Wildefire (2 page)

And there, spilling out of her mouth and onto the ground like it had just popped out of a gumball dispenser, was one of Lizzie’s incisors. One end covered in blood, it skittered across the pavement until it landed at Ashline’s feet.

“My truck!” Rich helplessly reached out to his cas-trated pickup.

Ash wasn’t looking at Rich or the bloody tooth in front of her. Instead the sounds of the crowd around her died away, fading into a void, replaced by a ringing in her ears. In that sliver of time Ash was frozen, looking at her split reflection in the cracked mirror.

A wind picked up from the west, and the already overcast sky instantly grew darker. The temperature plummeted to frosty levels. The short-sleeved students rubbed their exposed arms. Hoodies were zipped in unison.

Then, on that September afternoon, it began to snow.

Just a few flakes at first, carried like dancing ash by the growing west wind. But as a murmur rumbled through the crowd, the snow began to fall in blizzard proportions.

Ash finally severed eye contact with her broken reflection 6

and tilted her face to the sky, her cheeks quickly pow-dered by the storm. Despite her island roots, she always found the cold comforting.

“What’s going on here?” a sharp parrotlike voice screeched from the direction of the school. “You’re all blocking the fire lanes!”

The crowd shuffled to the side, letting Vice Principal Davis through to the combat zone. Mr. Davis pushed past Reggie Butler and, with no regard for where he was stepping, tripped right over Rich.

The vice principal caught himself just before he face-planted. “Mr. Lesley?” His bespectacled eyes tried to make sense of the tennis player on the ground, who still hadn’t risen and was cradling his man-bits as if they were about to run away. Then the vice principal’s gaze traveled across the circle first to Ashline, standing motionless, and then down to Lizzie Jacobs. Lizzie was just beginning to stir, her body now caked in a fresh coat of snow. As a half-human groan escaped her mouth, Ash thought she resembled a waking yeti.

The puzzle pieces clicked together, and Mr. Davis blinked twice at Ash. “Ms. Wilde?”

Ash shrugged and flashed her best attempt at an innocent smile, a look that, despite her numerous brushes with trouble, she’d failed to master. “What? I was just the referee.”

“Nice try.” Mr. Davis folded his arms over his chest.

“But drama club tryouts were last week.”

Ash couldn’t meet his gaze, and looked away, as if 7

there were a better future for her written somewhere on the pavement. Instead she found only a man-shaped cut-out in the snow. Following the trail of footprints away, she spotted Rich fleeing the school grounds without his truck, his dignity trailing behind him like a string of tin cans.

“Mr. Butler,” the vice principal said to the tennis player still lingering at the scene of the crime. “If you would run in and catch Nurse Hawkins before she leaves

. . . I have a feeling Ms. Jacobs will need an ice pack momentarily.”

On cue a loud grunt echoed from behind them. “My toof . . .” Lizzie moaned, sitting up. And then again louder, “My toof!” She touched her mouth in horror, and her finger explored the space where her left incisor used to be. She frantically raked her fingers through the snow, the fragment of her previously beautiful smile helplessly concealed by the white blanket on the ground. “Where is my toof?”

Meanwhile, the world war of snowball fights had erupted all around the parking lot. The silhouettes of its soldiers danced with delight through the impromptu snowstorm, using the cars as cover from the returning fire. The shrieks of mirth echoed through the eerie dark of the afternoon. A rogue volley splattered against the pleated pantleg of Mr. Davis’s khakis, and he took a hesitant step in the direction of Christian Marsh, who, with an ashen face, squealed and ran away.

8

But another sound overtook the school grounds. From behind the thick curtain of snow, a low rumbling picked up, an engine distinct from those of the factory-fresh cars and hand-me-downs that were slowly making their way out of the parking lot and onto the slippery streets. It was the churning rattle of a motorcycle, and even Mr. Davis, who had opened his mouth like he was about to really rip into Ashline, paused to listen. The snowball fight and the cheerful shouts of its participants faded to nothing as the sound grew louder.

Ash knew exactly who was on the back of the bike before the outline of the motorcycle emerged through the white gauze. The old Honda Nighthawk chugged threateningly as it rolled toward them, its red chassis like a spot of blood in the otherwise virgin snow.

The engine cut, and the bike drifted to a stop between Ash and her fallen adversary, who had finally located her tooth. Lizzie had it pinched between her thumb and forefinger and was squinting at it in a half-conscious daze. The arrival of the motorcycle caused her to drop it again.

The rider, cloaked in white jeans and a matching spandex shirt that made her look like a floating vision in the falling snow, dismounted the bike and plucked her helmet from her head in one smooth motion. Her short chin-length hair curved around her face into two ebony spikes that pointed forward like tusks. Her dark skin, even richer than Ash’s, betrayed her roots to an island 9

far, far away from this suburban jungle. It was as if she and Ash had been excavated from different layers of the same clay.

The older girl glanced briefly at Lizzie Jacobs, perhaps noting the blood on her lip and the concussion-induced disorientation in her eyes. “Way to go, Little Sis.”

“What are you doing here, Eve?” Ash asked.

“Yes, Ms. Wilde, what
are
you doing here?” Mr. Davis echoed.

Eve pouted mockingly at her former vice principal.

“Can’t a big girl check in on her
wittle
sister from time to time?”

Mr. Davis cleared his throat. “Not on the school grounds from which you have already been expelled.”

“Oh, please.” Eve rolled her eyes and tossed her helmet from hand to hand. “A couple of unwanted comments in biology class, and one teensy little cafeteria fistfight, and you kick a girl out of school? Hardly seems fair.”

“Three,” Mr. Davis corrected her. “
Three
teensy little cafeteria fistfights, and one restraining order.”

“See?” Eve exclaimed as if this proved her point. “Six months out of school, and I can’t even count straight anymore. And I was
so
eager to learn.”

Behind Eve, Lizzie Jacobs climbed unsteadily to her feet, tottering from side to side. She massaged her head and squinted at the new arrival. “Christ, Ash. Did you hit me hard enough that I’m seeing double? Or are 10

there two Tahitian bitches strutting around the parking lot?”

“Lizzie, please shut up,” Ash said, this time pleading, not hostile. Eve had been missing for three months now, ever since her seventeenth birthday. But three months wasn’t nearly long enough for Ash to forget that when Eve got involved, things never failed to get out of hand.

“Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?” Eve said over her shoulder; the peon behind her wasn’t worth the energy of turning around.

Lizzie opened her mouth to reply, but Ash darted between the two of them. She experienced a pleasurable surge of victory when Lizzie flinched, but wanted to tele-pathically say,
I’m trying to protect you, you moron.

“Forget about this one,” Ash said to her sister. “I’ve already invested enough energy in her, and Rich Lesley isn’t worth the fight.”

“Rich Lesley?” Eve scoffed, and swept the snow out of her bangs with a flick of her hair. “That gangly tennis twerp? Baby Sis, I thought I taught you better than
that
. You certainly didn’t inherit your taste in men from me.”

Ash forced a laugh, waiting for the tension in the air to melt. Her mind was no longer fixated on the threat of school suspension. Now she was focused on getting Lizzie, Eve, and the vice principal to go in separate directions. Even Mr. Davis looked on edge—his fifteen years as a school administrator had no jurisdiction over the 11

teenage blood feud he’d interrupted, at least now with Eve in play.

Mustering up all the sisterly warmth she could for a sibling who was as frightening as she was unpredictable, Ash slipped an arm around Eve’s waist and guided her back to her bike. “Let me worry about all this,” she said.

“I’m just going to go inside and collect my detention slip, and then I’ll meet you back at home. We can catch up then.”

Eve narrowed her eyes, like some sort of menacing ice witch with the snow collecting on her brow. “Why?

Why do you just content yourself to go along with the status quo when you
know
you’re intended for much greater things?” She jabbed her finger roughly on Ash’s sternum. “I know that you feel it in you, the same way I did when I gave the middle finger to this place and rode off into the sunset. Do you really feel like you belong in this Wonder Bread town? Have you
ever
felt like you belonged here?”

Ash dropped her eyes to the pavement.

“Then, why don’t you stop
acting
like you do! Do you really want to waste your time sitting for hours in some vomit-colored detention hall, just because”—Eve leveled a finger at Mr. Davis—“this miserable unmarried tyrant is angry that you”—and she pointed her thumb back at Lizzie—“showed this whorish man-stealing bottom-feeder, who has terrible split ends, a little bit of street justice?”

12

“Are you kidding me?” Lizzie screeched behind her.

“Shut it, cupcake,” Eve snapped. “It’s called conditioner—use it sometime.”

Mr. Davis took a step toward Eve and pointed to her motorcycle. “You have sixty seconds to leave school grounds.” He tapped his imaginary watch.

“Just go home,” Ash said to her sister, more firmly this time. “I can take care of myself.”

The wind picked up with increasing ferocity from the west. Ash’s hair billowed around her like a sail. Eve held out the biker’s helmet. “Get on the bike, Ash,” she ordered her sister. “I’m not leaving this parking lot without you. It’s for your own good.”

“No,” Ash replied.

“Get on the back of the damn bike!” Eve growled.

Her face contorted with such vicious lines that even Mr.

Davis took a few steps back. “Get on the bike, or so help me . . .”

Ash was summoning the courage to refuse a second time when fate—in the form of Lizzie Jacobs’s stupid-ity—intervened. The blond girl snorted behind Eve. “I guess I wasn’t off target when I said that crazy runs in the family. But I can’t really blame you, Ash. If my older sister was a motorcycle-riding Antichrist, I guess I’d be a little rough around the edges too.”

The wind died, and the only sound that could be heard throughout the parking lot was the distant call of thunder. Mr. Davis held his breath, frozen somewhere 13

between mediating and wetting himself. Eve’s eyes were still fixed with smoldering fire on her little sister, and for one blessed, relief-filled instant Ash actually thought Eve was going to let the comment slide.

Everything happened so fast. Eve whirled around like an Olympic discus thrower and, with her arm extended, smashed Lizzie Jacobs in the face with her motorcycle helmet. The already dazed sophomore spun around in an ugly pirouette on one foot, before collapsing to the pavement again, for the third and last time.

The onset of violence spurred Mr. Davis back into action. “I’m calling the police,” he said, and his cell phone was already in his hand by the time he knelt down at Lizzie’s side.

A vicious smile spread across Eve’s face, and she stepped forward so that she loomed over Lizzie. “I don’t know if it will be an improvement, but there’s certainly nothing I could have done to your face to make it any worse. Sweet dreams.” Eve flipped the helmet around in her hands. “Hopefully I knocked out another tooth and she’ll be symmetrical now.” She turned back to her sister, expecting Ash to look equally pleased.

But Ash had tears in her eyes. “Why do you always do this?” she whispered. “You couldn’t have just come back to see me. You had to make it about destruction. It’s
always
about destroying something.”

Eve stalked over to her with such intensity that for a split second Ash thought she might suffer the same fate 14

as Lizzie. Eve leaned menacingly down so that she came nose-to-nose with her shorter sister. The familiar tang of cinnamon and patchouli washed over Ash as Eve exhaled.

“
You
hit her and it’s retaliation and self-defense.
I
hit her and it’s destruction. Where do you get off making that distinction?”

Ash held her ground. “Because I don’t enjoy it.”

Eve sneered and gave her sister one more look up and down. “Keep telling yourself that.” She backed away and straddled the Nighthawk, her face livid with disgust as if the pavement were covered with rotting eggs. “Last chance. Are you getting on the back of this bike, or are you going to stay here in Pleasantville?”

Ash didn’t have the strength to reply. She could only shake her head.

Eve popped the helmet onto her head, and the motorcycle grumbled to life, mimicking the thunder in the clouds. “Grow up, Ash,” Eve said, her voice muffled behind the helmet. Ash caught her own tattered-looking reflection in the dark visor before the motorcycle and its rider zipped off over the snow, the back tire fishtailing out as she rounded the corner.

Ash crouched down beside Lizzie. The girl’s left cheek was turning purple, on its way toward a nasty bruise, and her eyelids were just starting to flutter open as she struggled to wake up from the second concussion. Ash was only vaguely aware of Lizzie moaning and stirring; of Mr.

Davis’s panicked footfalls as he paced restlessly, waiting 15

for help to arrive; of the distant wail of the approaching ambulance.

Instead she channeled all of her attention into listening for the whisper that each snowflake made when it touched the ground. But no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on this impossible task, she couldn’t shake the awful vision she’d seen as Eve had ridden off school grounds.