THE FIRE SAGA

SPARK 7 - ALTERATION

Get up, Flame Thrower," chirps an annoying voice. "You reek!"

My clothes are sticking to me, where I soaked them in the night. I was afraid to get up and open the window, fearing the slightest energy exertion would further stoke the fire. I fell asleep counting the blue topaz gradients in the paint covering my walls.

I'm far too tired to care how my smell affects her. Okay, that's not totally true. I care enough to delight in her misery when she lets out a disgusted groan. "Go away," I grumble.

"Nope." She yeets my blankets.

Monster, Superego commiserates.

"Why are you here?" I cover my face with a pillow. To have her in my room, badgering me into consciousness, earns Declan a new level of respect from me. How did he put up with this for three hundred years?

There has been radio silence from the Keanes since the big Friday night reveal. What did I do all weekend? Same old, same old. I spent more time than was warranted running disaster scenarios. Did they leave me alone to absorb the information? Did they run off to avoid the potentially unavoidable explosion? If they didn't run, would Tally and Declan continue ignoring me, as was the previous dynamic? Would we have secret meetings behind the bleachers? Would I show up at school only to discover the whole thing was a figment of my imagination? I drew one grim conclusion. The additional solo processing wasn't helpful. Also, I'm painfully aware now that I've neglected to plan for the most disastrous scenario. A Tally wakeup call.

She snatches the pillow. "I'm saving you."

"Saving me from what?" I hiss.

"First, I'm saving you from your stench. Second, I'm saving you from your poor fashion sense. I can't have my newest recruit looking unkempt."

"I'm not your newest recruit," I argue, refusing to budge from my cozy bed.

"This is for my own good," she says enthusiastically, pinching her nose with one hand and dragging me to my bathroom with the other. "Shower. Now."

She shuts the door in my face before I can tell her where to shove her efforts. Hint: it's nowhere nice.

The steady stream rouses me. I like my showers hot, and steam quickly fills the bathroom. The unfortunate side effect of using such hot water is after barely ten minutes, the Arctic blast ejects me from my sanctuary.

Wrapping my body in one towel and my auburn hair in another, I stand in the bathroom contemplating my escape route. The heat fog will help. The fashion police are probably still in my bedroom. I imagine Tally replicated herself for company. Unlike me, she despises being alone.

I map a decent course exiting the small bathroom window, then down the lattice covering the side of the house, but Tally doesn't give me time to flee. She bursts in, grabs my hand, and yanks me back into my bedroom.

She inhales deeply. "That'll do."

I sigh. "Let me guess, you don't sweat?"

She screws up her nose in disgust. "We don't expel anything."

"Heh. That's a can."

"Your attempt to distract me won't work," she states haughtily.

Glowering, I head to my closet.

She intercepts me. "I warned you about my designer role. We can do this the easy way...or the hard way." Her brow lift tells me she hopes I pick the hard way.

My natural emotional impulse is to resist, but I don't have the mental fortitude to argue, so I alter my perception with the same tenacity Tally is altering my appearance. My old masking method wasn't very successful. They found me, didn't they? Trying something new can't hurt, can it?