by D.L. Miles
Chapter 1
LIVING (BARELY)
I ran faster down the street, deep auburn hair flying behind me after shaking loose of the small elastic. Really, I hadn’t expected the security guard to actually resort to hair pulling in his pursuit. But I grinned wide as a bus passed by and I spotted Clara in the window, waving frantically at me with a matching smile. I glanced over my shoulder, the guard falling further behind.
I took a corner as quickly as I could without needing to brace myself for impact. Next time I took Clara to the mall for a little shopping I would make sure that the stores hadn’t installed new cameras with a brand new security company. Then again, there might not be a next time when Fern found out.
Thankfully it was late in the evening, the busiest time of day for foot traffic in Havenbrooke County, and as soon as I hit the crowded street I was lost in a sea of people. I threw my green hood up, ensuring they wouldn’t recognize me by my hair. You’d be surprised just how many times I’d been caught based on the fact I was a redhead. It was rather unfair, really, but I was reluctant to dye it.
I gripped the plastic bag tighter in my hands, feeling the conspicuousness of the food as if it had giant arrows pointing me out. Another quick look over my shoulder told me I’d temporarily lost the guards, or maybe they just didn’t care that much about a few bracelets and groceries; or, most likely, their chairs and doughnuts were calling them back to the mall.
Someone slammed into my shoulder, shaking me enough to almost fall over. A hand caught my elbow and steadied me. “Sorry,” they said, “didn’t see you there.”
“Yeah,” I breathed, looking up to find a pair of insanely light green eyes staring down at me; they almost looked turquoise. “It must be so hard to look in front of you.”
The boy that had hit me didn’t look much older than I was but I found it unnerving that he wasn’t immediately letting go of my arm. My chest warmed with a familiar heat that often came before one of my accidents, so I wrenched out of his grip.
“You know, technically you hit me when you were looking over your shoulder,” he said.
“Yeah, well,” I stammered, “you coulda dodged me.” I hurried away from him, a strange tingling sensation rushing through me. Everything was blurring in and out of focus as I moved quicker down the street. I didn’t know how many people I ran into trying to get somewhere secluded but the burning in my chest was getting worse. Finally, only when I set out running again did it start to calm down.
I whirled around another corner only to crash into the side of a hotdog cart. The man operating it yelled at me in a language I didn’t know. “Sorry!” I shouted back at him, the flames on the grill rising high enough to reach the umbrella. The fabric ignited and more screams erupted when the black flames lashed higher, but by then I was already down the street and thankfully out of earshot. After what felt like an eternity I made it into Fern’s building and ran for the basement.
The door to the supply closet slammed behind me and I fell to my knees.
“It doesn’t control you,” I whispered, “you control it. It is your gift, not your curse.” I grunted as small sparks erupted from my fingertips. “Keep it down.”
A few shaky moments later I took in a deep breath. Sweat trickled down my face and dripped onto the concrete. Slowly I came to my feet, apples spilling out from a burned hole in the grocery bag; thankfully the contents seemed just fine.
As I opened the door a wave hit me, giving me only enough time to mumble, “Aw hell,” before the explosion hit.
When I made it up to Fern’s apartment (after taking five flights of stairs because the elevator was permanently broken) I noticed that my little problem in the basement had shaken the four off of our door. I nudged it aside on the grimy carpet and stepped inside, the lock still broken, to be met with a rusted chain across my eyes.
“Fern!” I called in. “Fern, open the door!”
“I would if I wasn’t so busy trying to straighten all the pictures from that stupid quake!” she yelled back at me. After some minimal crashing the door slammed shut and reopened to show me Fern.
Splattered in paint and soot and a few other unidentifiable splotches across her chest, she eyed me. Dyed black hair tied in a tight bun on the top of her head, I saw a few random pieces of clay and paint in there too. I stepped inside, slamming the door behind me. “Clara here?”
“In her room,” Fern said. “Lost it again?” She gave me a pitying look.
I grimaced and moved on, not feeling like getting into what had happened. “I’m good now. Got some groceries.” The bag hung on my fingertips as I raised it into the air.
“Ohh,” she cooed, “apples! Burnt apples…how do apples burn like this exactly?” She took a large bite out of one and grabbed the broken bag from me, dragging it into the kitchen. Since she was occupied, singing a song about how she was making a pie, I wandered into the room I shared with Clara.
“You got away!” she cheered when I stepped into the doorway.
“Yup,” I said, trying to be just as happy about it. Despite my slip up downstairs it had been a pretty good day. It had been a pretty good six months, actually, not that you’d be able to tell by the state of our apartment.
In my room was one twin size bed and a sleeping bag, a few books piled in a corner with a mysterious water stain beneath an empty cobweb. The window near the bed had a crack in it that got a little bigger every time I had an “accident”. Our dresser held assorted stolen jewelry, clothes, and art supplies with a single picture of the three of us on top. I eyed it a moment before joining Clara on the bed; what would I have done if Fern hadn’t found me?
“Check this out,” Clara said, pushing a pair of earrings towards me. “Real diamonds.”
“What?” I questioned. “Where did you get real diamonds?”
“That little sales person on the street,” she went on excitedly. “She was busy talking to some guy about them and I nabbed them coming home. Awesome right?”
I smiled at her. “Good job. Now go to bed, you got school tomorrow!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the woman on the street corner was a scam artist, and that the earrings weren’t real diamonds.
“Do you want the bed tonight?” she offered.
I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. I’ve got some things to do with Fern anyway.” As I left the room I flipped the light switch off. Clara only sent a couple groans of protest my way before falling silent.
The floorboards creaked as I shuffled towards the kitchen. Fern found me, her head poking out of the kitchen. “Did I hear you talking about school?”
“For Clara.” I sighed and hopped onto the counter.
“You should go too,” Fern argued, “get an education, go to college. You’re fifteen, you should be in school.”
“I should be a lot of things,” I mumbled.
“You should have the opportunity to get a better life.”
“I should have a last name, too, yet here I am.” I leaned back on the counter and watched her reaction, but like the typical laid back woman she was, Fern only smiled.
“I don’t have one either.”
“You choose not to have one,” I said, “I don’t have one because…I just don’t.”
Fern set the apples in the sink and began to rinse them. After she rubbed one clean she sighed and put it down, turning off the trickling water. She faced me, her normally bright eyes seeming tired and lifeless. “We decide who we are, that’s why I choose not to have a last name. I don’t need what my family was willing to give me; I’m my own person. A name doesn’t define us, Grace. Our actions do. We do.”
I rolled my eyes and jumped from the broken tiles on the counter. “Right, you always say that.”
“You’ll understand one day.” She smiled and returned to washing apples.
It was hard not to roll my eyes again. As grateful as I was for having Fern in my life, and having her be so
willing to take me in, she said things like “you’ll understand one day” and “it will make sense in time” a lot. It’s been nearly sixteen years; if I don’t understand now how could I later?
Though I didn’t want to I said, “I’m going out.”
“You’re not going to steal again, are you?” Fern asked. Just as I reached the front door I turned and faced her worried expression. Guilt crept into my stomach and I tried to shrug it away.
“I’m just going to a club,” I told her, but it did little to ease her worry. She clasped her frail hands together and only nodded. She knew just as well as I did that we needed to money. Besides, it’s not like I ever got caught.
I was feeling exhausted after blowing up again, but I didn’t have the luxury of grabbing a good book and taking a nice long bubble bath, mostly because we barely even had a bathtub. Also, most of the books we had were burned after I accidentally exploded in our old place (which was technically a motel room).
My shoulders rolled as I sighed, wondering how hard it would be to get into one of the four clubs downtown. Pickpocketing was easy in those places, at least compared to a bar. Lots of cash, cell phones and cameras that could easily be pawned, and most people didn’t notice anything was missing; and when they did I was long gone. The only trouble I usually had was getting in. At fifteen I really looked like I was fifteen, which meant I always had to find an open back door.
I decided to hit up the busiest club in the county, Haven Oasis. Most people just called it The Oasis, and it was about as dark as a club could get without everyone being completely blind. They had drinks that were priced just right to make people want to pay in cash, which meant extra cash if I managed to get in. Recently they’d beefed up their security after a group of minors had gotten drunk and one vanished from their restrooms.
As I turned the corner the moon was already overhead and glaring down at me. I shivered against the cold of March, thinking about how I should have switched my sweater for a jacket. But I could already see the line of people waiting to get into Oasis, and there was no turning back now.
I skipped past the line of people, noticing a few of them sent me glares as I walked past. I ignored them and went to me I special access. It just wasn’t lined with a velvet rope, and instead was blocked by the dumpster.
A single knock at the door around the corner and it opened, and Sam appeared with a smile. “Gracey, good to see you again.”
“It’s Grace,” I corrected. “Let me in already, it’s freezing out here.”
“Ah-ah,” he sang, pushing back his long blond bangs. “Thirty per cent of the findings.” He wagged a finger at me.
I gaped. “Thirty? Last week it was only fifteen!”
He shrugged, a hand still resting on the door. “I got caught letting minors inside, and the price has gone up. So, thirty.”
I pursed my lips, wondering if it would be worth it. Sam knew he had me; there was no way I’d be getting in the front door. Slowly I nodded my head and his grin widened. “That’s my girl.”
“Bite me.”
“I would love to,” he told me as he stepped back. “But Song has put in a rule that I’m not allowed to touch the talent.”
“Talent?” I repeated. I flexed my fingers at me sides, trying to get a bit of feeling back into them. The back of the club smelled of cigarette smoke and just a bit of puke. A dark hallway led towards the front of the club, the music already vibrating through my body. Sam followed me towards the front of Oasis.
“You earn lots more money kitten,” he said, “and Song would like you to know of a few more rules.” He stopped me just before the door. His large hands suddenly gripped my shoulders, his breath hot against my ear. “No repeat steals, no hassling the musicians, and no getting caught.”
I tried to shrug him off but his grip only tightened; I winced under it. “And one more thing,” he added, leaning in even closer, “if you skip out on the bill again, you’ll wish you were dead. Have fun!”
Sam opened the door and shoved me out. Even the heat of the club couldn’t stop my shivering.
It was hard not to think about what might happen if I did skip out on giving Song, the creator of this lovely theft system, thirty per cent of what I stole. I’d only skipped out on the bill once, and it wasn’t fun. I did wonder what he would do though; what would make me wish I was dead? A lot of things crept into my mind, and none of them I liked. I remembered what happened last time, and compared to what I’d heard about it wasn’t so bad. First punishments were always pretty lenient…second ones though? Not so much.
I shook out of my head, focusing on the problem at hand. If Song was going to be getting thirty per cent, I needed to get a bit more. No waiting until afterwards to find what I took; I had to check while I was still there.
As always, the club was packed. Young men and women lined the bar and dance floor, moving and swirling to the music. I picked out a couple targets while I was on the edge of the chaos and started moving.