The Essential Elements: Boxed Set

by Elle Middaugh

  “They’re those little shits we’re always messing with,” Jimmy explained, as if he actually knew. Of course, I didn’t really, either; I only knew of one. Trisha sniffed and glanced away.

  “No more messing with the eco-warriors,” Jay corrected Jimmy. Then he stared at Trisha derisively. “By the way, maybe your boyfriend wouldn’t have been sticking his tongue down Ashley Gadson’s throat this weekend if you didn’t have such a stick up your ass.”

  “Ugh! Screw you, Jay,” Trisha said, glaring.

  “Just an observation.”

  “I said—”

  Charlene interrupted. “Shut up, Trisha. Why are you even here, anyway? The skank table is two rows down.”

  Jimmy shot Charlene a mild glower. “A bit uncalled for, Char.”

  “A bit?” Trisha shrieked.

  “Don’t call her Char,” Jay warned.

  Curt jumped to Jimmy’s side, but still managed to seem high as a kite. “Calm down, man,” he muttered to Jay lazily. “It’s just a nickname…”

  “A pet name,” Jay clarified. “And Jimmy’s a whore.”

  Jimmy opened his mouth to retaliate, but Trisha beat him to it. “You wanna talk about skanks and whores?” she countered aggressively, bringing the conversation back around. “Let’s talk about the new girl.”

  My eyes popped as if I’d been slapped in the face. She was going to drag me into it? I glanced indignantly at Holden, but he was focused on his cousin. I followed his eyes to Sienna. Oh, yeah…I wasn’t the new girl any more.

  “You have a problem with me, sweetheart?” Sienna asked, her voice poisonously sweet.

  Trisha laughed. “No, I called you a skank because I like you.”

  “You worried I’ll kick you to the curb and take your corner?”

  “I am not a hooker!” Trisha cried indignantly.

  Sienna smirked. “Never said you were, but if the shoe fits, please, string that bitch up and wear it.”

  “I’d like to string you up!” she shouted.

  This time Sienna laughed. “Sweetheart, I’d love to see you try.”

  I glanced from face to face to face. What the hell was wrong with this lunch table? This was a prime example of why I had shied away from high school interaction and drama. He hates her, she hates him, they hate them, and we hate everyone. I mean seriously. Why not just sit somewhere else? Why pretend to like one another just so you can appear to have friends? Was it honestly just about popularity? If it was…how shallow.

  “Maybe I will try,” Trisha sneered at Sienna.

  Holden raised his voice. “No. No, you won’t.” His expression was dark. “Leave. Right now.”

  “You can’t make me,” Trisha retorted, though uncertainty hovered underneath her words like a dense fog.

  He stood and leaned in her direction, arms bracing across the width of the table. “I said leave!” Fear froze in her eyes like winter. She snatched her tray and stormed off.

  A few nerve-racking heartbeats later, Holden sat and glanced at Jimmy. “You’re not going to bring her again. Understand? Ashley’s fine, but no more Trisha. I mean that. Seriously, why do you even like the girl?”

  “I love her!” Jimmy blurted out angrily.

  Jay chuckled and muttered under his breath, “You can’t be serious…”

  Jimmy either didn’t hear him or he ignored him. “And you can’t make me stay away from her! Why are you guys always such assholes to her?”

  “Because she’s a bitch?” Jay answered pointedly.

  Jimmy pointed to Charlene. “Your girlfriend is a bitch! But no one hassles her!”

  Jay had Jimmy’s t-shirt collar wound around his fist faster than I could register the movement. They were nose to nose, violence sparking like electricity between them. I twisted my hair into knots.

  “Don’t you ever insult Charlene again, or it’ll be the last thing you do. You get me?”

  Jimmy grimaced. “So Char is too nice, and bitch is too rude? How about you pick one?”

  I glanced at Emilie. She was watching the encounter like a hawk, twirling her citrusy curls, looking just as unnerved as I felt. Her boyfriend, Bear, had his hardass glower aimed in Jimmy’s direction this time. Thank goodness. Bear was seriously intimidating, though it seemed they might all have threatening streaks to look out for. Even sweet Jay had a dangerous side.

  We weren’t the only ones watching the little showdown. Vice Principal Adler came storming over like a hurricane a second later. The look in his eyes was molten.

  “Reynolds! Walsh! What is going on here?” he snarled.

  “Nothing, Coach,” Holden answered quickly, but Jay still had a death grip on Jimmy’s shirt.

  “Shut up, Michaels. Walsh, let him go.”

  “No can do, Coach. He’s had this coming for quite some time now.” Jay grinned malevolently and reared back his free fist.

  Adler sucked in a sharp breath. “Enough! Fighting is not, under any circumstances, tolerated at Center Allegheny! I don’t know what sort of petty drama you two have going on, but you had better drop it, or so help me, I’ll suspend you from the game.”

  “No offense, Coach,” Jay began complacently, “but if you think I care more about this Friday’s football game than my own ‘petty drama’, then you’ve seriously overestimated my athletic aspirations.” I bit my bottom lip to keep from giggling, but Charlene apparently couldn’t help herself.

  Adler’s heavy glare pinned us to our seats. “Not this Friday’s game, son. The entire season.”

  The bomb dropped and rattled Jay just enough. He released Jimmy’s shirt, an astounded expression smeared across his face. “Are you kidding me, Coach? One fight and you’d kill my entire varsity career?”

  Adler ignored Jay, eyeing Jimmy calculatingly. “Reynolds, go.”

  Jimmy scowled. “Come on, Curt. We’re outta here.” They traipsed off smugly, glancing over their shoulders a number of times before leaving the cafeteria entirely.

  Adler leaned in closer. “Don’t be stupid, Walsh. I wouldn’t drop you this season if you committed a felony. Any of you,” he added as he looked from Jay to Holden to Bear, then back to Jay. “I just knew you weren’t going to drop this shit with Reynolds if I didn’t jar you out of it somehow.”

  Jay looked pissed.

  “You’re gonna be running for this later, too,” Adler tagged on almost regretfully.

  “I’ll run with him,” Holden volunteered.

  “I will, too,” Bear agreed. His voice was just as rough and rumbling as I had feared. As scary as the complete package was, I could totally see why Bear was so alluring. Bad boys were sexy, and he was the epitome of badass.

  The lunch bell rang and Adler hiked a thumb toward the door. “Get out of here.” So we did. I couldn’t help replaying bits and pieces of the lunch cluster-fuck as I wandered the halls toward Creative Writing.

  I was compelled to draw the obvious conclusion that the fight was between those who knew and those who didn’t know about Elementals. ‘Jimmy, Curt, and Trisha don’t know,’ Holden had whispered. And guess who everyone seemed to despise? Big surprise there. So what was the point, exactly? To me, it seemed easier to just draw the lines and segregate. But then, wasn’t that exactly what Cade had done? And I’d hated it. I’m being so hypocritical today…

  I also found it kinda interesting how quickly Trisha and Sienna got off on the wrong foot. Something had to have happened that morning that I’d missed. From what I remembered, Sienna had never used to be such a hardass. Then again, that was using elementary school and social media as archetypes. She seemed pretty hardline nowadays, though. I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the end of the rivalry.

  Also, Bear and Jay seemed rather upset at the prospect of a treaty with Cade and his friends, whoever they were. Especially Jay. Charlene had said they’d had ‘an interesting morning’. What the hell did that entail? Were there confrontations Holden had ordered them not to exacerbate? If that was the case…maybe I was being too selfish in calling
for a ceasefire?

  It was way too complicated.

  I took my seat and glanced to the right. My desk was now attached to another desk.

  Mr. Berwyn was smiling softly from the front of the room, his gray beard whitening by the second—ok, not really, but he was quite old. “I took the liberty of assigning you partners,” he wistfully half-explained to the class.

  A student dropped into the seat on my right and I glanced over nervously. Who knew how long this partnership would last? I hoped to at least tolerate my new cohort. As I turned my head, emerald eyes locked with my pale blues, and shock overtook us both simultaneously.

  Cade Landston.

  How was this even happening??

  Chapter Seventeen

  “The goal of this partnership,” Mr. Berwyn began softly, “is to discuss and confirm the spin that you’ll be applying to your chosen work of literature.” He licked his papery lips and continued. “At the end of class, you will turn in a short statement of your ideas to me. Good luck, and happy discussions.”

  I glanced at Cade, who was practically stone-faced. Happy discussions, my ass. Guess he should have been more specific when he said we needed to talk…

  “So…” I began uncertainly. “I chose a poem by John Keats called The Human Seasons. What did you choose?”

  He stared at me, emotionless. “The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka.”

  “How are you going to spin it?” I asked, curious despite myself.

  Cade shrugged. “I think the story would have gone much, much differently if he hadn’t been turned into a cockroach. So, I’m going to play him out as something beautiful. Maybe a bird or something.”

  I smiled and tried to imagine it. Gregor probably wouldn’t die at the end of Cade’s story. It would be nice to see a sad tale get a happy reload.

  “What about you?” he asked as he eyed me carefully. “What’s your spin on Keats?”

  I blanched. I’d made this decision long before I ever knew Elementals were real, and now I wasn’t sure it was appropriate. Of course, average, everyday people had no idea it would be anything more than fiction.

  I could always just play dumb. Maybe it’d get a rise out of Cade and force him to talk?

  “Well,” I said, tucking a piece of flyaway hair behind my ear. “The Human Seasons deals with sections of a man’s mind. Internal. I thought it would be interesting to apply the four seasons in an external sense.”

  Cade’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure I follow you…” Read: I sure as shit hope you’re not saying what I think you are.

  A nervous giggle bubbled from my lips. “I was thinking…earth for spring, fire for summer, wind for autumn, and water for winter.”

  He stared at his hand as he drummed his fingertips on the desk. I could tell he wanted to protest my ideas, but he couldn’t without giving himself away. Instead, he said, “There you go again with the water and winter combination…”

  I could’ve easily missed the reference in that statement. It had been forever since our little Q&A at the willow tree—at least it felt like it had—but I didn’t miss it. The reference, that is. I remembered telling him winter was my favorite season, and that I’d choose water if I could control an element. Knowing what I now knew about my family, I wanted to amend that statement and change it to fire.

  “Is spring your favorite season, Cade?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Why would it be?” he nearly threatened.

  I sniffed. “I think we both know what I’m insinuating.”

  “I’m more concerned about how you know.”

  “Can’t tell,” I teased mockingly.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both.”

  He growled. “This isn’t a game, Valerie. Whoever told you deserves to be reprimanded.”

  “All the more reason for me to never tell you.”

  “It was Michaels, wasn’t it?” he asked with shaded eyes.

  I raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t, in fact. Why the hell do you hate him so much?”

  Cade chuckled condescendingly. “I don’t hate him, per se. I hate what he is.”

  “An Elemental?”

  His emerald eyes might’ve slashed through my face. The shock, fear, and annoyance that tore through them was sharp as a blade. He looked around almost wildly, but no one was listening.

  I took that moment to add on, “A little hypocritical, don’t you think?”

  He sat up in his chair and leaned in closer to me. “Fine. I don’t hate what he is. Or that he’s a Wind. Or whatever. I hate everything he stands for.”

  A frown creased my brow. That didn’t sound too different from the original statement. What could Holden possibly ‘stand for’ that Cade would abhor so badly?

  He took note of my confusion. “You were telling the truth, weren’t you? Holden didn’t tell you. Otherwise, you would’ve known about the dissention.” The cogs in his mind were spinning. “Whoever told you must be very far removed from current Elemental politics…” And spinning faster. “Or very, very old.”

  I wanted to jump to Aunt Marge’s rescue and shout, ‘Hey! My aunt isn’t old!’ like some indignant, bratty kid, but I couldn’t even do that, because she’d made me promise not to. Damn it. I could, however, divert the subject.

  “What dissention? Between you and Holden?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. And everybody else. It’s my friends, my family, my community, my lifestyle, and my beliefs…versus his.”

  My head shook of its own accord. “But why?”

  “Why is it always?”

  I thought we had effectively explained life in those two simple questions. Why was it always left vs right, black vs white, right vs wrong, true vs false? Why couldn’t it sometimes be all of the above? Or none of them, even?

  “So, you oppose each other by default? Not because you genuinely disagree with his way of life, but because it’s not how you live?” I watched as he sighed and ran a frustrated hand through his sandy blond hair. “What, exactly, is the difference between your beliefs, anyway?”

  “Politics!” he nearly cried, then cringed. He checked our surroundings and continued in a softer voice. “It’s all politics.”

  I wasn’t buying the vague answers. “Politics involving…?”

  He closed his eyes and heaved the biggest sigh I’d ever heard him hurl. “Humans.”

  “Humans…” I swished that revelation around in my mouth for a few seconds. The discord between their social groups surrounded the issue of humans? I immediately thought back to lunch. “You hate that Holden’s group doesn’t get along with normal humans?”

  Cade laughed. Like, actually laughed. “No, Val. We hate that they even try.”

  Come again? Before he made himself look like too much of an ass, he continued his explanation. “Of our kind, there are two major cliques: Traditionalists and Modernists. I’m a Traditionalist, Holden’s a Modernist. Bottom line, I don’t intermingle with humans; he does. It has nothing to do with the fact that I dislike humans—especially you, Val—nor the fact that Holden particularly does like them. It’s all in how we were cultivated to act.”

  “Please do keep going,” I demanded curtly. If he didn’t, and he ended his explanation right there, I might be inclined to never speak to either one of them again.

  Cade licked his lips and looked away. “Okay… How about this one?

  “Once upon a time, Modernists up and decided they wanted to be normal. Being supernatural wasn’t really their thing any more. It was old news. They were like the hipsters of the old world. Because they desired to fit in, they consequently had to suppress their powers. So they pushed them to the backburner. Not completely off the stove, just…to the back. They began to infuse themselves into human society.

  “The rest of us, who still relished our abilities and loved being…” He hesitated. “Special, if you will…” I could tell he wasn’t sure how I’d react to the term; I didn’t react at all. “The rest of us were suddenly the bad guys.<
br />
  “The assumption was this: since we didn’t want to give up our free use of power, we obviously had a fundamental hatred for humans. Why else wouldn’t we have just blindly jumped on their bandwagon? They used this mindset to try and coerce us into change, but we’re not really the type to give in to peer pressure. It just never happened.”

  I crossed my arms and rested my chin on them. “So it’s not really about humans at all. It’s about power. Traditionalists want to use it freely; Modernists want to suppress it, at least enough to blend seamlessly into human society.”

  Cade nodded supportively. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

  “Why would they want to do that?”

  He chuckled. “I know, right? That’s the question we could never quite figure out. Boredom, I guess. They were tired of being different and isolated. They needed a challenge. Wanted to live life like it was intended, or something. I don’t know. It’s the best I can come up with.”

  It was miraculous to me how easily Cade had become an open book. It was like he’d been dying to tell me this all along, but he just couldn’t. Thankfully, Marge had taken the first swing to break the ice, and once that initial crack was there, it was like an ice picking free-for-all. Now that I knew about Elementals, whoever provided the additional information had free rein, because it was inconsequential.

  Cade smiled almost shyly. “I still can’t hang out with you in public, you know.”

  “What the hell! Why not?”

  “Shh…” he whispered cautiously. “Because it’s against the rules. Traditionalists don’t associate with humans. Period.” He artfully brushed his fingers against my arm. Sparks ignited under my skin in his wake. “I’m willing to risk it, though. For you. I just can’t risk it for the entire human population, okay?”

  He was asking my permission to keep me his dirty little secret. Ha. I guessed that was a start. It was still a sour thought to entertain, but it didn’t seem nearly as horrible now that I knew the whole truth. Still…

  “Why can’t you just become a Modernist? If you’re willing to break the rules to be around me, why not just forget the damn rules?”