Awakening of Fire

by Holly Hook

  With a total student body of five hundred, any new person stuck out right away. The new guy had dark, slick hair and striking blue eyes, and he sat right at the middle desk of the classroom. Faint freckles adorned his cheeks. He looked as if he worked out all the time because his biceps pressed against the fabric of his black T-shirt. He wore a shirt with a sword on it, a sword wrapped in fire, that threatened to push the school's No Weapons policy.

  In Olivia High School, no one could wear clothing that depicted anything more deadly than a stick. Even T-shirts of that superhero with the clawed hands were out. I'd always wondered if my parents managed the district. Well, they were good friends with Principal Adler.

  The new guy wouldn't last long under Mrs. Cornea's stare.

  And why did he look familiar? He shouldn't if he was new.

  Tasha stopped in the doorway, stared for a second, and then backed out, grabbing my arm. "Did you see that?" she hissed in my ear.

  "Yeah. He'll get busted so fast," I said.

  "No. That guy was hot, and he's sitting at your normal desk."

  I hadn't realized. "That's because he's new." I'd never had the heart to tell Tasha that my parents discouraged dating. I could only imagine what she'd say to that. It wasn't forbidden, but they liked to insist I bring every boy home I even got paired with for school projects. That was even worse.

  "But he's sitting at your desk," Tasha said. "And he looks familiar somehow. Maybe we saw him at the mall before that freak tried to stab us?"

  So it wasn't just me. "The freak wasn't after you," I reminded her. "Just me." Discomfort curled in my gut. I hated bringing this attention to myself. "Maybe you're right if he just moved here. He might have been shopping for school clothes."

  "Whatever. The point is, he's hot, and we'll be the first girls to welcome him to Olivia High School," Tasha said. "Do you want to pass up the opportunity?"

  "Well--" My friend did that already by holding me out of the classroom.

  Tasha took charge. "In. Now." She maintained her grip on my arm like that creepy vendor and pulled me back into the Lit classroom and out of the thickening stream of students.

  She was right about him being alone in the classroom. Only a steaming mug of coffee betrayed the former presence of Mrs. Cornea.

  The hot guy looked up from his desk. He'd been studying his phone before.

  My friend skipped towards him, dragging me along. "Hi! Welcome to Olivia High School. I'm Tasha and this is my friend, Felicia."

  I struggled not to gag. Tasha was going overboard. I thought of giving her one of those party horns as a joke for the next time she introduced herself to a guy.

  The guy smiled. "Hey. Glad to see a welcoming committee." He spoke English well, but with a faint accent that was swoon-worthy. It was something I couldn't put my finger on, something exotic that made me think of snowy mountain peaks and flower-filled meadows. Swedish, maybe?

  My throat went dry. "Hi."

  I was ill-prepared to talk to guys in any way that wasn't academic. My flirting abilities were in the gutter. Hi?

  Tasha took charge, standing in front of me by two inches. "I'm sorry you got Mrs. Hernia's class first thing in the morning. I thought I would warn you about her before she comes in. If you haven't seen her yet, you'll know her by the fire she breathes and the smoke that comes out of her ears. Yikes."

  "I can deal with that," the new guy said, all cool. He leaned back in this chair a little to show confidence.

  And I was becoming the quiet, mousy girl that no one would talk to. In the space of seconds, I had vanished. The new guy focused on Tasha, leaving me out of the equation. My stomach turned over in discomfort again, but it was a nervous discomfort. There was something else I couldn't identify that was bothering me.

  "Her name is Cornea," I explained, struggling to raise my voice. "We call her Hernia because she feels like one. It's more fitting. And turn your shirt inside out before she comes in. Otherwise, she'll send you to the office for 'inciting violence.'" I made quotes with my fingers, which for the first time in forever, were sweating.

  I never did that. Not in the heat, and not even during the grease fire this morning. But add a guy at this level of hotness, and I was helpless.

  "The school has a policy about having weapons on your shirt," Tasha said, upping her volume. "I mean, I get that with guns, but someone got sent to the office and got suspended for having a shirt with a video game monk on it. The monk was brandishing a stick."

  "How terrible," the new guy said. He looked down at his shirt and frowned.

  The uncomfortable feeling intensified. I had an urge to back away, no matter how hot he looked and sounded. Maybe it was the fiery sword on his shirt. It reminded me of the attack at the mall. The only thing missing was the encrusted handle the news sources said was worth many thousands of dollars, but was now possessed by the police. He was just a video game nerd—the best-built one I had ever seen—who liked games with swords and bows. It was nothing uncommon.

  But his eyes—

  They looked like my attacker's. He also had a similar accent.

  That was it.

  "You should turn your shirt inside out," I warned again, throat dry. Maybe I'd end up with some form of PTSD and the onset was delayed. Or maybe the stress of my near-death was hitting since putting a few days between me and the attack.

  "You're right," he said. "I don't want to get in trouble."

  Then he lifted his shirt.

  Looking away proved impossible. My mouth fell open as the new guy's muscles rolled over each other, each one a perfect mold like on one of those naked Greek statues. For a moment, I imagined what the new boy would look like in one of those poses and blushed.

  He stretched his arms overhead and a faint smell like mountaintops washed over me. I had never visited a mountain, but the idea always intrigued me and the fresh air scent was what I imagined it would smell like.

  Tasha stayed silent, watching.

  The warning bell rang.

  And the new guy slipped his shirt on, inside-out. "How's this?" he asked, staring me in the eye. "My name's Sven. I should have introduced myself before."

  Yes. His eyes were the exact same shade as the scary vendor's. Brilliant blue, like a clear summer sky.

  My blush died.

  "Nice to meet you," I said, heart racing.

  "And you," Tasha said, shifting and catching Sven's attention.

  I took a step back before I could stop myself. Tasha kept talking to the guy, moving on to the weather. So she wasn't that great at flirting. It made me look a little less awkward. The guy nodded, taking in her conversation, but he shifted like he couldn't wait for it to end. Tasha had him cornered.

  It gave me the opportunity to slip away and sit at the corner desk, which was the farthest one from the guy. I got out my Lit book and opened it, thumbing through pages of poems and mind-busting questions about terms and deeper meanings.

  I let out a breath.

  He was just a new kid. And lots of people had striking blue eyes and wore shirts like that. It was from a game. And it wasn't as if swords were uncommon among them.

  More people came into the room and set huge books down on old desks that could barely support the weight anymore. Mrs. Cornea came into the room and made a beeline for her mug. She took a long sip and surveyed the class with tired eyes. Tasha took a spot next to Sven, staking her claim. Most of the girls stared at him as they sat down. Larissa made a show of eyeballing him as she took the desk to his left. She was about to fall out of her chair. Her cronies, Heather and Maven, went to work applying more lipstick between turns of glaring at Tasha and whispering to each other about her.

  I hated them. Not everyone had parents who worked for Treasure Water Company.

  Sven, as if sensing the vultures, shifted. He opened his book and paged through it, using my tactic to shut them out.

  But that didn't last for long.

  Mrs. Cornea got her composure and spoke. "Open your books to p
age three fifty-four," she instructed without so much as a good morning. Mrs. Cornea was the stereotypical mean English teacher here to collect a paycheck and make everyone miserable until she retired.

  Tasha shot me a glance as if asking why I'd chosen a desk on the far end of the room, leaving her to sit near the Vultures. She hadn't noticed yet. Then again, she wasn't the one who had almost died from a scary blade not too much unlike the one on the guy's shirt.

  "Come on, Felicia," I whispered to myself. "Even if he's related to that creep, that doesn't mean he's like him." It wasn't as if the guy was trying to stalk me and so far as I could tell, he wasn't armed with any nail buffers.

  Sven was staring at me.

  The creepy feeling hit me before I noticed it out of the corner of my eye. Mrs. Cornea took attendance (which she always did after starting an assignment) and paused on Sven.

  "So we have a new student," she said. What she meant was that he was fresh meat. "Tell us why you have your shirt inside out."

  She was wasting no time. Sven shifted in his chair. "It's the new trend," he said in perfect English. "So I turned it inside out." Maybe he reserved the Swedish accent—it had to be Swedish with a name like that—for girls who weren't mean English teachers. And stalking.

  Mrs. Cornea nodded. "Okay," she said with disapproval. "Don't do it again. It's your responsibility to review the rules before attending."

  I eyed the door.

  The vendor hadn't cared about attacking me in public. While I saw no weapons on Sven, he had a small backpack. I prayed Mrs. Cornea was more intimidating than the mall security guard.

  "Attention," Mrs. Cornea said. "We will spend this week reading Beowulf, an epic poem penned over a thousand years ago. Before you complain, know we will read the modern English translation. Pay attention, because I will assign a report on it for the end of the week. Any work that does not get done will be homework for the weekend."

  Fun. Nobody dared groan. She continued to explain that the poem was the first of its kind and therefore significant and had monster-slaying that may or may not have happened in history. "We can be thankful," she finished, "that dragons and giants are thought to be extinct or close to it. While we don't know if the events in this poem have any basis in fact or history, we should appreciate that Normal warriors of the past helped to rid the world of more dangerous Abnormals than the ones that still exist today."

  Except for dagger-wielding maniacs that burn from the inside out, I thought. My gaze crept over to Sven. He was still staring at me, but shifted his attention to his book the second he realized I knew. Mages had gone nowhere, and I'd heard humans with magic had brilliant eyes. The color depended on what kind of magic they had.

  But as the teacher made us take turns reading out loud (seriously, why don't teachers let us sit and read it to ourselves in peace, which would go much faster?) Sven kept stealing glances at me. Larissa texted away, hiding her phone behind her upturned book, until Mrs. Cornea called on her.

  I couldn't even enjoy the moment she stuttered and tried to find her place. Even as Mrs. Cornea confiscated her phone and put it in her desk, Sven continued the intermittent stare-down. Thoughts of reporting him to the office spun through my head. What good would that do? They wouldn't kick the guy out of school for looking at me. Tasha would also freak. I was sure she was watching the way Sven was checking me out and ignoring every other girl in the class.

  I glanced down at my tank top and jogging pants. My clothes were wrinkled and I hadn't even had time to curl my hair this morning. I looked like crap. If there was anyone Sven should check out that way, it should be Tasha.

  "Sven. Read."

  Sven placed his finger on the book. I sighed in relief as he took his gaze off me. Mrs. Cornea had come to the rescue.

  "Grendel this monster grim was called, march-riever mighty, in moorland living, in fen and fastness; fief of the giants..."

  Sven read as if he had rehearsed the lines of the poem. Where were we? It was something about a giant terrorizing a king's hall, and the hero Beowulf being called on to deal with him. Until now, I had paid little attention to the others reading, but Sven spoke with such eloquence he should try out for the drama club. He let his accent slip through, but it only enhanced his performance. If every girl in the class wasn't staring at him before, they were now.

  Mrs. Cornea remained silent for a moment after he finished his lines, and called on Tasha to read next.

  Why did the guy who might have a connection to my would-be killer have to be so perfect?

  And then I saw it.

  A faint red glow, emanating from Sven's jeans pocket.

  Chapter Four

  "Did you see that?" Tasha asked at lunch.

  "Yes. I did. Sven wouldn't stop staring at me," I said, picking at my vegetables on my tray. I'd ordered that, plus taco salad with real beef today instead of the mashed potatoes that Mom approved of me eating. Even though I knew my parents would see what I'd put on my lunch card, the events of the past few days made me not care. Besides, I was having a strange meat craving. Hormones. Ugh.

  "I noticed that, too," Tasha said. "He's into you, Felicia." Disappointment flowed into her voice. My friend had been hoping to get his attention during class and failed.

  I swallowed after taking a big bite of the beef. "It might not be a good thing."

  She slapped her palms on the lunch table so hard that it made her tray bounce. "What? He's the hottest guy in school with a sexy Swedish accent, a perfect body, and a perfect everything else and you're saying this is anything less than amazing?"

  "Tasha," I said. "He looks like the guy who harassed us at the mall."

  Tasha stared at me as if I were an oncoming train. "He does not."

  "Yes, he does. The two of them might be from the same family. Same eyes. Same cheekbones. Both new to the area, and we know nothing about them other than they might have a tendency to stab people. He might be a Mage of some sort. Which ones have super blue eyes?"

  "I don't know. All those Abnormals are weird," Tasha said. "Are you serious?"

  "Dead serious." I regretted my choice of words.

  "But Sven's too hot to have connections with pushy nail buffer people," she protested, sticking out her lower lip. "It's not true. Maybe you're feeling paranoid after what happened?"

  "You're talking as if that's not a normal reaction," I said.

  "Well, you have to be paranoid right now. Just sayin.'"

  Maybe she was right that was a big part of the problem. Then I remembered one key detail. "Sven had a red glow coming from his pocket. Do you remember that medallion the vendor guy was wearing?"

  "Oh." Tasha thinks. "Maybe it was a cell phone in his pocket."

  "Most of them don't glow like that, and any red lights on phones are the little ones," I said. "And I think since Mrs. Cornea intimidated him, he wouldn't risk having his phone on in class."

  "You'd never know," Tasha said.

  "Why won't you believe me?"

  She talked in a calm voice as if she was trying to reassure a five-year-old who believed in a monster in the closet. "Felicia, you're scared because of what happened at the mall. We live in the most boring corner of the world and will for the rest of our lives, remember? Nothing happens here and ever will, except for the water company trying to run everything."

  "I know," I said. An urge to head to a bathroom stall and freak out washed over me. "Except I won't live here forever. There has to be a way out. Maybe you're right that Sven has no connection to that guy who tried to stab me, but I can't be too careful."

  "Now you sound like your parents," Tasha said with a smile.

  "No!"

  "Well, you did there for a minute. And how are you going to keep a job when your parents want you at home?"

  "Look, you need to help me by suggesting a place to apply for a job. Isn't that what you're supposed to do?"

  "Well, yeah. Maybe you can try The Freezer."

  The Freezer made me think of dead bodies whe
never I heard the name, but it was an ice cream place that saw loads of business on hot days. Tasha had no ideas for me about after-school activities, so I headed to the office to get applications for those. My parents wouldn't feel threatened by that. They trusted Principal Adler to keep an eye on me while I was at school. It would be a safe lie for a while because it wasn't as if school clubs would call home if I didn't show up for most of the meetings.

  "Want to come with?" I asked after scanning the cafeteria for Sven. He was a no-show so far. Maybe he had a bad sense of direction and had got lost in one of the smallest high schools in the state, or he left campus for lunch.

  "Wow, you finished your food fast," Tasha said. "All you've got to do is grab the applications from the office, Felicia."

  I'd have to be fast, then. Tasha was still eating and nothing other than another dagger would convince her that my fears about Sven were legit. Maybe they weren't. I could hope she was right it was just my paranoia. It made me feel better, too.

  So I left my empty tray as my stomach continued to growl. What was with me? I'd just eaten a meal that should have left me full and sleepy.

  Then again, I had skipped breakfast, right? The grease fire had put that out of my mind. I chalked it up to that and headed into the office.

  Principal Adler was a woman who hadn't aged a day in my whole life. That wasn't true, but she was in her mid-fifties and looked like a petite forty-year-old, which she credited her super healthy diet for causing. "Hey, Felicia," she said with a smile. "How are you today?"

  "Fine," I said, praying she wouldn't say anything about—

  "Did you hear about that guy at the mall who tried to stab two girls?"

  Crap.

  "Tasha told me about it," I said, eyeing the row of chairs opposite her desk. Yes, Principal Adler doubled as the secretary. This one room was her whole office.

  "It's awful, isn't it?" she asked. "They found a sword on him. Some antique dealer dated it as at least hundreds of years old."

  "Really?" I asked, interest piqued. I wondered if the principal was testing me to see if Tasha and I were the girls attacked or trying to help the police figure it out. Most teenagers who went to the mall were from in town. "Why would some mall vendor have a sword like that? Did he steal it?"