Blaze Read online

  I nod and follow him, unable to stop my chatter. "What happens after graduation?” Surely no shortage of opportunities await #22. I envy that, a chance to abandon a life holding me back, a new shot at starting all over.

  He thinks before speaking, no joke, something I've never seen any guy do. I may have to meet his mother after all, thank her on behalf of chicks everywhere. "Would you believe that leaving Louisiana never crossed my mind?”

  "I guess the hometown hero can't leave his hometown. But, don't you have other places to go? Other people to be?"

  “My destiny is right here." #22 throws this out casually, like it's a given. "What about you, Blaze? Your plans?"

  Of course #22 wants to know things, about me. Things I can't start to explain, that require more proof he’s ready to handle. "I don't spend a lot of energy on it." Truth.

  He chuckles, losing none of his determination - what I'm starting to understand is a somewhat annoying habit of his. "How about we start with your past?"

  "Not a lot to tell." Lie.

  Reaching the end of the bridge, we make a hairpin turn on a muddy footpath. With my first step, my heel sinks and sticks. "Yeah, these shoes seemed like a good idea earlier. Now, not so much,” I confess.

  A few feet below, #22 plants his right foot firmly as an anchor, opening his arms wide for me: "Jump!"

  For an airborne minute, I question the reason I have to believe he'll catch me. I just know, though. #22 would never let me fall. Not then, not ever. Then I'm in his arms, my smile touching his collarbone, my cheek resting on the pulsing spot in his throat. In a few tight zigzags he jogs down the steep embankment, halting before the river's edge.

  Because the moon is ringed with rainbow light, because he won't, I taste him with a light kiss that deepens. Neither of us is aware we’re sinking into the sand until suddenly the world goes wonky, and we're both under water.

  Beneath the surface I am weightless, frozen in motion, still tightly entwined with #22, a halo of bubbles rising above his head like a crown.

  I will myself to stay there, floating suspended against the guy least likely to be the guy for me. Our clothes billow out around us, tugging our bodies upward. When we inevitably rise, it’s together with a desperate gasp. Bobbing like a cork, #22’s weight stops us from moving with the current. His body, still and solid, quietly resists everything but the magnetism gluing us together.

  "You didn't drop me." A statement, wrapped in a question, full of the wonder permeating every cell in my body. Then, something snaps in me and whatever the reason - fear of getting in too deep, too quick, too late - I push away from him. Dipping my head in the less than mighty Mississippi, I suck in just enough water to arc a stream at #22.

  "Stop!" His harsh shout shatters my attempt to rekindle our playful vibe. I let him pull us to shore, where we stand dripping in silence. A shiver overtakes me, I shove him again. The dude's like granite, I fall backward when my palms hit his chest.

  "What the hell, #22?" Never one to surrender easily or without complaint, I shift into my most aggressive posture. It’s normally reserved for Cannon. I’m happy to play it for any guy by special request.

  "This part of the river’s toxic. Too many chemicals, since I was a kid." He trails off, noticing my shape for the first time. One thing I am not is shy. I don't turn away. I move closer. "I can't remember how to breathe." His voice is husky, though #22 doesn't touch me. Instead, I take his hand, appreciating the rough callouses marking his skin, and place it on me. He jerks away, seared.

  Humiliation rises inside me, like a slap. I start slipping and sliding up the vertical dirt path, making no progress. He grips my waist and I scream out of frustration and futility, in a four letter rage. #22 lifts me over his shoulder, taking his surefooted time up the embankment until we reach the top.

  I slide down his torso for a long moment before my toes touch the pavement and once again I'm a separate being from him. Anger boils inside me. #22 steps back, like: I hear you, I respect you. He doesn't. No guy ever does. What made me trust #22 in the first damn place? So far, everything I've learned for certain about this dude I can count on my two thumbs: he's hot, and he's a mama's boy. Scraping mud off the soles of my stilettos, I’m positive not only did I chose my shoes unwisely but my escort as well.

  "I'll see you home, then." #22 states this as a good-natured confirmation. I hate him for it.

  "No. You. Won't." I turn on my broken heel. Worst first date ever, fight me.

  Graveyards Aren’t Creepy AF

  FORD

  Stalking girls is not what I do. I know better than to let Blaze wander through the dark, alone. I rejected her because hooking-up on the mucky riverbank is a page from Brick's playbook. I desperately want a chance to explain, but doesn’t every stalker say that? Figuring there's a fifty-fifty shot Blaze is aware I'm trailing her, I fully expect to find her laying in wait across the train tracks to call me out as a creeper.

  Instead she disappears into a glowing, foreign landscape ahead, erected like a spontaneous metropolis above Louisiana's orchards. It broadcasts an energy so vibrant not only can I almost see it, I want to touch it - or be touched by it.

  Enormous tents erupt in a helter-skelter circle, laughter pouring forth from every square inch of the what a brightly-bulbed marquee proclaims is the Wild Big Top. Exotic animals roar, greeting a motley crew hustling hard enough for the air around them to crackle with energy.

  I have never belonged anywhere less than I belong here. Blaze, clearly a denizen of this place, slips expertly through the maze of canvas and rigging and disappears into a tent the size of a barn. My life in Louisiana shrinks in the shadow cast by her world. Here I am no hero, with no right to be here yet no desire to turn back. I duck inside the vinyl flaps where she vanished.

  A match sparks, briefly illuminating Blaze in the center of an arena. She blows softly on the flame, encouraging it to grow, then transfers it methodically from one fingertip to the next until ten bobbing balls of fire trail from her every motion. She begins to dance. First slowly, with deliberation. Soon her body whips into a frenzied abandon not meant for my eyes. Forcibly I turn away from her mystical performance, burning with questions for the girl I presumed to know solely on the basis of a simple dream.

  The Wild Big Top draws crowds from across Pike County, thirsty ticket-buyers who trek along the Art Corridor from Hannibal to Clarksville to Louisiana, lured by the promise of a so-called freak show. No doubt this is why Blaze keeps the details of her life quiet, perhaps it also explains the practiced right hook she clocked Brick with last night.

  I slide two twenties across the chipped counter of the box office, taking my ticket and a playbill, searching for the showtimes of Blaze's fire act. At the bottom of the back inside cover, a veiled girl promises to tell my fortune. Her stare is my undoing.

  The Midway's fraught with lollipops the size of a small child's head, and two-hundred and fifty flavors of cotton candy. Everything in sight either blinks or glows. I pass a tiny bodega.

  "Form an orderly line, gents." The voice, the jasmine, the girl. Blaze.

  I wait my turn to crouch under the mandala canopy. No flicker of recognition appears in the gray eyes above the veil. Still, I could swear she's glad to see me.

  "Cards or palm?"

  "I hear you're good with cards."

  “Palm it is.” She seizes my hand, flipping it over and tracing the lines on my skin. "You are a stranger in a strange land." Her imitation of my Midwestern twang is disturbingly accurate.

  "So are you." My arched brow dares Blaze to drop her facade.

  "The lifeline is faint."

  "That troubles you?"

  Blaze makes a meh sound, shrugging. "Not as troubling as your love line. It's thin. See for yourself." She shoves my hand away, shooting me daggers.

  "And this is bad?"

  "You'll only fall in love once, #22. She's too much for you." Blaze cuts me off. I detect a weakness in her force field.

  "As in, way
too hot to handle?"

  "Bingo."

  "I don't make a habit of handling girls. Any other predictions?"

  "She leaves you."

  "Why? She must believe in second chances, right?"

  Blaze picks at her veil, then pulls it down. Maybe, her eyes say. But only maybe.

  "Thanks for the reading." I hand her my ticket stub. On it I scrawled with the address of St Joseph's, where I'll be waiting for my girl come midnight.

  The arch above St. Joseph's Cemetery is a twist of ivy and moss. Besides being creepy AF, a graveyard is the only place I'm almost a hundred percent we won't be sucked into a brawl. She'll show. She has to show. Blaze may not believe in second chances, okay, fine. How do I prove I'm worthy of just one more?

  I think, What would Brick do? And then go with the opposite of that.

  An old VW bus rolls-up the gravel, dropping-off Blaze. The driver's gypsy scarf waves an equally hot blonde chicks throws a peace sign my way before sputtering back toward town.

  "You're here." No point in pretending I'm not enormously relieved. "More reasonable footwear selection this time, too."

  "So it would seem. Now what?"

  I know tonight will be a marathon of micro-tests, designed to earn Blaze's trust. Pointing under the arch, I say "This way." I really want to say: I'll never hurt you. Never sell out your secrets. Never compromise your safety.

  Her eyes search mine, and maybe she sees in them everything I don't tell her, because Blaze not only nods but loops her elbow through mine. We dodge headstones and markers, the moon full and high above. I halt our wordless march in a clearing, in front of a less than modest marble mausoleum.

  "Love the tomb, it's giving me all the fuzzy feels, #22. Next time I'll bring a torch." This is the first mention she's made of fire, and I want to pounce on the opening with the questions I’ve cataloged since I saw Blaze perform. I'm not ready to bust myself quite yet, though. She'll tell me when and if she's ready.

  "Blaze, meet Mary. Mary, meet Blaze." She can't help but crack up at my formal introduction to the statue of the Blessed Virgin, a decades-old relic of the mostly Catholic cemetery. The fiberglass figure, cracked and peeling, has seen better days.

  Blaze high-fives Mary's prayer hands. "What's her deal?"

  "She winks."

  "Winks."

  "I mean, yeah. At the stroke of 2 a.m.” I demonstrate.

  "That's it? Kinda anticlimactic." I see myself through Blaze’s eyes - desperate, inexperienced, failing. Flailing, actually.

  Blaze traces my jaw with her fingers, once then twice, turning away before I can kiss her. "I mean, you did hunt me down and drag me into a graveyard. A statue winking is the definition of anticlimactic in this scenario. Tell me you've got something else in your bag of tricks, #22."

  As a matter of fact, I do.

  Broken Down On Rollercoaster Road

  BLAZE

  I don't make a habit of riding in trucks with boys I don't trust into vast rural stretches of population zero. Then again, I trust no one. Nothing personal, #22. Yet somehow I find myself bouncing around his ancient pick-up, contemplating how short a distance there is between us on the bench seat. I pick at the loose threads of the blanket doing a poor job of covering the cushion springs poking into my butt.

  "Where we going?" Probably something I should have asked before we left the cemetery, which is what Cannon will remind me if #22 turns out to be a murderer. In death I'll still be a disappointment to my father. Maybe why I'm not as afraid of dying as I should be.

  "We're here." Damn #22 smells good, like cotton and clotheslines and the salt of a sweat never scrubbed completely clean.

  "Then why aren't we stopped?"

  "This is it. This is Rollercoaster Road."

  "I see. The journey is the destination. Not bad, #22. How far does it go?"

  He takes one hand from the wheel, chucking my chin."Wanna find out?"

  Hell yes I want to find out where this leads, as long as it takes me as far away from Cannon and the Wild Big Top as possible. Also. I'm done waiting. I decide to kiss the hell out of #22. Because he still won't, even if he wants to, though the pressure of his lips tells me he's wanted to for maybe longer than I understand.

  A boom, crash, and bang rock the pick-up truck, jerking us to an abrupt halt in a haze of what I hope is gravel dust, not smoke from the engine. We fly apart, both cursing.

  "Um yeah, just a sec." #22 hops outside, moving towards the left front tire. The beams of yellow headlights cast a spotlight as he raises the hood. It dawns on me how smack dab in the middle of the middle of nowhere we are so I join him outside in appraising the state of his motor, clearly jacked in any number of ways. The manufacturer logo on the manifold sends me into giggles I fail to suppress.

  "You drive a Ford." Hee. Hee hee hee.

  #22 folds his arms behind his neck, looking up at the stars like celestial guidance, or an alien tow, might be an option. "This is not ideal.”

  “You drive a... Ford!" The basic humor of it all dissolves my cool, and I collapse against #22 in an uncontrollable spell of laughter.

  He kicks the front tire with the steel-toed boots I've come to appreciate.

  "Don't go dick on me," I warn, his hotness be damned. "Not like you wanted this to happen." I take an enormous step back from #22. "Unless you did."

  His glower does not mellow. "I have no response to the idea I engineered this deliberately. Have we met?"

  "Yes. Just."

  "If you think I'm that guy, what else do you think about me?" For sure this was leading nowhere good.

  "If I'm being honest, isn't every guy, that guy?"

  "Wow." He looks like I gut-punched him.

  "Let me tell you about that guy. I know him, pretty well. Like my brother. I love him and I hate him. I hate how he labels the girls who sleep with him as sluts, when he's always been first to screw any and all chicks who trust him - surprisingly far too many. I hate that because I never wanted to sleep with random chicks, one day he'll do the math and deduce I never slept with any chick before. But. Brick would die for me. In some ways, he already has." He exhales. "I know it's a lot." #22 offers a wan smile, showing the deep dimple I wanna dive into for days.

  "Here's the thing: Brick is a dick and you are not. I believe you didn't do this on purpose.” This is as close to an apology as I know how to make. He thinks he has a lot to unpack? Same, #22, same. "Why did we come to Rollercoaster Road, if not for some elaborate ruse?"

  "I'm not ready to talk about it, Blaze." Not an outright refusal, a shocking setting of boundaries. Where did #22 learn to do that? His fingers travel through my hair, lifting it away from my face and for too long he stares, so I push into the crook of his neck, and just breathe. No matter how badly he screws up, which he will because they all do, I'm issuing #22 a Get Out of Jail free card. For life. His cheeks flush the identical shade of red lipstick Poet insisted I wear. "What's up, babe?"

  "You called me babe."

  He kisses the top of my head. "Yeah."

  "That's not something I get a lot."

  "That's not something I say, ever." #22 slams the hood shut, shuts off the headlights, and climbs into the truck bed. He tosses out a hose, a dolly, and a gym bag. He looks at me. "Grab the blanket in the cab, would ya?"

  I do, and he spreads it out, fashioning a pillow out of some feed sacks. Without looking at Ford, I state firmly, "I'm walking back."

  "Absolutely not. It's at least three country miles to St. Joseph's, and another four to main street from the cemetery."

  If I stay here I'm less worried about #22's intentions, but decently panicked about the probability of me unburdening my soul. No one can see the way Gigi burns inside me, can know the hell I wrestle with. "Stop me.”

  "Rather not." He holds his hands up in truce. "Get some shuteye. I'll crash out up front."

  "Wait." I climb into the truck bed, dangling my legs from the gate. #22 squats next to me. "There are things. Things I can't tell you."
>
  He nods. I relax against #22’s chest, wishing I felt the protection no one and nothing can deliver, not even the protective suit I wear when I perform, or Cannon's misguided attempts to keep me safe. I am Gigi's daughter and I inherited more than her talent, I inherited her power. Power which killed her.

  We stay this way all night, wrapped in each other under the stars, and I feel almost like a normal girl.

  Where I Ditch Brick

  FORD

  My chicken soup for the soul is the satisfying swish of nothing but net. Today I can't hit the hoop to save my life. I got girl brain, bad. Blaze is the missing piece of a puzzle I don't have a hope in hell of solving. Part of me doesn't want to, like if I do she'll disappear forever. After last night I see whatever holds her back is way bigger than what's happening between us. Something's so broken it faults her faith in not just me, but in her future and she doesn't want or need my help to fix it.

  "Congrats, bro." Emerging from the boys’ locker room, Brick swaggers on to the court.

  "My jump shot's crap today,” I say, like that's why I'm alone in the gym shooting like a third-string benchwarmer. We haven’t spoken in the aftermath since the shack.

  Brick's suspiciously calm, slapping me a little too hard between my shoulder blades. "Not every day my best buddy nails a circus chick. If she as freaky as she looks, do me a favor and pass her over my way when you’re done with her.”

  I have no idea what my face looks like right now. I never wanted to kill anyone with my bare hands before.

  "It's not like she's gonna stick around," Brick circles me like I'm prey. "Like this is true love, dude."

  "What if it is?" I make a last ditch effort to connect.

  "You must be joking." Brick's smirk sours. "Here's a flashback for you, Ford. Franny almost died. Died. Whatever hex this girl's got on you, you'll never walk away from Franny. Ever."