The Fire In My Eyes (16 page)

“I would have kept you from dying, at least,” he said. “Though you wouldn't have liked getting a boot in the face. Or having two broken arms.”

I shuddered. I was cold, wet, and tired, but I still had hundreds of unanswered questions. I'd get whatever I could out of him before I collapsed. “Who was that guy?”

“The one who attacked you? Some banger.” His tone was dismissive. “There are a few minor organizations in the city. It's gang warfare. They're always looking to expand their operations, but we never let them. Organized crime. Human trash.”

“What did you do to him?” I thought back to what he said. “Twisted him? What does that mean? Is that what Ripley did to me?”

“Just like that. Twist his mind so he can't use his powers for a while.” He made a corkscrewing motion with his hand, then looked over at Purple, who was still twitching every few seconds. “I'll have to dump him somewhere so that his people can find him. Hopefully they don't give him a second chance.”

“Second chance,” I repeated. “You're one of the people who didn't want me to get a second chance, aren't you?”

He didn't say anything for a long moment. “I don't like that policy in general. I don't like special treatment, even for those with your supposed potential. It's irresponsible to let kids like you walk around without any training. He should have locked you up until he got a straight yes or no. Or just turned you off. But, he's the boss. No matter how I feel about the policy, or how much of an idiot I think you are, I'll follow his orders.”

I shivered, and it wasn't entirely due to the rain. This guy scared me, somewhere deep inside. “I think I understand.”

Shade nodded and pointed toward the twitching gangbanger. “He wasn't bad,” he said while the body floated toward him. “I got careless. A little overconfident. No, he wasn't bad at all.” He hoisted the body up in a fireman's carry. I got a glimpse of Purple's face. The guy was young, maybe even younger than me. His eyes were rolled up, and his jaw was slack. A spot of blood that hadn't been washed away by the rain still stained the corner of his mouth.

“Why didn't you just kill him?” I asked.

He looked back at me. “Why bother? I could have. He was going to kill you and you're under our protection. That would make it acceptable according to our rules of engagement, but I try not to kill indiscriminately. If you twist someone, they usually return the favor. Twists are recoverable. Death isn't. Keeps things civilized.”

“I don't get it,” I said. It didn't fit. A strange sense of mercy, maybe? Or maybe just pure pragmatism?

“Of course not. You don't understand anything yet,” he said. “I'm going to get somewhere warm. Remember not to attract any more attention.”

“Wait!” I called as he started to walk down the slope of the roof. “I don't know how to get off the roof. I don't even know how I got up here in the first place. I'm too tired to go exploring. Can you give me a hand?”

He lifted a hand and I felt myself rise into the air again. When he leaped off the roof to the ground below, I went with him, and he set me down on the ground. “Here's another freebie. Sleep a lot tonight. Eat a lot tomorrow. You burned a lot of energy and your body's going to need to recover.”

“Is it going to be like this every time?” I asked.

“At first,” he said. “You'll learn. Or you'll die. Just like we've been telling you.”

He turned and strode around the corner, taking Purple with him. I stood alone in the rain outside the Pendleton mansion, left with a handful of questions answered and a hundred new ones.

I slept soundly that night. When I finally woke up the following afternoon, I was ravenous and ate my way through an enormous lunch. The cook was shocked, but pleased. I got the feeling he rarely got the appreciation he deserved. By the time I was finished, it was late afternoon and Max had left to help his mother and sister with a business project. Lisa's door was wide open. Drew's was closed. I decided not to take the chance and wandered downstairs to the rec room to find Jess.

She looked up as I walked in. “Look at that, you’re alive,” she said. “Sleep well?”

“Like a rock. Did I miss anything last night?”

“Well, Max got back late. He and his sister both marched down here and started going straight for the good stuff. Guess they both had a bad night. Ariel started flirting with Drew, so Lisa got pissed off, and that pissed me off. I told her to stop being a stupid bitch and she got mad at me too.”

“You're so diplomatic,” I said.

“Fuck diplomacy, she's been getting on my nerves with this shit. She needs to figure out if she wants to be exclusive with him or not and tell him.”

“So what happened afterwards?”

“Anti-climax.” She laughed. “Max passed out, Drew carried him off to his room, Lisa went to bed. Ariel hung out for a little longer. She's a lot more interesting when she's drunk. I learned all sorts of interesting things about Max from her. Great blackmail material.”

“Diplomatic, like I said. What are you up to now?” I flopped down into one of the theater seats and stared at the screen. The game she was playing looked vaguely familiar, but I was too tired to work out what it was.

“Avoiding drama,” she said. “What are they up to?”

“Lisa wasn't in her room, but Drew's door was closed.”

“Are they having make-up sex?”

“I wasn't about to knock on the door and ask,” I said.

She chuckled. “I'm looking forward to getting kicked out of my room so that they can get it on. Maybe I'll get lucky and they'll use your room.”

“I hope not,” I said. “But if that happens, maybe me and Max will just come and hang out with you.”

“That'd be annoying too,” she said, but her tone didn’t match her words. “In all seriousness, it will piss me off. It's bound to happen. Everything will be so awkward now. I mean, I'm happy for her because she's happy, but you know, things are going to get weird. Not that things aren't already weird.”

I nodded. “Are you afraid you're going to lose your friend to her new boyfriend? It would be kind of lonely.”

On the screen, her smooth movements hitched and her character promptly died. “Not bad, Kev. Are you sure you're not a girl? That's what we call female intuition.”

“I'm pretty sure I'm not a girl. Do you want to check?” I asked.

“Not a chance. You're not bad looking, but I'm just not interested in your type.”

“My type?”

“Pretender. Drew doesn't pretend to anything, he's just a big charming asshole. Max doesn't pretend either, he's confident in who he is, he just isn't confident that other people see him for who he is. That's endearing, in a twisted sort of way. But you, you're different. You hide things. On one level, it makes you a little mysterious, and lots of girls dig that. But, you're hiding things that make you who you are. I can tell.”

“If you only knew.”

“Knew what?”

“Nothing. Hey, what about Kaitlyn? Why do you two hate each other so much?” I asked.

Jess snorted and started playing again. “I don't hate her. She looks down on people like me, as if we're less human just because we aren't as sociable as she is. Of course, what she calls sociable, I call being a raging bitch slut. I don't like her, but I don't hate her. Sometimes we get along. She has her moments.”

“What about her roommate?” I asked.

“You mean, what about you and her roommate, right?”

I laughed. “Is that the female intuition you were talking about?”

“No, it's just the rumor mill at work. Lisa was chatting with Kaitlyn before finals. The bimbo was complaining that her roommate was depressed because you stopped talking to her. Apparently Kait thinks you're a real dick.” She laughed and paused the game. “I bet you're still interested in her, right? Holding her at arm's length? Just ask her out, dumbass.”

“I'm not holding her at arm's length,” I said. I should have known rumors would start flying. “I did ask her out. She has a boyfriend back home. That's why I've been avoiding her.”

“Oh, that's news. No one told me that part of it. Well, that's fine. You're still a dumbass. Isn't it obvious? We all saw the way she was acting that night. She's blatantly interested in you, even if she does have a boyfriend. If you give her enough reason, she'll dump him. Not that you're giving her much reason.”

“I'd feel guilty if she did that,” I said.

“Why? It's her choice to make. Not yours.”

“I'd feel like I stole something.”

“She's the one who makes that choice, not you, dumbass. Just go apologize to her. Get it off your chest and let her figure out what she wants to do.” I heard her get up, then she flopped down in the seat next to me. Her green eyes sized me up and she curled her lip in exaggerated disgust. “Though what she could possibly see in you, I don't know.”

“You already said I'm not bad looking.”

“Looks aren't everything. You need to think about what she wants.”

“It's not that simple,” I said.

“Spare me. It is that simple. You just want to make it complex,” she said, then slapped the back of her hand against my chest. “It's up to you to apologize, and it's up to her if she decides to accept your apology or not. What do you have to lose? That stubborn male pride? Having to admit that you're a dick? If you like the girl enough that you're asking me about her, you've really got a thing for her.”

“I had already decided that I'd apologize when we got back. I've been having some doubts about it, but like you said, I'm just being a dumbass. Thanks.” It was true. Like Jess said, it was Nikki's choice, not mine. If she was interested enough in me to break up with her boyfriend, why would I say no? Dumbass, indeed.

“Any time,” she said. “Hopefully she hasn't been influenced by Kaitlyn too much.”

I chuckled. “You're like a big sister, giving her little brother some advice on how to deal with girls.”

“Me, a big sister? That's funny, Kev. I'm the little sister, not the big sister.” She laughed harshly, not at all like I'd ever heard her laugh before.

“You have an older sister?”

“I have three older sisters. Had. I have two older sisters.” She looked down at her knees as she corrected herself. “Marissa's twenty-five and she's in med school down south. Cassie's twenty-two and she's finishing her accounting degree in Boston. She's engaged. First of the brood. No surprises there.”

“Had?” I asked.

“My other sister died,” she said. “What about you? Have any brothers or sisters? What's your family like?”

A sister who had died? I didn't want to pry if she didn't want to talk about it. “I'm an only child. My mom and dad are still married, technically. They separated when I was little.”

“That explains why you’re an only child. No wonder you're so used to being lonely.”

“Probably,” I said. “I lived with my dad. We don't get along too well, so it's more like being roommates than family. I get along better with my mom, but I only see her a couple of times a year.”

“What does she do that keeps her away from home so much?”

“I don't think she has a home. She's a professional mediator. She doesn't talk about what she does, and my dad never wants to talk about it either. Maybe it's a cover story. Maybe she's a top secret CIA agent or something like that.”

“She's traveling the world, bringing down corrupt regimes and saving princesses. Princes, in her case, maybe,” Jess said. “I doubt that. But it sounds like a pretty shitty way to grow up. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said. “I agree now, but back then I didn't know any better. That's why I'm a transfer student up here. I wanted to stay back at home. I had friends there, had a girl I was interested in, and I was comfortable. Comfortable in a shitty life. No matter how much I tried to dress it up, it was still shitty, but I thought that if I stayed there, I could make it better.”

“Like rolling a turd in glitter,” she said.

“Yeah, exactly. When I finally figured out that being there was holding me back, I decided I had to leave. So I transferred up here. I've never been happier.”

“What made you want to leave?” she asked. “I mean, what was the final straw? I'm just curious, if you don't want to tell me, you don't have to.”

“It's fine. It was the girl.”

“Of course it was the girl. That's what I thought.”

“Then why did you have to ask?”

She stood up and grinned down at me. “Because I wanted to see if you'd admit it. Maybe you're not as much of a pretender as I thought you were. But I guess it's easy to admit this sort of thing to a less than pretty girl like me.”

“That's not true at all. You're more than pretty,” I said. Jess froze and stared down at me, eyes wide. I felt myself start to blush. That had come out far more smoothly than I intended. I didn't want to insert myself between Max and her. “No, I mean it. You just try to hide it with the clothes and the attitude.”

She looked down at her baggy clothes. “You seriously are a dick.” Her face was turning red, close to matching her hair. “But I think I can overlook it in this case.”

“That's good,” I said.

“I won't tell anyone you were hitting on me if you answer a question for me.”

“I wasn't hitting on you!”

“I'll tell Lisa you were,” she said.

I shuddered. “That's blackmail. Fine, shoot.”

“Does Max think I'm pretty?”

I found my mouth hanging open. I closed it and tried to figure out how to answer that. She crossed her arms and her eyes narrowed. I found my voice. “Max? You mean, our Max?”

“What other Max is there?” she demanded.

“Smoking Max. The Max who lives here. The one with the ponytail.” I pantomimed smoking, then grabbed a tuft of hair behind my head. “Are you serious? That Max?”

“Kevin, I'm running out of patience with you,” she told me.

“Jess, without a doubt, I am certain that Max thinks you're pretty,” I said.

She blushed again. “All right. Thanks.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He's interesting. And kind of cute, when he isn't smoking. Don't you dare tell him I said that.” She stormed back to the computer and resumed playing. I settled back into my chair and watched. Maybe I didn't have to worry about getting between Max and her after all.