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

lips tasted like frog?” he tried to joke. I gave him a glare. His eyes question mine. So I told him. And he laughed. And laughed. Then I knocked him out of his chair and onto the floor where he continued to laugh.
“It’s really not that funny.” I say in a mumble barely audible in Jake’s laugh. He finally got up off the ground and said “Oh of course not! It’s not funny at all,” he said without even a trace of the laugh he had five seconds ago. “In fact, it’s miserable! I can’t believe April actually told you to text her and you were too terrified to ask for her number.”
He made a tsk-tsk noise with his tongue at me, which didn’t make me feel any better. Some friend! “I can believe it. In fact I can believe it specifically because it’s me, and I can’t talk to girls worth crap!” I pick up my warm-up lunch from Wally-World and start walking to the cafeteria microwave, Jake walking almost on my heels. I try to walk quickly, since the microwave is on the other side of the entire cafeteria, and keep my head on a swivel looking for April and Jerry. Maybe if I’m lucky she won’t notice I don’t have her number and maybe, just maybe, Jerry doesn’t know about what happened in Geometry and April confronting me after Biology.
Since Jerry, April, and the Meat-Head group don’t seem to have found their way to the cafeteria yet, I get up from my seat and start my lunch-yard dash for the microwave. (Swivel) “I just don’t think I can talk to her again.”(Swivel) “Next time I say something stupid, she really will think I’m just the retard in the back of the bus,” I tell him(Swivel). “Don’t be so ‘No Self-Confidence’ about it. Girls hate that. They want the guy who knows when he does something stupid or smart and doesn’t give a damn about it.” Jake tries to console me.
We finally make it to the microwave. I place my plastic covered food onto the tray and press the correct amount of time. I don’t see the gorilla coming up behind me and push Jake out of the way before he can warn me. Out of everyone in the entire cafeteria, even with my head swiveling, its Jerry come back from the Black-Lagoon to “talk” with me. I wish it had been Josh. Usually with Josh, there is only one attack then he backs off for a while. At least then I would have heard his heavy breathing coming up behind me. Jerry doesn’t even have that or that nasty, sweaty-sock smell that most football players carry around with them, even if they did use the locker room showers.
“What’s goin on with you and my gurlfriend, Jay?” Jerry grunts. Jake jumps in before I can. “There’s nothing goin on with him and your GURL-friend.” Jake says with emphasis on Jerry’s natural speech slur. “If you think something’s goin on then you need to ask her your-self” Jake says, looking around so he can point her out for Jerry.
He seems to be looking for her too, but it’s hard to tell. Sometimes his head just moves around like a bobble head. I bet it’s because he really does have a screw loose so the spring his head is twisted on spins around every once in a while.
“I think it is time to teach our not-so-smart friend here a new lesson in action and consequence.” Jerry threatens as he starts to back me closer to the microwave. Just then the fire alarm goes off in their impossible to ignore way, even if you’re about to beat someone up. We get just enough time to look around for movement or signs of a fire when the sprinklers go off. Everyone is immediately soaked, food and all, as we try to move out of the room in more of a mob-ish way than organized. So much for the Fire Safety drills we have every month. I have taken about three steps when Jake tackles me to the ground, pushing me away from everyone else. I realized then that everyone had been trying to get away from me, and that there was a distinct burning smell in the room. Jake was trying to roll me or something, and I caught a glance of the microwave.
It was in flames with smoke billowing out like an overflowing toilet. Jake told me to get my jacket off. I unzipped quickly and threw it across the room, trying not to think of the reason why Jake had told me to take it off. It was still slightly smoking as it flew across the room and onto the floor. Jake then helped me up and started moving me from the room, trying to say something but a combination of the fire alarms and screams of kids and my own ears ringing smothered his words, like the smoke was to my throat, I noticed.
We get out into the parking lot and I can hear well enough to understand that Jake was trying to tell me to go to the paramedics with him. As we walked over, my mind began to unravel what just happened. I was standing in front of the microwave when Jerry started backing me closer to it. “Did I put the wrong time in?” I question to myself as the paramedics, who were able to hear Jake, heard what Jake had to tell them, whatever it was. They motioned for me to take my shirt off and turn around so they could inspect my back, which I guess had caught fire as I stood too close to the microwave. My jacket must have kept me from feeling the heat from the flames. Lucky me.
Jake took a picture with his phone and showed me my back. I wasn’t burned, but I had scorch marks on my back and neck. My hair was singed black on the back of my head, making it look like I had dyed my hair in an attempt at growing out a black mullet. A few more seconds without Jake forcing me to roll me on the ground and my skin would have started melting off. Though I still couldn’t hear properly, I heard the paramedics say it was a close call, that I was lucky to have such an attentive friend like Jake. Maybe I was but I couldn’t help but remember a certain frog-lipped comment from earlier. I laughed at that and so did Jake, who apparently figured out what I was laughing at just after I did.
My hearing finally returns to normal just as the principal came over to make sure I was okay. Or maybe she was coming to expel me. “Are you okay? I was right next to you when I saw your shirt catch fire. I pulled the alarm and tried to tell you but you didn’t hear me I guess, so I had to tackle you…” Jake told me in a half apologetic way. God, what a friend.
I was in the middle of replying when Principle Claudia interrupts me and starts in on one of her infamous lectures. “What the heck happened in there? I DEMAND to know why you tried to burn my beautiful school to the ground.” She hissed. We all stopped to look at the school, now with smoke wafting out of a few windows near the cafeteria. That’s just great. Fan-damn-tastic.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself, Mr., uhmm…whoever you are?” she questioned, looking at all of us but obviously talking to me. “I don’t really remember…” I said, trying to feign that I had blacked out and couldn’t really recollect what happened. “I was putting my lunch into the microwave and I think I put in the right amount of time, but I don’t remember anything before that other than the fact that Jerry Stake and his friends were bullying me and my friend Jake here, backing us closer to the microwave.”
I tried to sound as innocent as possible with Jake nodding vigorously behind me. Hey, if I’m going down then so is Jerry. He was there too you know! “He had moved us close enough to the microwave that my jacket caught fire and Jake here had to put me out, unlike Jerry who just ran away like a coward. He didn’t even stop to see if we needed help.” I continued. It looked like Principle Claudia was buying my “Victim” act.
“Let me go talk to Jerry and see what he has to say about all of this.” She says and walks away with her eyes narrowed and searching. We watched as she stalked away from us , then to the ambulance as the paramedics drove back down the driveway to the school. I turned to see an entire student body, staff included, staring at me. I thought about asking if I had something on my face. The fire Marshall gave us the all clear about ten minutes later, noting that the damage had been contained to the cafeteria only. Damn, so close.
Jake and I were almost to the doors when the vice principal stopped us in the front courtyard and told us to wait for Principal Claudia to come back with Jerry. I watched as the rest of the school entered the building, intent on ignoring me completely now. April walked past me and gave me a smirk and a wink. I looked around for Jerry’s fist to hit me out of nowhere. She held a small paper in her hand, wadded and possibly chewed. She threw it at me like an insult for causing the disturbance. No one gave it a second glance, let alone a first. I picked it up, dry, and stuffed it into my pocket just as Principal Claudia found her way back to us. Jerry strolled behind her with a smug look on his face, a look that made my stomach drop ten feet below us. Something about his look and the blazing fury building up behind Principal Claudia’s eyes gave me a feeling that my luck was getting worse by the second. And all the while, Eva didn’t even so much as glance at me when she walked past from somewhere behind us. What a gal. I looked up, Jake backed up, Principal Claudia blazed, and Jerry smiled, all standing behind our principal as she dragged the three of us to her office in the deepest darkest corner of the school.
WHEN YOU’RE ENGULFED IN FLAMES…
If you have never been in a waiting room at school after you have done something stupid, rude, or illegal and you have never found yourself awaiting an imminent death delivered from a principal, then let me just fill you in on all of the wonderful details you are missing: you get to sit in these chairs, see, and you get to wait in a room that is glass all around that lets people stare at you when they walk past. Then you get to talk to the incompetent staff members behind the front desk who try to tell you to go see some other person in some other office even though the Principal was in the room five minutes ago and told them HERSELF why you are there and when you need to see her.
After that lovely misunderstanding, you get to use an office phone to call a parent, who no doubt leaves work early and shows up in the office crying, yelling, or confused. THEN you get to go to another waiting room outside the Principals actual office with your parent either whispering sweet frustrations in your ear or “whispering” them loud enough for everyone to hear and melt