Fire Fight

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

CADENCE

When Drake Arlington slams through the double doors of the science block on Tuesday, my gaze drops to the floor. We’ve always had a thing. He looks at me, I look at him, we both look away if our eyes meet.

But his mum died last Thursday, and I don’t have a clue what to say to him.

The air in the corridor is stale this late in the afternoon, a mix of dust, body odour, and deodorant. I glance at Drake from my peripheral vision, chewing the inside of my cheek with nerves.

When he turned up to school yesterday— far too soon —I muttered, “Sorry for your loss,” and felt its inadequacy down to my bones. But the more I tried to follow it with another sentence, something of substance, words to capture how much I adored his mum and how keenly I felt for his loss, the more I struggled.

My throat spasmed. My mouth went dry. After a minute of open-jawed gaping, I skittered away.

An ache lodges behind my sternum as I wonder where he’s living. She was a single mum, same as mine, and I’m not sure what’s worse; to think of him in a seedy group home, surrounded by brutal strangers, or alone, fending for himself.

“Cadence!”

The bellow startles me into turning, and his anger registers first. My shoulders hunch, then fear slams into me as he lowers his head and charges , roaring, nostrils flaring like an enraged bull.

He’s twice my size and class has started; there aren’t any students loitering in the hallway to protect me. I stagger backwards and when he’s an inch away, he stops, shoving a prescription bottle in my face. Too close to read the label.

“This come from you?”

Hairs raise on my neck at his ragged voice. It takes three attempts for me to ask, “What does the name on the bottle say?”

“Madelaine Summers.”

I recognise it, but there’s no way I’m telling him that.

He encroaches another step into my personal space, and I fall back, his steel eyes slashing mine to pieces. My arse bumps against the metal locker at the same time his palm does, his shaking body blocking me to the other side.

My pulse races. I’m trapped.

“Doesn’t sound much like Cadence Rivers.” My voice is eerily calm, the opposite of my thumping heart. “Perhaps you should go bother someone else.”

His eyes narrow as he pinches my shoulder, the thumb digging into the nerve until I flinch with pain, knees buckling in surprise. “I asked you a fucking question.”

“And I gave you an answer.” I raise my chin. “Just because you don’t like—”

He smashes his fist against the locker, the metallic clang reverberating through the hall. A student saunters into the corridor, takes one look, and lunges out of sight.

Cowardly fucker.

Drake grips my face in his giant hand, fingers digging into my cheeks, puckering my lips until my jaw opens under the crushing pressure. He leans close, nose bumping mine as he growls, “Answer truthfully or I’ll force feed you every pill in this bottle until you do.”

I can’t fully grasp what’s happening, why he’s upset.

Since when has Drake been some kind of drug-free campaigner?

Wrenching my chin from his grasp, I ask, “Where’d you get them from?” Leaping straight to aggression as I bare my teeth, guessing the pills fell from my pocket in class.

“Harriet.”

I try.

I try so hard to keep the spark of recognition off my face.

But Harriet has been my ride-and-die since year four. We drifted apart since hitting the wrong side of puberty, but she’s still my girl.

She would never hand them to him voluntarily.

Never give him my name.

Fear steals half my voice. “What did you do to her?” I push at his chest, but he’s six foot two of lean muscle. It’s like shoving a breezeblock wall.

“You should be more worried about what I’ll do to you.” He bunches my blouse in his massive fist until it rides high enough to expose my skinny ribcage. There’s no hint of mercy on his face as he glances along the hallway. “Which locker?”

The only thing of value is the phone in my pocket. If he wants to take his weird crusade out on the school-issued textbooks, he can have at it. “Number 173.”

His hand stays bunched in my shirt as he drags me along. Sweat plasters his dark hair to his forehead until it’s as black as the circles under his eyes. Days of stubble dot his chin, sculpting his face into a lethal mask.

His clothes stink. He stinks.

Like he hasn’t showered in days.

Emotion twists deep into his features. It trembles through his limbs, shudders across his skin and I recognise it’s not just anger.

It’s fury.

I’ve visited psych wards often enough to recognise the signs of psychosis. Until year ten, when her shrink stabilised her meds, institutions were my mother’s secondary home.

It hits me again. Stronger this time.

I’m in a fuckload of trouble.

“Open it,” he says, reaching into his jacket pocket and swapping the pills for a can of lighter fluid.

Fear explodes in my chest, heart thumping so hard that bright lights flash in my eyes, a whine filling my ears. I feel for the lock with trembling fingers, navigating the combination by touch.

The moment it springs open, Drake paws through my stuff, sweeping half onto the floor. A water bottle thumps to the ground, its contents sloshing out as the nozzle pops open on impact.

He rights it and pushes me aside, releasing my blouse to double hand the can of lighter fluid, squeezing it inside the cubicle. With one flick of his Zippo, the contents explode into hungry flames.

I don’t think.

I run.

My body eats through adrenaline, the world blurring into a haze as I thump through the exit doors, fly past the science block, sprint for the playing fields—praying for the safety of people.

Large, muscular, sporty people.

But the four field expanse is completely empty.

Motherfucker.

There might be students in the gymnasium, but it’s the length of a rugby pitch away and Drake is already on me. Tackling me to the ground.

I fall awkwardly, my nose smacking against my forearm, lips mashing against my teeth. When I try to crawl away, his weight pins me into the mushy ground. Days of rain have turned the hard earth into an inch of mud.

Enough to drown.

Strangled screams and pleas and cries for help pour from my throat, tangling together until they’re nonsense. He grabs hanks of my wavy blonde hair by the roots, yanking back so hard the bones of my spine grind together.

“Tell me how much you sold them for,” he demands, panting as he straddles my back, slapping my freckled cheek like he’s trying to keep me awake.

“I didn’t sell them.” I want to explain more, but he scrambles to his feet, bringing me with him, forcing me to stagger towards the batting cages on the far side of the field.

Someone must see us.

There must be a bored student in one of the science classes, staring out the window on this grim, overcast afternoon.

See something, say something. Isn’t that the mantra?

So, where the fuck is everybody?

My continuing pleas get washed out in a flood of tears, my brain catapulting straight into despair.

Drake undoes my school tie, using it to bind my wrists, threading it through the wire until I’m slumped against the cage. Too low to the ground to stand without wrenching my shoulders. Too high to sit.

He takes a handful of mud and I’m scared he’ll shove it into my nose, my mouth, clogging my nostrils, choking my throat.

But he smears it across my eyes until I’m blinded. Particles scrape between my eyelids, against the tenderness underneath. The pain of his rough application is torturous. My copious tears barely make a dent.

“How much?”

“I didn’t charge her,” I yell, which is the truth I wanted to convey the first time. “She bought this dodgy street version from a dealer, and I got her the real stuff. I was trying to help.”

And the shout at the end is the sad truth.

Harriet is high strung. Even as a kid she jumped at shadows, losing sleep to nightmares and racing heart rates. Those childhood fidgets turned to panic attacks. The unwarranted fear immobilising her long after she could safely breathe again.

Her parents escaped some weird Brethren sect decades ago, but its teachings stuck fast. They don’t ‘believe’ in mental illness or anxiety. They ‘know’ strengthening your faith is the cure for all ills.

“It’s just Xanax. She takes a quarter tab when she’s stressed. I didn’t want her to overdose on some random shit because her parents freak at doctors.”

My mother’s medicine cabinet is always full. The pills in there are almost never in her name. Even when she’s in the first flushes of limerence with a new beau, she still bangs a pharmacist on the side. In return, he passes unclaimed prescriptions along to her and there is a lot. The stuff she can’t use, even for fun, she sells.

Maybe there were other ways to handle Harriet’s problem, but hindsight has turned up late as usual.

“I was trying to help,” I repeat, my tears making progress in the mud, clearing it until I can make out shapes, colours. “Please let me go.”

Instead, Drake bends closer. His muscular build fills my limited vision, his fetid breath hot on my face. He shoves his hand into my skirt pocket, withdrawing my phone as a fresh surge of dread overtakes me. “Give that back!”

He wipes my thumb clean with his sleeve, pressing it to the device until I hear the click of it unlocking. Garbage security from the cheapest phone I could afford.

“I didn’t charge her.” Drake’s lilting mockery is savage. “Yet you’ve got four hundred in the cash app on your phone.”

Yeah. My life savings.

“No. It’s—”

He cuts me off with a yell. “Fucking liar.”

Leaving me strung up, he steps away. A few moments later, he laughs. The phone goes back, and he pats my pocket, then my cheek. “Now you’re a generous donor to the SPCA.”

The loss hits me harder than my fear.

The money’s gone.

Dozens of mindless hours over countless months spent cleaning, serving, taking orders through a drive-thru headset with the sound quality of string and cans, hoping to buy a secondhand car to sleep in when Mum spins out of control.

Viciousness pours from me. “You crazy fucker. No wonder your mother killed herself.”

The words hang in the air, too late to take back.

Guilt swamps me as I remember the woman’s kindness when I wet my pants at kindergarten, giving me a spare pair and helping the teacher to clean me when my mother didn’t show.

A smiling face at every bake sale, every clothing drive; always volunteering behind the tuck shop counter. Doing it alone. His dad never in the picture.

“I’m sorry, Drake.”

Sorry?

I’m fucking appalled .

“I didn’t mean it.”

He straightens and steps away from me, blurring into one with the distant trees and the soggy playing fields.

I feel the splash as liquid douses me.

I hear the flick of a lighter.

My vision sharpens as I blink, frantic, fast as I can. Desperate to see despite the pain.

Drake stands a metre in front of me. Zippo snapped open. Flame steady.

I scream, tugging at my bonds, wrenching at them while the pain explodes in my wrists and shoulders. Planting my feet on the cage for more leverage while he calmly tilts the lighter from side to side, his smirk growing wider as my head bloats to bursting with adrenalised panic.

“Catch,” he says…

And tosses the lighter straight at me.