Burning Hearts (8 page)

“
I know this isn’t the time
or the place, but I need you to know…I used to hate you, when you
were with the Stuck-Ups, but…I also loved you. They made fun of me.
You just ignored me. That bugged me the most. I wanted you to
notice me, even if it was to make fun.”

She was shocked, although his confession
wasn’t unexpected. “Do you…do you still love me?”

He nodded, giving a slight smile. “I love you
a lot.” His smile faded. “But don’t worry. I’m not expecting you to
admit the same.” He clasped her hand. “It’s just nice to be your
friend—to be talking with you—to be around you.”

She was moved by his words. But she was
afraid of their friendship progressing into something more. What if
it didn’t work out? They could no longer be friends and that would
disrupt the entire harmony of the Misfits. Yes, they were outcasts,
but they fit well together like found pieces from a lost
puzzle.

She gently squeezed his hand. Then she
proceeded to make a stupid move. She kissed him on his lips. It was
a dangerous thing to do. She had no intention of giving him hope,
but that’s exactly what she did. But she couldn’t help it. After
the way Val had treated her, it was nice knowing that she was loved
by someone.

“
Jenna…,” he trailed off,
not knowing what to say (for the second time that day).

“
You should go,” she urged
him. “We’ll see each other tomorrow.”

He hesitated, but then nodded, and turned
away from her, walking to the minivan. He entered and sat beside
Pru, who’d seen the kiss, along with Kylie and Caleb. None of them
asked for the 411, staring straight ahead at the windshield. Before
Riddick shut the sliding door, he smiled, waving goodbye. She waved
back, not smiling.

She feared that she’d set in motion a chain
of events she couldn’t possibly hope to control. In high school, a
kiss wasn’t just a kiss. It was a prelude to what she’d refused to
give Val. She knew Riddick wouldn’t toss her aside if she refused
him, but who was she waiting for?

KISS AND KILL

Jenna behaved.

She didn’t look at her grandpa’s journal, but
she read the letter. Well, tried to read. His penmanship was close
to indecipherable, but she got the gist of it.

There was no date.

No hi or bye.

He wrote as if he were in a hurry; it was
perhaps the last thing he wrote before his death.

By the short letter, she learned that her
destiny had been awakened. He didn’t explain how or why. He told
her not to be afraid; she’d do great things. Save the world type
stuff. He encouraged her to read his journal, even though he
admitted it was mostly illegible and there were places where he
went off topic. By the end, she was in tears, reminiscing about his
smile, his jokes, and his ability to always catch a flipped pancake
in the skillet.

His last statement of wisdom tugged at her
heartstrings:

Remember, my sweet girl,
hate is in supreme abundance, but the smallest amount of love
conquers all
.

She thought on those words as she drifted off
to sleep. But sleep didn’t bring her peace.

It brought her a fantastical dream, followed
by a horrific nightmare.

She woke with a start at precisely the rise
of dawn as if her body had become attuned to that great hot orb
like a fiery eye in the sky.

The alarm clock went off, ringing. It was an
old-timey one that she’d found in the attic, belonging to her
Grandma Dottie. Jenna shut it off, gently, and relaxed with her
sweaty neck against the pillow, reminiscing on her nocturnal
visions.

The dream started off well. She was at the
football game with her friends. Malcolm, with his exotic appearance
and confident stride, came and sat next to her, placing his arm
around her shoulders. He kissed her cheek and the side of her
mouth, until finally reaching her lips, where he tugged at her
virgin soul with his pull and power; it was hot, intoxicating. But
when she held his face in her hands to study his gorgeous features,
she noticed that his eyes were no longer fiery blue, but red.

Hate filled her heart, replacing love.

The nightmare had begun.

He struggled, trying to block her
knife-wielding hand, but she was too strong and with one quick jab
to his heart, she ended his life; she watched fire consume him in
screaming agony from the inside out, until his body disintegrated
upon the bleachers.

The football game never stopped. The crowd
never stopped cheering. And her friends never stopped to ask Jenna
why the new guy was a pile of ashes.

Her destiny was to slay evil-doers. So why’d
she dream of killing Malcolm?

SHATTERED GLASS

As if having a dream about killing the new
student wasn’t already a bad start to the day, Daniela and Emma
decided to grace Jenna with their toxic presences in the restroom
before first period.

“
I can’t believe we have to
share the restrooms with the riff-raff,” Daniela commented to
Emma.

They stood in front of the mirror, reapplying
their nauseating peach-scented lip balm. If they swiped any more,
their fat lips were sure to turn into rotten fruit.

Emma looked at Jenna in the mirror, narrowing
her eyes. “Yeah, soon her freaky friends will be in here, stinking
up the place.”

Jenna, despite wanting to commit murder, held
her cool as she casually approached the sink and washed her hands.
She flicked water in their direction, gave a false apology, and
dried her hands with the rough brown paper towels.

After throwing the balled up trash in the
can, scoring a three-pointer from across the restroom, she turned
to the girls and smiled.

“
Dani! Em! It’s been too
long! So what’s up? Dani, how’s that rash of yours? You know? The
one you got from messing around with Deadfall’s quarterback? What
was his name?” Jenna put a finger to her lips as if she were trying
to remember, and then snapped her fingers in recognition. “Oh,
yeah! I-Cheated-on-Barrie-Last-Year!”

Daniela put her hands on her hips. “We were
broken up!” She smirked. “And besides, Barrie already knows!
So—ha!”

Jenna wrinkled her nose. “The rash too? What
does he do?” She raised her eyebrow in mock concern. “Like scratch
it for you?”

Daniela smirked again. “Oh, he scratches any
itch I got! But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would
you?”

“
No, I’ve never been with
Barrie, but you know, he always flirted with me.” Jenna purposely
spoke in a gossiping tone as if they were talking about other
people. “And when Val broke up with me, well, let’s just say he
offered himself to me.” Her mouth dropped in mock
astonishment.

Daniela gasped. “You lie!”

Jenna smiled, back to her old self. “Most of
the time. But not about this.”

Emma looped her arm around Daniela’s. “Don’t
listen to her, Dani! Val said she was liar! He said not to believe
anything she said.”

Jenna held out her hands, confused. “So when
we used to hang out, y’all thought I was a liar then? Or after Val
dumped all that propaganda into your empty little heads?”

Daniela pointed a trembling finger at Jenna.
“You’ve always been a liar! Val just made us see it!”

“
Yeah, and he was right
about that new guy, Malcolm,” added Emma.

That made Jenna pause before she found her
voice, and asked, “What do you mean?”

“
We thought he was all cool,
but Val saw how much of a loser he really is.”

Jenna smiled, shaking her head. “I highly
doubt Malcolm’s a loser. Have you seen him? He exudes the
confidence of a well-traveled man.”

Daniela snapped her fingers. “Well, he can
travel right on back to Egypt!” She nudged Emma, while still
glaring at Jenna. “What did Val say? ‘He’s probably al-Qaeda,’” she
repeated, and then declared with absolute certainty, “Oasis High
has their very own Muslim terrorist!”

Hot pools of anger rose from the depths of
Jenna’s core. Her heart began racing, thumping against her chest,
pounding in her ears; she envisioned picking Daniela and Emma up by
their necks, and throwing them against the mirrors.

In one quick move, her hand was up; but
instead of ending their pathetic lives, she struck the mirror,
causing shards and bits of glass to fly out.

Daniela and Emma shrieked in fear.
Fortunately, they’d ducked in time, so they weren’t injured. But
that didn’t stop them from running out of the restroom screaming,
“Jenna tried to kill us! Jenna tried to kill us!”

The blow to the mirror wasn’t that painful,
but her blood was everywhere. It gushed profusely from her hand,
down the sink drain, and had splattered what was left of the mirror
and along the wall.

She held her hand, trying to stop the
bleeding, cursing at her actions. It was all over now. A cold
prison cell awaited her along with a roommate named Big Bertha, who
liked to cuddle at night.

But as Jenna waited for the law to come that
was the school’s resident cop, Officer John Marlowe, she noticed
that the gash on her hand wasn’t as big as before and the blood
gushed less. By the time he finally arrived with Principal Yvette
Greene and what seemed like half the school, the wound was nothing
more than a large paper cut, the blood half-dried with the other
half a slow drip.

Officer Marlowe, a young man with a receding
hairline—who spent most of his time doing crossword
puzzles—escorted her out with one gentle hand on her back—as if he
knew Jenna wasn’t as crazy as Daniela and Emma were making her out
to be.

“
We knew she was dangerous!”
Daniela yelled, pointing from the crowd of onlookers.

“
All those freaks are!”
added Emma, thrusting her finger at the newcomers to the most
exciting event in Oasis High history: Kylie, Pru, Caleb, and
Riddick.

Val stood nearby with a proud smile—as if
vindicated for all his claims that his ex was really a crazy
loser.

Barrie was holding onto Daniela; Aidan was
holding onto Emma. They acted as if Jenna was going to run toward
them like a charging bull and massacre the whole school.

Kit looked sympathetic, standing next to a
grinning Sadie—who couldn’t get enough of Jenna’s dire
predicament.

Jenna never settled too long on any one of
them; not even her fellow Misfits. But when her green eyes met
Malcolm’s fiery blues from a space in the crowd, she couldn’t help
but to focus, hoping that the concern on his face was real. It was.
He took a step forward, desiring to go to her, to comfort her.

But he didn’t make it that far.

“
All right, that’s enough!”
barked Principal Greene; she was petite in stature, but made up for
it by wearing three-inch stiletto heels and adopting a fierce
attitude. She snapped her fingers and the students started to trail
away. “That’s it! Off to class! They don’t pay me the big bucks to
let y’all just stand there and stare with open mouths. Open those
heads of yours! You might just learn something! Shoo! Shoo!” She
waved the only remaining students away: Malcolm and the
Misfits.

She closed the door off to the halls,
effectively blocking Riddick and Malcolm’s worried faces from
viewing the student lobby. Officer Marlowe stood next to Jenna, no
longer keeping a gentle hand on her back. The spot where he’d been
comforting her felt ice cold.

Principal Greene directed one of the school’s
janitors, who’d just arrived, to clean up the restroom that
could’ve been a set piece from a teen-slasher flick.

She turned to Jenna. “C’mon,” she urged in a
soft tone. “Let’s go see the nurse.”

Jenna held up her almost-healed hand. “It’s
not that bad.”

Principal Greene smiled, shaking her head.
“Can’t let you go without getting it looked at. Might have to call
the ambulance.”

Jenna didn’t want any more attention. “But
I’m fine.”

The principal shook her head again. “They’d
rake me over the coals if I didn’t follow procedure. Now be a good
girl and do what I say, okay?”

Jenna nodded, feeling defeated. She followed
the principal to the station of Nurse Nora, a tall lanky woman, who
still thought beehive hairdos were in style.

The room was very white and very bright,
making Jenna’s eyes hurt. She hesitated at the doorframe, but
Officer Marlowe gave her a gentle push inside.

“
It’s okay,” he
coaxed.

He was trying to make her feel better, but
Nurse Nora with her beaky nose and her array of silver metallic
instruments made Jenna tremble a bit. If she was some great Mage, a
fighter against the forces of darkness, then she was poorly chosen
if Nurse Nora in all her pasty glory could impose such fear.

Eating saltines, she looked
up from her
Modern Nurse
magazine and stared from left to right at Officer
Marlowe, Jenna, and Principal Greene. “Ah, I heard the commotion
outside.” She looked Jenna up and down. “By all the ruckus, I
expected you to be covered in blood, growing claws and horns.” She
gave a slight smile. “I was only half-right.”

Jenna wasn’t warming to Nurse Nora’s humor,
but there were worse ways to be addressed in a high school.

“
Nora,” began Principal
Greene, “please attend to Jenna. She says she’s fine, but you know
the rules.”

Nurse Nora nodded. “Got it.” She patted the
examining table with freshly placed sanitary paper. “Hop on
up.”

Gently, Jenna sat on the paper, but managed
to tear it anyway.

“
All right, let’s take a
look.” With care, Nurse Nora took Jenna’s hand in her bony ones,
scanning the cut that was just a red line. “Let’s clean this off.”
She dabbed hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball and wiped the dried
blood off the wound. There was only a pink scar left from the
attack against the mirror. “Not bad. You were lucky. Let me put
some gauze on it, just to be sure.” After she wrapped Jenna’s hand,
securing it with bandage tape, she said, “Keep this on the whole
day. You don’t want it to get infected. Schools are a
nasty
place.”