Forever Inflamed (Working title)

Chapter One

Izzy jolted awake, gasping for air. It had been nine years since the incident, yet for every night since high school started, she had dreamt about it. She wiped the tears from her eyes and grabbed her phone to check the time. 7:17. Her bus left in fifteen minutes.

Oh shit, she thought, her eyes widening.

She threw her blankets aside and rolled out of bed. She rummaged through her drawers for something to wear, leaving them half open when she had what she needed. She settled on dark blue high-waisted jeans and a Guns N' Roses t-shirt. She grabbed a hair elastic and threw her hair into a ponytail while she ran to the stairs. Then she remembered her other duties upstairs, and did a one-eighty towards her bathroom.

As she quickly brushed her teeth, she looked at her phone again. She only had ten minutes left. The stop was about a five minute walk from her house, so she knew she had to hurry. She snatched ten bucks from her dresser and gathered up the scattered pages of homework on her desk, throwing them into her binder. She grabbed it and ran to the stairs, being careful to not wake up anybody else in the house.

Apparently she was causing quite the ruckus, because Daniel was rubbing his eyes in the door frame of his shared room when Izzy passed.

"Isabelle, why are you awake?" he said groggily.

"I've got school, and I'm late. Go back to bed."

"Okay," he replied, turning around and flopping back on his bed.

Daniel was seven years old, meaning he didn't have to wake up for another hour. Izzy's other half-sibling, six-year old Ellie, was taking full advantage of that extra hour and was still sleeping soundly, while Izzy, on the other hand, was now behind schedule.

She thrust her binder and money in her backpack and swung it over her shoulders, leaving the door unlocked, out of sheer need for time. Three minutes. Izzy ran for about fifteen seconds before she got tired and had to slow to a jog, briskly walking the rest of the way. Soon the mass of students was in sight. However, so was the bus, which was approaching quickly. She ran over, and got in line just as the last kid was climbing the stairs.

She followed him on, breathlessly saying, "Good morning," to the bus driver.

He nodded back at her, and she went to find a spot on the bus. She located her best friend, Alex, sitting by herself, so Izzy plopped next to her.

"You look like shit," Alex said, glancing up from her phone.

"I slept in again."

"More nightmares?"

"What's new."

"Do you think you should see somebody about that?"

"Come on, you know I already do."

"Sorry, sorry," Alex responded sincerely.

They sat in silence for a while, and Izzy thought about her biweekly therapy sessions. She always delved into her dreams, explaining and re-imagining them. Every time it was awful, as images of fire and darkness flashed in her mind while the doctor tried to find deeper meaning and help her move on. Nothing seemed to be working though, as the nightmares were consistent and always the same.

"Somers!"

Izzy snapped out of her trance at the mention of her last name.

"What?"

"I was asking - are we were still on for tomorrow?" Alex said. " You know I can't study alone."

"Oh yeah, for sure."

Izzy didn't need to study for their math test, she understood everything that was taught and did her homework, but she knew math wasn't Alex's strongest suit, so she always offered to keep her company and help out if she was needed.

They talked about class and crushes for the remainder of the bus ride. It was only October, but twelfth grade had already kicked off, and classes were starting to get heavy. They both had a math test in two days, as well as a history essay due in the next week. Besides the work, Alex was busy being enamoured with some of the girls they saw around. There was nothing she liked more than a cutie in a sweater.

Izzy missed being single, and found it humorous to watch Alex go through her stages of liking a girl, being starstruck for a week, then moving on. Sometimes the week ended in a hookup, and on even rarer occasions the hookup stuck around for a couple weeks, but Alex had never actually been in a committed relationship. She wasn't shy about her sexuality, but as Izzy had often noticed, she was very picky, and always found something about possible partners that she thought wasn't good enough. However, Izzy got a lot of interesting stories out of it.

When they got to the school the girls split paths. Alex went to her locker, and Izzy went to the library to find her boyfriend.

Like always, Jeremy was sitting at a table in the back of the library, his brow furrowed as he worked on his laptop. Izzy walked over to him and sat in the empty seat beside him. She sat in silence as he finished his train of thought and finally turned to her.

"Good morning," he said, giving her a quick kiss.

She kissed him back and he turned back to his computer.

"Whatcha working on today?" Izzy asked, uninterested.

"Right now I'm finishing off my accounting lesson, and after that I'm going to get started on my bio lab."

"Wait when is that due?"

"Tomorrow."

"That was this lab? I thought you said you were gonna finish that last night!"

"Babe, you know I get caught up in my music."

Izzy remembered the countless hours that Jeremy sat in his room programming different beats and tunes, wearing those hideous over-sized headphones.

"Can you still see me tonight? This was one of the only free nights you had. We were gonna stay in remember? Watch a movie, eat some popcorn," Izzy slid closer to him. "Maybe some other stuff..."

"Izzy you know I want to, but I just can't tonight. I've got too much homework."

Izzy stood up, exasperated.

"Fine. Just don't miss Friday."

She paced out of the library in short, hard steps.

"I love you!" Jeremy yelled after her.

Izzy scowled and kept walking, psyching herself up for what she knew was going to be an awful day.