Fire Scarred *Un-Edited Version*

Chapter Four

I sank down in front of my vanity. I saw myself in the mirror seemingly ghostly pale. "Figures," I mumbled under my breath. Slowly, I began running my brush through my damp hair. The water glistening on it made it seem darker, a dirty blond, rather than its normal pale gold. I hummed an old lullaby to myself softly. I closed my eyes and whispered the foreign words. Never could I recall where I had learned that song, but still I knew it by heart. The non-English words were completely lost on me. I couldn't even imagine what they were saying. My eyes closed, I continued singing. "You have a beautiful voice." I whirled around as my scream rippled through the room. Leo stood up from my desk chair and started to approach me. Any chance I would've given him earlier to try to explain diminished. My hand flew to my chest, felling my rapid heart beat. "Get out! You have no right to be sneaking into my room! Leave!" He put his hands up defensively in front of him. "Calm down. I just need to talk to you." "Leave!" I pointed to the door. "Now. Or I'll call for my parents." "Cora, you know as well as I do that if your parents were here, they'd have come in here by now." Heat rose to my cheeks. Anger roared inside of me. "Get out!" I stomped over and slapped Leo's face. He wasn't even fazed, which only made me even more angry. "Never, ever sneak into my room again! Do you understand that?!" "Cora, we really have to talk." He was deadly calm. I jabbed in the direction of the door again. "Go! I've had enough of you today! Out!" "Fine. But, please, we really need to talk." "Leave!" But before the word fully left my mouth, a gush of air from nowhere blew by, taking Leo with it. "Freak of nature," I grumbled, falling back against my bed. My head pounded against my skull. He was watching me! I couldn't believe it, yet at the same time I could. I felt so violated. Was he just waiting for me to take off my towel and get dressed? I pulled my knees up to my chest and slowly began to rock back and forth. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, I began to cry. I was curled up in bed later that night when Mom and Dad came in to yell at me for cutting class. At that moment, they then also decided to notice my eyes. Their anger instantly melted into horror. Through all the commotion they didn't seem to notice my hoarse throat or swollen red eyes. That I was silently grateful for. Once Mom and Dad complied to their parental duties of grounding me for a week they left me to my sleep. I settled down under my covers. My brain was going a mile a minute analyzing every detail of every part of the day. I did that every night before I fell asleep. I had once told Noah about my doing that. He had said it sounded completely exhausting, which I kind of thought was the point. Tire out your mind so you fall asleep better. He didn't understand. In the end we agreed to disagree. My eyelids began to feel heavy as sleep crept into my mind. I could feel the dream creeping in. Slowly at first, then all in a rush once I was completely under. I was running from something. The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was strong, heavy, intoxicating. Burning. It seemed to pull me in, surround me until all hopes of breathing once again vanished. After smell came feeling. This dream was always the same starting with one agonizing sense and adding others. My dream would never get the chance to end. I'd always wake up before it got the chance. The feel of tiny pinpricks covered my body, slowly turning into shots of electricity. My body was burning hot, yet I was shivering. I felt paralyzed as the searing pain continued. Then came my hearing. My cries of agony, outsiders' screams, crackling of fire. My sight was last. All I could see was the fire surrounding me, creeping all over me, clinging to me. My throat burned. My eyes were ejecting tears. The fire finally caught onto my hair, bringing me down. I screamed. My bedroom door banged open and Mom was there. Her fangs were drawn out. She looked ready to pounce. I sat up in my bed, sweat dripping off my face. Then I noticed her tears. "Mom. It was just a dream. Go back to bed." I felt odd having to comfort her when I was the one with the dream. My mom leaned against the door, then slid to the floor. Her fangs retracted into her mouth with a sickening popping noise. Her tears began to fall more heavily. I slipped out of my bed and crawled across the floor to her. Wrapping my arms around her, I asked, "Mom, are you okay?" She wiped at her eyes and tried to smile. "Yes, I'm fine. I was just a little scared." "Why?" My dad appeared at the door then and reached out his hands to help me and Mom up. We stumbled to our feet. Dad looked at his watch with a sigh. "It's two in the morning. We should all get back to sleep." "Okay." I watched as Dad tucked Mom under his arm and led her away. I crawled back into bed to stare at the ceiling for about four hours until it was an appropriate time to get up. "Hey," Noah said plopping down in the seat next to me. "Decided you'd show up for classes today?" "I had nothing better to do." I hadn't gone to any of my classes or barely any of the meals in the Hall for two weeks or so. It'd been about three weeks sense the Incident, as everyone liked to call it, and finally things were beginning to return to normal. I did nothing magical and didn't have any more run ins with monsters so we all kind of started to pretend like it was just a fluke, or plain never happened. Leo slowly began to move to the back of my mind where I barely thought of him, while I slowly began to emerge from my self-pity coma and my anti-social shell. Sometimes, I thought, I'd end up even more outgoing than I started. Goodness knows why. We were in English class, a class everyone took. We all had to take the same literature and math classes. All the magical students took a history class over their species's history while I had U.S. history. They also took different sciences than I did. In their gym classes they were also separated into their species and either worked out or learned how to wield their powers to protect themselves. I, on the other hand, just had to jog around the Hall six times. While I had art and music, they had a certain classes where they learned more how to use and control their abilities. Basically, I had a very different schedule from everyone else. Even the revelation of my own mysterious powers didn't change that. I continued on with my regular classes as normal. "Well, I'm glad you came. Class is no fun without you." "If you say so," I muttered as Raylynn and Josh approached. "Hey, guys," Noah said. "Where's Georgia?" "Sick," Ray relayed the state of health of her cabin-mate. "Flu or something." "That's great," I mumbled in all my sarcastic glory. "Well someone's in a great mood." I glared at Josh. "So you now suddenly think going to school is fun?" He straddled the seat in front of me. "As long as I get to see you." He tapped the tip of my nose. I squirmed away. "Uh, okay?" We all fell silent. Then Raylynn let out a low whistled and softly said in a sing-song voice, "Awkward." Noah was the first to snicker, but I was the first to full blown laugh. In the end, both boys were rolling on the floor, tears streaming down their faces; Raylynn and I checked our mascara, praying it wasn't smeared across our cheeks.