Blaze

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

I was out again on Sunday night. Caught a group of five Rooks trying to bust down a door to a house. Took them out quickly. Helena didn't come to school on Monday, and that night I was out yet again. Prevented the mugging of a drunkard.

By now I'd begun to make a name for myself. Witnesses were snapping pictures wherever they could, and I sometime heard cheering. Though I still think most of Castling sees me as an idiot who'd take on the Rooks.

It was a Tuesday, and I was in school early. I'd taken the window seat that Helena would usually have taken. She walked into class with a backpack slung over her shoulders. I waved and smiled. She didn't return the gesture. Instead, she just dropped her bag at a seat across the room and sat down. I decided not to try anything.

During home economics, she avoided me. I ended up partnering a guy called Damian, a semi-rich kid who's family benefitted off what the Rooks were doing, and in turn funded them. Helena partnered with a friend of hers, from String Ensemble.

At the end of the day, I caught up to her in the hallway as she was headed for the Council room. She tried to disappear round a corner but I got her shoulder before she could. She shrugged my hand off and sped up.

"Helena, what's going on?" I matched her pace. "Why're you avoiding me?"

She took a sharp turn and into the girls' toilet. Perfect. Well, she couldn't stay in there forever. I leaned against the grimy wall and waited. Ten minutes later, she came out, not seeing me.

"So are you gonna answer me or not?" she turned, "What happened? I thought we were friends? We're supposed to help each other when we're in trouble."

A pained look flickered across her face. She curled her lips back and squeezed her eyes shut before screaming at me, "You're the problem, okay? So stay away from me!"

I took a step back into the wall. She ran off, wiping tears from her eyes. I was left standing there, trying to figure things out while every pair of eyes in the hallway was on me.

*****

I no longer did this because it was the right thing to do. Or at least not totally. My nights now served as an adrenaline rush for me, a sanctuary from my normal life. When I had my mask on, I was no longer the weak and fragile Chris Macmillan, I was Blaze, the vigilante hero who was up against the Rooks and whoever else might've been doing wrong.

I sprinted along the roof of Castling Stadium. It was the only proper sports facility we had for the public here in the neighborhood. It was easy to get up here, and also to get down, so now it was my new crow's nest. I no longer needed to concentrate to hear things. I could hear everything around me perfectly fine. I could sometimes even here the whispers of gossiping women.

There was a gunshot, then yell. I reacted instantly, springing off the edge of the stadium's tiled roof. I spun my body over in midair, cascading through a mass of branches moments after jumping. I grasped one of them to slow my fall and then let go. I landed like a free-runner, bending my knees then entering a tumble roll to ease the impact on my body. It didn't make a difference anyway, I'd never broken a single bone in my body in my entire life, not even when a thug slammed a metal pipe into my arm on Sunday. But doing the roll made me feel cool.

I got up and began sprinting towards where I heard the gunshot. I darted across an avenue, being awarded several blasts of the horn before I to hit by a sedan. I heard a woman inside the vehicle scream as I rolled over onto the roof of the car and boosted myself off. I latched onto the face of a building and began climbing. Once I was stop the brick building I leapt to the next, then the next, until I heard murmuring in an alleyway.