Burned Ones

Chapter 14

Annabeth.
15 years old.

"Stop looking at me like that."

Finn turned his head to face forward.

It wouldn't last for long. We had been walking for about fifteen minutes now and every few seconds he would glance over at me. I tried to ignore it, it was becoming difficult.

Right on schedule, he looked over again, ducking his head down toward me and quietly asked, "Are you okay?"

I sighed, hands trembling as I pulled the back edges of my tank top away from my body. It wasn't a tight tank top but I hadn't let Cameron bandage up anything back at the house so if my top touched it, it sent a shrill sting through my body on top of what I was already experiencing. I knew I should've let Cameron take care of it but I couldn't breath or think. The only thought going through my head was to leave. It felt like I was burning from the inside out, yet at the same time, it would get so intense I wondered if I was just imagining the pain, if it was all in my head because it would go numb for just one second. I had unsnapped my bra before we even got out of the Casey house but it was still technically on. I couldn't tell if Finn noticed or not but he didn't say anything.

Cameron had left the house with us but he went a different direction after I told him to go at least five times. We didn't have phones that could look up anything and the burner phone that I had didn't have internet access. Our dads didn't tell us how to take care of the burns and we weren't exactly in the mood to go asking them for help. It seemed demoralizing in a way. So while Finn led me to his place, Cameron went in search of the nearest pharmacy or doctor where he wouldn't get snitched on to our dads to figure out how to care for the burns and what supplies, other than what Finn was supplying, to get. I had gotten burned once or twice in the past by accident, mostly through cooking something, and I knew how to handle those burns but the mess on my back was much worse.

Finn looked away. We went one block. He turned. Asked, "So. You're in a gang? That's new."

I didn't answer.

He leaned his upper body closer to me as we walked and I would've leaned back if my back hadn't hurt so much. "You ever kill a guy?"

"You know I'm fifteen, right?" I asked, but my voice was much wobblier than I would've liked as my teeth fought between staying clenched and chattering with pain.

"So?" he asked, like how old I was held no reason for whether or not I was a murderer.

"So," I began slowly, trying to figure out how much it would take to scare him away. Cameron's friend or not, this was not a life he needed to be involved in. Even if he was offering me a reason to be out of the house and medicine. I went with the truth. "I've thought about it."

He pursed his lips to the side and I could practically see the cogs in his head thinking before he asked, "Could you?"

I looked down at the flowers he still had in the hand furthest from me. "It's messy. I don't like it."

"You know what I'm realizing?" Finn asked me, swinging the flowers from side to side. They hit his thigh and a few of the petals fell off, fluttering behind us. The hand that was closest to me stayed strangely still. "I should probably be a lot more frightened of you."

"That's the smartest thing I've heard you say yet," I admitted.

I had told him we were in a gang which probably wasn't the best thing to blurt out but my mind had been screaming at me and I wasn't thinking. Yet, his only response was to offer burn cream to us instead of running. Finn was an enigma wrapped in a smile and I kind of liked it. And that was what was missing, his smile. I hadn't seen it once today and it brought me back instantly to last night as he stood beside me threatening the Dacostas that he didn't know were Dacostas, with that evil look on his face. And I hadn't seen his face today but I'd seen his shoes standing beside me as he blocked my dad from getting near to me.