Flames At Midnight

07 | quentin miller

Fire.

It spread to the trees, burning through the brush and lighting up the night in an angry, red blaze. Heat seared my skin and smoke clouded my vision.

I heard coughing and shouting.

Ash dusted the air like darkened snow.

There was a girl.

I couldn't get a good look at her. She was on the ground, unmoving.

The fire roared around her.

I tried to take a step closer, but couldn't move. My legs felt stuck.

Then someone was screaming.

I covered my ears with my hands to block out the sound and forced my eyes to open.

My face warmed when I realized I was currently in the middle of calculus, and everyone was staring at me. Grace was watching me from the other side of the classroom. Her pale eyebrows were drawn together with worry.

Mrs. Walker had stopped writing on the whiteboard. "Are you okay, Quentin?"

The smell of smoke still lingered in the air.

"Sorry, Mrs. Walker. A headache. I'm fine though."

"Do you want to see the nurse?"

"No, it's okay. It passed," I said, picking up the pen that'd fallen on the floor.

My notes were an illegible mess for the rest of class. I couldn't stop my hand from shaking as I wrote. And even then, I had only been half listening, so I missed whole chunks of equations. My notes were useless.

Thankfully, lunch period followed.

In the cafeteria, Grace and I grabbed a foam tray and got into line.

"What happened? Was it another, uh, vision?" she asked surreptitiously.

"I saw a fire." I wasn't sure if I could describe how hopeless it felt. "It was completely out of control. It was horrible, Grace."

Her eyes went round. "When's it going to happen? Where? We have to stop it."

I rubbed my palms against my eyes, trying to commit the details to memory before the images faded. Most of it was already slipping away, but I couldn't get the picture of the girl out of my mind. She was so still, and remembering made me shiver.

"As usual, the images didn't include a handy description," I said. "It was an unclear, jumbled mess of pictures."

"At least you didn't pass out this time. You're getting the hang of it."

"If you can even call it that."

We took our trays to our usual lunch spot outside. We liked to sit against the side of the library and under a curved awning as we ate. In previous years, Porter would join us, but he had a later lunch period this year.

Porter.

"I'm considering telling Porter about everything," I said.

It was more of a statement than anything, but I glanced at her questioningly as I said it. I wanted to know what her thoughts were. When it came to a decision, I knew Grace would look at it from every angle and weigh all possible outcomes.

"It took you long enough," was her response.

"You think it's a good idea?"

"No, but it's not a terrible idea. I would hate to be Porter in this situation, to be kept in the dark and have all this happening right under my nose," she said. "He should hear it from you."