Burning Hearts

by Melanie Matthews

Jenna nodded vigorously. “Yes, ma’am.”

  As Jenna opened the hall door, Principal Greene said, “Don’t let those girls get to you. I know you’re tired of us preaching it, but it’s really better to just ignore their comments, unless of course, they’re threatening you. You’re smart enough to know which is which. Be smart. Don’t let your emotions rule you.” She smiled. “Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  But keeping your emotions in check was easier said than done when you had super strength and now speedy healing. As long as the Stuck-Ups persisted in their Let’s Taunt Jenna daily routines, she wasn’t so confident in keeping her desire for revenge at bay.

  WHAT GOES AROUND

  “Lemme see.”

  “Nurse Nora told me to keep it on all day.”

  “And when did you start listening to authority figures?”

  Kylie chuckled. “Riddick, if Nurse Nora’s an authority figure, then I’m the Queen of England.”

  “I just wanna see if she’s all right,” he defended.

  “I am,” Jenna insisted.

  Before she’d even sat down at lunch to eat her turkey-and-tomato-on-wheat sandwich, Riddick started pestering Jenna about her supernaturally-healed wound that would leave mental scars if she let it bug her brain.

  Riddick had tried to enter her first period chemistry class to see if she was all right. Mrs. Quinn had gently pushed him into the hall, telling him to go back to class. Jenna had made an effort to smile and wave at him, to show she was indeed not about to die. But she wasn’t aggravated; she knew where his worry was coming from: he loved her.

  Sitting next to him on the bus ride that morning had felt strange. She’d wanted to wedge herself between the dirty window and Pru, but Riddick made a point of actually grabbing Jenna’s arm and seating her himself—right smack dab against his twitchy leg that made the floor beneath them vibrate.

  She still thought of him as a great friend, but that kiss…well, that kiss changed the game. It was like she was saying: Yes, I love you too. I’ll express it physically. I hope you don’t mind.

  Pru kept silent on the kiss that everyone had witnessed from Caleb’s mom’s minivan. Jenna suspected Kylie would want to gossip, but after the near murder in the bathroom, she’d kept silent throughout chemistry; she gave Jenna slight, reassuring smiles that everything was going to be okay.

  Of course, Daniela and Emma were too distraught to take the scheduled quiz, so Mrs. Quinn let them read her collection of Science! kid-friendly magazines. They enjoyed connect-the-dots and coloring.

  And then there was Malcolm: the mysterious, alluring foreigner, who was hiding a secret. Everyone had secrets. But his would be explosive with a capital S. And she didn’t mean that in a stereotypical he’s-wearing-a-suicide-vest kind of secret. It was explosive as in life-changing; a truth exposed amid a mined field of disinformation.

  Everyone thought they knew everything. In realty, they knew nothing.

  Malcolm seemed to know a lot, though. He’d kept staring at Jenna’s bandaged hand during the remainder of first period. His fiery blue eyes seemed to be on her all the time, even when he was looking away. His presence was something more than just knowing another person was near her. It was as if an invisible taut string had been tied, connecting them across the chasm of the lab tables. If she tilted, he tilted.

  When the class had dismissed for second period, he’d spoken to her for the first time that day: “Sometimes, it’s best to humiliate the leader than to strike at his followers.”

  And with those weird cryptic parting words of wisdom, he’d exited her life, to only return hours later in the cafeteria, sitting with the Stuck-Ups—which she found weird, considering he’d been exiled on Val’s orders. But she had other concerns—like gently dodging Riddick’s hand on her back and informing the group about her grandpa’s letter.

  “You didn’t read the journal, right?” asked Riddick.

  “No, but it’s in my backpack. We’ll go over it at the game unless y’all feel the sudden urge to cheer and then, well, we gotta do that.” She rolled her eyes, not serious.

  Everyone smiled, agreeing it was foolish to cheer, but Kylie. “Well…I kinda made this poster…what?” She looked at everyone. “There was leftover glitter from my sis’s project.” She held out her hands. “What else was I supposed to do with it?”

  “Donate it to the Fairy Guild,” Riddick suggested in a serious tone.

  Kylie gave him a mischievous smile. “What’s their number again? I’m sure you have it in your cell’s contacts.”

  He smiled back, unaffected by her sting. “Yeah, sure. It’s right before Kiss-My-Ass, followed by You’re-a-Tool.”

  She grunted at him, aggravated. “It’s not being a tool to show school spirit.”

  “The only thing I wanna show this school is my ass when I graduate.”

  “It’s a pretty poster,” said Pru, speaking up. “Kylie showed it to me last period.”

  Kylie smiled, glad she had a supporter. “Yes, it’s in my locker, in one of those tubes people put blueprints or drawings in. You know, to keep it protected. I brought extra glitter and glue just in case I need to touch it up before the game.”

  Riddick squealed, clapping his hands. “Oh, joy! And then afterwards we can go out for root beer floats with the Stuck-Ups! I’ll bring enough change for the jukebox! Ladies, don’t forget your poodle skirts!”

  Kylie sighed and folded her arms over her chest, defeated.

  “Calm down, Riddick,” Caleb advised. “It’s just one poster at one game. Besides, a little cheering never hurt nobody.”

  Pru smiled. “Yeah, Kylie. We’ll cheer with you.”

  “I’ll cheer for Deadfall,” Jenna half-joked.

  She knew Pru and Caleb were trying to support their longtime friend, but Jenna had her reasons for hating the football team with Val, Barrie, and Aidan as prime players.

  Riddick grinned, finding a soul mate in Jenna. “Yay, go Vultures!”

  “You can’t cheer for the opposing team,” Kylie whined.

  Jenna waved her hand in the air. “Don’t worry! I’m gonna be more concerned about the contents of that journal.” She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed it up, and then swallowed it down with some soda. “And the secret life of my grandpa.”

  “I went surfing on the web last night,” Caleb informed, “and I looked up this Jinn and Magi stuff.”

  “And?” Jenna inquired.

  He shrugged. “Well, there’s lots of information. I dunno what’s real and what’s fairy tale.” He nodded to her backpack, where the journal was. “That’s the truth.”

  “Yeah, but what if I don’t like what I read?”

  Riddick put his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Jen. We’ll never abandon you. I’ll never abandon you.”

  Even though she should be shaking his affections off, it felt good to be loved and touched. “Thanks.”

  He smiled and released her, but his smile faded into a pained contortion as he slyly rubbed his hurt arm.

  “Lemme see,” she urged.

  He smiled, nodding to her bandaged hand. “Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

  She rolled her eyes. “How bad is it?”

  “It’s healing. A faint bruise now.” He shook his head at her. “No worries.”

  “So you’ll still be my friend even if I occasionally give you welts and break your bones?” she half-joked.

  He nodded. “Yes, but I cross the line at decapitation.” He swiped his hand in the air. “I just won’t be able to look at you anymore.”

  The cafeteria erupted in laughter.

  “Damn,” said Riddick. “I didn’t know everyone had super hearing. Must be something in Lunch Lady Doris’ mush patties.”

  “No, it’s that,” said Kylie, pointing near the front of the cafeteria.

  The target of everyone’s laughter was Val. He’d stripped down to his underwear, doing a handstand, singing the children’s song “John Jacob Jingleheimer
Schmidt” while blood rushed to his face. While everyone was laughing, the Stuck-Ups were in muted shock, telling Jenna that Val didn’t plan this attention-getting performance.

  She noticed that Malcolm was neither laughing nor seemed shocked. In fact, he wasn’t even staring at Val. His fiery blue eyes were targeting Jenna. He gave her a gentlemanly nod before grabbing his backpack and walking away.

  Principal Greene exited the rarely-seen administrative wing of the school. “What’s going on here?!” she demanded to know. The howling ruckus died down, but a few chuckles could still be heard; she stood with her hands on her hips, scanning the cafeteria, and eventually locking her administrative sights on Val’s half-naked body. “Valentine Lockhart!” She snapped her fingers in an ear-piercing sound of authority, creating an echo that traveled across the cafeteria. “In my office, now!”

  Val seemed to break out of whatever hypnosis that he’d been in and fell to the floor. Shaky, he managed to stand up, grab his clothes, and hide himself as he trailed behind Principal Greene; she was click-clacking furiously in her stilettos toward the administrative offices. She pushed him into a dark narrow hall and slammed the door behind them.

  The cafeteria’s noise level went back up as students chatted about the recent strip show and singing debut of Valentine Lockhart. Embarrassed, the Stuck-Ups left, running away from all the points and stares.

  What goes around, comes around, Jenna thought gleefully.

  “Phew!” Riddick shook his head. “One more second of that low-budget one-man act, and I was gonna be scarred for life. That dude was so close to revealing why he’s nicknamed ‘Serpentine.’”

  “I’m kinda disappointed,” Kylie confessed. “All this talk of Valentine Lockhart and he wears plain white briefs.”

  “He’s improved,” Jenna defended unexpectedly. “The last time I was at his house, his mom was washing his Superman boxers.”

  “Hmm.” Riddick rubbed his chin. “I would’ve figured him more for a Hello, Kitty kinda guy.”

  “But what made him do that?” Caleb pondered. “Val’s all for attention, but that was…”

  “Embarrassing,” finished Pru.

  Kylie nodded. “Yeah, he seemed fine until he started talking to Malcolm.”

  Jenna tensed. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I noticed that Val looked like his usually smug self, but when he started chatting with Malcolm…” She shrugged. “I dunno. His face changed.”

  “He looked more like an asshole?” Riddick guessed.

  Kylie shook her head. “He just didn’t look himself. Like he wasn’t even aware. And then, he’s stripped and singing.”

  “Think he’ll get expelled?” asked Pru.

  “Oh, I hope so!” Riddick crossed his fingers briefly. “It would certainly endear me more to this crappy school.”

  Jenna shook her head. “Not a chance. He’s the quarterback, remember? Principal Greene’s not gonna risk it.”

  “Why?” asked Riddick. “It’s not like the Scorpions were doing that great with him anyway.”

  “Well, they weren’t good, but they weren’t bad either. I hate to say it but without Val that whole team would fall apart.”

  Riddick shook his head. “I can’t believe you were in love with him.”

  Jenna narrowed her eyes, furious. “Who’re you to judge me?” Her voice was soft, but menacing.

  Kylie, Pru, and Caleb slowly edged away.

  Riddick stirred with uneasiness, his dark brown eyes widening. “I’m sorry, Jen. I’m sorry. I just…I don’t understand.”

  She raised her voice. “I fell in love!”

  He furrowed his brow. “But why him?!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t see you first!”

  His face twitched, angry. “You never saw me at all!” He grabbed his backpack and stormed off just as the bell rang.

  Kylie grunted. “Why’d you have to kiss him?”

  Jenna replied by letting her head fall on the table with a bang!

  RESCUED, AGAIN

  “Well, Jenna, this is extraordinary! Class! Class! Look at what your fellow artist painted. This is what I meant by ‘exposing your soul.’”

  Ms. Rush-Holliday placed Jenna’s painting on view for the whole class to see and use as a guide toward exposing their souls. Everyone looked on in bewilderment, even Malcolm, who’d been occasionally glancing at Jenna.

  “And to think,” Caleb began, “all this time I’d been actually painting a picture—with objects.”

  “It is a picture,” Jenna countered. “The teach said so. It’s my soul, represented in oil paint, on canvas.”

  “It looks like it was done by a kindergartner.”

  Jenna studied her masterpiece, covered in nothing but the color red.

  She shrugged. “I guess my soul is five years old.”

  After her major tiff with Riddick during lunch, she hadn’t been in the mood to paint the original idea for the illustration of her soul: red roses. But being drawn to the color red, she’d dipped the brush into the paint and applied it to the white cloth, haphazardly slapping the bristles back and forth until the canvas looked like it’d been murdered. When she’d taken a step back to admire her work, she was satisfied with the end result. And so was the teacher, who’d gushed with an artgasm all over it.

  The other students tried to do the same, choosing other colors like black and blue, acting sly, but the teacher clicked her tongue is disapproval, shaking her head. Apparently, thrice-divorced Ms. Rush-Holliday could tell when someone’s soul wasn’t accurately exposed.

  Near the end of class, Caleb’s soul was exposed to be a man in silhouette, standing outside a crowd of people in bright colors.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Jenna.

  “The silhouette represents me, while the people in color are society.”

  “Huh?”

  “I can’t walk, but I wanna; even if I got prosthetics that wouldn’t change the fact that I don’t have real legs. I’d still be an outsider. Hence—me in all black, while everyone else is in various colors.”

  “Wow, that’s deep.”

  “Well, not as deep as yours.” He nodded to the display board. “The teacher didn’t even put it up.”

  “It’s still better than mine. You actually drew something.”

  “Apparently, she likes the disturbed ones,” he teased with a dimpled smile. “Take a look at the one next to yours.”

  She turned to see the teacher with Malcolm, displaying his work. If Jenna’s soul was disturbed, then so was the new guy’s. And eerily familiar. In the center of the canvas was a black pupil, wreathed in red flame.

  ~~~

  During calculus, Jenna took the opportunity to study the back of Malcolm’s head. His raven black hair was shiny and full. Maybe it was something in the Egyptian water. She thought about who he was, where he came from, and why he was in Oasis. Eventually, she had to look away, finding it harder and harder to resist tapping him on the shoulder and demanding an interrogation.

  Normally, she wouldn’t be so determined to get to know the new guy. But the question of his fiery blue eyes was just begging for an answer. Why were the flames blue instead of red? And what did he know about the Jinn? Clearly, his art project wasn’t a coincidence. He knew something.

  And past events weren’t a coincidence either: her visions of killing people with fiery red eyes; her discovery of a destiny to slay evil beings called the Jinn; her ability as the only one to see the new guy’s fiery blues.

  Their initial contact—that spark of electricity—had jolted an awakening inside her; more than when she’d first held her grandpa’s heirlooms. His touch had allowed her to decipher a foreign language engraved on a sharp knife and a flashy necklace. From the tattered journal of an ancestor’s secret life, it’d brought forth words on paper, as if they’d been written with invisible ink.

  But it also rattled her nerves.

  She wanted to kill him.

  She wanted t
o save him.

  She hated him.

  She loved him.

  “Miss Love?”

  She looked up from her pop quiz at Mr. Worth. “Yeah?”

  He flared his nostrils. “Again.”

  She stifled an eye roll. “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m going to call ‘time’ in five minutes, and you haven’t written anything down. Do you want to pass my class and graduate?”

  “Yes, sir,” she grumbled.

  She put pencil to paper and concentrated on the first problem. The lead tip didn’t move. Frustrated and embarrassed, she found it difficult to recollect anything from the past week’s lectures.

  She let out a loud sigh.

  “Mr. Worth?”

  She looked up, distracted by the new guy’s voice that was beginning to lose its accent.

  She’d never finish her quiz now.

  The teacher swiveled his magnified eyes to Malcolm, less-than-thrilled that a student was addressing him during quiz time. “Yes, Mr. King?” He sounded annoyed.

  Malcolm didn’t seem to notice. Or he didn’t care. “Jenna’s right hand is wounded.” He spoke softly as if luring someone to sleep. “It’s hard for her to write. She needs more time as does the rest of the class. Can we have until the end of the period to finish the quiz?”

  The students looked in awe at Malcolm, and then in hope at Mr. Worth.

  He adjusted his square-rimmed glasses as if he were trying to regain focus. Then he said something shocking. “Well, uh, yes. Yes, that’s admissible.”

  The students sighed in relief and went back to the quizzes, going over their answers, erasing and correcting obvious mistakes.

  “Also,” Malcolm continued, “I think it’s best if Jenna told me her answers, and I could write them down for her, considering her hurt hand.”

  Mr. Worth nodded. Another shock. “That’s quite all right.”

  The students, especially Val, who’d recovered from his embarrassing act in the cafeteria, seemed perplexed at Malcolm’s ability to sway Mr. Worth; but everyone kept quiet, focusing on their work.