The Fire Artist (12 page)

“Not complicated in the sense of a scavenger hunt or riddle complicated. But more like you have to be ready for it,” she says as we reach the coffee shop and order our iced coffees.

“Hmm,” I say because there’s not much else to say. Imran made it clear I needed to be clean, and so I will be clean. Besides, Elise is my granter for all intents and purposes. As long as she’s in my life, I’d never need a granter.

After coffee Gem takes me to her favorite shop in the East Village for rings. The store’s exterior is black, and the windows are full of leather bracelets and silver necklaces as well as tattoo designs.

“When I get out of the Leagues, I’m going to come back
here and get a tattoo,” Gem says, pointing toward the back of the shop where a bleached blonde with a nose ring is sitting stoically as the tattoo artist inks a design along her arm.

“What are you going to get?”

Gem shrugs. “I don’t know. Something pretty. Flowers maybe, since, you know, I do like flowers.”

I nod. We can’t have tattoos in the Leagues. Our arms are often exposed in the shows and the unmarked skin is part of the uniform.

“Maybe I’ll even be a gardener when I’m too old to perform,” Gem muses as she taps her fingers absently against a glass case, checking out the costume jewelry underneath it.

“Ha. You’d be the best ever and put everyone out of business.”

Gem laughs. “True. So true. But my
made
flowers never last.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’d be the flower magician, and everyone would come to your store to see you make roses and lilies.”

“Boring,” Gem says.

“What’s boring?”

“Those flowers. I like daisies. Those crazy Gerber daisies, you know? They’re in every color. Purple, pink, blue, peach. Perfect for me, don’t you think?” Gem says as she models a silvery ring with a gleaming aqua sunburst in the middle. I’m not sure if she means the ring or the rainbow of daisies, but my answer’s the same either way.

“Yes,” I say as she roots around in her purse for cash. She finds some bills. She plunks them down on the counter and smiles at the clerk. The clerk hands Gem some change, and she thanks him.

“You’re cute. Do you want to go out sometime?”

He smiles, blushes, and says yes. Then they exchange numbers.

I’m all grins and awe as we leave. “How did you do that?” I ask her with the same sort of admiration that nonelemental artists probably feel when they see us make fire or air. Still, asking a guy out seems about the equivalent.

She shoots me a look like I’m crazy. “You saw it. There was no voodoo. Just a simple ask.”

“I’m impressed.”

She shrugs happily and admires her ring. “This ring is awesome.”

“Have you talked to him before? Do you know him?” I press on, wanting to know how she can be so gutsy to ask out a guy she doesn’t even know. Kissing a boy on my last night in town is one thing, but laying it out there—
you’re cute, do you want to go out
?—is entirely another.

“No. But now I can get to know him,” she says, and the smile on her face is so natural, so normal that I bet Gem never had to keep the kind of secrets I keep.

A few days later, my phone buzzes with a text from Elise.

Mindy invited Jana to the mall today. J said couldn’t go. Said she had to spend the day at swim practice. She’ll come over later though for dinner.

My spine stiffens. I write back, pressing hard against the dial pad.

See if her hands are cold.

Really?

Yes.

After practice that evening Elise replies.

Hands are warm. Said she was tired from swimming all day. She went home.

I call Jana at home. She doesn’t answer. No one answers. I finally reach her the next day.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You didn’t answer last night.”

“I fell asleep.”

“Is Dad working you too hard in the water?”

“No. I just—”

But she’s cut off by the sound of my father. “We need to go.”

“High tide is soon,” she whispers to me. “He wants me to become stronger by swimming against the tide.”

Swim away from him. Swim across the ocean, I want to say.

By the time the first show rolls around a few weeks later, the legend of the fire twin has been scratched from the lineup. I’ve been relegated to the “chorus,” where I back up the better elemental artists.

We perform in Intrepid Arena, which was built several years ago in the middle of the green fields of Central Park for the New York Yankees but has become better known as the home for the Coeur de la Nature show, the name for our troupe. The Yankees still play here, but only in the mornings now, and the ground crews have to slap up sliding walls over most of the seats because the team only generates a fraction of the crowds that they did back when spectators used to watch big boys smash balls.

A slice of the ground has been left exposed, a canvas of dirt and grass for the earth artists to paint on. On each side of our stage is a glittering black curtain that shimmers in the breeze, with silver—real silver—streaked into it to make the arena
appear as some ethereal night. The stage itself is set like New York City, with backdrops of tall buildings, glowing streetlamps, and luminous building stoops after a rain.

There is no starlight in New York City. There is too much light pollution. But tonight, it’s my task to make starlight. It’s one of the hardest tricks I’ve had to master in the last year because it requires pinpoint precision and patience. Tonight I craft the tiniest little flickers, scatter them above me, and keep them stoked because my starlight becomes the backdrop for Mariska as she makes the ground in Central Park rumble, the earth under the audience shifting and tilting.

After the show, I call Elise to tell her about my first performance in the M.E. Leagues. We chat as I walk back to the dorm, and a construction crew jackhammers a section of concrete on Broadway. “It’s always like this here,” I say, laughing over the noise. “Even at night. How’s home?”

“Boring without you.”

“Ha. I find that hard to believe. Kyle is probably thrilled to have you all to himself.”

“Yeah, but doing doughnuts in the parking lot was more fun with you.”

“I bet other things in the parking lot are more fun with him.”

She laughs, then her laughter fizzles out. “So listen, I have something to tell you,” she says.

No good news has ever begun with those words. But I barely have time to brace myself because she continues. “I’ve been recruited too.”

“Are they sending you here too? Because that would be perfect.” I let myself feel hope for a second.

“No.”

“Where then?”

“The Lookouts want me.”

“The Lookouts? But what about college?”

“My dad wants me to postpone it for a year. My dad thinks it’s good experience. A real honor, he says. Like this honest, noble thing you can do. He said it’ll look great on my résumé.”

“But, do you want to?”

“I’m not talented in the way you are, Aria. But I can use these talents in other ways. To help with the storms. To lessen the impact,” she explains, but she barely has to because the Lookouts are the perfect fit for Elise. They’re the altruistic elemental artists. They don’t use their gifts for fame and glory. They use them to make the world safer. They
give
. Like Elise does.

“Right. Of course. You’ll be amazing.”

But there’s a heaviness in the phone lines, a cracking pause, and I have a feeling everything in my life is about to rattle out of order, two sides of a fault line slipping far away.

“The thing is, Ar,” she continues. “They’re sending me to sea next week. With the Coast Guard. I’ll be working on a boat for the next few months. I’ll be on storm duty in the Atlantic.”

“A boat?” I repeat as if it doesn’t compute, because it doesn’t. I’m finally settling in, I can finally see freedom, and so this just can’t be happening.

“Yeah, we train out at sea, in the middle of the ocean. We’re stationed there too so we can fight the hurricanes.”

“A boat,” I say, the words like tar in my mouth.

“I’m so sorry, Aria. I feel terrible. But we can still try to meet up in August. I’ll see if I can get leave, okay?”

I want nothing more than for her to tell me she’s pranking me. But that isn’t her style. The Lookouts is her style. I just wish I didn’t feel as if the sidewalk is crumbling under me.

“No, it’s okay,” I manage to say, even though my carefully planned life is slipping away. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“I’ll figure something out,” I say through tight lips, my insides hollow.

“You will?”

“Sure. There are always other ways.”

That’s what the Lady said. You can be born with fire. You can steal it. Or you can bargain for it.

With a granter.

I weigh the odds. On the one hand, stealing fire can bring life punishments.

But I’ve been stealing fire since I was thirteen and I haven’t been caught. All I have to do is maintain my track record. After I end the call with Elise, I dial my brother and we make small talk for a minute or two. Then I slide into the important stuff.

“How’s Jana?”

“She kicked my sorry butt in Monopoly tonight,” Xavi says with an appreciative tone in his voice.

“That’s because I had Boardwalk,” Jana shouts in the background.

“You’re really playing Monopoly?”

“Yeah. I told you I’d look out for her. She spent the day at the pool with Dad, and now she’s with me.”

I cringe inside, picturing her daily water workouts with Dad. But at least for tonight she is safe. “So, I have to ask you
a question,” I say, and I bet he can smell the lie coming, but I also doubt he’ll care.

“Hit me.”

“The Leagues are crazy intense about granter use and say they’re doing some new testing this year. Everyone here is kinda freaking out, and some say you can test for granters, and some say you can’t, and no one knows. You know some guys who used them, right? Is there a way to test?”

“You using a granter, Ar?” Xavi asks me, but he doesn’t sound like he’s judging; more like he’s impressed.

“No,” I say, forcing a laugh. “I’m just curious.”

“Here’s what I know. All the guys who were caught got caught because of what they wished for and what they did. But there’s no way to test for granter use. That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Good
.

Because I have no more choices. When I run out of fire in a month or so, they’ll know I stole my fire in the first place. I’ve come to the end of a rope knotted by all the untenable choices I’ve already been forced to make.

The choice now is clear.

Somewhere in this city of millions there’s got to be a granter who’ll bargain with me.

They’re found in tunnels, they’re found behind doors
.

Xavier’s earlier words about granters clang around in my head a few nights later as I walk along the edge of the park after our performance. There’s an apartment building across the street with double brass doors and a doorman. Maybe the doorman is holding the door open for a granter.

Maybe that’s why Gem said granters are virtually impossible to find. There are tunnels everywhere. Doors everywhere. There could be granters everywhere.

But that doesn’t matter. I have to find one. If I have to open every door in New York City, I will. I’ve been hunting for the last few days, inspecting every last one. But I’ve found no door marked “G,” no tunnel that leads to the lair of a wish giver.

I trek across town, continuing my hunt. An hour later, I’m on the East Side, and I walk past a subway stop. Maybe there’s a granter down in the tracks. I’d claw my way through the dirt
and grime to uncover a granter. I’d race in front of a train to track one down.

After I hunt through the subway station, I walk south toward the Chrysler Building, wishing I’d never stolen fire in the first place. If I’d been tougher and stronger, I wouldn’t be wandering through Manhattan now in a frenzied state of
wanting
. I wish I’d never become a fire girl, because now I can’t be anything but a fire girl. I need too much, more than I needed back then.

Now I
am
desperate. Consumed by a desperate wish for a granter.

My boots are heavy against the sidewalk grate. Where do these things even lead to? What’s under these stupid grates that women are afraid of getting their heels caught in? I flash back on the boy descending below the grate when I first saw him. But all I can picture is a cesspool of grime and dirt, of cigarettes squashed and stubbed out, of flimsy white plastic bags from the drugstore floating in dankness, of a wet dirty muck oozing underground. Then I picture a door in the grate, and suddenly I stop.

Because it’s not my imagination.

There is a door.

The grate has become a door, and I see a pair of hands pushing from underneath the grate, lifting the iron hatched bars above the sidewalk.

Then a loud clanging
thunk
as the grate hits the concrete.