Incendiary

chapter 3

3

                I wake to the buzz of an alarm clock. I look down- I’m late. I realize I’m still in my clothes, and with my eyes barely open, I grope around for clean clothes. I walk out the door half awake and run across campus, a book tucked under my arm, to my class across the street.

                I feel the tug of sleep on my eyes, and rub one of them, realizing my glasses aren’t there. I open my eyes wider- and realize that everything is still in crystal clear vision from the vial Rose gave me. But then I realize something else- my entire world is only in black and white.

                My eyes grow wide and I silently kick myself for taking something without knowing how it would affect me. I am relieved to find Rose sitting in a seat- early, very much unlike herself. Her eyes are awake and bright and I drop in the seat next to her.

                “Those drops you gave me are faulty,” I complain, “I can only see in black and white.”

                She raises her eyebrows but doesn’t seem too surprised. She leans in close to me, dark eyes scanning my own. “Imagine me with the most vivid eye color you can think of.” She stares at me, and I stare into her eyes, willing myself to see a violent shade of fuscia.

                For a moment, I do, and then their normal brown fills in and the color of the world slowly melts and dissolves from its shades of gray into the colors that really surround me.

                “How did that work?” I ask, rubbing my eyes.

                She leans back in her chair, looking satisfied. “No one’s quite sure why,” she says. “Honestly, I didn’t know if it was going to work for you. Jason told me to do the same thing when it happened to me.” I try to imagine her with glasses, but I can’t seem to do it.

                “Alex?” she asks, and I barely hear her over the bell ringing, signaling for everyone in the halls to break into a dead sprint.

                I look towards her and raise my eyebrows.

                “What color did you see?”

                “Fuscia,” I say a little sheepishly. “Why?”

                “Just wondering. I hear those kind of things say a lot about people, little things like that.”

                “Oh?” I ask, wondering what anyone could possibly tell about me through my seeing fuscia as the most vibrant color I could see. “What color did you see?” I ask her.

                “Orange,” she says simply. “But not just any orange, it was the brightest color you could ever think of- like fire, or a crazy sunset.” I smile a bit, and she turns to face the teacher. I guess it does make sense, that a color could describe someone. Rose imagining a color like that, it seems to describe her well; vibrant, strong, almost loud in a way.

                Then what the heck does fuscia say about me?

                I bite my lip, and turn to face the front of the room, my fingers absently flipping through the pages of the book on my desk.

+++

                I shuffle sleepily through the hall of my dorm, passing through the hallway filled with windows. I drag the back of my hand across my mouth, stray water from the fountain leaving my lips. I don’t even know what time it is, but I couldn’t forget the thirst and fall back asleep.

                I see a flash of light streaming in through one of the windows- bright and orange and red. Just a flickering, a swirl of light. I take a closer look, squinting through the layer of sleep and slight fog from the contrast of the cold air of late fall and the warmth of the hallway covering the window.

                I see a girl, but I can’t figure out what’s going on.

                Then I see it’s Rose.

                Rose and fire? This can’t be good.

                I lean a little closer  to the window. Rose is standing there, her finger tips slightly… glowing? She looks like she’s playing with the fire, one long flame moving around and around her in a circle. But, there’s nothing attached to the fire, she’s controlling it completely.

                This must be some sort of illusion.

                I walk down the hallway, confused, and stumble towards the door. We’re not supposed to be outside afterhours, but I can’t just go back to bed after seeing this.

                The cold hits me first, wind swirling around me. I turn to the side, and walk down the slight decline of the hill to where Rose is. She smiles and laughs a laugh of pure delight. What is going on? No human can do things like that! My mind swirls. She closes her hands, which were spread out with her fingers extended, and the long, swirling flame goes out. At the same time, her smile is extinguished when she sees me.

                Suddenly, fear swells up inside me. Who knows what else she can do? My feet refuse to move for only a moment, until I can finally get myself to propel back towards the dorm. I hear her uneven footsteps starting from slow to fast, approaching much more rapidly than I am moving.

                I don’t turn around, but I don’t have to. I feel the singe of her burning fingertips on my skin.

                “What were you doing, watching me, huh?” she asks angrily, her bare arms flexing slightly as she holds on to my arms tightly.

                “What was THAT?” I ask, pointing to where she was just standing.

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