Firelight (with Bonus Material) - [Firelight 01] by Sophie Jordan

Author:Sophie Jordan [Jordan, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-03-18T23:22:14+00:00

Nothing ever goes my way, I think as the entire school population descends into a gym designed for the smaller student body of seventy years ago.

The deep beating of a drum vibrates along the old wood floor and travels up my legs to the center of my chest, an unwelcome reverberating pulse there.

I clear the double doors and my stomach pitches, twists at the sight of overstimulated teenagers packed tightly into bleachers. The band is assembled at the far end of the gym. Its members wear dark red uniforms with stiff-looking collars. They play their instruments, swaying as if they enjoy it. Their puffy red faces, shining with perspiration, tell another story.

Sweat trickles down my spine. It’s hotter in here than outside. My pores open wide, grasping, searching for cooler air, mist, and condensation. But there’s only the cloying scent of too many humans crammed together. Students shove past me.

“Move already,” one girl grunts as she bumps me.

I’m swept forward on a sea of bodies, deeper into the gym than I want to be. Turning, I strain, looking behind me for the door or something. Someone, anyone in the sweaty press of humans to cling to. Tamra. Catherine or Brendan. Even Nathan would be okay. Someone to distract me and help me get through this.

Not Will though. I know better. He’s the wrong kind of distraction.

I lift my face, try to gulp clean air. Impossible. The gym is stale and stinks of sweating, unclean pores. I drag deeper, sucking breath into my shrinking lungs. I get a sniff of blood buried deep in the wood floor and I feel sick, wilted. Cassian’s voice rolls over me. You can’t like it here. You can’t want to stay. You’re not bred for this misery.

My legs move numbly. Telling myself pep rallies can’t last long, I pick a seat. Squeeze into the first spot I find, as low as I can get on the bleachers.

Cheerleaders entertain the crowd, shaking their pom-poms and tossing their bodies in the air. Brooklyn’s out there. Those over-glossed lips curve wide as she shouts at the crowd. And up front, dead center, as close as she can get to the action, sits Tamra, an expression of rapture on her face.

“Hey.” A girl with braces—green rubber bands stretching like ropes of slime between the metal—nudges me. “Are you a junior?”

I stare at her, at the menacing snap of her teeth as she spits out her words. Words that I can’t seem to register.

I’m in sensation overload. The band’s pounding drums beat like fists inside my head, determined to split my skull open from the inside.

I shake, jump as screams and shouts break out, even louder than the train wreck of a band.

Bewildered, I look around. From one set of double doors, a dozen guys rush out onto the court wearing red baseball jerseys. The crowd goes wild, surges up on every side of me like a hurling sea.

The principal’s voice lifts above it all—a strange, disembodied sound on the microphone.

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