Aftermath(22)

Stop, drop and roll.

Uh, I’m not actually on fire.

As soon as I think that, I feel heat on my leg and look down to see sparks scorching through my jeans. I smack them out and stay down.

I crawl toward the door, reach up to grab the metal handle and fall back, hissing in pain. Grab my discarded sweater, put it over my hand —

My sweater’s on fire!

Drop sweater. Grab handle. Grit teeth against pain. Bang on door with one hand while twisting the knob as hard as I can and…

The door flies open, and I stumble out. I hesitate, unable to believe I’m actually free. Then I spin. There’s no one around. No one at all.

I break into a run, smoke filling the hall. I spot a fire alarm. I race toward it, and then there’s a shout behind me.

“You!”

I wheel. It’s Owen, running down a side hall.

“The newspaper room,” I say quickly. “It’s on fire.”

He swears and shouts, “Pull —”

I’m already there, already pulling it, and the siren starts. I turn back to Owen, and as I do, I catch a glimpse of someone walking fast down the hallway behind him. I see who it is, and I tell myself I’m wrong.

Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s a guy in a hoodie. Lots of kids wear them.

As the guy veers down the next hall, I get a look at his face, and there’s no doubt who I’m seeing. Who is fleeing the scene of the crime.

Jesse.

Jesse

As Jesse walks to school the next morning he can’t recall the last Friday he actually attended. Other kids skip to start their weekend early. He just skips. Today he even has a good reason to not go. He couldn’t sleep last night, so he took something because he needed to rest up for the track meet. Then he woke up groggy, which meant two cups of coffee, and now he’s on edge, his stomach roiling.

He could say he’s here because of the track meet, but it’s not like anyone’s going to say “Hey, Mandal, you didn’t show up for class – cool your heels on the bench.” He is the star, after all.

It’s possible a teacher could mention his absence when his parents come to watch. Sure, let’s go with that. He’s here to avoid disappointing his parents and not because, with Skye at school, he feels some weird compulsion to shape up, a fear of her discovering how far he’s fallen.

He barely gets through the doors when he hears “Jesse Mandal to the office, Jesse Mandal to the office.”

Good thing he didn’t skip. As for why he’s being called to the office, he has no idea. Cutting class really is the extent of his rebelling.

No, that’s not exactly true.

But that isn’t rebellion, is it? It’s not like he’s doing it for himself.

Still, it’d get him into a lot worse trouble than skipping class. He’d be expelled for sure, and then his parents would find out, and they’d be crushed.

That’d be irony, wouldn’t it? He starts doing something to make his parents proud, to distract them from his brother’s death, and that same thing could hurt them even worse.

The secretary ushers Jesse into Vaughn’s office, and the VP motions for him to shut the door.

“There was a fire last night,” Vaughn says as Jesse takes a seat.

Jesse lifts his brows, as if he’s surprised by this. He doesn’t dare do more. He sucks at lying. He heard the alarms yesterday. Before that, he’d been outside running laps, working through some stuff, which mostly meant resisting the urge to follow Skye from school. That crap was getting weird, and all his self-talk about watching over her and worrying about her didn’t erase the fact that if anyone caught him, it’d look like stalking.

Um, because it is?

So he ran instead. In books, he’s read about love/hate relationships, and he never knew what that meant until he started running. He loved how it made him feel when the endorphins kicked in, and he loved the freedom of being in an empty field, just running, knowing no one would bother him.

But he hated running for competition, for praise, for awards. Especially when he hadn’t earned it.

Yesterday, no matter how fast he ran, he couldn’t escape the feeling that he should be with Skye. Looking after her.

Talking to her?

Yeah, there’s an idea.

Once he decided Skye would be long gone, he came into school to change his clothes, and he found himself walking behind Tiffany and another kid. He heard them talking about Skye, which made him eavesdrop. It seemed Skye had been at their newspaper meeting, and they’d left her doing some kind of research.

He wandered a bit, but finally he couldn’t resist circling past the newspaper office. Just… you know, checking on her.

The door was closed, with a light shining under it. When Jesse heard footsteps, he took off but didn’t actually leave. He wandered the halls, working up the courage to go talk to Skye.

Then the alarm sounded. The fire alarm. Some idiot pulling it for fun, which meant Jesse got the hell out before anyone started asking why he was hanging around.

Now Vaughn is saying there was a fire. A real fire. And all Jesse can think is — “Skye?”

Vaughn pulls back. “Interesting word association, Mr. Mandal.”

“I just… I heard… I heard she joined the newspaper club, and I know they meet on Thursdays.”

He waits for Vaughn’s eyebrows to lift. For the VP to wonder why Jesse is taking such an interest in Skye Gilchrist’s schedule.