by Shaye Easton
Caden notices that something’s up straight away. “Melissa?”
I push myself firmly into my chair and grab the sides. I close my eyes.
And it comes.
The heat surges inwards and at once it’s everywhere: my arms, my legs, my chest, behind the sockets of my eyes. It’s a fire that can’t be escaped or controlled, that isn’t tangible or even real, unable to truly affect any part of my body except my mind. It’s an illusion—an illusion that scrapes and claws my skin with its sharp burning fingers, digging into my pores and then further into my veins. I open my mouth to take a breath and it gushes in. It’s burning in my mouth down to my throat. Soon it’s in my lungs and I can’t breathe. There’s no air, only heat. My throat squeezes tight, feeling red and raw, and I bite my lip to keep my mouth shut.
Amongst all these, I manage a thought that seems totally out of place: I’m drowning. But in truth, I am drowning, just not in water. I open my eyes enough to find Caden’s face distant and distorted. It’s like I’m beneath the surface of Lake Corven and looking up at him on the shore. Up there, he’s breathing, comfortable and safe. Down here, I’m trapped under an unbreakable ceiling of fire. It crawls into my cells and I can no longer move. I’m drowning, drowning in an ever-flowing river of heat.
Somewhere, someone is saying my name. They touch my clothed shoulder and quickly pull back. During heat surges, everything is amplified: my ability to feel and my ability to hurt others. As my insides cook, my outside grows colder, the dry ice feel of my skin transferring into the air around me. I’m a cold fire—two opposites contained within one body—but from here, the cold is unreachable. I wish I could shake off my disease and feel the iciness of the air, but it won’t go. It’s stuck with me, woven into the fabric of my being, and it won’t come undone.
The pain is everything now: there is no one else—nothing else. I’m dying, I think, and even though I’m just being dramatic, in that instant it sure as hell feels like it. And I wish for it too: for the pain to end, to be shrouded in cold darkness and carried away from it all. I want to leave the fire behind, to leave it trapped in a body that’s no longer mine.
And then, for a split second, it happens. I’ve left the heat behind and I’m up above, watching down on the class, on my body, which is deathly pale, frightfully rigid and practically moulded with the chair. I’ve doubled over, my head down, but I’m not screaming or even moving. I look hollow as a shell. I look dead.
With a rush, I’m back in my body. The fire is there again but it’s dissipating. Slowly, the heat is extinguished and I sink into the chair, taking large gulps of fresh air. I open my eyes and everything comes back into clear view: the teacher preparing for a class up front; the oblivious smiles and chatter of my classmates; the bottomless black of Caden’s eyes as he watches me, frowning.
I hold a hand to my head as I overcome a wave of dizziness.
“That was a heat surge, wasn’t it?” Caden asks.
I inhale deeply. I shouldn’t be surprised he knows a term only a handful of professionals know. “You’ve done your research.”
“Are you okay?”
“Perfect.”
There’s a moment of silence between us. Then he remarked, “Your arms. They’re healed.”
I meet his widened eyes with an expression of innocence. “Whatever do you mean?”
“They were scratched up yesterday and now they’re fine.”
“Maybe you were seeing things.”
“That’s not possible,” he says, and I know he’s talking about my exemplary healing and not the chance of him ‘seeing things’.
So just to be a pain, I reply, “Sure it is. I see things that aren’t there all the time.”
“Melissa,” he groans in his this-is-serious voice.
“Caden,” I mock.
“For how long have you been regenerative?” and he really is serious. He waits on my answer like it’s going to change his life.
“Uh,” I say, laughing, “regenerative? Do you mean my accelerated healing?”
He cringes. “That’s what you’re calling it?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m calling it—me and several of the world’s smartest professionals.”
He ignores my retort. “So how long have you had it?”
“For as long as I’ve had cancer.”
“Right, cancer. That’s what you’re telling people.”
“It’s better than explaining I have a rare, yet-to-be-diagnosed disease with five random arse side-effects.”
“And you’ve had regeneration . . . sorry, accelerated healing that entire time?”
“Yes.”
He leans back in the chair and exhales. “Jesus.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing.”
“You don’t just commit sacrilege for nothing.”
“My bad. I meant to say gee-whiz.”
“Caden,” I groan.
“Melissa,” he mocks, and we’ve come full circle.
“You shouldn’t start telling me things you don’t intend to tell me.”
“I know,” he replies apologetically.
“Are you going to stand up and leave now?”
It was meant to be a joke but he actually stands. I stare at him, dumbfounded. “One of these days, a teacher is going to notice your absences and you’ll be in big shit.”
“They won’t.”
“You’ll miss history if you leave. It’s the best class.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Your tomorrow—” I air quote “—is two weeks from now.”
“In this case, I really mean tomorrow.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
“Forgiven.” and he goes.
***
That night, I toss and turn in bed, sleep coming and going. When I do manage to drift off, I’m haunted by dreams of Sara with her cold hands and of Caden’s dark, unnerving eyes as he stares down at me, trapped and screaming beneath the surface of Lake Corven.
Then real nightmare comes.
I’m in a pitch black room, sitting on a smooth cement floor. I don’t know how I got here or where I am. All I know is that I’m a kid again. I’m terrified, trembling, shaking and crying. The darkness is all-consuming and I crawl into the corner of the room, rolling up into a ball.
Suddenly there’s a rectangle of light as a door is opened on the other side of the room, framing the silhouette of a man. The light floods into space and the man’s shadow extends across the floor, like hands reaching for me.
The man takes a step forward, followed by another, and I start crying harder, screaming indiscernible words.
“Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice, smooth as honey, floats across the room, lulling me into a state of complacency.
As he closes the gap between us, I sit silently, trembling in the corner. He crouches down in front of me, and even though I can’t see his face, I can feel him smiling.
“I promise this won’t hurt a bit,” he says. Then he leans forward, pressing something round and hard against my small chest, and my world explodes in excruciating pain.
Chapter Six
The strange thing is, when I wake in the morning, the nightmare remains firmly lodged in my brain, and not blurry and distant like most dreams become in daylight. I can see with clarity the silhouette of the man, hear his honey-smooth voice in my ear, and still feel the round object hitting my chest and the unbearable pain that followed.
It feels like more than just a dream—it feels like a memory.
I shake the feeling off, pushing all thoughts of the nightmare from my mind as I head to school.
As it turns out, Caden was lying. He isn’t here, and I don’t see him. Not until Friday morning, when I decide to take the short cut to my locker through the school’s inner courtyard.
I’m still in the hallway, approaching the door and he’s standing alone outside. But as I get closer, I realise that he isn’t alone after all,
and more people—his boisterous friends—come into view. A horrible feeling grows in the pit of my stomach, warning me that something’s not right. With trepidation, I step into the courtyard and stop.
He’s speaking with Drew, Brandon, Noah and Luke. I only know all their names because they’re my least favourite people in the cohort. Their conversation drifts over to me and I swallow.
“…speaking with that psycho. What the fuck, man?”
“She’s a family friend,” Caden says with a grimace like the words taste foul. “I kind of have to.”
“Have you heard about the window?” Noah asks. “She fucking shattered it. Out of nowhere.”
“I heard she didn’t even touch it,” Drew adds.
Brandon laughs. “I say she’s just a little messed up, you know? All the cancer, it’s rotting her brain. She probably had a psychotic break or something and punched the glass.”
“Don’t you know how hard it is to break a window?”
“It ain’t that hard.”
“That’s what she sa—”
Brandon shoves Luke before he can finish. “Fuck off, shithead.”
“I’m serious though,” Drew said again. “There’s no way Croft could have smashed it.”
“Haven’t heard of adrenaline, have you?”
“Oh.”
Brandon turns his attention back to Caden. “Please tell me you at least fucked with her a little.”
“Melissa’s sensitive. If I did that, she’d probably go ballistic.”
Brandon raises a brow expectantly.
Caden laughs. “Okay, maybe I did a little. See, she thinks there’s this ghost…”
He goes on and everyone’s laughing. Brandon claps his arm. A sick feeling rolls around in my gut. I’ve had enough.
Caden looks up just as I’m stepping back and his eyes grow wide. “Melissa,” he says, “I—”
But it’s too late. I turn away, charging back the way I came, headed for anywhere. I can feel tears welling up and I violently rub them from my eyes when his words play over in my mind: Melissa’s sensitive. I feel like all this time he’s been pulling back on an elastic band while I held the other end. And now he’s let go, standing back to watch as it whacks me in the face.
“Melissa, wait!” Caden calls, and I round the corner, my feet taking me forward, going faster and faster until I’m almost jogging, desperate to outpace Caden to get away.
“Melissa, I can explain!”
“Stop following me!” I shout back. Somehow, I’ve ended up outside of the central building, on the far side of the school. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around except the occasional latecomer passing by on the other side of the fence. I come to a stop before a tree, feeling cornered, and realise I have no option but to face him.
I spin around, anger now swirling through my bloodstream, just as he catches up. He’s careful to keep his distance, stopping a good few metres from me.
Before he gets the chance to speak, I let out my pent up emotions, my words loud enough to be heard by anyone who cares to listen. “What the hell, Caden? You think I’m sensitive? What the fuck are you trying to achieve? Just playing games with the crazy girl, is that it?”
He grimaces. “Melissa, you don’t understand. You’re taking things out of context. I—”
“You’re right, Caden! I don’t understand. You have so many damn faces and I can’t tell which one is real! One moment you don’t want me to hate you, and the next you’re off spreading rumours and laughing behind my back!”
“I didn’t mean any of that.”
“Then why did you say it?! You lie to me in one breath and want me to believe you in another! What is the truth, Caden? Why do you disappear for long stretches and return acting like nothing has happened? Why does no one ever notice you’re gone? Why do you care to speak to me at all? I don’t understand!”
He doesn’t say anything and simply watches blankly as I pace, my anger almost radiating off my skin.
“Well?” I demand. “Say something!”
Again he doesn’t reply. I want to punch him. I want to kick and claw and lash out until he responds, until he shows some kind of normal human emotion. But he’s silent and still and staring, black eyes blank but focused. I realise he reminds me of the ghost: dark but pale, scary in his composure, ever-watching, otherworldly. All the dreadful fear I felt when I first ran into him on the street returns—and it confuses me. Sometimes he’s a stranger. Sometimes he’s a friend. Sometimes he’s an arsehole. And then sometimes, he’s…this.
I fight to stay angry with him but he’s not giving me much to work with, and slowly I feel my anger seeping from my pores and evaporating. Now there’s only trepidation, confusion and fear. I quell the latter as best as possible. He’s just a guy. What is there to be afraid of? I take a deep breath and come to a standstill.
“I’m sorry,” Caden says, now that I’ve calmed somewhat, and the empathy is back in his eyes. “I’m not playing games with you, Melissa. I’m just trying to keep us safe.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s the whole point.”
“Caden, you’re not making any sense.”
“I said those things about you so I could keep their friendship,” he says as if that explains anything.
“And you want their friendship because…? They’re dickheads.”
“They really aren’t that bad. And I have to hang around other people or that ghost could…”
“Could…? Come on, Caden, tell me. What could the imaginary ghost do?”
He meets my eyes, and I can tell he doesn’t want to say anything, but he does. “It could figure it all out.”
I frown. Did he say something similar a couple weeks ago or am I just imagining it?
“You need to start explaining things right now.”
He shakes his head, and I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t want to explain or because of something else entirely. He’s simply too hard to read. “If that ghost starts taking a greater interest in you—”
“Why would it be interested in me at all?”
“Isn’t your disease evidence enough? You’re different, Melissa. Things happen around you that you can’t explain—windows shatter without being touched, injuries heal at an accelerated rate. I mean, come on, you absorb heat. Can’t you see that there’s more going on here than meets the eye?”
“What are you saying?”
“I think I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself,” he says, and then the bell goes, its rings surging out of the building, across the empty lawn, filling up the air I breathe. His black eyes are emotionless again, but I’m starting to realise that that’s not true at all. It’s not an absence. It’s the opposite—all his emotions, all his expressions, all his different faces and personas, mixed up together.
It’s like white noise. It’s everything at once.
***
When school starts up again the next week, Caden’s present every day. But he doesn’t come anywhere near me. We’re strangers again—only this time, he’s not staring in my direction; he’s not bumping into me in the rain. It’s a complete estrangement. He acts as if he doesn’t even recognise my face.
For the first day, it bothers me. I have all these questions and he’s left me stranded with them. He’s the one who reached out to me. If he didn’t want to explain anything, then he shouldn’t have opened his goddamn mouth.
By the second day, I start noticing things. Like how sometimes, when no one’s looking, a crack will appear in his regular teenager persona: a flash of blankness on his features that’s quickly filled in with emotion; the way his fingers rest unnaturally straight when he’s not paying attention to them; the jerky, flinching movements he makes when there’s a loud noise or abrupt motion. He’s like something dead pretending to be alive. It used to be so convincing; it’s only now that I’ve taken all this time to watch him from afar that I see the truth.
And with the truth comes si
milarities between him and me. Both existing, albeit in different ways, on the fringe of social life. Both with secrets that no one at this school would guess, let alone believe. Both afraid—just of different things. It’s weird to think it, but it’s true: we’re alike. And I have a nagging suspicion we’re alike in more ways than I know. There’s some sort of invisible cord connecting Caden and me—even when he’s ignoring me, I can sense it, linking us—and I feel like if I could just figure out what it is, I could figure out everything.
At the end of the week, I’m alone under my tree for lunch when my heat surge comes. I face the trunk, nails digging into the damp bark as I sit through the pain. Afterward, I make a beeline for the bathroom. It’s empty when I enter, and I find myself staring at my flustered face in the mirror above the sink. Strands of my brown hair, which are as dark as ever, cling to my sweaty forehead and cheeks, framing my dejected eyes. I splash some water on my face and wipe off the excess with a paper towel.
I take the quickest route back to my tree, right down the centre of the courtyard, crowded with students eager to catch a glimpse of the sun. The clouds are patchy today, and every now and then, a slip of pale yellow light sweeps over the school. As I pass through the seated crowds, I focus my eyes down at the narrow pathway. So you’d think when someone tosses a bag into my path last minute, I’d see it.
I don’t.
I trip, landing hard on the rough pavement, scraping my arms and chin. The air is knocked from my lungs. I take in a deep breath, already fuming, and pull myself up with as much dignity as I can manage.
“How was your trip, Crazy Croft?” comes a female voice, followed by an unnecessary amount of laughter. I turn to face the sound, knowing I should just keep walking but unable to help myself. They’ve made me angry, and anger makes me stupid.
It’s Caden’s friends, plus a couple other girls I don’t partially like. The two girls—one blonde, one brown-skinned—are standing, bums against the edge of one of the courtyard’s metal picnic tables. “Piss off,” I retort.
