Flames of the Heart by John Horton (sci fi books to read txt) 📕

I didn’t do it.
Technically I wasn’t even conscious, but that didn’t stop the police from placing me under frigging house arrest in the police station. I guess that was the only place they could think to put me, since, you know, I burned down my house…
IN THE BEGINNING…
Last Monday
My sister, Eva, and I are on our way to school. Again. We have the same argument about the bus driver’s mentality. Again. We have done this every day for the last 2 years on our way to school. She’s a senior. I’m a sophomore. She’s in National Honor Society. I’m failing Geometry. Eva May was made for the limelight, with all eyes on her, living the glamorous life of a cheerleader while I try to stay as invisible as possible.
The bus drives up to the bus stop and opens its doors to whisk us away to Claudia’s School for Genius and Imprudent Students, which is really just a fancy public school the city paid some whacko lady to build.
We walk up the steps and the driver, Mr. Jacobs, gives Eva that same frigging look that all the boys give her at school, that drooly “Oh-My-God-Who-Is-That?” look that he gives her every morning. She, of course, flashes him her cheerleader-thousand-dollar smile our parents paid the orthodontist to make, the one that says “I’m an angel and I never do anything wrong!” smile. He tells her she looks “Gawd awful pretty today!” like he does every day. She walks on. I step up. He gives me the same “Who let the delinquent out of his cage?” look. I return his leer with my signature death glare.
He says “Off the drugs yet?”(I was never on them), I say “When you quit drinking before school.” He retorts “Don’t jack around on my bus.” I walk away, trying to understand how my parents could wonder why I never show my thousand-dollar smile the orthodontist fixed too. Emphasis on fixed.
My sister, a few steps in front of me, gains her daily lustful stares as she walks down the rows to her friends in the middle of the yellow death machine. I follow quietly, since she doesn’t say anything to me after we get on the bus anyway, and I pretend not to know her. But I do notice that as I pass, the Jocks start snickering and stealing glances at me. They’re probably coming up with new insults to tell me. A foot juts out just enough that if I hadn’t seen it, I would have fallen on my face into a pile of gum that seems to have mysteriously accumulated in the five seconds it took for me to get on the bus. I wonder where it came from. I kick the leg, hard enough to elicit more than just a little pain. It turns out the leg belonged to a football player I was once friends with, named Josh Santos. Josh cried out and stood up as I tried to pass. He stands and looks me right in the eye.
“Hey! What’s your problem, Freak?” Yeah, that’s me and seven other nice little names, including my own, which is Anon-Jay Smith Jr. I like my extensive name, but everyone calls me Jay because it takes people forever to work out how to pronounce ‘Anon’ and then remember to add in the ‘Jay’.
I turned to Josh and said “Maybe if you didn’t stretch your goddamn legs into the aisles, they wouldn’t get stepped on.” He gets up to say more but I keep walking. I don’t look back until I’m in the very back of the bus and in my seat. He glares at me but Mr. Jacobs tells him to sit his (let’s use nice words shall we?) “Butt” down so he can drive the bus. I almost smile at the thought of the bus jump-starting and sending Josh into the back windshield. Almost.

So here we are on the bus to Nowheresville. As usual I think about my life, about the world, my grades, my school, whether or not my lunch will move today. But mostly my grades and how if I don’t pass my Geometry End of Course Exam in three weeks then I will no-doubt go to summer school, and I will absolutely not go to get my biology credits at the community college this summer. Eva is supposed to be trying to help me, but only me, you, and the trees know that she is a complete idiot when it comes to mathematics. So I just help myself, and by that I mean skipping out of half the homework and missing even more of the tests. My teacher, Mr. Wheese (A.K.A. the WEEZER), tells me that I should come in more often in the mornings for tutoring. But if you had a choice between going to math tutoring or talking to a girl who may possibly-maybe-yes want to be your girlfriend, which would you choose? Remember, we are talking about mathematics here. So I procrastinate my homework into oblivion and try to think “Happy” thoughts.
In the middle of all the happy, my tiny inner-voice suddenly decides that it knows how to scream and reminds me that I had homework that I didn’t do. Again. See my pattern? At the same time the bus driver slams his brakes into the floor board, cursing his face blue, and opens the doors. Even though I’m in the very back, I hear him mutter “Darn kid…getting in front of MY bus…I should have hit him the way he jumped in front of me…” and it went on and on until the kid got on. As he boarded our ride of misery, I realized that this kid was not a He, but a She, and possibly the most beautiful She that I have ever seen in my life. She walks down the row looking straight ahead as if no one else is in the bus at all, not even the waves of guys staring her up and down, giving her the “elevator eyes”. My jaw breaks a hole in the floor as I gawk at the sudden beauty in my life. Her name is April Caye. I know her name from being in her Biology class all year long, but she’s never noticed me (no I wasn’t stalking her!). I begin to think that she just might be walking towards me when she sits right down next to the biggest, ugliest, football goblin of them all, Jerry Stake. Fat Head I think to rather loudly. I find myself willing her to come to my side, to leave Jerry behind and love me instead. They hold hands and she kisses his cheek. I die a little inside.
He turns around just in time to catch me looking away and speaks loud enough for the entire bus to hear “Hey, I think that retard back there is staring at us. HEY. RETARD. Whatcha looking at? YOU BETTER NOT BE OGGLIN’ MY GURLFRIEND!” The entire bus looks back at me and an entire roar of giggles and snickers follow me as I sink down into my seat, red as an apple. I wonder if I can sleep back here and live off the food kids’ drop between and under the seats. I may never leave. I hear steps coming down the rows of seats and I wonder if Eva is coming back here to try to comfort me a little, then terrified that April is coming down here herself to tell me to leave her alone. It turns out that it’s none of the above, and is in fact my best friend Jake Dillon who got on the bus just in time to see the entire scene unravel from beginning to end.
“That was…smooth.” He jokes with a grin the size of Texas. “Shut. Up.” I hiss through gritted teeth. I’m still thinking about that living in the back of the bus idea when the bus starts up again and everyone simultaneously wangs their heads on the seats behind them. We all give a groan after realizing that though my crippling humiliation was a good distraction, we are still heading for the school from which there is no escape.


THE AMERICAN SCHOOL EXPERIENCE
Luckily I was able to ride the rest of the way to school in blissful invisibility. Thank goodness the Jockosaurus-Rex has a small attention span will little to no intelligence. After the attack they usually will move on and save the rest of the humiliation for a later date. Jake, however, is impervious to my invisible powers and continued to poke fun at me relentlessly about my encounter with the beautiful April Caye and my attack from the Meat-Heads.
“I came in at ‘Oggling my Girlfriend’, did I miss anything before that or was that all?” he said with a laugh. “Would you like me to video tape it, or just call you ahead of time?” I retort, probably sounding a little more snappish then I meant to. Jake just laughs it off like he always does and takes no offense. Maybe that’s why we’re such great friends. We can say just about anything insulting to the other and neither one of us will care. Or maybe we just like insulting each other. Either way we’re still friends through and through. “That would be just great of you, man.” Jake says.
We pull up past the school sign that says “WELCOME TO CLAUDIA’S JOUVENILE DELINQUENT CONTAINMENT CENTER”. Okay, I admit I’m exaggerating. But don’t we all every now and then? It really said “Claudia’s School for Genius and Imprudent Students”, as I mentioned earlier. It’s supposed to be a private school but really it’s just a normal school that happens to be 1% better than a public school. Go us. After the bus lets everyone off at the front door, we all go our separate ways. The Jocks, Eva, and the other cheerleaders leave for the gym, along with April who doesn’t even so much as breathe in my general direction as she leaves the bus. She was probably going to watch Jerry practice football by running laps up and down the field a million times. I hope he drowns in his sweat. Okay, okay, exaggerating again, but I can pray for whatever I want! Everyone else on the bus, consisting of me, Jake, and maybe three freshmen, leaves for the front doors, golden sunlight basking us in a slight warmth and glow of early sunrise as we enter school.
Unfortunately for the freshman girl wearing several flowers on her dress today, the birds that have made their nests in the awning in front of the school began their day by dive bombing her dress. Too bad she was also wearing heels, otherwise she might have had a chance at running away. Jake and I, being the lady-killers that we are, helped swat the birds away and brush off the grasses and ribbons the birds had dropped on the fly-bye-dive-bombing. She gave us a blushed-faced response and opened her mouth to say something but then she began to investigate her shoe laces and walked into the building without looking up again. Anything for a damsel in distress.
“She could have at least given us some gum.” Jake grumbled. “Oh no. I am never giving you gum again. Not after you chewed seven packs at once and stuck all my homework papers together.” I reminded him. He grinned, obviously glad for my annoyed recollection and his chance to gloat at me.

We enter through school’s massive