Incendiary

chapter 2

2

                She looks at me, the streak of scarlet a screaming banner in her dark brown hair, hazel eyes wild eyes dancing with mischief. "Well?" she asks, a grin spreading across her face as her feet tug her forward towards the object of her excitement and joy, as if it is a magnet to her reckless side- which, unfortunately, seems to be the stronger side of her.

                "Well what?" I ask.

                She laughs, "Are you coming?" I shake my head. No. No- I will not do something that's getting her this excited. If she's this excited, then it's gotta be dangerous. Scratch that. It's gotta be one step short of something suicidal. She shakes her head, disappointed, but still smiling. "That's too bad," she says. "You would like it." She says this in a way that makes me think that she's going to get her way. No. Why am I thinking like that? I refuse to do this crazy act-whatever it may be.

                "No, I wouldn't," I counter. Her eyes look crazed. "I'm not going." I say firmly. She rolls her eyes.

                "Nonsense."

                She grabs my wrist and takes off, though she's a great amount smaller than I am, she's got amazing strengh, and I am immediately pulled from my planted in ground position. She laughs and her loose hair tosses and tangles in the wind. I wonder for a moment if this is what she referred to as freedom when we talked a while back. She got a blissful look in her eyes then, as if something far away were calling to her and she couldn't escape to it. I had always wanted to feel that kind of freedom, I suppose, but I was always considered the good child in my family. The one who went to the boarding school and got straight A's and visited my family respectfully and as often as possible in my schedule. I obey. I am careful. I was the child who was expected to succeed because of my innate discipline.

                I doubt that she is the same way. There seems to be a great streak of rebellion in her, actually. A sense of freedom, and the feeling that boarding school wasn't her idea, it was more of a punishment. I've seen her get in trouble several times since I arrived, but she's gotta be smart to pull off those stunts. If I had wanted to, I probably would have been able to do most of them, but a few I just can't seem to understand how she did it.

                She starts to run faster and faster, her whole face lighting up in delight. We finally reach our... destination?

"We have to wait for a few of my friends," she explains. "Take off your jacket, we can come get it later," she says, unzipping her own. I do the same and when I look up, she looks much different. The jacket she was wearing was long, but now it reveals the baggy cargo pants she wears,  but complimenting ever curve in her body, and the shirt that my mother would never even allow my sister to qualify as a shirt. It rises up a few inches past her bellybutton, revealing a tattoo inching along the curve in her abdomen, words that I cannot read in this dark lighting. She isn't paying attention to me, thank goodness, while I catch my breath. She runs a hand through her hair and looks around anxiously for the people we must be meeting. I wonder how she isnt' cold, but then it occurs to me that it seems like fire must run through her normally, the fire that must come naturally with a  free and wild spirit like hers.

                "Oh, and take your glasses off," she says, "put them with your jacket." I follow her orders, but the dark world goes even fuzzier than with the haze of night.

                "But I can't see," I say, squinting into the oblivion that lies before me.

                "Drink this," she says, taking a vile from her back pocket, so small that the flask is just a line in her hand. I think the word drugs over and over in my mind nervously. So many things that poison could do to me- my nervous system going into overdrive, unable to control my thoughts, I... "don't get your glasses in a twist," she says. "It will fix your vision, for a whole week. I can give you more if you want it." I hesitantly take the vile and the liquid tastes sharp and sour on my tongue. I blink, and when I open my eyes, the world is sharper than it was with my glasses on.