skip out.”

I nodded. “Yesterday was hell. I can’t go through that again.” She turned the wheel, and we headed for the mall, parking in front of the north entrance. “This feels weird, Ashla.”

I got out of the car. “Hopefully, Elenas will give me a day shift, just this once.”

She frowned and stared as I walked away. The mall was open but the clothing store would remain closed for over an hour, so I roamed around until their doors opened and then approached the manager. She was a surly woman in her forties who smelled of tobacco. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, not showing up yesterday, not even calling in, and then popping up here expecting me to give you extra work. I don’t need help like that.”

I walked out, feeling like scum. Sure, I had that coming, but I needed work badly. I walked a few doors down to the internet café and sat down at a computer. Almost two hours later, I had a freshly printed one page resume, made copies, paid twelve dollars for the privilege, and spent most of the day going from store to store looking for work. Responses ranged from negative to, “We’ll call you if something comes up.” Pretty disheartening, but I wasn’t going to give up. Tomorrow I’d try the strip mall down the road.

Around three o’clock, I went home. As I closed the door behind me, Mom appeared in the hall. Her face was flushed, fists clenched. Her green eyes blazed. Oh-oh. I hadn’t seen her this angry in years. “I got the school recording this morning.”

Uh-oh. Forgot all about that. If you’re a no show in the morning without your parents calling the school to explain the absence, a computer program dials your home number relaying a message about your absence from school.

“Ashla?”

I rubbed my eyes. This was getting to be too much.

“Where were you all day?”

“Job hunting.”

She frowned, trying to absorb that. “School comes first. Always.”

I shook my head. I just couldn’t tell her how it was at school. “We need the money with the hospital bills and everything.”
And I needed to fill my day somehow
.

“Ashla, there’s no way we’d let you take a job during class time, even if you could get one. What are you thinking?”

“How are we going to pay the hospital bills?”

“We’ll pay them somehow. But you’re not missing anymore school. Promise me.”

I nodded miserably and then, just to make things a lot worse, my grandmother appeared behind Mom and barked out her opinion. “She should work, Laine. Pay for her stupidity instead of unloading all those bills on you and Bryan. She needs to grow up and take some responsibility instead of acting like a little Miss Prima Donna.”

Mom ignored her. “Ashla, promise. No more missing school.”

“Alright. Alright,” I said, slipping by Mom and then my grandmother.

“Lazy, good for nothing tramp…” she shot at my back. I bit back a remark and headed upstairs.

The following day Celeste and I walked into the school, hoping no one would notice me. No such luck. We did the death walk down the corridor. Dirty looks followed us. A few kids elbowed us as they passed. A freshman stuck his foot out to trip me, but I hopped over it. I tried not to hear the snide remarks. All I had to do was get through the morning so Mom wouldn’t get a call from the office.

I made my way to the first class and the room went instantly quiet as Rand Riley, huge and intimidating, left his desk and walked menacingly toward me, his colorless eyes boring through me. He was unanimously considered the meanest, toughest, most deranged guy in the school. Even the Tarantulas avoided him. Worse, it was well known that he was an avid hockey fan. “Hey man, looky here. Just looky here.” His fist shot out and my books and papers went flying. I backed away from him, and turning, I bent down to retrieve everything. His boot struck my butt with so much force I flew forward, my footing gone. I slid across the floor stopping when my shoulder struck a desk leg.

I stayed there a few seconds, but instead of collecting myself, a dam broke. Red hot anger roared through me like a freight train. I pushed off the floor, whirled on him like a feral cat, and whacked him so hard across the face with my text book that his head snapped sideways.

The room went deathly quiet. With painful slowness, Rand turned back to look at me, his hand rubbing the huge red mark above his hairy cheek. His eyes lost focus. His right fist shot out again, this time plowing into my stomach, sending me backward against the wall. I collapsed . . . lungs paralyzed. I couldn’t get air in or out. I couldn’t breathe! Nor could I call out for help. I was terrified.