All that remains is the cleanup.
The gym is on fire. I should be afraid. Instead I feel a sense of pride. This is my creation, born of my magic.
The blaze from the trees spreads to tablecloths and crepe paper—a chain reaction so brilliantly spectacular and terrible, I ache to be a part of it … to devour and destroy, then relish in the plunder.
I could do it. I could stand here amid the flames, let them lap at my skin, and laugh in a death-defying haze—because they belong to me. I could watch the world crumble and then dance, triumphant, in the snowfall of ash left behind.
All I have to do is set the power free. Escape the chains of my humanity, let madness be my guide. If I forget everything but Wonderland, I can become beautiful pandemonium.
The flames rise higher … tantalizing … tempting …
Smoke fills the room, gray and sylphlike, lovely in its deadly grace. It trails into the fire and forms what appear to be wings—black and magnificent. A man’s silhouette fills out the image, two arms reaching for me.
Morpheus, or a mirage?
My mind trips back to our dance across the starlit sky in Wonderland, how amazing it felt to be so free. What would it feel like to dance with him in the middle of a blazing inferno, surrounded by an endless power that breathes and grows at our will?
The school bell sounds—three consecutive rings—the signal for a fire alarm. It doesn’t affect me. Let the humans run from the flame. I’ll walk straight into it.
Relishing the heat that magnifies with each step, I move closer to the shadowy wings and beckoning hands, only pausing as a faint sound breaks through my euphoria.
Taelor is coughing.
It makes me hesitate. Makes me listen. Makes me remember.
She didn’t get out with the others. She’s in danger.
I shake off the netherling tendrils wrapped around my mind, shut down my tyrannical desires. The smoky wings and silhouette disappear. I’m not sure they were ever there. In spite of the heat, I shiver, appalled at how easy it was to almost abandon my humanness.
I can’t see Taelor for the flames rising between us, but I hear her coughing. Either she’s waking up or her lungs are instinctually flushing out the pollutants. Whichever it is, she needs my help. I gulp down scorched air. My eyes sting and blur.
In order to get Taelor to safety, I have to kill the fire I gave birth to. I pause for a split second, frozen by a bizarre maternal anguish.
If I could make it rain, I could destroy the flames quickly. Douse them before they feel any pain. I remember the moldy girls’ bathroom where I met Morpheus, in the basement beneath the gym. Those faulty water pipes are right under my feet.
I envision the rusted conduits coming alive, stretching and bending awake, like a salamander rousing from hibernation inside a decaying log. Flexing metal thumps the underside of the floor and radiates through my boot soles. Water pools around me, seeping between the wooden slats. Metallic pings echo as the pipes snap. Spurts of water hiss through every crack and split in the floor, shooting straight up, then coming down to douse the flames.
As the inferno shrinks and the gym gets darker by the second, I race through the water, my wet, cold clothes sticking to my skin. I skid to a stop beside the table.
Taelor grunts and rubs her eyes. I help her up and prop her against the table’s edge. She coughs again. I won’t leave her side. She can barely stand on her own.
The main doors fly open with a thud. A handful of firemen step inside with flashlights flaring. They pause at the door, stupefied by the sight of the gym.
Their waving lights expose my rampage: scorched wood, paper, and paint; sooty puddles along every inch of the floor; and somewhere under it all, the school mascot warped beyond recognition, blistered and black.
“What happened?” Taelor mumbles, her bloodshot eyes taking in our ruined surroundings. She’s up to her ankles in black water. Her boots lie in a smoky heap a few inches away, the stink of cooked leather enough to make me gag.
Instead of trying to answer, I slump on the table beside her.
I’m like the flames. Used up. Burned out. And I haven’t even begun to fight, because the battle I just won against Wonderland and myself is nothing compared to the accusations I’m about to face, and the answers I don’t have.
The wind blows through my tattered braid as I stand between Dad’s truck and Gizmo. I gulp down the last of my water, then toss the bottle into the Dumpster behind me. My gaze takes in the mid-morning sky, then drops to the plumbing trucks parked beside the school’s back entrance.
The soft buzz of bugs hums in my ears:
Well done, Alyssa … just one more war to save us all.
Every muscle tenses at their warning. It’s true. I’m nowhere close to safe yet, and neither are the people I love. Jeb is my priority now. I’ve wasted enough time here.
The fire trucks and police cars left five minutes ago. Their flashing lights still burn on the back of my eyelids. Or maybe it’s the flames. Maybe that inferno will never leave my memory. An indelible reminder of the moment I lost sight of my humanness and ruined my school career and my relationship with my dad in one fell swoop.
Dad had just picked up Gizmo from the tire place when he got the call from my principal. He could never have anticipated what awaited him on the other end of his cell.
“If you get home first,” he says, “you wait for me to get there. I want to be the one to tell your mother you’ve been suspended. All right?” The cautious restraint in his voice grates, as if he’s afraid to yell at me. He thinks I’m too unstable to handle any real emotions.
He looks defeated, hunched against the truck in his work uniform. He’s convinced—like everyone except Jenara—that I collected a ton of ants to sic on the entire student body. Then I accidentally set fire to the gym while trying to regain control of my prank gone awry.
Dad isn’t sure it was an accident at all, although he never said that to the police or me. I can see it in his eyes. He thinks I broke the mirror in the locker room, just like the one in my room. He doesn’t buy the theory that the mirror was hot from the flames and when the icy water ran over it, the glass busted, like what “happened” with the busted lightbulbs.
At least I didn’t have to try to explain the water. According to the firemen, the heat warped the wooden slats until they pressed against the rusted pipes and snapped them. It was a stroke of luck.
Luck. Right.
I’m anything but lucky.
The gym is on fire. I should be afraid. Instead I feel a sense of pride. This is my creation, born of my magic.
The blaze from the trees spreads to tablecloths and crepe paper—a chain reaction so brilliantly spectacular and terrible, I ache to be a part of it … to devour and destroy, then relish in the plunder.
I could do it. I could stand here amid the flames, let them lap at my skin, and laugh in a death-defying haze—because they belong to me. I could watch the world crumble and then dance, triumphant, in the snowfall of ash left behind.
All I have to do is set the power free. Escape the chains of my humanity, let madness be my guide. If I forget everything but Wonderland, I can become beautiful pandemonium.
The flames rise higher … tantalizing … tempting …
Smoke fills the room, gray and sylphlike, lovely in its deadly grace. It trails into the fire and forms what appear to be wings—black and magnificent. A man’s silhouette fills out the image, two arms reaching for me.
Morpheus, or a mirage?
My mind trips back to our dance across the starlit sky in Wonderland, how amazing it felt to be so free. What would it feel like to dance with him in the middle of a blazing inferno, surrounded by an endless power that breathes and grows at our will?
The school bell sounds—three consecutive rings—the signal for a fire alarm. It doesn’t affect me. Let the humans run from the flame. I’ll walk straight into it.
Relishing the heat that magnifies with each step, I move closer to the shadowy wings and beckoning hands, only pausing as a faint sound breaks through my euphoria.
Taelor is coughing.
It makes me hesitate. Makes me listen. Makes me remember.
She didn’t get out with the others. She’s in danger.
I shake off the netherling tendrils wrapped around my mind, shut down my tyrannical desires. The smoky wings and silhouette disappear. I’m not sure they were ever there. In spite of the heat, I shiver, appalled at how easy it was to almost abandon my humanness.
I can’t see Taelor for the flames rising between us, but I hear her coughing. Either she’s waking up or her lungs are instinctually flushing out the pollutants. Whichever it is, she needs my help. I gulp down scorched air. My eyes sting and blur.
In order to get Taelor to safety, I have to kill the fire I gave birth to. I pause for a split second, frozen by a bizarre maternal anguish.
If I could make it rain, I could destroy the flames quickly. Douse them before they feel any pain. I remember the moldy girls’ bathroom where I met Morpheus, in the basement beneath the gym. Those faulty water pipes are right under my feet.
I envision the rusted conduits coming alive, stretching and bending awake, like a salamander rousing from hibernation inside a decaying log. Flexing metal thumps the underside of the floor and radiates through my boot soles. Water pools around me, seeping between the wooden slats. Metallic pings echo as the pipes snap. Spurts of water hiss through every crack and split in the floor, shooting straight up, then coming down to douse the flames.
As the inferno shrinks and the gym gets darker by the second, I race through the water, my wet, cold clothes sticking to my skin. I skid to a stop beside the table.
Taelor grunts and rubs her eyes. I help her up and prop her against the table’s edge. She coughs again. I won’t leave her side. She can barely stand on her own.
The main doors fly open with a thud. A handful of firemen step inside with flashlights flaring. They pause at the door, stupefied by the sight of the gym.
Their waving lights expose my rampage: scorched wood, paper, and paint; sooty puddles along every inch of the floor; and somewhere under it all, the school mascot warped beyond recognition, blistered and black.
“What happened?” Taelor mumbles, her bloodshot eyes taking in our ruined surroundings. She’s up to her ankles in black water. Her boots lie in a smoky heap a few inches away, the stink of cooked leather enough to make me gag.
Instead of trying to answer, I slump on the table beside her.
I’m like the flames. Used up. Burned out. And I haven’t even begun to fight, because the battle I just won against Wonderland and myself is nothing compared to the accusations I’m about to face, and the answers I don’t have.
The wind blows through my tattered braid as I stand between Dad’s truck and Gizmo. I gulp down the last of my water, then toss the bottle into the Dumpster behind me. My gaze takes in the mid-morning sky, then drops to the plumbing trucks parked beside the school’s back entrance.
The soft buzz of bugs hums in my ears:
Well done, Alyssa … just one more war to save us all.
Every muscle tenses at their warning. It’s true. I’m nowhere close to safe yet, and neither are the people I love. Jeb is my priority now. I’ve wasted enough time here.
The fire trucks and police cars left five minutes ago. Their flashing lights still burn on the back of my eyelids. Or maybe it’s the flames. Maybe that inferno will never leave my memory. An indelible reminder of the moment I lost sight of my humanness and ruined my school career and my relationship with my dad in one fell swoop.
Dad had just picked up Gizmo from the tire place when he got the call from my principal. He could never have anticipated what awaited him on the other end of his cell.
“If you get home first,” he says, “you wait for me to get there. I want to be the one to tell your mother you’ve been suspended. All right?” The cautious restraint in his voice grates, as if he’s afraid to yell at me. He thinks I’m too unstable to handle any real emotions.
He looks defeated, hunched against the truck in his work uniform. He’s convinced—like everyone except Jenara—that I collected a ton of ants to sic on the entire student body. Then I accidentally set fire to the gym while trying to regain control of my prank gone awry.
Dad isn’t sure it was an accident at all, although he never said that to the police or me. I can see it in his eyes. He thinks I broke the mirror in the locker room, just like the one in my room. He doesn’t buy the theory that the mirror was hot from the flames and when the icy water ran over it, the glass busted, like what “happened” with the busted lightbulbs.
At least I didn’t have to try to explain the water. According to the firemen, the heat warped the wooden slats until they pressed against the rusted pipes and snapped them. It was a stroke of luck.
Luck. Right.
I’m anything but lucky.
