Wildefire (14 page)

Ignoring the first yawn of soreness in her legs from the morning’s workout, Ash abandoned her towel on the 129

grass and began to lope toward the campus gates. Mud splattered her previously immaculate tennis shoes. She didn’t care.

She swept through the stone titans guarding Blackwood’s entrance and, without looking both ways for traffic, darted across the parkway and into the redwoods beyond.

Ash wasn’t sure where exactly she was running, but it was definitely west. Had the sky been clear, she would have discovered that she was running directly toward the setting sun. Whereas the brooding forest had brought her a sense of profound dread the night before, she tasted only the sweet confection of freedom now. She ran faster.

Finally, after she had easily been jogging for four miles, the trees above began to noticeably shrink, their growth curbed by the brisk ocean air. Ash could smell it too—the subtle aroma of the soil and decaying leaves overpowered by the sharp bite of the sea.

The rain died to a whimper. It ceased altogether as the trees abruptly ended, leaving Ashline perched on the top of a tall bluff overlooking a narrow smile of beach, and beyond, the Pacific Ocean.

Ashline stumbled down the sharp slope of the bluff, finding footholds where she could in the sand, which was freckled with stones. Here and there the dirt and sand had managed to hold on to a few vestiges of beach grass, like a balding man savoring his remaining tufts of hair.

At the bottom she took off her tennis shoes and socks, 130

tucked them behind a rock, and trekked across the chilly dune sand, letting it ooze through the spaces between her toes.

She came to the water’s edge. The foamy fingers of the surf wrapped around her feet before continuing on their path up the beach. It was the ocean’s way of breathing, the tide—deep breath in and deep breath out.

However, Ashline’s relaxation was gradually waning, replaced by a growing confusion as to why she had ended up on this beach, and how she was going to navigate her way back to Blackwood after blazing an unmarked trail for miles.

Then the discomfort of her rain-drenched clothes, clinging to her body, washed over her.

The breeze against her damp skin wasn’t the only thing giving her chills. Ahead, fifteen meters out to sea, was a familiar blond-haired boy sitting ready on a long-board, waiting for a good wave. His body rose up and down with the swells. Rolfe was too busy scouting the horizon to notice Ashline.

Ash turned to face north, hearing the slap of approaching footsteps in the sand. Raja, who had been maintaining a brisk pace on her beach run, caught sight of Ashline’s face, and her jog died to a walk before she stopped altogether. From this close Ash could hear the tinny chirp of the music from her headphones.

Raja plucked out her earbuds and opened her mouth to say something—but whatever it was she could possibly 131

have wanted to say would have to wait. The rumble of a motor had picked up from the south, where a black SUV

was carving a path across the sand. As it approached, Ash spotted two sea green kayaks mounted on the roof. It hadn’t even rolled to a complete stop when Ade opened the passenger door and hopped out. The engine sputtered into silence, and Lily joined them on the sand.

“Well,” Ade said, “at least there were no screams this time.”

Raja folded her arms across her chest. “That really doesn’t make me feel any less creeped out.”

“I’m with Cleopatra on this one,” Ash said. “We really have to stop meeting like this.”

Speechless, they all watched Rolfe—who had finally found a wave to his liking—ride to shore. He coasted in with the surf until his momentum died in the shallows.

He hopped off the long-board and scooped it up under his arm in one fluid motion.

Rolfe walked up to the foursome and speared his board into the moist sand so that it stood upright, like a fiberglass obelisk. “Long-boarding regionals aren’t for another two weeks. Did you . . . did you all come here to watch me practice?” he asked hopefully. At least a yes would have simplified the situation and padded his ego at the same time.

“Do you try to be a walking California cliché? Or is it genetic?” Raja asked.

“Birth defect,” he replied.

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“Oh, good,” a girlish voice announced from behind them. “I’m glad you all could make it.”

Like a crab that had tunneled its way up onto the beach, Serena had materialized on the sand behind them.

She wore a little white sundress and had her walking cane slung rakishly over her shoulder.

“If we’re here because somebody is about to kidnap you,” Ash said, “then this time I’m going to let them.”

“Maybe this time they’ll try to pull me into a motor-boat!” Serena giggled quietly to herself.

No one else laughed.

“I thought it was obvious why you’re here,” Serena said at last, as if the answer itself were tattooed on her forehead.

Rolfe prodded his long-board. “Because this cove is supposed to get good waves?”

“No, that’s not right at all.” Serena shook her head.

“You’re all here because I told you to be.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “Mind control?”

Ade snickered. “Raja coming to watch Rolfe’s surfing practice is more believable than that.”

“Not by much,” Raja said, and rolled her eyes.

Serena’s expression soured. Ash got the distinct impression she’d tried to explain this to somebody before and failed. “It’s not
mind control
. It’s more like . . . making suggestions.”

“You’re a hypnotist?” Rolfe asked.

Serena ruffled her hair in frustration. “No, no, no!

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No. I reach out”—she did so with her hand to visually demonstrate—“and I tap you on the shoulder.”

“Telepathy, then,” Ash said.

Serena sighed. “Stop trying to categorize it. I don’t—I can’t—use words when I reach out. I just sort of give you a feeling, an emotion, a state of mind. In this case a general urge to meet me here.”

Ash found herself thinking,
What a kook
. But, crazy as it was, as soon as she thought that, she studied Serena’s expression in case the girl
could
read her thoughts. Serena’s face remained impassive, but Ash decided to at least try to play along.

“Then the next obvious question,” Ash said, “is, why us? Or are we the only people it works on?”

Serena fixed a hand on her hip. “It works on whoever I want it to work on.”

Raja smiled. “Then you must never be starved for male attention.”

“I get by just fine using my natural talents, thanks,”

she said. “Besides, it doesn’t work on the unwilling.”

Ash scoffed. “So I wanted to run four miles through the rain to a cold beach to have another creepy discussion? Unlikely.”

“No,” Serena said coldly. “But you did want answers.

And that’s why when I reached out to you five, I broadcasted a sense of resolution, understanding. And belonging.”

“Belonging?” Rolfe adjusted his wet suit.

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“Yes,” Serena replied. “That night in the alleyway, I didn’t reach out specifically to you five. I didn’t even know it was you who would come to my rescue. I just touched on the frequency for anyone like me.”

“You mean
special
?” Ash asked.

Serena frowned. “Yes. Freaks like me. Freaks like
us
.”

Nobody said anything, and Ash wondered what was going through the minds of the other four. It would have been easy to dismiss the blind freshman as a delu-sional psychopath and move on. But crazy was quickly becoming a staple in the life of Ashline Wilde. If she could run from blue flame monsters in the woods, and foil attempted kidnappings, and watch her older sister electrocute a sophomore for being catty, she was for now willing to entertain the confessions of a blind telepath.

“I bet you all fit the same profile,” Serena said with confidence. “Adopted. Had something happen to you in adolescence that made you wonder whether you were fully human or if you were . . . something else.”

“Maybe you do read minds after all,” Lily said softly.

From the glum, haunted expressions of the others, Ash could tell Serena had hit a nerve. Nobody offered any testimony to corroborate her theory.

Serena’s face brightened as she sensed the silent agreement among the group. “You all . . . can do things?”

Their eyes darted from one to the other, reluctant to engage in this insane game of show-and-tell, but Ash 135

could sense the confessions perched on the tongues of her schoolmates.

“Do you want to be alone?” Serena asked when no one stepped up to the plate. “Do you want to walk the earth as aliens among men?”

Still, the five remained silent.

A light dawned behind Serena’s chrome eyes. “What if you didn’t have to say anything?” she offered. “What if we could all just
see
?”

She didn’t give them time to protest or to process the irony that a blind girl wanted to help them “see.” Instead she stepped into the middle of the circle. “Come close around me until you’re all touching.”

They grudgingly followed her instruction, crowd-ing around the blind girl until they had imprisoned her within a cell of flesh. Ash could feel the sweat-lined skin of Raja to her right, the touch jarringly intimate for two people who had never demonstrated much like for each other. Ade was to her left, his warm breath spiced with peppermint.

“Think back,” Serena instructed them. She tilted her head up to the sky—and the world went black.

The nausea lasted only a minute, but the confusion persisted long after Ash returned to consciousness somewhere in a world beyond this one—a world that once was.

In the visions that followed, Ash would later remember feeling like a passive participant, placed as a passenger in bodily vessels that weren’t her own. She would remember experiencing every instance of pain, regret, 136

anger, and fear, but her actions were set in stone, immov-able. The memories she bore witness to were foreign, but planted roots down in the soil of her own memory banks as if she had lived the experiences herself.

And thus Ashline had her first introduction to the dreamlike periphery of consciousness known as limbo.

ADE SAINT-CYR

So this is what it’s like to be a rock lobster in a Crock-Pot.

You’re hot. White hot. These sizzling Haitian summers are boiling enough to make you want to tear your skin clean off and jump into a bathtub full of ice cubes.

Your stiff little cot hasn’t fit you right for three years now, and as usual, you wake with your legs sticking right off the end of the mattress, from your bony knees down.

Your sweat-soaked sheets, tossed away during the night, are bundled on the hardwood floor.

Escape. A flock of marble-size flies have the same idea. They buzz in frustration against the window—the one Mama nailed shut when you snuck out to see Fabiola again last week—and their fat, bloated bodies rap persistently against the glass.
Tappety-tap-tap.

You pull yourself out of bed, stretching, stretching, stretching until your joints click like castanets. Your elbows are still coated with the dirt and soot of last night’s soccer game, and your knees . . . Oh, if Mama could see you now.

You slip out of the house. Pepe’s work boots are not 137

on the doorstep where they should be. Two months since they last were, but you still check every day without fail.

It’s too hot out to hate him today.

The ocean waters had time to cool overnight, one of the perks of living one rusty-bicycle ride away from the shore. You make your way over the rocky “beach,” if you can even call it that. It’s really just a narrow ribbon of stones, tumbled half-smooth by the sea. No wonder you have calluses on your feet, as thick as the hurricane mud. Twelve years on this beach, and you could probably walk on razor blades. Maybe walk on water, too. Like a Haitian Jesus.

Big Flo is the only one around, sitting out in the shallows on her folding chair, which, as usual, looks like it’s about to collapse. A miracle of engineering, that chair.

One day it’s going to give out and some poor grouper below’s going to catch hell. Just another victim of wrong place at the wrong time.

With the aid of the washboard, she is scrubbing away at a pair of Tommy’s play-stained pants with enough force to exorcise them. She’s more likely to tear right through those hand-me-down knees before the grass stains ever come out.

You ignore Big Flo, strip off your cargo shorts, and walk right out into the ocean, one water-slowed step at a time until you’re submerged right up to your eyelids.

If anyone looked out from the beach now they’d see only curly dark ringlets and a pair of eyes. Voodoo, man.

Voodoo.

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The bay breeze on your face. No barking village dogs.

Two hours of bodysurfing, just floating free and naked in the blue. You should be still in bed like a normal twelve-year-old, but you’ve chosen sweet, cool freedom.

It’s even tempting to swim along the ocean floor and grab Flo’s leg underwater. Maybe pop out of the water draped in seaweed. You’ve got the muscle and the lung capacity to pull it off, but Mama will hear about this, and morning swims will probably be a bit difficult when you’re dead.

Now back to the house to see what chores are waiting for you. As you open the front door with practiced stealth, the sink glares at you. The dishes have been fes-tering there since Thursday’s casserole. You’re going to need the tough sponge.

This is the first time you find Mama with the pastor.

They don’t know you’re there, that the cat has pawed the door ajar in his search for food. They don’t know there’s anyone around to hear their laughter, to see Mama’s hand playfully come down on the pastor’s knee as she says “Oh, Albert.” Funny to think that a man of God has a first name.

And to think for a second you actually thought it was Pepe, come back for you. But there are no work boots on the doorstep, just the last remaining table scraps of your hopes for his return.

You lie in bed. All that sweat cleansed during your trip to the water has been replaced with a slick new coating, courtesy of the climbing afternoon sun. Between the 139