Flame
The sun threw a bright patch of light on the floor just under the window; shadows were short. What time was it? Almost noon.
In the first instants after waking, Angela thought it might have been a nightmare. But as the details stormed over her consciousness, too vivid, too clear, too connected, she knew it had been real.
The van.
The chemicals.
The men.
Her power flickering at just the wrong moment.
Her tiara missing.
Grabbed. Ziptied. Hoisted. Helpless.
Confusion. Yelling.
Harold. Lowering her. Freeing her.
Harold hit. Kicked. Hurt.
Her tiara found.
Crashing. Tossing. Angry.
Harold's hand. Bloody but calming.
Stop.
The other one. Still. Very still.
Blood. So much blood.
Go.
Pushed.
Out.
Panic.
She'd left him there.
Abandoned him.
She was a failure.
She was a monster.
Shaking hands searching for a bottle. No bottle. The kitchen. The little peach pill. It would make the nighmares fade. It would make them less awful. Pill popped. Water, half drank, half worn.
Shivering body crawled back into bed. Staring at the ceiling. Hands clenched. Waiting for the shaking to stop. Waiting for the terrible images to soften. Waiting for the calm to come.
Finally, she got out of bed. She was slower now. Thicker. She didn't feel normal, but she felt... less, and less was better than more.
What thoughts she had became more focused.
She would try to find Harold today. See if he was okay. But later. Adrenaline faded, she was still tired. Failure took so much out of her. She needed to rest.
No, not failure. Just not success.
A man was dead.
But he was a bad man. He'd tried to hurt her. He'd tried to kill Harold. He would have tried to kill her, after. It was an accident. It was self-defense.
You still lost control.
They were still stopped. Harold would explain it all. It would be all right.
Next time could be worse. You should stop. Before the wrong people get hurt.
No. I just have to be more careful. I have to be smarter. I have to be safer.
She had to keep trying. She couldn't just hang it up. There was still so much she could do that ordinary people couldn't. Angela remembered that day at the mall with Ricky -- if Sapphire had been there, that diamond thief wouldn't have gotten away.
But that wasn't the memory that haunted her. There was another.
< < Angela's heels scritched a rapid rhythm on the sidewalk. She normally didn't walk this fast -- or this far -- in heels.
But she wasn't normally this pissed.
Right now, the further away she could get from Ricky, the better.
Ooooh, that boy!
What the heck was she thinking, having a boyfriend like that! Sure, they had something between them, but it's hard *not* to develop a bond with someone under circumstances like what happened over the summer -- the sapphires, Black Widow and The Hunter, Ginger Hartwick and her gang of thugs in suits... the Labor Day Incident...
Maybe that's all her relationship with Ricky was, just a desperate reaction to stress. Maybe they didn't really have anything more than that.
No, that wasn't true. There *was* something there. But getting to it through all of Ricky's hormones and childish behavior was a real drag. She *had* been a little suggestive lately, but still, that didn't excuse him trying to make their first time a lame grope on the couch right after *church*...
Come on, Angela, he doesn't have the experience you do. He's two years younger, and even more sheltered than you in some ways. Maybe if you just Do It and get it over with you'll both get past this and things will work out.
No way! I'm not rewarding that horndog, it'll only make things worse! If he can't see that it's worth waiting for... And it's not like he's been doing anything to romance me.
Well, sweetie, you haven't exactly been the most romanceable person lately. And he *has* been there for you.
Well he should be doing that because he loves me, not because he expects some kind of reward.
Maybe you shouldn't be so hard on him. Maybe you should help him. Tell him how you feel.
I just did! And he threw it right back in my face!
No, tell him how you feel about him. Tell him what you're going through. Tell him what you've been through, how you need time, how important it is that your first time with him is *not* like what the sapphires put you through...
He should know all that!
Honey, nobody can possibly know all that. Even with a lifetime of experience, nobody would understand what you've been through without a little help. And Ricky's new at this. That doesn't mean he isn't trying...
God, I wish I'd never found those sapphires in the first place. Even after I quit using them they're still messing everything up...
A sudden loud noise shakes Angela from her thoughts -- a car horn. She looks up; she's walked all the way to the corner on Great Oaks, the main drag. A car is turning left as another one going the other way, the one on his horn, stutters into the intersection, pitched forward, unable to stop in time...
It isn't like a car crash on TV. The two cars just meet, and bounce, with a staccato crackling sound. The back end of the turning-left car swings left, gracefully like a ballet dancer's pirouette, the front end slowly pulling the car along until it comes to rest facing the wrong way, toward Angela.
The going-straight car folds accordion-style in an instant, and continues a sickening slow roll to a stop, turning slightly to gently bump the far corner lamppost.
The sound seems to come a moment later, as if rushing to catch up to what had happened: crunching metal, raining glass, sliding tires, pouring liquid...
The turning-left driver creaks open his door and steps out unsteadily, pushing his deflated airbag back into the car. A tall man, Angela guesses in his twenties, blinking demonstratively and rubbing his neck. He looks at Angela, who stands there stunned, then he looks over at the other car.
It is an older car, an anonymous domestic midsize beater in the requisite light blue metallic.
The driver is slumped forward, unmoving.
The turning-left driver takes several steps toward the other car, then sees the smoke coming from under the crumpled hood. He looks around, eyes wide. He sees only Angela. Angela can practically see him evaluate his future in an instant. He runs back to his car and drives off.
By the time Angela thinks to get his license number, it's too far away to read.
More smoke now. Angela rushes over to the crumpled car.
An older man, thinning gray hair, body straining against the too-loose seatbelt, bloody forehead leaning on the bent steering wheel. Above, spiderwebbed windshield where his head has hit it.
"Mister..." she touches him, but is then afraid to move him. She remembers from some childhood emergency thing that you weren't supposed to move them.
Angela looks around -- all four corners are high concrete walls, with housing developments behind them. There is no one in sight. The nearest accessible house is two hundred yards away. She has to get help...
A scream. The driver is suddenly awake. Moaning. In pain. Legs hurt! Help me...
Angela tugs on the driver's door.
Won't open.
Runs around to passenger side. Pulls and pulls.
It won't budge.
The whole car is tweaked, nothing lines up. Trunk popped.
Runs around back. Tire iron -- tiny one.
Back to the driver's door. No good as a crowbar, too small. Slips out of her hands.
She has to get him out.
Runs to the passenger window.
Whack! Whack! Crack. Whack! Hole. Whack! Whack! Whack! Crumble. Rings the frame to clear the rest. Raining glass inside and out.
Angela dives into the car through the window, losing her shoes.
The driver is a large man. Legs caught under the steering wheel. She pops his seatbelt. Can't find a tilt adjustment, but it looks all the way up. Maybe he can slide out.
"Come on." She pulls on his arm; he screams. "I'm sorry, but you have to get out."
Flames lick up around the hood. She can feel the heat. Smoke entering the passenger compartment...
A minivan has stopped. The driver is shouting into her cell phone. "There's been an accident! The car's smoking, I think it's on fire! Great Oaks and... and... Sunny Oaks! Hurry!"
Angela sees he's not getting out the window anyway -- too big. She has to get the door open.
She lays on the seat, bracing herself against the dash and center console, bare feet squared up on the passenger door, pushing. Creak, creak, won't budge.
She kicks, harder and harder; eventually cracks door panel.
Kicking frantically now, like an animal, screaming. Coughing.
Someone grabs her ankles, pulls her across the seat; she resists. The trapped man grabs for her wrist but is too weak to hold on; she's pulled out of the car, still grabbing hold of it, not wanting to leave. The door's not open yet!
Hands grab her wrists and forcibly remove her.
The trapped man is calling out.
"don't leave me, help me, please, don't let me burn, help me..."
Flames suddenly burst higher, all around the hood, windshield quickly turning black with smoke, smoke now billowing out of the passenger compartment. Popping, crackling, roaring fire.
The car is rocking from side to side, the driver inside is flailing, screaming...
Angela is tugging against the person holding her, reaching toward the car, struggling to break free. Screaming hurts her ears. His and hers.
She feels a strong arm wrap around her head and pull it to a chest, smothering her, shielding the girl's eyes and ears, muffling her screams...
...which give way to violent sobbing and wailing...
Sirens in the distance. Approaching. Too late.
The minivan woman releases her now; she collapses, barely holding herself up, watching the car burn itself out, seeing a blackened mass in the shape of a man through the smoke.
She leaps for the car. It can't be too late. It can't be.
The minivan driver pulls her away, kicking and screaming...
"I could have saved him. I could have saved him."
"Honey, there was nothing you could do. No one could have gotten him out."
Sapphire could have.