A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) by L.H. Cosway Page A

myself. Worrying. Analysing. Dying really. Because caring for a man like my
father will kill you eventually.
     I turn my attention back to
Caroline and the others, Frank has been sitting silently beside me all the
while. I like how he doesn’t try to fill every opening with conversation, he
allows me time to think. I’m a little bit proud of Caroline, admittedly I don’t
know her very well yet, but she just seems so fearless to me. She came into
this situation completely distressed and uncomfortable and now she’s the centre
of attention. But then there are those of us who prefer the shadows, that way I
can watch and study the colours that entrance me.
     The crowded barn house is almost
dizzying to me right now, so many people with glimmering, shifting, changing
auras. The night is young so I’m not yet being bombarded with a sea of white
drunkenness, although it is getting there. Often I like to look at the colours,
but at the moment it’s a little too much.
     Because everybody’s emotions are
high in a situation like this, it’s difficult to keep from absorbing all the
love, hate, happy, sad, aroused, angry, ecstatic, excited, sneaky, sly,
delighted, attracted, dislike, streaming, streaming, streaming out from these
teens in their overly hormonal bodies. Jesus, I go from thinking about my
father to this. These are the reasons why I can never truly enjoy myself, let
go, be free. I don’t want to know what everybody else is feeling. It’s hard
enough having to deal with what I’m feeling, never mind forty or fifty
teenage boys and girls.
     A flame flickers over my hand,
Frank’s wondrous, unexplainable fire. “Are you okay?” he asks with concern. I
didn’t realise until now that I’d been holding my head in my hands, perhaps to
block the auras from hitting me in the face. Funny that.
     “Headache,” is all I can say in
reply.
     “You want me to take you to get
some air?”
     “Please.”
     He grips my hand firmly and leads
me out the back way. Once I’m outside the cool air hits me in a cleansing rush.
A minute later Frank is sitting me down on some grass by the edge of the lake,
the water shining and black in the night. There are stars tonight, not like
last night, hundreds and thousands of them glimmer in the sky.
     “Thank you,” I say after a minute
or two. “I’m not good in crowds sometimes.”
     Frank sits down gently beside me,
our knees touching.
     “Why not?” he asks.
     “It’s a very long story.”
     “Enlighten me.”
     For a moment I consider actually
telling him the truth, but then I decide to go the long way around. “Do you
believe people can have psychic abilities?” I ask.
     “Anything is possible,” he
replies.
     “So you wouldn’t think that
people who believe in that stuff are crazy or deluding themselves?”
     “People can believe what they
want as far as I’m concerned, I’m not here to judge them Florence.”
     “I told you,” I say, and nudge
him with my elbow. “It’s Flo, call me Flo.”
     “What has this psychic stuff got
to do with your headache Florence?” he says slyly, not backing down, and
nudging me back playfully.
     “Never mind, Franklin .”
     “Hey, how do you know my full
name?” he asks, feigning indignation.
     “Caroline told me.”
     “You two talk about me huh?” he
teases.
     “I just asked her who you were on
my first day,” I reply in defence.
     “So you asked about me?” his
smile is intolerable.
     “Whatever.”
     “You know, you could have just
asked me my name yourself, I wanted you to talk to me.”
     “What? You mean on my first day?”
     “Yeah, I had to introduce myself
in the end.”
     “I didn’t know you wanted to talk
to me. Besides, you know I’m not good with introductions as you saw that day, I
could barely talk when the teacher told me to introduce myself to the class.”
     “Don’t worry about that. I liked
you the second I saw you, your stammer made me like you even