Wildefire

by Karsten Knight

  The headmistress folded her hands into her lap and regarded her student for a cool minute. Had Ash said what the headmistress wanted to hear? Wasn’t that what this impromptu tea party was all about—opening up?

  Finally Headmistress Riley said, “I’m going to require—” She stopped, then corrected herself. “I’m going to strongly recommend that you meet with Ms. Lombard next week when she returns from her honeymoon. I think a counseling session would work wonders for you, or at least give you some release. What do you think?”

  Ashline imagined herself lying on a chaise longue while Ms. Lombard scribbled frantically in a little flip-top notebook. Well, Ms. Lombard, the problems I’m facing are pretty much universal to the American teenager. My sister, who controls the weather, murdered one of my high school classmates, so I excommunicated myself to California, only to find out that I was summoned here by a blind oracle. Yesterday I served a fairly typical detention, during which a group of commandos attempted to kidnap me for somebody’s science project. I watched a man age 240

  forty years in sixty seconds, before the earth repossessed his body while he was still alive. Eve has decided for the first time in six years that she wants to spend quality family time with her little sister. And while the world around me, immortal or otherwise, seems to have lost its mind, I’m just waiting to see if I’m really a goddess or if I’m just like everyone else, and I’m hoping I don’t explode if and when the transformation happens.

  Oh, and I don’t have a date for the masquerade ball on Friday.

  “Well?” the headmistress prodded her.

  “Fine,” Ashline agreed.

  “Good.” The headmistress took Ashline’s file and tucked it into the top drawer of her desk. Just great. Her file was conveniently on call for the next time she was caught lurking around after curfew. “Before you go, as the headmistress of these here parts, I’m obligated, for both your sake and for my own, to admonish you as a school administrator. You’ve made two visits to my office within the past week. If for some reason in the near future I’m forced to call you in again, I will have no choice but to put the squeeze on your Spring Week activities. No midnight movie. No masquerade ball.”

  “That’s more than fair.” Ashline downed the last of her tea.

  The headmistress stood up, announcing the end of their visit. “Stay out of trouble, kiddo.”

  “You bet,” Ash said, and made for the door.

  “Oh, Ashline,” the headmistress said before Ashline 241

  could leave. “Coach Devlin told me that you are quite the firecracker on the court, and that Wednesday you’ve got a big match against Southbound. Something about a grudge match between you and your rival?”

  Just thinking about it Ashline felt the butterflies explode in her stomach, wings and monarch dust spraying everywhere. “Patricia Orleans,” Ash replied. “Ranked number one in Coastal Conference Athletics.”

  “Well, good luck, and go, Owls,” the headmistress said, then added a lame, “Hoot, hoot!”

  Ashline laughed. “Not just any owls—the Spotted Owls. I’m sure it would be a terrifying mascot if our opponents were small woodland animals.”

  “Yes, I don’t suppose the spots make them any more intimidating,” the headmistress said. “You know they’re an endangered species here in the redwoods.”

  “Actually, they’re a threatened species,” Ash corrected her as she opened the door.

  It’s the rest of us that are endangered.

  Ashline was a sponge soaked in sweat. And she was playing the worst tennis game of her life.

  On the opposite end of the court, Alyssa tossed the ball skyward and hammered her racket down onto the ball.

  Ash started left before realizing all too late that the ball was thundering toward the outside line. She dove in a last-ditch attempt to catch the ball backhand, and she did—

  sending the fuzzy green orb careening up into the stands.

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  “Ace!” Alyssa shouted, and hopped ecstatically up and down.

  “Thanks, Alyssa—because I didn’t know what that was called.”

  Alyssa plucked another ball from her pocket as she stepped into the opposite box. “I call it a beat-down.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Ash pointed her racket angrily across the net. “Why don’t you try it again, and we’ll see how far I can serve that ball up your—”

  “Wilde!” the coach shouted, leaning out the door of her office. “Get in here.”

  “Ooh,” Alyssa crowed as Ash walked past her toward the open doorway.

  “Keep it up,” Ash snapped, “and we’ll see if my racket fits up there too.”

  Inside her office the coach tossed Ash a bottle of water, which she snatched out of the air.

  “Good to see at least some of your reflexes are working today,” Coach Devlin said.

  “Just the useless ones.”

  “Wilde, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to take it to heart: You look like shit.”

  “Thanks, Coach.” Ash dropped the unopened water bottle into the metal wastebasket. “Suddenly I’m not so thirsty.”

  “What’s the deal, kid? Are you hungover? Are you . . .

  on drugs?” She nodded out the window, where Alyssa was practicing her serves, giving a dainty but dramatic grunt 243

  every time she hit the ball. “Because Ms. Junior Varsity—

  the one who paints her toenails before she comes to practice—is serving your ass to you on a buffet table.”

  “Well, you know what they say about a terrible practice.”

  “Yeah—it makes for a shittier match.” The coach pointed to the screen, where she had pulled up the con-ference statistics for the Southbound Renegades. “You know what the zero means after the dash next to Tricia Orleans’s name?”

  Ash paused. “It’s the number of points she will have earned after I beat her in two perfect sets.”

  “You’re damn right,” Coach Devlin said. “Now go finish your matchup with our resident beauty pageant con-testant out there, and if you let her get even one point, I’m going to put you on laundry duty.” She held up a grungy towel from the bin to emphasize her point. “I don’t think this one has ever been cleaned.”

  Ash gave her a salute and a “Yes, ma’am” and then hurried back out onto the court.

  “What did Coach say?” Alyssa asked.

  “She said it was okay to stop letting you win now,”

  Ash replied, and swatted Alyssa on the ass with her tennis racket, which caused the smaller girl to jump. “Oh, and Coach says that if you lose, the laundry’s all yours today.”

  Twenty minutes later, without missing a single point, Ashline wiped her brow with her own towel and tossed it 244

  over the net. It caught Alyssa square in the face, right as she looked ready to explode with disbelief.

  The beaten junior shuffled into the locker room, writhing with anger, and Ash gleefully stuffed her racket into her tennis bag. As she closed the metal gate behind her, she glanced up at the bleachers—empty.

  Get a grip, girl, she urged herself. You’ll be seeing him in twenty-four hours.

  Ashline was walking back to East Hall when she heard it—the distant thrum of a pipe organ. Chords. Music.

  And then, softly through the wind, she heard the faint but powerful call of a girl’s voice singing out a hymn.

  The melody pulled her away from her original trajectory, toward her bed, and around the side of the dining hall. She found herself treading along the stone path that led up to Mercy Chapel, the latest addition to campus.

  When Charles Blackwood had financed the construction of the academy, he’d had only two requirements: that the academy be green-certified, to live in harmony, and not at odds, with the forest around it; and that God be present on campus. And so they constructed a small church complete with a pipe organ.

  Headmistress Riley had yet to hire a Jesuit for the Blackwood faculty, so for the time being, the chapel merely served as a
reflective place, open twenty-four hours for its students.

  Not once had Ashline ever heard the dusty pipe organ put to use.

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  She placed her tennis bag next to the entrance and opened the front door softly, but the click still echoed over the stone floors. The song had just ended, and the organist—Monsieur Chevalier—ignored the newcomer and flipped through his hymnal in search of the next piece. Serena, the vocalist, smiled bashfully from the lec-tern where she stood.

  The only occupant of the chapel to acknowledge her entrance was Ade. He sat in the back pew and beckoned her over with a wave of his hand. She gently closed the door and made her way down the narrow pew.

  Side by side, sitting down, it was the first time she felt like she was even close to eye-level with the tall Haitian boy. Up this close, she could see the raw musculature of his neck, the way he held the unopened hymnal in his hands with power and grace.

  “Welcome,” he said. He angled his body toward hers.

  His knees barely fit in the narrow pew to begin with.

  “Thanks,” she whispered back. She gazed up at the ceiling. For a chapel that didn’t look so mighty from the outside, the arching underbelly of the roof sure looked high from within. “I’m not going to burst into flames for being here, am I?” she asked. “I’m Jewish.”

  Ade stifled a low laugh; fortunately, the acoustics of the church amplified sounds only from the altar. “I don’t think it works that way. And this chapel doesn’t exactly get a lot of visitors, so I’m sure it’s pleased that you’re here.”

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  Monsieur Chevalier launched into a new hymn. Its solemn opening chord swelled out of the organ, filling the small chapel with a melancholy embrace. Ashline recognized the introduction—something she heard around the holidays. “It’s a little late for Christmas music,” she said.

  “Or early.”

  “I requested it,” Ade replied. “It’s about peace and resolution, something I think we could all use right about now.”

  Serena’s eyes closed, and she drew in a long, patient breath. And then the slow, haunting melody sounded from her open mouth:

  O come, O come, Emmanuel,

  And ransom captive Israel,

  “My God.” Ash found herself unconsciously leaning forward, drawn toward the source of the music as if she were slowly circling around in a whirlpool.

  “I know,” Ade said, his eyes fixed on the diminutive girl beside the altar. “I started coming here months ago to listen to her, before we even officially met during Thursday night’s madness.”

  That mourns in lonely exile here

  Until the Son of God appear.

  “Strange to think that we spend our entire life growing up under the wings of one religion,” she said, “only to 247

  find out that we’re actually the fruits of another. Do you

  . . . still believe?”

  Ade blinked and broke his one-way eye contact with Serena. “Our very presence here, a Polynesian goddess sitting next to a Zulu thunder god, listening to the song of a Greek siren, should be proof enough that religions can and do coexist.” He looked back at the cross over the entryway. “And still I do not know.”

  Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

  Shall come to thee, O Israel.

  “The last church I came to before this one,” Ade said slowly, “I brought crashing down on the man of God who was sent to speak the word within it.”

  “It was an accident. Your powers were new to you.”

  Ash studied him. Even half a decade after the incident in Haiti, he was clearly sagging beneath the weight of his own guilt. Did Eve feel even a flicker of the same remorse for what she’d done to Lizzie? For abandoning her family?

  O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,

  Who orderest all things mightily;

  Ade shook his head. “Intentions mean nothing, and they don’t bring men back from the dead. My anger laid ruin to that church. How can I have faith when I destroyed a man whose only sin was loving my mother?”

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  Ash reached out to touch his shoulder, but Ade continued to gaze down at his lap.

  “It’s ironic,” she said, “that somewhere in the world, on an island in the Pacific, on the African savanna, there are people whom we’ve never met and probably never will who believe in us . . . and we can’t even believe in ourselves.”

  To us the path of knowledge show,

  And teach us in her ways to go.

  “You know, my papa, before he left us, used to tell me that being a man wasn’t about not making mistakes.”

  Ade set the hymnal book down next to him. “Being a man, he said, was knowing who you are when the dust settles. And being better for it.”

  “When do you think the dust from all this will settle?” she asked him.

  He took a deep breath. “I think the better question is, Has the bomb even dropped yet?”

  Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel

  Nascetur pro te, Israel!

  “In the meantime,” Ade said, “I plan to live a mortal life the best I can. Pass my trig exam. Find a date for the masquerade ball and pray that my old suit still fits me.

  Maybe watch my friend play in the tennis match of the century.” He patted her knee.

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  The organ cut out for the last line of melody, leaving only the hypnotic lullaby of Serena’s voice as she completed the hymn in her lofty soprano:

  Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

  Shall come to thee, O Israel

  Serena held the last note for as long as her lungs would let her before going quiet. Ashline began to clap, only to realize that Ade was simply watching the blind songstress with adoration, so she cut her applause short. Serena lowered her head and waited for Monsieur Chevalier to find the next hymn in his book.

  “Will you pray with me?” Ade asked her. “Come on.

  You won’t get struck by lightning.”

  You never know, Ash thought. “I’d love to. What are we praying for?”

  He leaned over and folded down the kneeling board.

  His joints cracked as he lowered himself onto his knees.

  “You don’t always need to pray for something. Sometimes prayer is enough.” With that, he clasped his hands together and lowered his head to his thumbs.

  As the chords of the next hymn trickled through the chapel, Ashline knelt beside him and closed her eyes.

  When Ash returned to her room after the impromptu concert, there was a ball of a human being curled up against her door.

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  Ashline flipped her tennis bag to her other shoulder and toed the girl with her shoe. “Oy, there. Wake up.”

  She prodded her again.

  The girl only made a wounded cry and wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees, burying her face deeper into her jeans.

  “Jackie, as much as I appreciate you serving as a human doorstep, I’ll give you five seconds to pick yourself up and tell me what’s wrong or I’m opening this door and going right over you. It’s been a long day.”

  Jackie peered up, and her big eyes blinked behind her glasses . . . before she pulled an ostrich maneuver once again and tucked her head into her armpit.

  “Suit yourself.” Ash dialed her combination and opened the door. Jackie toppled inward into a heap, and Ash stepped over her.

  Her bespectacled friend rubbed her head and sat up.

  “I see you’re on a sympathetic streak.”

  “You know my combination. You could have just as easily let yourself in and lain dramatically in the comfort of my bed.” Ash dropped the tennis bag to the floor and offered a hand to help Jackie up. “How long have you been out there, anyway?”

  “Time means nothing,” Jackie muttered, and grabbed hold of Ashline’s hand. She made it halfway to her feet before plummeting back to the carpet like a sack of can-nonballs, nearly dragging Ash down with her.

  “Jackie, are you . . . ?” Ash sniffed the air around 251

  Jacki
e’s head and flinched when she caught a whiff of her breath. “Have you been hitting the sauce tonight?”

  Jackie groaned and grabbed her head. “I asked Chad Matthews to the masquerade ball,” she blurted out.

  “The sophomore girl asks the senior boy,” Ash said.

  “Well, that was progressive of you.”

  Jackie collapsed dramatically onto her back, her arms splaying out to either side like she was a human T

  square. “I just couldn’t handle the waiting anymore, so I poured a few nips into my OJ for some liquid courage at dinner, and then I cornered him as he was going up for mashed potatoes. Just blurted it out. He stood there looking like I’d hit him in the face with a shovel. Then he finally told me he was going with his girlfriend. I ran back here to drown my sorrows in tequila, and—” She paused as another memory bubble burst through to the surface.

  “The witnesses. Oh so many witnesses . . .”

  “Come on, Sadie Hawkins.” Ashline wrapped her hands firmly around Jackie’s wrists and lugged her to her feet. She slipped an arm around her waist before the wobbly girl could go down again. “You can sleep it off in Hayley’s bed tonight. I could use the company anyway.”

  She guided her over to the bed and with a gentle shove got her to roll onto the bedspread. “Hang tight for just one second.”

  In less than a minute Ash was able to pour a large glass of water in the bathroom, locate the emergency box of saltines that she kept in her bureau, and move the 252

  wastebasket next to her roommate’s bed. “Just in case,”

  she added with regard to the last item. After some negotiating—she took Jackie’s pillows away as ransom—Ash convinced Jackie to crawl beneath the covers and eat a small stack of saltines, followed by several long drinks of water.

  As Jackie’s lips twitched with a crooked but comfortable smile, and her eyelids fluttered off into slumber-land, a great idea occurred to Ashline. “One more thing before you pass out,” she said. She carefully removed Jackie’s glasses and set them on the nightstand. “I know you’re really down about this whole Chad thing, but how do you feel about tall handsome Haitian boys?”