Page 13 of Envious Of Fire
After all, if something like Kyle can exist, why not women imbued with special powers?
“No,” Kyle finally answers. “I don’t think you’re foolish at all. Not one bit.”
Cade’s leg bounces in place below the desk as she gnaws on her lip, thinking. Then she leans forward. “Kyle, I swear to you, I’m not going crazy, but … I had a dream last night, and … and I think you were in it.”
“Really?”
“Come closer, sit down.”
He does, taking a seat in a folding chair by the desk.
She swallows, gathers her thoughts, appears to change her mind, then decides at once to go for it. “I dreamt of a burning house with a family inside.”
Kyle stares at her.
The air leaves the room.
As if an enormous living flame just took a great big breath to feed itself.
The sound of crackling wood and shattering glass.
“And in that house,” Cade continues, “I heard … I heard a shout. Like a boy’s shout. I felt like I was right in the middle of it, in the middle of that house. The boy cried out. He was on the floor, and … I saw him. He was …” Her face scrunches up in discomfort. “He was calling what sounded like your name.”
“My name?”
“Yourrealname. ‘Kyle … Kyle …’ That’s what he said. He had your eyes, too. I thought it was you at first … a teenage version of you, until I realized it was your name he was calling. Does that …” She winces. “Does that mean anything to you?”
It seems to be an everyday thing lately. Remembering that painful night when his second life had been thrust into motion.When Tristan took control of it all, took him away from his life and ran into the eternal night. What did Kyle’s last full sunrise look like that final evening he was human? Does he remember the color? Did he even bother to watch it? All of it fades away into that terrible night like a dream of his own. The only color that remains is the blood red that covered his kitchen.
His dead parents … and dead little brother.
Tristan said he took care of it. Burned everything down. It was all relayed to Kyle secondhand in newspaper articles. It was a small enough story that it only seemed to make local news. If there was much else to say about it, Tristan spared him. Kyle was already a mess about everything else. Why would he need to ask about the fire?
He still thinks about his letterman jacket in the dumpster. What items he might have left behind at school. What really happened to Brock in that locker room.
“Oh, your face … I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”
Kyle snaps out of it. “No, no,” he quickly insists. “It’s fine.”
“You totally went somewhere just now.” She reaches for his hand across the desk, takes it, squeezes. “Hey, I’m just a lonely person with too much time on her hands, who has to make up things to occupy her time. I’m no damned magical forsooth or, or, or psychic medium, whatever I’m deluding myself into … please just forget it, forget everything I said.”
“Cade …”
“I have an imagination. That’s what my gran told me, every morning when I’d share my dreams … And look at me now! Nothing much changes. Just forget what I said.” She lets go of his hand and instantly starts closing up books and stuffing away her notes. “Maybe she made it all up, too, sending me on this wild goose chase for who-knows-what …”
Kyle puts a hand on top of Cade’s, stopping her.
She looks up.
Kyle’s mind remains transported as he speaks. “There was this old psychic lady I went to when I was a kid. I was thirteen. It was Halloween. Was supposed to be taking my little brother out trick-or-treating, but we went there instead with a buddy of mine—Brock, the guy you met here a few nights ago.”
“Oh, that loud, obnoxious drunk?”
Kyle smiles wryly. “The psychic … she told me I would live a long, long life. She told my little brother he would live long, too. She said my buddy would have a wife, a son, and a best friend … and abandon them all.”
Cade makes a face. “She said all of this dark shit to a bunch of kids? What kind of fucked up fortune teller is this?”
“Two of those three things came true. I’m living a long life. Brock … has a wife and son, and if I can be so bold as to assume I’m the best friend … then yes, he’s abandoned them all. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but I’m telling you, Ifeltsomething from her. I still wonder if she might’ve been real. What I’m saying, Cade, is you shouldn’t be so quick to doubt stuff we can’t explain. Can we explain the magic of the stars? Of gravity? Of life itself?”
