Flame Touch

Chapter 12-Knox

Taris snorted again at our next English question.

“Why do you keep doing that?!” I asked clearly annoyed. Somehow, he had gotten into all my classes and we were partnered up for a Midsummer Night’s Dream “scavenger hunt”. I was still pretty shaken up by his entrance today, but I was determined not to show it. Taris gave me a questioning glance.

“Why do you keep snorting at the questions?”

Taris shrugged his shoulders, “They’re stupid questions.” He looked at the paper again, “Your teacher has very good handwriting. How is it that all her letters look exactly the same,” he glanced at a nearby group, “And all of the papers look the same?” I must have been giving him a ‘you-are-kidding-right?’ look, because he insisted that he was serious. I rolled my eyes, “The papers are printed from the computer.” His eyes lit up, “Ah yes! I’ve heard of those! I’ve heard they are fantastic!”

I gave him a blank stare. Has he been locked up in a hospital room for too long? I thought, the doubt that he wasn’t who he said came back to me.

“Anyway, why do you keep snorting at the questions? I’d like a specific answer this time.” I folded my arms. He laughed and said, “It’s funny because the name given to the goblin creature in the story is false.”

“What?”

“They call him Puck or Robin Goodfellow, but his real name was Zelena Cetka which is green brush in Croatian. The name must have come from the many cirtus jokes he played on the ladies of that time, who puckered their lips whenever they ate something with just a hint of lime so that their features would become very distraught for a matter of minutes.” He said, all the while his face was perfectly straight and his voice didn’t waver.

“You don’t have to go out of your way to confuse me you know. You act like you know the characters in a story. A made-up story. By Shakespeare. A story-teller.” I said also keeping my face perfectly straight. Taris just shook his head like I was a silly toddler and said, “Ah yes, Shakespeare. He was one of our most renowned journalists. He took all that he saw and made them into plays. Very talented.” He nodded his head slowly and I was forced to look back down at the paper and not look up again until we had finished all the questions.

The bell rang for lunch and I happily jumped out of the classroom, eager to get away from Shakespeare and from Taris.

“Heeeeeyyyyy Sunnyyyyy!” I yelled to my best friend after I bought my lunch and sat down next to her. Taris had thankfully gone on to the next table to, and I quote, “Learn what a %$@#!&” meant because he had heard some kid say it to his friend.

Melody’s hair was wet and I almost waved her over when I stopped myself. She was laughing with a guy. Not just any guy. Semba. The same guy who copied my essay without me knowing it and I got in trouble. It was one of my best essays, but since I usually don’t do good work and he does, the teacher assumed I cheated. I tried to make him fess up, but he called me a snit.

Who the hell uses the word snit anyway?

Anyway, they were laughing and having a grand ole time and as I watched them I almost crushed the tuna wrap I was eating in my hands. “Ain’t they having fun?” I asked Sunny, who was now observing the tuna that spilt onto the table. She frowned, “That won’t be a good relationship.” she said matter-of-factly. I nodded my head, “Yeah! How dare she talk to him! She knows what he did!” my tuna drops turned into a stream around the wrap, but Sunny shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I can, like, see blackness around the two of them. Is that weird?”

I looked at her in disbelief and then a couple things happened at once.

We both heard a really high pitched scream. The voice was feminine and seemed to be addressing Sunny, but I couldn’t figure out what she was saying.

A bunch of white and black lights danced around Sunny’s right leg and disappeared.

Sunny screamed and I’m pretty sure I screamed too.

And then it stopped.

Yeah, that’s right, just like that the chaos stopped, and no one was looking at us like we’d lost our marbles. Sunny was as pale as a tan person could be and I stared at her leg. A strange symbol was inscribed on it and it was glowing red.

“What are you looking at?” she asked in a quivering voice that sounded excited and scared at the same time. “Look at your leg!” I said with some degree of excitement in my voice too.  Her eyes widened, but she did what I asked and gasped pretty audibly at the sight. I pulled up my sleeve to where my arrow mark was and showed it to her. “You got a tattoo?” she gasped, her breath still uneven. I rolled my eyes, “No you dimwit, the same thing that happened to you happened to me. Well, not the exact same thing. Actually it was pretty different.” And then I told her everything from what happened that night up until that moment.

“I knew there was something different about him. He had a really white light around him that got brighter when he was close to you. At first I thought it was because you two were related, but now-” I cut her off, “Wait! Does that mean Semba is a bad guy? Like, a really bad guy because you see a black light around him?” I asked hurriedly, but she frowned and shook her head, “I think it’s just the relationship that’s bad. I mean, I don’t know how I know. I just do.” She said stumbling on her words. She looked as confused as I felt and just then, I saw Taris coming to us with a very dopey grin on his face.

“Well! It seems your friend finally realized her colony eh?” he smiled at Sunny. Both Melody and Semba came running over. “THE HELL WAS THAT?!?!?! WHY ISNT EVERYONE IN A PANIC HOLY CRAP MODE RIGHT NOW?!?!?!” she yelled as people were looking at her as if she was in a panic-holy-crap-mode.

Taris looked at her in contempt, and then shifted his gaze over to Semba, “What are you doing hanging around a fish?” he asked with annoyance in his voice. Semba frowned, “You’re such an old-timer.”

“No, I just have a good memory.” Taris retorted through gritted teeth.

The three of us just looked at the two of them with blank confusion on our faces.

“What happened to panic-holy-crap mode?” Sunny wondered out loud, and we all turned to look at her. Taris opened his mouth to respond, but at that point, all hell broke loose.

Not that that was common…yet.