Burning from the Inside (3/4)

Esmé's face is full of dread now. He only manages to hold his eye contact with me for a few seconds before his gaze drops away. "It wasn't with fire. And it wasn't on purpose. It wasn't even really me, not directly. But it was my fault. And it happened because I can hear and feel things I shouldn't be able to."

He looks back up at me. "But I can control it now. And I think you could learn to control yours, too. Let me help you."

"What makes you think you can?"

"I don't want you to live with what I live with. Let me try."

"What is it you think you can do?" What if he's not like me at all? It could be schizophrenia or something. God, I hope not. Poor Esmé.

"To find out, I'd have to see you do it again."

"Seriously?" I don't want to doubt him. But everything I'm (not) hearing out of his mouth tells me I should.

Esmé nods. "Everything has another side to it. Other than the physical, I mean. I don't know what to call it. Occultists call it all kinds of things, but different ones use the same words for different things. If they even know what they're talking about. Anyway, I'm more sensitive to it than most people. What I want to look for is whether it's different from other flames. Make sense?"

I want to say 'no,' but maybe all the time around Eddie and Charlie and Hector and the rest is rubbing off on me. "It all burns the same, doesn't it?"

Esmé takes my hand in his, like when he reads people's palms, except he's looking at the wrong side of my hand. "Think of it like a fever. A fever can have all kinds of underlying causes. And which one it is determines how you treat it."

I guess if there was any safe place to show someone, it would be here. Even a boat in a lake or an ocean wouldn't be as safe, especially if it took fuel. But can I do it on command? What if I can't, and Esmé thinks I'm lying or laughs at me or—

Ugh. My face is heating up. Bet my hands are, too.

Esmé lets me go and crouches down to pick up a twig. Hands it to me.

"Stand back," I murmur. That's going to make me feel incredibly stupid in a minute. I'm probably not going to make the twig explode or anything. But all I care about right now is making sure I don't hurt anyone.

"If I stand back, it'll be harder to tell if the fire's different."

I close my eyes to stop myself from rolling them, or glaring at him. And I focus on the twig in my hand. For several long, painful seconds, it feels like nothing's happening. Or I can't tell because my hands are so hot.

Esmé sucks his breath in through his nose. Did I hurt him? Oh god please don't let me have hurt him—

Somehow, I've managed to not jump a foot in the air and fling the twig away. Just opened my eyes. The twig is indeed on fire, though my hand only feels a little warmer than before.

"Can you make it any bigger?" Esmé asks.

"Are you kidding me? That's—" The flame swells so quickly we both have to lean back. It's at least ten times bigger than it was before. Which wasn't all that big, actually. Maybe about the size of a typical candle flame.

Esmé sticks his finger out like he's trying to poke it. Or maybe pet it, like it's some kind of small animal.

"What are you doing?"

"Don't burn me," he whispers.

"Don't burn yourself!" But even as I speak, I can see the flame curving to avoid the tip of his finger. That has to be a coincidence. Some sort of weird law of physics or something.

Slowly, he sweeps his finger around the flame, shaping it along with his movements. It goes back to his usual shape behind it, once his finger is out of the way.

No. I don't believe what I'm seeing. The more he moves his finger back over the different spots, the more it stays in place. It's egg-shaped now. No, almost perfectly round. "How are you doing that?"

I can't place the smile on his face. I don't think I've seen it before. No, maybe traces of it, when he looks at Eddie. Or at least, looked. "Happy" is too vague. Touched, maybe. That might be it.

"I'm not," he says. "You don't want to hurt me." He smiles up at me angelically. For a second, it's all I can see. Then I notice him sticking his finger straight into the flame.

"Stop!" I jerk my whole body away from him and hit the tree behind me. I took the flame with me, but not before I saw what he was probably hoping I'd see.

The flame made a hole around his finger.

He lifts his chin and blows the flame out like it's the easiest thing in the world. "Good news: that's coming from you, September."

"How is that good news?"

"Well, it could have been coming from something else. Something that had latched on to you. And if that had been the case, I probably would have gotten burned."

"Why would you take a risk like that?"

Esmé shakes his head. "I wasn't. It felt like you."

"How?"

He shrugs. "Like I said. Everything has another aspect to it. Including people. That flame felt the same as you."

"So did it—is it different from other flames? Or is it just that I feel the same as fire?"

"Bit of both, I think."

I sigh, and more tension falls with my shoulders. Why am I still holding the twig?

Esmé looks at it like he's thinking of picking it back up after I throw it on a snow bank.

<<>>

Esmé is at least as good as Eddie at getting into places he's not meant to be. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if she learned it from him. She's a year younger, after all.

It's March. We're in a spare room on the fourth floor of Moore Hall. Being the first dormitory built for Florian Academy (Esmé has a habit of fact-dropping that wasn't exactly apparent last semester, but came as no surprise this one), it's had the most time to deteriorate. Which makes it the least comfortable, especially when you're directly under the leaky roof. And so, at least half the rooms up here are unoccupied. That doesn't make it the most ideal place to practice controlling my fire, but the privacy makes it the best available.

I can make little tongues of flame crawl over my fingers at will, now, without any extra fuel. Not directly out of my skin or anything. They don't burn me. But sometimes they singe my clothes. That's where Esmé comes in.

The bed has a mattress with no bedding, which would still burn faster than the floor if I lost control, so we always sit on the floor, facing each other. Esmé takes off his blazer and rolls the cuffs of his sleeve up a couple times, just enough to make sure they aren't loose. I take his hands in mine, barely holding them. And I make flames on top of his bare wrists. When I push them up his arms, they sit about two inches above his sleeves.

I can still feel him trembling every time I do it. Not as much as the first couple times, though it was hard to tell then how much of the shaking was me and how much was him. But he still gets that awestruck look on his face. And I can't get enough of it.

Next, I mold the flames into little marble-sized balls and move them up and down his arms. At first, Esmé had to do that with his fingers. Then I learned to imitate him. Now I can do it with my mind. The most I've been able to control at once is three.

“Try doing it on your arms,” he says after I let go.

He thinks the reason I don't burn his sleeves is because I worry more about hurting him than me, and if I practice enough on him, I'll eventually learn to control it better on myself. I'm starting to think it's because the flames still somehow originate from my body, so if I'm trying to manifest them from a spot that's covered in fabric, they have to go through it. But when they're on Esmé, it's coming from my hands. But then again, my arms are never farther away from my hands than Esmé's, so in that case I could still learn to make the flame come from my hands and go over my sleeves.

I hold my hand out, palm up, and it only takes a second for more flames to come up. I think keeping them round helps me think of it like rolling a ball. At any rate, it's the only way I've had any success so far.

Ever so slowly, I move the ball of flame towards my wrist. Over my shirt cuff. So far, so good. Then the bottom of it starts to flatten out—

Esmé presses his palm over it, covering the flame completely. It goes out before it can burn him or my shirt. I can't get over how he can just do things like that, especially without hesitating. Sometimes I wonder if it's more that he doesn't care if he gets hurt than that he trusts me. But all I have to do is look at the childlike expression on his face to remind myself it's the latter.

He checks his watch. “It's been twenty minutes.” It felt like five. “Why don't we study?”

“Sure.”

“You need a brick?” We put several under the bed. Another one of Esmé's ideas. I use them as heat sinks if I get overwhelmed. Which I'm currently not.

So I take out my history book, and Esmé gets his flash cards, and we lay on the bare mattress with me sprawled on top of him, and my book open next to his head. He's got one hand on my back and his cards in the other. It's just more comfortable this way.

When I finish with the assigned chapter, I close the book first, then my eyes. Esmé's barely-whispered French blends together meaninglessly. My world softens and recedes.

"Hey. You'd better get back. They're going to check rooms in a half hour."

I don't believe it, but when I look at the window, the sky's darker than I remember it being. "Did I fall asleep?"

"Did you?"

"I must've. It doesn't feel like past nine."

We both take the back stairwell. Him to the third floor, me all the way to the bottom. It's not that we're not supposed to use them, but rather that most people don't. I'm not the only person leaving this way at this time of night, though. There's a girl with light brown hair that I usually see here about once a week. We've never said a word to each other. She always heads for the bus stop after leaving the dorm. I can only assume we come to Moore Hall for similar reasons.

"You know, if I didn't see you at meals, I'd think you transferred out, September."

I just got into Addison Hall. I know it's only Eddie, and I've still got enough time before room check so there's nothing she can do to get me in trouble. But I still jump when I hear her voice.

"Come on. I've been coming to club meetings when I can." Which means, only the ones before curfew, in the common room.

They've shifted away from group rituals and toward independent study, reporting their findings every week or two. It's mostly Eddie, Hector, and Emma who've been doing the reporting. Anne's busy again with the spring play, but sometimes she makes an appearance in Eddie's reports. I don't know what they told Ms. Stencombe, but it's technically not an official extracurricular. We don't compete or coordinate with other schools, or do public performances, so I guess the school doesn't care if everyone suddenly drops the activity at once.

I, of course, never have anything to report. Because none of them need to know about my relationship with fire. But they're so consistent about reminding me when there's a meeting, or even pulling me in if one of them sees me after class on Friday, that it feels weird not to at least show up. Especially since Esmé explicitly doesn't have a problem with it.

"I don't want you missing out on making friends because of me," he said when I asked if it bothered him that I still went. "I'm graduating, remember?"

"In body, at least,” Eddie says. “But your mind's always on your math homework."

"Math is the least distracting," I tell her as we head upstairs to our rooms.

"It's still a distraction," she tells me.

"Well, I'm not smart like the rest of you are. I need all the study time I can get."

Eddie snorts. "Have you seen Hector's English grades? Or Charlie's grades in general?"

"Have you?"

"I memorized Hector's ID number, and I've been trying to help Charlie with his biology homework, but I'm just about ready to give up if we're being honest. What are you always working on with Esmé? French? Because you skipped the first couple semesters?"

"Something like that," I tell her. Is she satisfied?

"Or is it the other way around? I bet it is. He's terrible at other languages. Like, he can memorize the words just fine, but forget grammar and actual sentences and all that."

I don't correct her, and she doesn't say anything else.

<<>>

"Hey, September?"

It's April. Thursday, so no French, but Esmé still managed to find me before Eddie or anyone else, so I'm eating lunch with him. We've got empty seats all around us.

"What?" I ask. He's been awfully quiet during lunch lately. Studying for college exams, I think, on top of finals.

"Do us both a favor," he mutters. "Kiss me."

God, what a shade of red my face must be. For all I know, it could even be purple. "But I've never—"

He looks up at me, leaning forward a little. No, actually, I think I just saw him look behind me. "Doesn't matter."

I didn't think. I just did it. Once my lips were on his, I pretty much froze, but he made up for it. It all happened so fast.

I didn't know I wanted to do that. I mean, I must have. It felt like an opportunity. One that'd fly by in a second if I didn't take it.

That wasn't just me, though. It was in Esmé's voice, too, and his timing. It's odd that he'd want to kiss me here, now that I'm thinking about it. There are so many other places he could've asked without people around to see us.

I can barely hear the dull roar of voices around us, but they don't sound any different from before. Maybe none of them noticed. Or if they did, they must not have cared.

Esmé's gone back to his homework again. I don't want to question him right now. He must be really stressed out.

<<>>

Someone's knocking on my door. No one ever knocks on my door. Not even Hector, and he's on the same floor as me. What's going on? Did some teacher finally realize just how many of other people's keys Esmé's gotten his hands on?

It's fine. It'll be fine. I'll just pretend not to know anything—

Oh. Eddie.

"Um," I say. "Sorry I missed the meeting?" I saw them in the common room, but no one called out to me, so I kept going. I thought they hadn't seen me. I have studying to do.

"He's using you to get back at me," she says. I've never heard her voice sound like this before. It sounds wispy and tired. Deathly serious, too. Complete opposite of how she normally talks.

"Who is?" But I think I know. There's only one person I can think of.

"Don't play dumb, September."

"You know, if any of the staff see you here—"

"It doesn't matter. I saw you two, and I just wanted to warn you. That's all."

"Are you talking about Esmé?"

Eddie rolls her eyes. Not at all lovingly. "He doesn't love you. He doesn't love anyone. He just does what he wants with people until they notice him doing it. Then he moves on to someone else."

"I don't care."

Eddie chuckles at that. "Oh god, you're hopeless—"

"Whatever he's 'using' me for, I've gotten plenty of use out of him, too. So whatever happens is fine."

Eddie's face turns pink. I close the door on her to spare her dignity.

Maybe that was unfriendly of me. I mean, not like she was being friendly in the first place, I guess. Opening the door again is only going to make things more awkward either way. Besides, she really isn't supposed to be on this floor. I don't want her to get in trouble.

Wait, I was supposed to refute that, wasn't I? That thing about Esmé using me. What if she tells Esmé I didn't and he gets mad at me?

Would he even be mad about it? I don't think he would, actually. He'd probably just—tell me Eddie was trying to rile me up and get back at me. For—

Oh god, how many people think we're dating? Does he? Is that what we've been doing? I'm not opposed, but I wish I'd known. No, I wish I knew. We never actually talked about it.

<<>>

Choices, choices. I managed to avoid Esmé yesterday by hiding in the bathroom after French class. But then when I finally did get to the cafeteria, Trudy put her bag on the only empty seat near her and the others. Eddie didn't even see me. Or if she did, she did a convincing job of pretending she didn't. Actually, I'm amazed it's taken them this long to give me the boot.

This doesn't have to be inconvenient. I'll just study through lunch period. Then I'll be able to focus on my English paper after class—

"September."

Is he mad at me? God, I hope Esmé isn't mad at me, too. I don't want everyone to be mad at me at once. I probably deserve it, though.

"You want to eat outside?" he asks. "It's really nice out."

Sunny, he means. Sunny, and maybe even warm enough to take our blazers off while we eat. There's no rule stopping anyone from eating outside, other than the time it takes to get back to the building if you don't get one of the few coveted seats near the doors.

We buy sandwiches because that line moves faster, and wind up standing against a tree to eat them since the ground's probably too wet to sit on without getting our uniforms dirty.

"I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable," he finally says. We've been quiet long enough to finish our sandwiches.

I'm not sure what I want to say to that. "It's not that you made me uncomfortable, but—"

"But Eddie did later, right? And I knew she was there. So that was really my fault, too."

"I was going to say, your timing seemed a little strange. I didn't realize why or question it much until she, uh—told me she saw."

"And that I'm using you?"

"I'm so sorry, I know I should have defended you, but it didn't really occur to me until it was too—" Why is he laughing?

"No, September. You have a right to be angry. That timing was strange, because I was trying to get to Eddie. She was, like, ten feet behind you, and I didn't want her bothering us while we were eating. But I didn't want to make things tough between you, either. I just—I wasn't thinking."

"But you're always thinking."

Esmé chuckles. Nervously, I think. "Not when I'm with you."

"You're always studying when you're with me!" He's being so ridiculous it's getting hard not to laugh at him myself.

"I mean, sure, if it's school work. That doesn't mean anything to me. I mean about other actual people."

The warning bell rings. We've got ten minutes to get to class.

"Okay, fine. Apology accepted." Wait. No. I don't want him thinking I didn't want him kissing me. Aaagh. "Look, just, before we go back to class—what are we?"

Esmé narrows his eyes at me. "What do you mean?"

I don't have time to figure out how to word this right. "I mean, have we been dating this whole time and I somehow didn't notice? Or was that a one-off to make Eddie jealous? It's fine either way, I just really need to know which—"

Great. Now he's laughing again. Sounds happier, at least. "September, neither."

"What do you mean, neither?" Why now, of all times, does he have to get all cryptic on me? My next class is on the other side of the building, damnit.

"Do you want to go out with me?"

Well. That escalated quickly. "Uhh—I mean, not if you don't want to—"

He grabs both sides of my face and kisses me. "I want to. And not just to steal you away from Eddie, either."

Not just to what?

"Now get to class."