Cold Fire [SAMPLE]

[25]

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Working up the courage to question Sarah is harder than I thought. Every time I open my mouth with the intension of speaking, the silence surrounding us rushes in, hardening into a lump in my throat. It’s when we’re nearing the spot where we saw the dark figure waiting for us yesterday that the words finally come, flowing out as more of a distraction than a way to get answers.

“So what have you been doing since I last saw you?” I ask Sarah.

She frowns. “Well… I went to class and-“

“No, I meant what’s happened between when we separated as children and now.”

“Oh,” she says quietly, eyes on the ground. I can feel Caden behind us, listening in even though I wish he wasn’t. For some reason, this topic feels personal – like it’s something only Sarah and I should share. But I know that the more everyone knows, the better our chance of getting through this alive, and if an important piece of information lies in Sarah’s backstory, then Caden needs to hear it as well.

“I suppose I should have seen this coming,” she says, sighing. She closes her eyes and for a second, everything is still, as if the world itself is waiting for her words to be released into the air. She takes one last breath, opens her eyes and speaks, “My mother told me everything – about being swapped, about the abilities that she and countless others possess, and about the nameless group who watch our every move – when I was ten. She told me that when I was young, she met with a lady who knew of a way to dull the effects of being swapped so that I wouldn’t get heat attacks. Instead, my body constantly absorbs the heat needed to stop it from freezing over in tiny painless amounts. Of course, that doesn’t stop the temperature around me from dropping, it just slows down the process and makes it less noticeable. I have to move at least once every year, and my mum always moves us to a place that’s going into autumn so that people won’t find the drop in temperature unusual.”

I close my eyes, feeling, for the second time today, jealous. While every year I’ve had to push through countless heat attacks, she’s been living a semi-normal life. No one knew about her disease – hell, she wasn’t even diagnosed with a disease. She hasn’t had to put up with people calling her a freak or had to spend day after day attending a school that wants her gone. She hasn’t walked into a room and realised that everyone in it hates her or watched her parents grow distant. Her life has been easy and I’m jealous.

And with this jealousy comes something else: pain.

Every time she mentions her mum, all I can think about is how she’s actually talking about my mother – my real mother – and how I’ve missed out on a life with her. And the pain that accompanies this thought threatens to break free of the flimsy sheet I’ve stuffed on top of it. If given the chance, would my mother even want me after spending years and years with someone else as her daughter?

I want to collapse to the ground and cry until I’ve no more tears. But that would be selfish. I’m not the only one in an unbearable situation; as easy as Sarah’s life has been in the past, her future will be just as hard as mine, if not harder.

Because when we swap back, she’ll become Melissa – the girl whose disease is known worldwide. I’ve ruined her future for her and when – if – I swap with her, I’ll be condemning her to the fate I’ve thought would be mine for years.

I want to crawl in on myself until I wink out of existence. How many lives must I wreck before I finally set things straight? How can one person be responsible for so much pain?

I withdraw from my thoughts in time to hear Sarah continue, her voice soft. “When I was seven, my dad was…killed. My mum never told me the details, and after a while I learned not to ask.” She stops and looks at me. “I’m sorry, Melissa.”