Teen Phantom

by Chandler Baker

  But I wasn’t going to wake up. There wasn’t time for guilt or for anything unless I wanted everything I currently knew to be gone.

  I wrenched my feet from where they stood, succeeding only with great mental effort to run to the door. It was locked.

  “Open up!” I banged my fist. “Lena, open up!”

  There was no answer. I hurried to the windows, but they were locked, too, so I started beating on the dirty glass. “Lena!” I yelled. “Lena!”

  From my vantage point, I could see black smoke gathering at the ceiling like a storm cloud. Honor was in there. Honor was in there.

  I had to get inside and fast. I dropped to my knees and started scrabbling around on the ground. The landscape outside the cabin was dark save for the occasional sliver of moonlight that crept through the trees.

  I crawled around in the soil until my dirt-caked fingernails jammed up against something hard and flat. A large stone, half-buried in the muck. I worked to dig it out. Feeling the heft of it in my cupped hands, I carried it over to the window and held it over my head. The first time I rammed the stone into the glass nothing happened. The second time, I heard a small ice-chip crack. I grunted, and on the third time, the glass splintered. Cracks fanned out like a spiderweb and finally the stone crashed through to the other side where I heard it bounce and thud against the wood.

  Tendrils of smoke snuck out of the window and spiraled their wisps out into the night air. I pushed out the glass remaining in the pane with my bare hands and then, clinging to the sill, I scaled the low siding of the cabin using the soles of my ballet shoes. The bottom of one caught on a nail and ripped.

  I gritted my teeth and hooked my elbow over the side of the broken window so that I could pull myself through the gaping mouth of it. Glass cut through my forearms and, as I landed on the floor of the cabin in a crawl, I felt the abrasions begin to leak blood.

  Inside, the temperature of the cabin had reached sauna conditions. The air was stifling, and my breaths immediately felt more labored.

  I drew myself up off my knees, dripping red from the cuts on my hands and wrists. Crimson streaked the Roman tunic.

  I scanned the clouded room, near blinded by the fumes that burned my nose and throat and turned my eyes watery.

  At the center of the room, Honor was tied to a chair. Around her flames spiked up, following an invisible ring that was not yet completely surrounding her. She hadn’t heard me come in, so intently was she watching the flames and trying to force her chair legs back farther and farther from the fire. Her face dripped with sweat.

  “You made it.” Lena stepped around the fire toward me. Her cheeks were flushed red. Orange and yellow danced in her eyes. But it was what was in her hands that froze the blood in my veins despite the rising temperatures.

  It was the ax.

  My eyes flitted to the wall where I’d noticed it hanging the first time we visited. The pegs now hung bare.

  Honor seemed to register Lena’s words, and she turned her face toward me, her forehead glistening. And then she screamed. “Chris! Chris!” But it hardly sounded like my name at all. The shriek felt as though it was piercing my eardrums, and I had to take a moment to flatten my palms against the side of my head to keep the panic from becoming contagious.

  How long could a ring of fire burn without reaching its center? How many burns could a person sustain and still survive? What did it feel like to die from smoke inhalation?

  A very real part of me wanted to escape because the smoke was already thick and it felt like suffocating, only so slowly you weren’t sure whether it was really happening.

  The heat pressed in like a solid entity. Like a monster.

  “What are you doing, Lena?” My voice echoed in my own ears, and I removed my hands from over them.

  The ax in her hands was half her size in length, the deadly blade as long as the distance from her elbow to the tip of her middle finger.

  “Look how much I’ve done for you.” She smiled at me, a sad, kindly smile, the same one a veterinarian offered a pet owner before putting his dog down. “Look how much I’m willing to do for you.” She gestured back at Honor, at the ceiling, at the cabin she was burning to the ground.

  “This isn’t a game, Lena.” I tried to move to Honor, the wall of heat roaring in my face, but Lena was fast. She held out the ax to block my path, and I sprang back. I wasn’t cut out for this. I was just a boy from New York. And there was an ax blade not inches from my leg.

  She clucked her tongue. “This will all be over soon.” Her voice was dreamy. “And you can stay. Things will be better again.”

  Behind her, silent sobs racked Honor’s body and a putrid dampness pooled in my armpits.

  “This is for your own good, Chris,” Lena continued. “I know what’s best for you. You told me those things for a reason. I think we both know that now.”

  I raked my nails over my face. “Lena, just let me get her,” I yelled. Honor’s sobs had turned to wet coughs. The ceiling of smoke inched lower and lower. Lena frowned, a look of unchecked disappointment taking over. “Nobody has to know about this,” I said. “Please, you don’t want to do this. I will take her away, and we won’t tell a soul.”

  “No!” She swung the ax, and it nearly brushed my chest. Lena’s mouth fell open in surprise. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  I could only barely see Honor through flames. There were minutes—maybe—before the ring of fire completely closed her in. Time ran as quickly and as effortlessly as water away from me.

  “I know—I know what’s best for you.” Lena tightened her grip on the ax handle. Her knuckles went white. But there was no more time. I could wish for it. I could pray for it. But to do any of that would use up the only resource I had. And once it was gone, there would be no rewinds.

  I felt desperate. Caged. The contacts in my eyes itched and begged to be torn out. But I held myself together piece by piece.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Lena

  The air was on fire. The world around us was melting.

  Why wasn’t Chris understanding? I felt like I might scream. He wasn’t getting it.

  We stared across the room, both trying to read the other. Honor had tried to drive a wedge between us, and it had been working. I didn’t know exactly what Chris was thinking.

  Then he was projecting his voice over the crackles and spits of flame. “I’ll … stay with you,” he said. “I’ll stay with you,” he repeated.

  I felt my heart being peeled in my chest, layer after layer until it was raw. Stay. With me. Everything, everything I had done, he understood it because he wanted to stay with me.

  He held up a finger before I could speak. “But you have to let her go. If you let Honor go free, I will be here. With you. If you don’t, I’ll be gone. Forever.”

  I stared into his brown eyes. Forever was such a long time. Forever was not what my mother had given me or Marcy or my father. Forever was a thing that stretched and bent, wrapping into a cocoon. Forever was a treasure beyond my wildest dreams, and Chris wanted to give that to me.

  I looked back at Honor between fits of coughing—her head was slumped forward, chin-to-chest.

  “You have to decide now,” he said, sputtering and holding his hand to his throat. “Right this second or it won’t matter. Lena, I’m—”

  I turned back to him. It was so easy to decide because Honor meant nothing to me at all. “Okay then,” I said.

  “Okay,” he parroted back. “Okay.” His brow furrowed. He lifted his arm to shield against the wall of heat. He didn’t want to go after her. I could see that in every molecule of his body. He was fighting himself forward toward Honor. He slipped through the open space in the igniting ring and began to work furiously at the binds that tied Honor’s hands and ankles. The countless number of gashes on his hands oozed blood. I could smell the heat singeing his hair. He gave up. He yanked on the back of the chair, trying to drag Honor, seated, along with him. But the weight of the ch
air kept him from gaining any leeway and he soon turned back to realize that the front legs were nailed into the floorboards. He cursed. I wasn’t used to Chris cursing. He returned to the sweaty work of trying to free Honor’s ankles from the ropes.

  Worried for his safety, I stamped my boot into the flames, but they were spreading, eating everything, a great gaping maw of orange and red and searing white. The cabin was a furnace. A funeral pyre. A sea of fire and ash and embers that lit every spot they touched. The dining room table combusted. Next the hand-carved stools.

  The sharp smell of fear burned through the air along with the blaze. I fretted as Chris unbound Honor, and I worked to beat out the fire with my boots and sweater. But instead I accidentally flung the reach of the fire farther into the cabin with the sleeve of my sweater. The fire was consuming us, surrounding us.

  And then Honor was free.

  And sometimes I could see the figures—Honor and Chris—through the haze of the burning cabin and sometimes I lost them through the mirage of wavering heat. Spots on my skin had begun to bubble. I was cooking alive and this wasn’t how I’d meant it to go. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right.

  The chair to which Honor had been tied turned to tinder for a campfire.

  “I—I knew this would make you see.” My voice faltered.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Chris

  My hands trembled as I untied the last knot and Honor slumped like a doll onto my shoulder. And now I had started coughing, too. I was sputtering for air. The first ripples of panic ran up my arms.

  I hoisted Honor up. The chair fell over and at once erupted into a bonfire.

  Honor’s eyelids fluttered open, but barely.

  I stumbled, my feet clumsy. I crossed a spot of the gasoline ring as it was just igniting and the flames were low enough to clear. I walked three steps and my knee buckled. It cracked on the floor. Pain shot up my thigh.

  I gasped. My hamstring was cramping in the heat. I clutched the balled-up muscle. Honor fell from my arms. Her back slammed into the ground as if I’d meant to throw her there.

  But the force of the jolt made her eyelids fly open and she came into consciousness.

  “Chris.” She pulled onto her hands and knees. “Chris!” Her nose was inches from mine. She touched my cheek. I was so hot, so dizzy. I couldn’t see my hands.

  I felt the acid in my stomach lurching up to my mouth, and I was afraid I was going to vomit.

  “Run, Honor,” I told her. She stood, retreated a few steps. “Run,” I repeated, lifting my chin off the ground.

  Above us, embers had caught the roof and lines of fire ran through the seams of it. At that moment, flames ate their way through a support beam.

  The end of the beam lost its connections with the wall and careened down in a blaze of hot ash and char between me and Honor. “Go!” I screamed at her, the words scalding every painful blister on the inside of my throat.

  Smoke flared up between us and when I looked up again, Honor was gone.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Lena

  Had Chris left me? But no, no, no he wouldn’t. My eyes streamed with stinging tears.

  I stumbled around, directionless, unable to see through the smoke. Then I heard the tear in the ceiling. A white-hot log crashed sidelong and in the glow of it, Honor’s face lit up. Our eyes met. She held my gaze for a beat. And then she spun on her heel and ran from the house, leaving Chris behind.

  I found him trying to lift his body off the floor, his overcooked arms trembling. I looped my arm through his elbow and tried to pull him upright, but he was too heavy. “We’ve got to get out of here,” I said in his ear. Fire, I was learning, was like a barrel rolling downhill. It picked up speed as it descended. There was no catching it now that I’d lost control.

  He nodded. His arms and neck were caked with blood and dirt. A dark cough brought his chest banging back against the floor. “Please.” It was a whisper.

  A rush of fear stampeded over me. I couldn’t lose him. Not Chris. He was the whole point of this. But it was hot, so hot. I was melting. My vision was going blurry. I kept wiping at my eyes trying to clear them from the itch of smoke clouds, but it was no use. I heard another rip up above go off like a shot. A beam crashed to the ground where it disintegrated. It looked like the butts of a thousand cigarettes had been tossed across the floor.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Chris

  Lena tugged again on my arm. It was no use. I tried crawling to my hands and then to my knees. She stayed hunched beside me, pushing me toward a door or a window or anywhere. It was a small comfort not having to die here alone.

  Outside there was shrieking. Shadows played at the corners of my eyes. And the next gash in the roof erupted directly overhead. I looked up as the beam spit out its burning rain.

  “Move, Chris, move!” Lena pushed my shoulder, but I fell over uselessly and was caught clawing for purchase on the wood.

  The support beam lost its hold with the wall on both sides at once. I knew this. I knew that I was going to die, to break open and erupt into flame, and I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand any of this.

  And it fell, burning and charring as it went. I closed my eyes. I heard the flaming crunch, but there was no pain. Maybe this was what death was like. Completely painless.

  Except for the gashes on my hands and arms. Except for the throbbing in my lungs.

  No.

  I forced my eyes open against the red sting of too little air. Lena had used her body as a shield for the beam that collapsed and splintered apart somewhere between her knee and ankle.

  A cut ran from her temple to chin. She screamed in agony. I smelled the copper tang of blood as it dripped from her face. She licked her lips. They came away red.

  Fully alert again, I scuttled free.

  Her dark eyes shined in the light of the cabin. “Chris.” She held out her hand. I felt my fingers flex. I felt frozen. She tried to army crawl her torso toward me, but her ankle was caught under the burning beam.

  “You saved me,” I said. My chest was rising and falling, in fast, hard breaths. “You saved me.” I fell onto my backside and hands. My heart was pounding.

  “Of course I did,” she said. “You’re my best friend.”

  My organs shriveled when she said it. I felt my body recoiling from her. Lena Leroux. Look, just look at what she had done. Fire engulfed the cabin. Minutes, seconds, moments marched on.

  I hated Lena.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Lena

  The gash across my face throbbed, and I knew the blood from it was running hot and fast. Chris swallowed. His face was damaged but still sweet. So sweet. But his breaths looked excruciating to take.

  And then that was the last look I had of Chris. He turned over and clambered away toward fresh air, oxygen, a cool breeze. He didn’t look back, not once.

  And my ankle burned under the fiery debris.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Chris

  I lifted the bunk mattress and scratched the thirty-seventh tally mark into the metal frame with a penknife. Then I smoothed the sheet edges tightly around the corner and tucked the ends underneath before the commander appeared in the barracks doorway.

  I and the other cadets stood at attention near the foot of our beds as the commander took slow, assured strides past us. Inspecting, always inspecting.

  Some of us were already dead behind the eyes and already halfway through rigor mortis, while others, like me, were slower to die.

  I’d changed, too, though. On the first day, the school barber had shorn my hair to the scalp, so that, more than five weeks later, I still only had brown nubs beginning to sprout again. And now there were callouses on the backs of my heels from breaking in my boots. And fresh nicks on my neck from my daily shave. And, of course, the scars running up my arms from that night, deep purple lines, like veins.

  Commander Lucien had a boxer’s nose, square front teeth, and a voice like a Rottweiler’s bark. He squatted down in
front of my lower bunkmate’s bed, resting his meaty elbows on camouflage-covered knees for closer inspection. He loudly sniffed the air. I felt Rusty, whose bed it was, start to go Jell-O next to me, so I knew that it wasn’t the commander’s nose malfunctioning.

  While at attention, nobody could look around, so it was a chance to play the guessing game for everyone except Rusty, who must have known what the commander was going to find, since it wasn’t a matter of if but when.

  I pushed on the knuckles, folded neatly behind my back, until they cracked. I could already feel the ache in my muscles lasting for the next week, but I wasn’t mad at Rusty for not being dead behind the eyes yet. That was his prerogative just like it was mine.

  The springs on his bed gave a long squeak behind us. We still weren’t looking, but I could hear the room and the twelve cadets in it listening as hard as they knew how to.

  The next thing I heard was Commander Lucien pushing up my mattress, which was in the bunk over Rusty’s, and then wrestling something plastic from the metal wire frame.

  Whatever contraband Rusty had smuggled in, Lucien had found it. I shifted my weight, my shoulders tensing for what was sure to come next.

  Commander Lucien crossed before me and stood with his crooked nose nearly touching Rusty’s. “You like yourself some Twizzlers, Cadet McDaniels?”

  My eyes flitted down to the packet of red candy squished in the commander’s fist. Rusty was in deep for it when the commander started asking questions for which there were no good answers. That was how you knew that you were about to become a lesson. “Yes, sir!” Rusty stood up straight and shouted his truth.

  Lucien shoved the Twizzlers into Rusty’s chest, but Rusty did what he was supposed to. He didn’t move. “You like when the red plastic garbage gets stuck between your teeth, Cadet McDaniels?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  I glanced sideways at Rusty. I could say they were mine. I could do that for him. I’d been here fifteen more days than he had and so I was fifteen days stronger, fifteen days more broken than he was. I knew those two things sounded like a counterbalance, but they weren’t. Not here.