Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One) Read Free Page A

firework.
    “It’s safer here,” he said.
    “I can’t visit Mom,” she said.
    “She’s with us—”
    “—in our hearts? There’s a lot of things in my heart right now and she ain’t one of them.”
    “Mieshka—”
    “No! What can you say? What can anyone say?” She was yelling now, not caring how her voice echoed through the alley. Above them, a neighbour closed a balcony door loudly.
    “I’m sorry that—”
    Rage flashed ahead of her thoughts. “Sorry? Sorry doesn’t help! Fuck!”
    Her hand had smacked against the railing. The cold numbed the pain.
    “Mieshka, calm down,” he whispered, hissing across the two feet that separated them. “We have to get through this. Remember what the doctor said. Count—”
    “I’m sick of counting. It doesn’t help. Who are you to tell me what to do? You just hide in your room all fricking day. And order pizza. I can’t live on pizza!”
    “Mieshka!” His voice rose. “Keep your voice down. I know it hurts. Believe me, I know. I lost her too.”
    She choked, the alleyway blurred around her.
    “I lost both of you.”
    A sob hiccoughed through her as she turned away. She slammed the door back on its tracks. She sped into the dim, dark room, past the couch with its piles of laundry and junk mail. Past the stacked, mouldy pizza boxes on the coffee table.
    Into her room.
    She slammed the door behind her, breathing hard. Tears slid down, carving raw streaks into the cold of her cheeks. She ripped a Kleenex from her desk, nearly taking the box with it. Sinking onto her bed, she curled into the mess she’d left the quilt in this morning.
    It was starting to smell too.
    After a few minutes, she heard the balcony door again. Her dad shuffled in, pausing outside her door. She twisted around to stare at it.
    He moved on. She listened as his bedroom door opened, closed.
    She rested her head back into the quilt, eyes closing against its familiar softness. The cold had followed her in, and it numbed her skin for a long time afterwards.

CHAPTER 2
    Meese had missed first period, and wasn’t responding to Robin’s texts.
    Robin cradled her forehead in her palm, fingers edging under her beanie. Around her, a steady, hushed conversation filled the room. The classroom’s fluorescents strained her eyes. Robin sat sideways at the too-small desk, feeling the chair’s wooden back jab into her ribs. Her phone rested on her thigh, safely hidden behind the desktop. Staring absently at its screen, Robin overheard a few snippets of gossip:
    “—Really? Ben and Jessica? Have they, y’know, done it?”
    “—got her wallet stolen.”
    “Devil Bitch Murphy is on phone-conquest again.”
    She looked up at the last, spotting Mrs. Murphy at the front of class, erasing the chalkboard. Robin's hand curled protectively over her phone. The teacher’s confiscating habit had earned her a few nasty nicknames over the years.
    Robin rubbed at her eyes. They felt dry and itchy.
    By the front window, Mrs. Murphy’s taxidermic Cooper’s hawk reeled on its wire, dead wings outstretched. It lorded over a shelving unit filled with animal skulls, textbooks, and wilted plants. Robin watched as the bird slowed its spiral, pausing for a second to consider escaping through the window. Drafts pushed it into an opposite spin.
    She swiped her phone’s screen before it timed out.
    Meese was a lot more fragile than she let on. Robin had learned that yesterday, though she’d long suspected it. Perhaps both of them had been content to pretend that wasn’t the case. Pretending was good. There had been some good times.
    But pretending was a thin way to live. Something grated in Robin’s head. She suspected things might not be all right.
    How could she have been so stupid? Of course the ‘temple’ was a memorial. How hadn’t she seen that? After Meese had pointed it out, it seemed obvious.
    Of course it was a memorial. All those burning words on the wall? Those were names. A lot of names.
    Meese had