Wildefire

by Karsten Knight

  “Not for long!”

  53

  The truck’s engine sputtered to life, and Darren screamed “Yeehaw!” before slamming his foot down on the gas pedal. They rocketed through the two stone pillars that marked the entrance to Blackwood Academy.

  The silver pickup streaked off into the night, a fierce phantom of steel vanishing off into a dream of redwood trees and silent roads.

  The gravel crackled beneath the truck’s tires as they rolled to a halt in front of the Bent Horseshoe Saloon. True to the grimy bar’s name, a gnarled wooden horseshoe had been nailed over the entrance. Ash would never know whether they’d hung it askew on purpose, but it always looked one strong breeze away from dropping onto someone’s head.

  The saloon was just one of a few storefronts that made up the old mining town of Orick, a town that existed in the twenty-first century for its motels and bed-and-breakfasts, a waypoint for the summer’s stream of visitors to the national park. Thus, the clientele of the town’s only bar consisted of a curious mix of weary travelers and wiz-ened locals.

  Ash tried her best to act casual as she pushed through the flapping double doors to the saloon with practiced grace, Jackie and Darren in tow. The occupants of the saloon looked up from their beer and fishing conversa-tions to gawk at the newcomers. Ash ignored the twenty pairs of hungry male eyes and carelessly flipped her fake 54

  ID onto the bar in front of the bartender. “Amaretto sour,” she said.

  The bartender pressed his hands down on the countertop. Raggedy Ray’s sea-worn face was spiderwebbed with age, like mud left to crack under the hot sun, but his golden hair was seeing only the first invasion of gray. He didn’t even bother to look down at the driver’s license on the countertop. “Sure thing, princess,” he croaked. “You want one of those frilly umbrellas in it too?”

  “Depends”—she slid a ten-dollar bill across the bar top—“on whether you want to keep the change and lose the sense of humor.”

  A spry grin stretched across the barkeep’s face. “Your quick wit always brightens my day, lovely,” he said.

  “What’ll your friends be having?”

  “We’re standing right here,” Darren said from the back.

  The bartender raised an eyebrow and leaned around Ash. “Oh, it speaks.”

  Darren rolled his eyes and flashed his platinum money clip, the crisp stack of twenty-dollar bills looking fresh from the mint. “Yeah, well, ‘it’ would like a Diet Coke. . . . That is, if you’re out of moonshine.”

  “And a gin and tonic for the thirsty girl in the back,”

  Jackie added with a wave.

  “Three recipes for trouble, coming up.” By the time Ash slipped onto a vinyl bar stool, the bartender had already expertly poured Ashline’s drink and was 55

  measuring an indulgent amount of gin into Jackie’s.

  “And how is that geological research going?” he asked.

  “Stimulating.” The corners of Ashline’s mouth twitched upward in a quick smile. Two months ago, when Ray, the bar owner, had attempted to make small talk during their initial visit, Ash had identified the trio as a team of geology majors from UCLA on a semester abroad mission to study the local strata. She hoped she’d chosen a boring enough backstory that it would prevent any further inquiry from the bartender during future visits.

  Ash’s best guess was that Raggedy Ray had caught on to their shenanigans the moment they’d first entered the Bent Horseshoe but welcomed the fresh younger blood in his bar, since the regulars seemed to recycle the same discussions on retirement, saltwater fishing, and weather patterns.

  “And what’s your topic of study this week?” Ray humored her.

  Ash stirred her straw in the amaretto. “The effects of erosion in the Great Fern Valley, and the continued hunt for fossils.”

  Darren and Jackie both snickered and carried their drinks over to a nearby high-top, where a group of other Blackwood students were playing a drinking game that involved dice, a stack of poker chips, and an empty pint glass.

  “You know . . .” Ray lowered his voice and leaned over the counter. “I don’t know why you bother going all the way into the park to do your studies.”

  56

  “Why’s that?” She took a long pull from her drink.

  “Because,” he said, glancing to the right and to the left before he winked at her, “I’ve got more old fossils in here than I know what to do with.”

  Ash couldn’t help it—she laughed so hard that amaretto spurted out her nose before she had time to cover up.

  Ray nodded to the back corner of the bar, where they kept the pool tables. “Some of your fellow ‘researchers’

  arrived earlier.”

  “That so?”

  Ray rolled his eyes. “Marine biologists, I believe.”

  Ash slipped out of her seat and scooped up her drink.

  “Better go have a bit of shoptalk with them.”

  “Aye, they probably have a bone or two to pick with erosion, I’d imagine,” Ray said with another cough-like laugh. Then he scurried away to tend to a few mugs that needed refilling at the end of the bar.

  With Jackie and Darren both distracted—Jackie was madly bouncing poker chips into the empty glass while Darren and the other kids cheered her on—Ash took the opportunity to glide around the bar to the billiard room.

  She ignored the catcall from a bearded ogre, whose friend slugged him and whispered “Jailbait” loud enough for Ashline to hear as she slipped through the beaded curtain in the doorway.

  The billiard room’s walls were decorated with a strange assortment of tiki masks, yellowing maps of the state park, and beer memorabilia. As she entered, the two 57

  boys were too deeply ensconced in their game of pool to acknowledge her.

  Ash watched as the eight-ball rolled across the table, on a perfect course for the corner pocket. Both boys inhaled sharply. Ade, who had taken the shot, stepped away from the table holding the cue, and Rolfe was gripping his long hair with anticipation. The ball lingered dangerously on the precipice of the corner pocket. . . .

  And then dropped off the edge and into the net below.

  “Bullshit!” Rolfe cried out. “You hit the table!” He looked about ready to snap his pool cue over his knee.

  Ash guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d lost that night.

  Ade pumped his own cue over his head in victory as he danced in circles. He chanted something celebratory in his native tongue of Creole.

  “If you’re going to taunt me, at least do it in my own language, bro,” said Rolfe.

  Ade shoved the nearly empty pitcher into Rolfe’s chest, roughly enough for some of the remaining beer to splash over the brim and spatter his shirt. “Tell me. What is surfer-speak for ‘The next pitcher is on you’?”

  “What’s Creole for ‘Bite me’?”

  Ash cleared her throat. “Do you two need to be alone?

  I’m suffocating on testosterone.”

  “Ah, if it isn’t my favorite Wilde child,” Ade announced as if she’d just entered his royal court. He swept forward and wrapped his arms around her like a bear. “It feels as though I haven’t seen you in years.”

  58

  Ash patted him on the back, and he stepped away.

  “Pretty sure it was fourth-period chemistry, but I appreciate the theatrics. So Ray tells me that you guys are marine biologists now?”

  “We’re studying the mating rituals of the local salmon.” Rolfe emptied the last of the pitcher into his pint glass. “Care to participate in a case study?”

  Ash snapped her hand out and cuffed him hard on the back of the head. This time the beer sloshed out of his pint and onto his sneakers.

  Ade wandered over to the pool table, where he gathered the balls from the pockets and rolled them back onto the green. “And what is Blackwood’s star soccer player up to this evening?”

  “Bobby? Off icing his bruised ego somewhere,” Ash said. “Or maybe trawling the freshman wing fo
r a new girlfriend.”

  Ade grinned smugly while he racked the balls. “Sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, stuff it.” Ash rolled her eyes. “Now I’m curious—what is Creole for ‘Bite me’? In case Bobby comes crawling back.”

  The bead curtain parted, and in stepped Lily Mayatoaka, another Blackwood classmate that Ashline had met a few times when she’d hung out with Ade and Rolfe. Tonight Lily was wearing tight jeans and an even tighter frown.

  “You’re looking chipper,” Ade said.

  59

  “If a guy compares you to a baked good as you’re walking out of the bathroom,” Lily said, “should you be flattered or insulted?”

  “Depends on the baked good,” Ash replied. “Cupcakes, yes. Pie . . .”

  Rolfe chalked up his pool cue. “Depends on whether or not you want to climb into his oven.”

  Lily scoffed, but she couldn’t conceal the faint smile that glowed through her disgust. “Only you could find a way to say something that manages to make no sense and sound completely repulsive at the same time.”

  Rolfe pulled a rumpled ten-dollar bill from his pocket and dangled it in front of her. “Since you were kind enough to play designated driver tonight, why don’t you treat yourself to a 7-Up.”

  Lily reached for the bill.

  Rolfe yanked it out of her grasp and held up the empty beer pitcher in its place. “And be a dear and refill this for your thirsty friends while you’re at it?”

  Ash made a sound of disgust. So wrong on so many levels. “Lily’s not your beer wench, Hanssen.”

  “They prefer beer maiden,” Rolfe corrected her, and continued to hold out the pitcher.

  Lily sighed. “Fine.” As she accepted the pitcher from him, Ash couldn’t help but notice the way her hand lingered on his. Then she grumbled something in Japanese, snatched the ten-dollar bill from his other hand, and disappeared back into the bar.

  “Love you, cupcake!” Rolfe called after her.

  60

  Ade pointed his pool cue at Rolfe. “Not cool, dude.”

  “What?” Rolfe barked. “It’s just a pitcher.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant,” Ade said. “Don’t play with her like that.”

  Ash shook her head. Anyone who had spent more than two minutes with Lily and Rolfe in the same room knew that she was completely infatuated with him. Rolfe’s way of dealing with her crush seemed to be a mixture of pretending it didn’t exist and, at times, exploiting it. “When are you going to put that girl out of her misery and take her on a date?” Ash asked.

  Rolfe avoided eye contact with her, and instead set the cue ball down on the table and lined up his first shot.

  “Soon as Ade stops cheating at pool.”

  “Boys,” Ash muttered. She looked into her glass. A few sips shy of empty. “I need a refill,” she said, but the boys had already tuned her out, sucked back into their game.

  Halfway to the bar Ash spotted two newcomers nestled in a corner booth. The young man, with his five o’clock shadow, close-cropped hair, and olive complexion nearly as dark as Ashline’s, didn’t match her memory for anyone she’d seen at Blackwood. He looked too old to be a student, and yet was still out of place in this bar. The girl smoldering next to him, however, Ash was indirectly acquainted with: Raja, an Egyptian goddess of sorts on campus, with a reputation for being “standoffish,” to put it lightly. For the few games of Who Would You Do?

  that Ash had been present for at the boys’ lunch table, Raja had always come out on top. Ash had met her only 61

  once, at one of Bobby’s nefarious soccer parties. When Ash had offered her a drink, Raja had just stood up and walked away. When Ash had passed her in the hallways, she had observed Raja gliding through the living world like a ghost, mentally somewhere else—home, college, traveling the world. Who knew?

  Tonight things were different. The young man was impossibly ignoring his drop-dead gorgeous companion in favor of fixing Ash within his sites.

  Ash dropped onto the bar stool next to Lily and tried to ignore them. Ray was busy refilling the pitcher. “Rolfe’s a dick,” she said to Lily.

  Lily just shrugged.

  Shit, Ashline thought. She’d never been good at this whole girl-talk opening-up nonsense, and Lily wasn’t making things any easier. “If you like him,” she tried,

  “maybe you should just ask him out.”

  “Let me spell this out for you,” Lily said in such a surprising display of anger that even Ray looked up from what he was doing. The pitcher overflowed. “I’ve been to a dozen American schools since the fifth grade. Each and every one has had its own Rolfe Hanssen, and they’re all the same. So for the final time, let the record show that I do not have the hots for Rolfe.”

  Ash sat stunned. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Lily was rifling through her handbag, flustered now. “I’m just sick of being asked.” She fished out the ten, tossed it onto the bar top, and waved Ray off when he tried to give her change.

  62

  “Well, if you want to talk . . .”

  But Lily was looking behind her. “You’ve got company,” she whispered. And like that, she picked up her pitcher and disappeared back into the billiard room.

  That’s when Ashline felt his presence looming behind her. He lingered silently, just within the boundaries of her peripheral vision. He wasn’t begging to be noticed, like any other barfly would.

  “You’re blocking my sunlight, pal,” Ash said over her shoulder. She refused to validate him by meeting his gaze.

  “I’m not an eclipse, just an admirer who wanted to introduce himself.” He slipped onto the bar stool next to her and extended his hand. “Colt Halliday.” The older boy who’d been sitting next to Raja—if she could call him a “boy” at all.

  “Colt Halliday?” she repeated, but ignored his outstretched hand. “Sweet name. Isn’t there a stagecoach somewhere you should be robbing?”

  “I left my six-shooter in my other jeans.” His voice was rich and just a tad breathy when he talked, like the whisper of silk against metal. When Ash met someone for the first time, she sometimes got an instant flash of images, as if she could see a person’s soul defined within a single painting. When Colt talked, Ash saw crimson and smoke.

  “A bandit with a sense of humor,” Ash said. “New student at Blackwood? Haven’t seen you around.”

  “No, I’m finishing up my first year down at Humboldt, but I work most of the week up here as a park ranger.” He 63

  leaned against the counter, bringing his sharp cheekbones into profile as he motioned to Ray for another drink. The lines of his face were so angular that his cheeks and chin could have been the cut facets of a diamond. “So are you going to tell me your name, or am I going to have to start guessing?”

  Ash shrugged playfully.

  “Fine.” He sighed. “I’ll start reverse alphabetically, but stop me if I get it right. Zora? Zoey? Zelda—”

  “Okay, okay! It’s Ashline,” she conceded, but couldn’t hold back her laughter.

  “I know. Raja told me.” Colt smiled and held out his hand again. “Just wanted to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “You better not be calling me a horse.” Ash finally took his hand, which engulfed hers. Only then did she notice the girth of his forearms, which were so thick and toned that she could follow the veins from his elbow down to his wrist. “Christ, Halliday, the lumberjack union called. They want their arms back. Do you protect the forest, or cut it down?”

  He smirked and squeezed her hand lightly before he severed contact. “Not much to do when you’re out on patrol except climb trees and box with Smokey the Bear.”

  “I bet you win, too,” she said.

  She took a shameless moment to size him up and catalog everything she knew about him already into two lists.

  64

  PROS:

  1. Just under six feet tall, a comfortable height for her

  2. Arms tha
t could put even her thighs to shame 3. Rugged and confident in a way the high school boys could never be

  4. Most important, he was unlike anyone she could have met back home

  CONS:

  1. If he had an athlete’s body, he might have the athlete mentality to match

  2. Friends (?) with Raja

  3. Now that she was close enough to smell him, she detected a faint scent of—

  “Is that jasmine?” Ash wrinkled her nose. “Are you wearing Dior?”

  Colt sniffed his T-shirt and then sheepishly rubbed his sleeve. “Raja practically crop-dusted my car with it on the way here.” He scanned the bar from front to back.

  “I’m not sure who exactly she was hoping that the perfume would attract . . .”

  “I’m just impressed that a perfume-wearing, park-protecting college freshman can still find time to take underage high school students on dates to the bar.” Ash whistled. “Mom must be so proud.”

  “Who, Raja? She’s just a friend.”

  65

  Ash glanced back in Raja’s direction. Given the intensity of Raja’s stare, Ash was surprised that she hadn’t spontaneously combusted yet. “Well, your friend looks like she’s about to breathe fire for being neglected in the corner. Given the state of the bar clientele”—she panned the room with her best judgmental look—“I can’t say I blame her.”

  He laughed. “Raja’s a firecracker. She can fend for herself. Besides, you haven’t even let me buy you a drink yet.”

  Ash opened her mouth, about to cave into the charming inquiries of the handsome park ranger. And then the scream pierced the air.

  The scream was certainly human—female, more precisely—but it stretched into an octave that Ash didn’t even know she was capable of hearing. It penetrated her eardrums so startlingly that she couldn’t help but clamp her hands over ears. The wail infiltrated even her deepest recesses, and her body transformed into a human tuning fork.

  “Are you okay?” Colt asked.

  “Okay?” she started to ask. Hadn’t he heard it too?

  The screaming instantly stopped, as if the valve of pain had been wrenched to the off position. He placed a hand on her elbow.

  “I . . .” Ash stopped herself and gazed around the Bent Horseshoe. The barflies were continuing their business.