Just For the Night

Lena was moments away from being burned alive.

Mia had actually done it.

She'd lit the match.

She’d thrown it into the puddle of gasoline leaking from the pipe, screaming arson, chanting about how much she wanted to watch this place burn.

How much she wanted to burn.

“We're going to die in here,” Lena whispered, struggling to keep her voice monotone as she continued to stare directly into the other girl's deep brown eyes. They weren't cold anymore-not like before. They were blazing, filled with an indescribable passion, and she felt herself being drawn closer and closer until they were almost touching.

Lena could feel her breath on her face.

“Probably,” Mia said.

And that was that.

Those were the last words they ever said to one another.

As they inched closer and closer together, it was as if their minds were melding, melting, into one.

Neither of their gazes ever wavered.

‘What if we were friends for the night?’ Lena had asked herself earlier.

‘What if I wasn't the school's reject and she wasn't the cruel, pretentious ice-queen that everyone made us out to be?’

'What if we were the same?'

She'd never thought someone like Mia Singh could even get angry because Mia was perfect.

She passed every test, went to every student council meeting and had the highest grades in their entire class.

Lena had thought she was soaring, but it turns out they were one and the same.

They'd been drowning.

And now, they were both burning.

Lena felt the flames catch onto her skirt, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

She didn't want to admit it to herself, but she wanted to burn too.

Somehow, Mia already knew that. Lena didn't need to tell her.

‘What if we could be more than friends for a night?’

Mia pressed their foreheads together and suddenly amidst the flames, Lena felt hot.

She was burning her from the inside out and Lena wanted her to.

She wanted her to, so badly.

She wanted her.

She wanted-

Suddenly the steel gray doors of the basement storage room burst open and in came a horde of men in uniforms shouting orders at one another and snatching them away from the flames.

Lena hacked smoke out of her lungs and shook all the of the soot from her hair, gulping up the fresh night air.

One of the firefighters immediately asked them if they were okay.

He told them that his department had gotten an alert that to their school's core temperature had risen to unprecedented amounts and that he and his squad had driven over as fast as they could.

He told them he was sorry the department hadn't gotten to us sooner and asked them how the fire started in the first place.

She let Mia do the talking.

She let the girl craft a wonderful tale about how the pipes had burst and how Lena's cigarettes had accidentally triggered the fire.

The chief gave Lena a look of disappointment but not surprise.

He'd taken one look at the gauges in her ears, her greasy, knotted hair and her scrawny bony figure, and decided he could trust Mia's story because apparently pretty girls with glasses can’t lie. He kept asking Mia more questions and then asked another firefighter to call their parents.

Lena's mother didn't pick up until the 5th call.

She asked the firefighter to drive her daughter home because she was sleeping and they’d all just interrupted her.

God forbid anyone interrupts her beauty rest.

Mia's parents came mere moments after getting the call.

They looked livid. Her father questioned every single firefighter in sight while her mother criticized the school, calling it a place unfit and wildly dangerous for the likes of her daughter.

That made Lena smile a bit.

If only she knew how dangerous Mia truly was.

Her mother gave Lena a fleeting glance, looking at her as if she were some stain on the bottom of her shoe.

She was used to it.

Before being hauled off into her parents' car Mia gave Lena one last look.

Her eyes were cold again, just like they had been before the fire.

‘What if we could-’

That didn’t matter.

They were strangers once more.