Free Fireworks by Riley Clifford Page A

endless, endless training that would never be enough.
    “I’m hitting as hard as I can!” Amy yelled back.
    “Okay, stop,” Sinead said. Amy stopped. “Look. I know we’ve seen some hard things,” she began.
    You were part of it
, Amy wanted to say, but she was breathing too hard.
    “I want you to close your eyes, and remember it. In your head. Just relive it for a second.”
    Amy closed her eyes and steeled herself to go back to the dark places. To the smell of the flames that burned down her parents’ town house. The crippling pain that had twisted through her, knowing that her parents were inside and she was outside and there was nothing she could do about it.
    Amy’s lip was quivering. Once buried in the worst of it, it was hard to reemerge on the other side. “Now,” Sinead said, “I want you to imagine you have thirty seconds to get the person responsible for all of it. If you could give them just a piece of what you are feeling with your fists, what would your fists say?”
    Amy landed her hardest blow of the day. A big pop in the center of the black pad.
    “Not bad,” Sinead said. “What else?”
    Amy let her shoulder rear back. Tired?
Big deal.
No Grace and dead parents?
Suck it up.
Skiing down a mountain with a killer breathing down your neck? Amy landed one combination punch, and then another, and then another, one-two-one-two-one-two-one, fast, faster, the fastest she’d ever gone and the hardest, her arms gaining energy with each impact. The fists balled up in her gloves kept hitting glorious smacks in the center of the pad.
    Her arms no longer felt part of her body; it was like they had their own motor, taking off, gaining momentum, rocketing away.
    She didn’t notice when she started crying, but there they were, tears dripping on her T-shirt, burning her eyes along with the sweat sliding down her face. And still she kept punching, because it was one of the rare times she’d let herself feel. She was scared: She could have died. Her brother could have died. And now here she was.
    Sinead lowered her pads. “Well said,” Sinead said softly, and squeezed Amy’s shoulder. “I think that’s enough for today.”
    But it would never be enough. Only Amy and Dan knew about the Vespers. Only they understood the evil the Cahills were up against.
    “Hey, kiddos,” Nellie said, peeking her head into the studio. Nellie was Amy’s au pair, but she’d become more like an older sister. “There you are! Time for dinner. I made frog-leg enchiladas,” she said, her smile fading as she took in Amy’s wet-rat appearance and tear-streaked face. “Hey, you okay?”
    Amy wiped her forehead with her shirt, took a cold sip of water, and put the bottle down.
    “I am. I’m actually okay,” Amy said.

     
    Dan Cahill had been planning the joyride for months.
    The regimens Amy tried to push on him every day — the exercise, crash courses: What was even the point? And he couldn’t make himself care about seventh-grade tests and homework anymore, or hockey tryouts, not after what he’d seen. What was algebra when you’d been the target of death threats? Dan didn’t want to be chased and hunted, but since he’d been back home, everything felt like it was coming through in black-and-white instead of color.
    Enter the midnight joyride.
    Technically, he was thirteen, which meant what he was about to do was not exactly legal. But he’d already driven before, in St. Petersburg. Now he was willing to admit he’d been awful at it, but the one lesson he’d accepted since then from Amy was defensive driving.
    A little ride through the back roads would be his shot of Technicolor. He would definitely tell his cousin Jonah about it, after it was over. He already knew exactly which car he had in mind — Grace’s mint green 1969 Ford Mustang, in perfect condition. Even though nobody drove it anymore, Dan waxed it once in a while, just to see it shine. In the glove compartment, he’d found a pair of Grace’s