Free Burning Hearts by Melanie Matthews Page B

Don’t let your emotions
rule you.” She smiled. “Okay?”
    “ Yes, ma’am.”
    But keeping your emotions in check was easier
said than done when you had super strength and now speedy healing.
As long as the Stuck-Ups persisted in their Let’s Taunt Jenna daily
routines, she wasn’t so confident in keeping her desire for revenge
at bay.
     

WHAT GOES AROUND
     
     
    “ Lemme see.”
    “ Nurse Nora told me to keep
it on all day.”
    “ And when did you start
listening to authority figures?”
    Kylie chuckled. “Riddick, if Nurse Nora’s an
authority figure, then I’m the Queen of England.”
    “ I just wanna see if she’s
all right,” he defended.
    “ I am,” Jenna
insisted.
    Before she’d even sat down at lunch to eat
her turkey-and-tomato-on-wheat sandwich, Riddick started pestering
Jenna about her supernaturally-healed wound that would leave mental
scars if she let it bug her brain.
    Riddick had tried to enter her first period
chemistry class to see if she was all right. Mrs. Quinn had gently
pushed him into the hall, telling him to go back to class. Jenna
had made an effort to smile and wave at him, to show she was indeed
not about to die. But she wasn’t aggravated; she knew where his
worry was coming from: he loved her.
    Sitting next to him on the bus ride that
morning had felt strange. She’d wanted to wedge herself between the
dirty window and Pru, but Riddick made a point of actually grabbing
Jenna’s arm and seating her himself—right smack dab against his
twitchy leg that made the floor beneath them vibrate.
    She still thought of him as
a great friend, but that kiss…well, that kiss changed the game. It
was like she was saying: Yes, I love you
too. I’ll express it physically. I hope you don’t mind.
    Pru kept silent on the kiss that everyone had
witnessed from Caleb’s mom’s minivan. Jenna suspected Kylie would
want to gossip, but after the near murder in the bathroom, she’d
kept silent throughout chemistry; she gave Jenna slight, reassuring
smiles that everything was going to be okay.
    Of course, Daniela and Emma
were too distraught to take the scheduled quiz, so Mrs. Quinn let
them read her collection of Science! kid-friendly magazines. They
enjoyed connect-the-dots and coloring.
    And then there was Malcolm:
the mysterious, alluring foreigner, who was hiding a secret.
Everyone had secrets. But his would be explosive with a
capital S . And she
didn’t mean that in a stereotypical he’s-wearing-a-suicide-vest
kind of secret. It was explosive as in life-changing; a truth
exposed amid a mined field of disinformation.
    Everyone thought they knew everything. In
realty, they knew nothing.
    Malcolm seemed to know a lot, though. He’d
kept staring at Jenna’s bandaged hand during the remainder of first
period. His fiery blue eyes seemed to be on her all the time, even
when he was looking away. His presence was something more than just
knowing another person was near her. It was as if an invisible taut
string had been tied, connecting them across the chasm of the lab
tables. If she tilted, he tilted.
    When the class had dismissed for second
period, he’d spoken to her for the first time that day: “Sometimes,
it’s best to humiliate the leader than to strike at his
followers.”
    And with those weird cryptic parting words of
wisdom, he’d exited her life, to only return hours later in the
cafeteria, sitting with the Stuck-Ups—which she found weird,
considering he’d been exiled on Val’s orders. But she had other
concerns—like gently dodging Riddick’s hand on her back and
informing the group about her grandpa’s letter.
    “ You didn’t read the
journal, right?” asked Riddick.
    “ No, but it’s in my
backpack. We’ll go over it at the game unless y’all feel the sudden
urge to cheer and then, well, we gotta do that.” She rolled her
eyes, not serious.
    Everyone smiled, agreeing it was foolish to
cheer, but Kylie. “Well…I kinda made this poster…what?” She