Enflame (Insight #6)
Jamie Magee
Chapter One
Fear. That is the worst emotion. Some might think it’s trepidation, grief, or even heartbreak. They’re wrong. I’m not talking about the fear of insignificant things, phobias. I’m talking about that feeling that grips your core and turns slowly, the agonizing feeling that tells you that something is coming, something that you can’t see, only feel, and it’s going to rip you into shreds. It’s almost as if an echo from the future has reached back to warn you, to prepare you, but you wish with everything in your soul that you just didn’t know, that you could live in the peace you were in for a while longer.
The last time I felt like this was the night before Olivia’s parents died. If the emotion of fear were taken away, it would have been a blissful memory. My mom had taken us shopping, to a movie, the ice cream shop, then we’d listened to music, sketched, and did everything that young girls do to pass the night. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in trouble—that something horrible was about to happen.
I felt it before they ever crashed their car. It was a sick feeling that settled in my stomach, one that vibrated my soul. I remember frantically waiting for my father to come home from the hospital that night, thinking that my gut warning was about him. Even after he came home and said goodnight to us, I still felt it. The feeling grew and grew. Then, what had just been a lingering idea of dread lashed out at me without warning. I held in the gasp of air that I’d sucked into my lungs for an eternity.
I saw a flash in my mind, the cars colliding, the ambulances, the stretchers, and the Emergency Room.
When I saw her parents standing near the beds where the doctors were working, I assumed that it wasn’t them—that it was Olivia’s aunt and uncle that had been hurt. However, when a nurse rushed through the image of Olivia’s mom, I knew I was wrong. They were gone.
In this vision, their stare captured mine. I felt them ask me to be there for Olivia. I felt them tell me they would always be with her, a guardian. The image stopped abruptly when Olivia’s aunt reached the Emergency Room door and screamed out in agony as they called the time of death. The sight of her falling to her knees in her husband’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably, was more than my twelve-year-old mind could take.
I rose from my bed in a cold sweat. I was breathing so hard that it hurt. I thought about running to my parents’ room, waking them and telling them, but I was afraid they would think I was insane. Just two days before that, I could have sworn my mother had caught me helping an image, that she’d heard my whispers of peace to them just as I returned from wherever they’d taken me.
My mom had locked eyes with her ten-year-old daughter but only smiled nervously as her gaze returned to her garden. A moment later, she rose from her work, called Dane’s mom to come and watch me, then went to my dad’s office. I don’t know what happened there. I just knew that it’d been tense between them since that day. They were blissfully in love but clearly not agreeing on anything that had to do with me.
Instead, I rocked myself back and forth and cried, thought of how I would feel if I were my best friend. Then foolish, childlike thoughts came to me. A part of her parents were still there. I saw them. I was going to find them, bring them back.
As my tears poured down, I tried to call an image of them to me, thinking I could save them, fix this before Olivia ever woke up to find out she was an orphan. It must have been hours, but it felt like minutes. Olivia heard me cry, and she rose thinking it’d been a nightmare of mine. I tried to croak out the words that would tell her that it wasn’t me I was crying for, it was her, but before the words found me, her aunt opened my bedroom door and Olivia’s life was forever changed.
I felt fear right now. Gripping the hum of Landen’s hand as he all but pulled me down the street, trying to reach the home Austin had here, wanting to see his sister with his own eyes.
I kept replaying what I’d seen as a child, that veil that Olivia’s parents were in, comparing it to how I saw Dane and Clarissa before. It wasn’t the same. Reasons and excuses raced through my mind. I thought maybe it was because I was older now, or maybe it was because it was in the string and not a solid dimension. Then crazy ideas came to me. If they were back, or not gone, who else could come back?
Tears threatened to surface, and rain began to fall as I thought of Monica, Livingston, Olivia’s parents...my best friend Dane.
When the rain became a downpour, Landen leaned me against an aged stonewall that surrounded a historic home. His lips fiercely found mine, and in that instant a distraction was given to me. As my lips moved with his, as I felt this newfound hum in his touch, my heart raced and I could think of nothing but him. Wanting to get closer, to protect him from the savage pain grief left in its wake. I didn’t really want to know that Clarissa and Dane were gone, or at the very least forever changed.
His strong arms caged me as I moved my hands up his chest, trying to smooth the pain away.
The rain stopped just before the sun rose in the dead of night. He tenderly pulled away, bringing the atmosphere to an eerie balance.
“Don’t grieve yet. Don’t make this real for us,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against mine and squeezing his eyes closed.
“I’m just afraid.” My voice trembled as they met his blazing blue eyes, which were now open.
“I know,” he whispered, caressing the side of my face, trying to mask the stern expression that was hiding the raging emotions I felt inside of him.