Rouge

by Isabella Modra

  So - despite how much it killed her - Hunter backed down.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice and followed Eli’s lead by staring at the floor. “That was uncalled for.”

  Mr. Akerman’s hard look relaxed, but he still regarded Hunter with a sneer much like Melissa’s. He turned his back on them again, muttering something about ‘uncontrollable teenage trash’ as Eli grabbed the casserole out of the microwave and the two of them rushed out of the room.

  They climbed the staircase and Eli led her into the second bedroom on the left, which was only half the size of hers, with a double bed and a wall covered in posters from movies, rock bands and magazines. His desk was cluttered with workbooks, video-game controllers and stained mugs. Clothes were scattered across the floor that he hurriedly began to pick up.

  “S-sorry about the mess,” he fussed. “And sorry about Dad, he was so rude. I don’t know where it came from-”

  “It’s fine Eli,” she assured him, sitting down on the bed and judging its bounce quality. She smiled, satisfied with the feel of it, and also admiring his deco. Eli didn’t seem to notice her smile though; he continued to shove clothes in his wardrobe.

  “No it’s not fine,” he hissed. “He does this with all the girls I bring home-”

  “All the girls?” she asked teasingly, her eyebrows raised.

  “No, I mean – no! It’s not like that,” he stammered. “What I mean is-”

  “Eli!” She snatched his arm firmly as he hurried past her with jeans and an empty packet of fries. “Relax.”

  He stared at her momentarily and Hunter wondered why on earth he was so frazzled. It was then that his breathing began to increase.

  “Are you okay?” she exclaimed.

  He nodded and muttered, “puffer,” indicating to the bedside table.

  “What?”

  He ran around the bed and snatched a small inhaler, clicking air into his mouth. His chest rose and, after a small pause, he looked down at her with embarrassed, watery eyes.

  “Well,” she sighed. “That’s something you didn’t share with me on our date.”

  “I thought being an asthmatic would make you think I’m even more of a nerd than I already am.” He sat down on the floor and lay back on his coffee-colored carpet, staring at the roof.

  “Not in my books,” she said.

  “Hunter? Have you ever wondered if you were meant to be born into another family, if… I dunno, if maybe fate wasn’t fair to you?”

  She climbed off the bed and lay down next to him.

  “All the time.”

  Eli turned to face her and looked deep into her eyes, squinting, as if reading her like a book.

  “You never told me your fantasy.”

  She smiled, staring at the smudge marks on the ceiling. “I don’t have one.”

  “Come on,” he urged, the childish glee in his tone making her heart melt with joy. “If you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?”

  The answer came to her in that moment, though she couldn’t remember ever thinking about it. “Marty McFly,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I would be Marty McFly from Back to the Future so I could speed in the Dilorian back to 1994 and stop my parents from dying in the fire.”

  Eli looked puzzled. “A Dilorian? Why don’t you just say ‘I want to be a time traveler’?”

  “Well because that’d be painful. At least this way, I can do it in style.”

  He snickered, his lip curling up in a crooked smile. “Would you take me?”

  “Eli,” she whispered, exploring his strange eyes behind the glasses, his curly blonde and brown hair shining in the dim light from the lamp. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you behind.”

  She looked down at his lips, at the strong jaw littered with stubble, and hesitated for just a fraction of a second. The fire burned softly inside her, content and a little eager of what it knew was coming. It didn’t appear out of control, so she turned her head and met the slant of his lips with hers. Eli pecked at the corners of her mouth, then rolled on top of her and pressed her body into the carpet. His lips tasted of rich chocolate and moved with a passionate, eager motion against her own. Shivers ran up and down her body at each touch his fingers made against the back of her neck or the very top of her jaw, just beneath her ear. Surges of electricity bolted through her, but she was completely immune to them, immersed in the kiss and the feel of Eli close to her.

  They moved onto the bed, where she fell deep into the covers and Eli relaxed beside her. He dug his fingers passionately into her hair. The kiss became harder and more urgent. Pausing to remove his glasses, Eli looked down at her on the bed, his cheeks flushed, his green eyes filled with light and love. She smiled up at him, completely unaware of the flame that crept under her skin, and found the hem of his shirt. She ripped it up over his head and threw it on the ground. Her arms wrapped around his back and felt the soft texture of his olive skin, warm and beautiful. His lips moved down the crook of her neck where her jumper covered her shoulder, as if teasing the skin that he could not touch and she smiled to herself, savoring each shiver, each spark of electricity that gushed through her. Eli rolled onto his back and lifted her so she lay on top of him. Hunter unzipped her jumper and pulled it off slowly, just to tease him, and watched his cheeks blush but his eyes sparkle. She threw her jumper on the floor, flicked her out-of-control hair away from his face and continued to kiss him, feeling as if she might burst with passion. His muscular arms were tense and corded, but the gentle touch of his violinist fingers gave her comfort that the fire never could.

  The fire.

  It accelerated in her blood so quickly she had no time to push it back. It was as if a volcano of fire had erupted inside her. She clung to the sheets, grabbing fistfuls of the material in order to keep control of the burning, but it was too late. She was lost.

  Hunter didn’t have time to pull away before she felt it.

  Fire shot from her hands into the quilt she had been grasping and Eli yelped in surprise. The two of them leapt from the bed, staring in horror at the two balls of flames licking at the sheet material on either side of where Eli’s head just lay.

  Hunter didn’t realize she had started slapping madly at the fire until Eli clenched at her waist and yanked her from the bed. The flames were out, leaving two large scorch marks in the sheets.

  “Hunter-” Eli gaped in complete shock. “What... what the hell was that?”

  Hunter didn’t move. She was paralyzed, her eyes wide and unblinking, gazing at the bed and remembering the alleyway. But the heat wasn’t angry or terrified here, just aroused. Just like my mother before their bed burst on fire and my father burned. She could have easily repeated history, only it would have been Eli’s lifeless body burning beneath her fingers.

  “I...” Words were whisked away from her along with the heat, leaving her feeling empty, like a house with no furniture. She couldn’t even look Eli in the eye.

  “Hunter,” he said cautiously. “What’s wrong?”

  She didn’t answer. Her mind taunted her with horrible images of Eli’s body burning. I could have killed him. I could have set him on fire. I could have killed him.

  He came around her, grasping her shoulders and forcing her to look into his face. He was paler than usual, but not nearly as horrified as she expected. It didn’t make her feel any less sick to the stomach.

  “Everything’s fine,” he assured her. “The fire’s out.” He looked back at the scorched bed sheets and then at the roof, as if flames had fallen from the light above the bed. “How do you suppose that actually happened?”

  She didn’t so much as shrug. He has no idea...

  Eli sensed something was clearly bothering Hunter. She stared up at him, feeling suddenly vulnerable. What if she hurt him again? How could she control it this time?

  “Eli-” she stepped away from him with her hands raised. “I can’t… I just… I have to go.”

  And without lo
oking back – which she so dearly wanted to – Hunter picked up her jumper and ran from Eli’s bedroom.

  “What? Why?” He followed her down the stairs. “Was it something I did?”

  “No,” she assured him, collecting her bag and throwing open the front door, wishing he would go away. The fire wasn’t out yet, and she was afraid if she stayed with him for one more moment, it would set him alight again. “Please Eli, I just need to go.”

  Eli sighed, his face earnest. “I know you’re lying Hunter. Look, I don’t know what happened just then, but it was probably a spark from my light. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” He reached through the open doorway to take her hand, but she backed up onto the porch. The hurt that crossed his face was like watching someone kick a puppy in the head. “If this is about what happened to your parents, I just want you to know I understand. We can take things-”

  “Eli,” she snapped, wincing at the bite in her tone. She wished she could tell him that he’d done nothing wrong, that she was a danger to him and that she didn’t deserve his company. She wanted to flush the fire and go back to making out on his bed forever and ever, but despite her confidence, she just wasn’t ready. No matter how much she cared for Eli, she wasn’t strong enough to give herself to him. Not yet, at least. She had pushed it too far this time. For now, she had to stay away.

  Hunter looked up from the ground and stared at Eli with a deep regret.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this. I’m not...” she exhaled in frustration, finding it harder to piece together a sentence that he could understand without stabbing him in the heart. “I’m not right for you.”

  Eli blinked furiously and she prayed he wasn’t crying.

  “Are you... are we breaking up?” he asked with a thick voice.

  Hunter wished she had the strength to say yes, but either she was too selfish a human being to give up the only good thing she had in her life - even if it meant putting him in danger - or some part of her really couldn’t let him go. She didn’t deserve to be alone. No one deserves to be alone.

  “No Eli,” she said with tears brimming in her eyes. “But for now, I need to leave.”

  “Hunter...”

  She turned her back on him before the innocence and hurt in his eyes won over her willpower and drew her back into his arms.

  twenty- two

  As the wind picked up outside, Hunter stalked down the street to the main road and scanned traffic for a taxi. A few tears trickled down her cheek and she swatted them away, determined not to let her fight with Eli – if that was even a fight – get her down. In truth, she just didn’t want to give the fire the satisfaction. It had overpowered her tonight, true, but that only gave her the fortitude to train even harder.

  A yellow cab pulled in next to her and she smiled to the driver and ducked in the backseat. There, she found a passenger already buckled up on the other side.

  “Oh,” she started, moving backwards. “Sorry, I-”

  “Mind sharing a cab, Sweetheart? You’re not gonna get a free one in this traffic.” The driver urged her inside and she reluctantly sat beside the man. “Where you headed?”

  Hunter gave him the address and tried to relax, focusing on the howling hot wind outside. The man next to her was staring, as New York men always do, but there was something about his stare that drew Hunter to meet his gaze. He was balding, with a slim face and hollow cheeks. He smelled strongly of antibacterial, the kind they use in hospitals and tattoo parlors, but he looked like he belonged in neither. He wore all black and his gray eyes regarded her as someone he might know distantly but could not recognize.

  Hunter forced a smile and went back to staring out her window.

  “Have you got some sort of blood deficiency?” asked the man in a calm, slippery tone.

  Hunter frowned, followed his gaze and saw that under her sleeve, the skin of her forearm showed the faintest glow of orange in her veins. Hunter crossed her arms and covered them as best she could.

  “No,” she said.

  He nodded and stared ahead, but the smile on his lips struck a chord of fear in her heart.

  “Actually, it’s a um… a bracelet my mother gave me. It’s the new fashion.”

  The man glanced at her again. “Right. No one likes to be different these days, do they?”

  Unsure what he meant, Hunter laughed nervously and hoped he would stop talking to her. She thought about his words long after the man left the cab a few blocks from her stop, unable to be rid of his knowing gaze and strange smell.

  She had to be more careful, or soon everyone would start asking questions.

  “Who can tell me what the missing equation is?”

  Not a hand shot up in the entire physics lab, and Hunter thought to herself with a roll of her eyes, God - we’re all doomed.

  Miss Smart eyed them with the air of a disappointed mother. “Really, guys, I know it’s getting to the end of the year and you’re all exhausted, but I expected better.” Her sharp young eyes moved around the room, peering over the rim of her glasses, and rested on Hunter for a fraction of a second before she turned back to the board to finish the equation herself.

  Sighing, Hunter settled back in her chair and twisted her pen around in her hand. For the past half an hour, she’d seriously considered stabbing herself in the neck with it. She was sure none of her classmates would lift a finger to stop her bleeding out.

  The day had begun horribly. When Hunter arrived, she purposefully waited on the opposite side of the building to where she and Eli usually met - near the science building - and set herself the task of writing up study notes. But she couldn’t concentrate at all. She lit two cigarettes and ended up sitting there, alone again, wishing she’d never left last night. I really can’t keep him out of my life, can I? I’m a danger to him, and I still selfishly put him at risk. The bell rang for class before Eli arrived.

  She didn’t meet him at her locker. Either he took the hint when she’d said she wanted to be left alone and decided to give her space – which best suited Eli’s gentlemanly disposition - or he was furious that she hadn’t given him a reason. But as Joshua said, it would be too dangerous for him to know. She had to keep lying.

  Hunter twirled her pen around in her fingers and wondered why that was. Some part of her knew it was right to keep her powers secret, either because Joshua asked her to or because it was simply expected. That’s what happens in movies anyway. The hero never tells anyone about his powers, especially the ones he cares about for fear they get themselves mixed up in dangerous business that the hero has to eventually rescue them from. And someone almost always ends up dying.

  Was it worth the risk?

  But you can’t even call yourself a hero yet Hunter, said the fire teasingly. You have to save someone’s life and get your face on TV to earn that title. Maybe you should design a cape or wear glasses.

  Hunter sniffed a laugh and hadn’t realized how loudly she’d done it or how quiet the lab had been until a few students sitting around her turned to stare. She looked at her books and pretended nothing had happened.

  In all she’d been through, Hunter never actually considered using her powers. She was too busy trying to get rid of them, banish them to the dark depths of her soul where they could never hurt anyone, learn to control them, or else forget about them altogether and try to have a normal life with Eli. Never had she actually thought about stepping up and using her powers to save people until that moment, in Miss Smart’s afternoon physics class.

  Yet the idea was so preposterous that she almost laughed again. Me? A superhero? It was so farfetched that she entertained herself for a few minutes thinking about costumes and names and her face in the papers. She imagined herself jumping into burning buildings to save children or catching criminals and putting them in prison. Dear God, what would Joshua think of me? She smiled to herself, knowing he would be absolutely livid. Then she remembered the Agents, the men he warned her about and the company they worked for. Would they know it was her? Wo
uld they uncover her identity and take her away?

  The bell signaling the end of class rang shrill throughout the school and students began collecting their books and sidling out of class in a swift mob. Hunter made to follow when she was called out of the crowd by her teacher.

  “Hunter? Could I speak with you for a moment?”

  Snatching her things off her desk, Hunter hurried to the front of the classroom.

  “What’s up Miss Smart?” she asked.

  Miss Smart looked a lot wearier these days in comparison with the woman she knocked over on the first day after break. Perhaps it was simply the stress of the upcoming exams, and Hunter had the urge to ask if she was alright when Miss Smart lowered her thin glasses that hung by a glittering string from her neck and fixed Hunter with a grim look. Uh oh, I know that look.

  “I want to talk to you about your work,” she said.

  Hunter’s stomach fell. “I know I’ve been slack lately Miss Smart. But I understand the work, and I can pass, I just need to-”

  “Passing isn’t what I’m concerned about,” Miss Smart interrupted. This time her voice held something else, something that sounded like caution. She clearly had other things on her mind. “I’ve seen your work this semester Hunter. I know you’re a talented girl. But there are a few interesting answers in your theories. For example, the last assignment on Coulomb’s Law, you wrote this-” she slid three stapled sheets under Hunter’s nose. “I’ve never seen an equation like it before, and it certainly wasn’t Coulomb’s.”

  Hunter bit her lip. She’d written that assignment the day after Joshua had explored the theory behind her powers. There were several equations that stuck in her mind. She must have confused them with the subject they were researching. Hunter pushed the work away from her and shrugged.

  “I guess I was just side-tracked,” she lied, hoping Miss Smart believed her. “It doesn’t even matter.”