Chapter Eight
Max
Past.
Mom and Dad are arguing— again. It’s been happening a lot lately, and their arguments are rarely subtle. More often than not, they’re explosive, even though they try to keep their voices down.
They think I don’t notice. That I can’t sense the charge of tension in the house.
And I let them go on thinking that. It’s not like they’re a shitty couple; they love each other dearly, and have never been anything short of exceptional parents to me.
It’s just that, when work stuff hits Dad hard, Mom gets worried—and when she’s worried, arguments ensue.
I slip out of the house while they whisper furiously at each other in Dad’s first-floor study. The air is thick with tension, and I’d rather not suffocate beneath it, so I head down the road to find my favorite distraction.
Possibly favorite human, too.
It’s late—10p.m.—but Ember is sitting on the porch of the groundskeeper’s house.
She’s curled up on the green sofa I got her—one that’ll have to go inside soon, since it’s getting cold and snowy out—and frowning at something on her phone.
When she hears my footsteps approaching, she looks up. An easy smile steals across her lips.
“Hey,” she calls out. “What are you doing, wandering around so late?”
“Looking for you.” I ascend the steps of the porch, and plop down beside her. Ember is the easiest person to be around that I’ve ever met. She doesn’t judge, doesn’t talk endlessly, and does lend a listening ear. She’s also the only reason I’m passing English.
The fact that I’m being schooled by someone four years younger than me isn’t a point I like to acknowledge, but it’s true.
It helps that she’s shit with numbers, while I’m already taking college calculus.
I help her with math; she helps me with English; we hang out all the time.
I wonder if this is what having a little sister is like to my school friends. Being an only child gets boring.
Nah, I decide. The guys at school endlessly yap on about how annoying their little sisters are, but Ember isn’t annoying. She’s smart, kind, and fun to hang out with. She’s also sassy as fuck.
“How’d the math test go?” I ask her.
She makes a face. “I don’t know. The numbers…” she sighs. “They jumble around on page if I stare too hard. I think I did well, but I won’t know until I get the grade back.” She worries her lower lip, telling me her sentiments on that.
“You’ll be fine,” I assure her. “If you didn’t do well, you can always retake it.
Your math teacher loves you.” Probably because her math teacher used to be my math teacher, and I delivered a thinly-veiled threat that he ought to play favorites with her, or I might start telling tales of his incompetence to my parents.
A shitty move, but nothing’s too low when it comes to protecting Ember.
“Did you get your essay grade back?” she asks me.
I nod. “89%.”
She beams, setting down her phone. “I knew you could do it.”
That she did. She always believes in me, even when I don’t believe in myself.
“What about the girl who was harassing you at lunch?” I ask her. A girl whose older brother I had a chat with, telling him to get his sister in line before I took it upon myself to do so.
Again, there’s no end to my protectiveness with Ember, though I don’t usually bother telling her exactly how I go about protecting her. I don’t think she’d want to know just how many people I’ve threatened on her behalf.
“Hasn’t looked at me since last week.” Ember frowns. “It’s weird. She wouldn’t leave me alone for months, and now, it’s like I stopped existing.”
I hide a smile. “Maybe she realized fucking around with you was a bad idea.”
Ember casts me a suspicious glance. “Max?”
“Ember?”
“Did you say something to her?”
“No.” I pause. “I may have said something to her older brother, who’s in my class.”
She squints at me. “What did you say?”
“That if he didn’t get his bratty sister in line, I would.”
“Urgh!” she smacks my arm with her phone, and I chuckle. “You can’t go around threatening people!”
When she hits me again, I grab her phone. “Ah-ah, Ember. Hitting people isn’t very nice. Haven’t you learned that from all your books?”
Her nose wrinkles. “Actually, most of them seem to advocate for violence, not against it.”
I sigh dramatically. “If you want a better moral standpoint, read less fantasy.”
“But then there wouldn’t be swordfights.” She grins, her previous anger forgotten.
“You should take a sword fighting class,” I tell her. “Fencing, maybe. I’m sure there are some in the city.”
She glances away and mumbles something under her breath. I arch an eyebrow. “Speak up, buttercup.”
“I can’t afford them,” she mumbles. “Dad…” she trails off, her lips thinning. She draws her knees up to her chest, rests her chin on them, and cranes her head up, searching the sky for answers to whatever question’s floating around in her head.
I don’t say anything. I’ve told her repeatedly that if she wants something, I’ll get it for her, but she doesn’t like charity.
She chased me with my own fucking baseball bat when I got her this couch.
I managed to diffuse her by saying I wanted to be comfortable when she was helping me with reading.
Since her dad is finicky about letting boys into the house, she let it slide.
“Do you like mythology?” she asks out of the blue.
I blink, not sure what it has to do with our conversation. “Sure.” Not that I know anything about it. But I tend to like whatever she likes.
“Prometheus gave fire to mortals,” she murmurs, wrapping her arms around her knees and resting her cheek on them.
“For that kindness, he was chained to a rock and tortured for millennia.” She blinks up at the sky.
“I read about that last week. An eagle would peck at his liver every day, and then he’d regenerate, just to live through the pain all over again, until Hercules shot the eagle with an arrow.
” She points a finger up at the sky, indicating a batch of stars.
I squint up in the general direction she’s motioning at.
“The constellation Sagitta—the one in the shape of an arrow. That tells the story. Do you see it?”
Nope. “Yeah. It’s nice.”
Her soft snort tells me she sees straight through my lie. “I want to be like Hercules when I grow up. Slay the bad guys, free the good ones. And I want to do the right thing—like giving fire to mortals. Imagine what mankind would be like without it.”
A smile curves my lips. “Alright, Little Flame.”
“Flame?” she turns her head to look at me.
“Yeah. All I really heard was something about fire, mortals, a bow, and some stars. I like the fire part.” I grin. “You are fiery as fuck.”
“And you like to forget that there are more words in the dictionary than your favorite swear words.”
I shrug. “Fuck fancy words. Profanity covers all of the important bases.”
She sighs. “If you say so.”
We stare at the stars for a while, sitting in comfortable silence. “Why are you here?” she asks. “Everything okay at home?”
Not really, though I’m not sure exactly what the problem is. “Yeah,” I lie easily. “Why are you out here?”
“Waiting for Dad to get home.”
My jaw tightens. “He out gambling and getting blitzed again?”
She doesn’t respond, but her silence tells me all I need to know. As a groundskeeper and gardener, her father is brilliant—has a green thumb, keeps the estate’s property in tip-top shape with minimal outside help. As a father and a human, however, he fucking sucks.
I might be biased on that front, but he outright neglects Ember. She has to go to my parents when she needs permission slips signed for school trips. I hate how hands-off he is with her—it leaves a gaping hole in her life, where she needs protection.
I don’t mind stepping into that role—warning off boys who sniff around her, telling petty girls to go fuck themselves, making sure teachers handle her kindly—but I’m going to college soon enough. Then, she’ll be alone, and that doesn’t sit well with me.
I’ve grown used to being her protector. I like being her protector. I like knowing she relies on me, because she’s so damn self-reliant. With a dad as shitty as hers, she has to be.
“You know you can stay over at the main house any time,” I mumble. “If you get scared or something. My parents love you.” They do love her, probably because they know she’s the reason I stopped failing English.
“Thanks,” she says noncommittally, and I know it means she won’t be taking me up on my offer.
“Yeah.”
We spend another hour in the same comfortable silence. Eventually, she gives up on waiting for her dad, and stands from the couch. I stand, too, gazing down at her.
“Will you be okay?”
She smiles. “I always am.” She gives my arm a squeeze, turns, and disappears into the house. I stay on the porch long after all the lights go out, searching the sky for the constellation she was looking at.
I don’t find it, but I don’t have to. Flame is my constellation; the one constant, dependable person in my life. I fear I might always look for her when I search the stars.