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  Ruhi disappeared into the corridor.

  Jaya’s fingers traced her face, her heartbeat accelerating, fascination and panic interlacing, as the recent past came flooding back to her. Her face felt normal. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Where am I?” The words came out as a croak.

  “KB Bhabha Hospital. Do you remember what happened?” Her father’s voice was heavy with sadness. He rested his hand gingerly on her arm, just above where an IV line pierced her skin.

  Jaya reached for the truth but the complexity of the answer eluded her. She remembered lighting the match, but she didn’t recognise the woman who would have done that. How could she not know she had been capable of such an act?

  It was easier to lie. “I don’t remember.”

  He searched her face for answers. Beside him, her mother sat still. “Was it an accident?”

  “I was cooking samosas.” She recalled her feeling of hopelessness, which dogged her even now. All because of Akash. She had wanted to press reset but the world had remained the same.

  I should have died.

  “My daughter, what will become of you now?” said her father. “Where is Akash?”

  So he has not come, not even to the hospital.

  Jaya didn’t respond. The skin on her legs seemed to sizzle and pulse as if she were still shrouded in flames. She longed to tear off the bandages, to see what had befallen her, to itch her skin until she found some relief. Yet the physical sensations bore no comparison to the emotional ones. She remembered Akash’s face at the kitchen window.

  He left me to burn. Instead of punishing him, have I freed him to be with his lover? How can he not be sorry? If he cares at all, he would have tried to save me, and he would be at my bedside now.

  She felt his absence keenly, and the shame wrapped itself around her like a blanket of thorns. In that moment, her emotional core—the part fed by love and promise—transformed into a block of ice. What remained was simply a carcass of the woman who had stepped from her marital home that morning.

  She could find no answers to soothe her parents’ worries.

  Ruhi hurtled into the room, followed by the more sedate entry of a doctor wearing blue scrubs and a serious expression.

  The doctor pinned Jaya with a stare that stripped away her pretences. “It is good that you are awake.” She turned to the rest of the family. “Can I have a few minutes alone with my patient?”

  “Jaya would want us to stay,” said her father, squeezing Jaya’s hand.

  “It really is better this way,” said the doctor.

  Ruhi glanced from Jaya to the doctor. “We’ll be right outside,” she said, and ushered her parents into the hallway.

  Jaya fixed her eyes on the doctor’s hair, a frizzy mop tinged with the orange of fading henna.

  “I’m Dr. Tarpana. How are you feeling?”

  If she had to answer questions, it relieved her the doctor happened to be female. Who knew how a man would judge her? “Uncomfortable.”

  Her legs had been elevated under the sheets. Their mass appeared greater than they should, even under the thick bandages, as if they belonged to someone else, someone not as slight as her. She tugged at the sheets with her hand.

  Dr. Tarpana stilled her movement with her palm.

  “You went through a huge ordeal. Being caught in a fire is an attack on the entire body. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Jaya snatched her hand back and focused on the soot underneath her nails, uncertain of how far to trust this woman. Blisters dotted the pink skin of her palm. “I was in the kitchen cooking. The oil caught fire.”

  “I see.” Dr. Tarpana paused. “Jaya, your sister’s intervention saved your life. The burns on your legs are the ones I am most concerned about. They penetrated deep into the skin. It’s going to be a long journey from here.”

  The words floated over her. How she wished it had been Akash who had saved her. As it stood, Jaya didn’t know whether to thank Ruhi or hate her for not letting her die, but in the bright light of the hospital ward, her heart lurched to think she might never have seen her sister again. She tried to sit up, but the doctor held her in place, and her legs refused to obey. The effort caused her to cry out in pain.

  “I’ll get the nurse to bring you some more morphine. It’s best to stay still for now, if you can. We want to inflict as little trauma to the affected areas as possible.”

  Jaya motioned to her shrouded legs. “They don’t feel like mine.”

  “They’re swollen. You received second degree burns to fifteen per cent of your body. We had to cut away the dead tissue and clean your wounds. We had to amputate two of your toes. The ones that survived are splinted. We’ve applied cooling gel and thick dressings to give your skin as great a chance of recovery as possible.”

  Jaya heard the words as if through a filter. Each word dipped with weight, until Jaya could no longer understand the sum of its parts. The information was too much.

  Amputation. Dead tissue. Burns.

  She jolted as the flames seared her mind, as real as the bed she lay on.

  Across the ward, a man with what looked like acid burns gazed at her, pity on his face.

  Dr. Tarpana’s face loomed again through the haze, talking about administering electrolytes and antibiotics. She kept on, but Jaya caught only fragments. She nodded periodically, as words swirled around her: the risk of sepsis, compromised immunity, physiotherapy. This alien world was not hers. She had not caused this.

  “You’ll need skin grafts. We’re just waiting for the theatre to be free. Massage from a professional is key. Too much contact, and we risk disturbing the healing process. Too little, and your skin and muscles will become unsupple, risking reduced mobility.”

  Too much. Better to live in fantasy than to be confronted with harsh truths.

  She longed to unhear her diagnosis, but there would be no going back. She was nearly at the finish line. Surely it could not get any worse.

  Jaya focused on the doctor’s face, her solemnity, the steady hands in contrast to her own trembling ones. “I want to see. I want to see what I look like.”

  Dr. Tarpana considered her for a moment. “It’s better to wait. It’s too soon.”

  “I need to see. Please.”

  All because of him, and he isn’t even here. I wish he could see what he’s done to me. Would he worry about me or would he wash his hands of me? Was there ever anything there?

  The doctor called a nurse, and the blood rushed into Jaya’s ears. Together the doctor and nurse peeled back the sheets and removed the bandages from her legs with infinite care, first one and then the other.

  Now Jaya could correlate her pain with the physical symptom. She gasped and her vision swam. A moment of disassociation: a lifetime of consequences. The smooth skin of her legs had been replaced by raw, open sores. Where her skin had been almond in colour, it was white, as though the pigment had given up in face of the onslaught, melting like a wax figure in an oven. It glistened under the harsh hospital lighting, and there was no place for Jaya to hide. Two of her toes on one foot were no longer there. She flinched from the sight, shutting her eyes, but still the image of her new body played underneath her closed lids. She willed the gods to take mercy upon her, to rewind the tape.

  “Jaya,” said Dr. Tarpana, bending close, trying to project empathy that failed to reach over Jaya’s walls. “It might not seem like it, but you’ve really been very lucky. The fire has done minimal damage to your muscles. Much depends on how fast your body heals, but I see no reason why you won’t be able to continue life as you know it.”

  Jaya blinked her eyes open. Her wounds remained. Her foot did not magically become whole. She could not imagine a humdrum life like her mother’s, one borne of duty rather than passion. She had never wanted a pale imitation of love, and now even that had been axed from her life. She had wanted change. Couldn’t fire bring renewal? Instead, she had fuelled the flames. Who would want her now? “Life as I know it? My life
is over. What have I done?”

  ——End of Special Sneak Preview—-

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  Praised as a modern and edgier “Lolita” meets “The Catcher in the Rye,” award-winning “White Chalk” is the eye-opening realistic look into the minds and actions of adolescents. Far from sugarcoated and rose-colored, this novel captures the raw, dark side of growing up.

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  CHAPTER 1

  Troy Christiansen came for me.

  I knew it the moment he first walked into Northwoods Secondary School. I watched, transfixed, as he glided right through the crowd of popular kids who hung out by the front door—like someone used to being ignored, slicing through the throng like a ghost. He had a black Mohawk pulled tight into a ponytail, and smelled like cigarettes and delinquency. A black T-Shirt and long-sleeved hoodie clung to his hunched shoulders.

  Something about him looked so perfectly fragile.

  He looked up only once and, by the smirk on his wide full lips, I knew I’d been caught staring. It didn’t really matter. I’d fallen instantly and obsessively in love, but not the kind of teenage drama crap you might expect. No, this was the real soul-wrenching kind of love. I’d never be the same again.

  The whole school trilled with gossip. Morgan heard he’d moved here to live with his dad after his mom got arrested. Sebastian said he’d been in Juvie and just got out.

  I knew better, having spent that entire day wandering the high school between classes, getting more tardies in one afternoon then I’d received so far that year. But I didn’t care. I was determined to figure out a way to talk to him, whatever it took. Something about the way he’d looked at me, the way the world fell away, taking with it the dread sitting in the bottom of my stomach. Like getting shock therapy, or jumping in the lake in winter, suddenly I felt alive—thanks to him.

  Two days later at lunch—one of the few events not segregated by grade—I finally saw him.

  I’d been held after class in Algebra; too many days of missing homework. Teachers seemed to think we possessed this unlimited amount of time between getting home and going to bed for all this work, and every one of them gave enough homework to fill the whole night. This assumed I bothered to even try. Between cleaning up the house, trying to keep the reality of my life from caving in, worrying about Dad coming home drunk or Ma crying over bills, Earth Science homework just didn’t seem like that big of a fucking deal. At least I didn’t have to worry about homework in History—it paid to be Mr. Harris’ star student.

  When I finally got out of there, I trudged down to the cafeteria, ignoring the insults the boys tossed, or their occasional moo call. Fuck them. I retreated to my usual spot in front of the vending machine, looking for something sugary before finding Morgan on the front steps with her friends.

  Cheetos or cupcakes or a Rice Krispies Treat... the options for processed fat and sugar proved endless.

  “The machine gave me two, you want one?” A low rumble came from around the corner.

  I stepped to the side and looked around the clunky machine blocking my view. There, on the ground with earbuds dangling around his neck and one hand offering up a HoHo, sat Troy Christiansen.

  “Umm, Yeah.”

  I took the treat and shifted my weight to the other foot. I wanted to tell him I’d seen the way he’d looked at me, that this place didn’t suck too bad, that I could be something—maybe something special—if he wanted. Instead, I just crinkled the plastic wrapper between my fingers.

  He shrugged, put the earbuds back in, and picked up the book on his lap—something old, with tan pages and a cracked spine.

  Dejected, I turned away.

  “You can sit here if you want,” he said, without looking up.

  A swelling in my chest made it difficult to breathe, and, for a minute, I floundered. I wasn’t even sure if I could find the strength to sit, but when he glanced up and raised one eyebrow, I shivered and stepped closer.

  “Um... yeah... sure.” My mouth went dry and my tongue felt stiff as a diving board, but my legs managed to lower me to the floor without falling. Little miracles shouldn’t be taken for granted.

  The waist of my jeans cut into my middle and made it tough to figure out just how to sit, but I didn’t want to fidget too much. With one leg bent and the other curled under me, it wasn’t comfortable, but I couldn’t cross the other leg. I left it bent, my knee poking out at an angle.

  “Thanks.” I peeked through my hair, afraid to look right at him. When he smiled, a thrum of excitement started in my chest, speeding up my breath.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Chelle.”

  He nodded. “I’m Troy.” His eyes shone in the florescent glare of the cafeteria, and he passed me one of his iPod’s earbuds. When I took it, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes, not bothering to eat the HoHo balanced precariously on his knee.

  The earbud was still warm, and shrill, fast music crashed into my brain. It clamored around in my head, abusing the parts of my mind normally reserved for coherent thought, but I didn’t care. Troy Christiansen and I listened to the same thing, shared the same sensations.

  I didn’t eat the HoHos he’d given me, despite a tingling at the back of my mouth anticipating the decadent mixture of chocolate and cream. I leaned against the wall, enjoying how every breath he took moved the air around me. The hairs on my arm reached out to him, and I vibrated with the fantasy that he might touch me.

  When the warning bell rang, chairs scraped against the linoleum floor as everyone rushed to finish their conversation, stuff in one more bite of processed meat, and dump their trash before heading to class.

  Troy and I just sat, him with his eyes closed, me trying desperately to look at him... without looking. His sharp features were symmetrical, and sitting side-by-side, we weren’t too different in height. But my figure was thick, his lanky, and where I curved, he stuck out in angular points. He wore the same tight jeans as the first day I saw him. His lip ring dangled from the center of his bottom lip, pulling it out into a pout that made me shiver and look away.

  The class bell rang and even though I couldn’t afford another tardy, the mere idea of moving away proved inconceivable. I’d spent all week searching for him; no way I’d get up first. Every minute we sat—the cafeteria now cold and barren—the knot in my stomach grew. I tried not to fidget, to keep my hands still and not worry about needing to go to my locker before class.

  Finally, he opened his eyes and pulled out his earbud. He set the iPod on the ground before standing up and stretching.

  From where I sat I could glance at the swatch of skin above his pant line, pale and smooth. I fumbled with the earbud and gathered the cord around the iPod to keep from staring.

  “You smoke?” He stuffed the iPod and uneaten HoHo into his bag.

  “Yeah.” I scrambled to pull myself up as he slung it over a shoulder.

  “You didn’t eat. Aren’t you hungry?” He pointed to the HoHo in my hand.

  “Nah, I’ll eat later.” I hoped he couldn’t hear my stomach growl, or the crinkling of the plastic wrapper as my hand shook.

  He shrugged and walked away, out of the cafeteria and down the long hall leading to the main door.

  “Aren’t you going to class?” My voice reverberated in the empty hall, too loud as I rushed to keep up with his long legs.

  “No. Why would I ask you to smoke if I was going to class?” His response made so much sense, I felt stupid for asking.
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  “Well, you can’t go out front,” I offered, lowering my voice a little, trying to make it sultry or something. I knew something he didn’t, and despite the fact I was essentially skipping class for the first time in my life, I desperately wanted him to keep me around. “We have to go out back, behind the loading docks. None of the teachers bother going there.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what the teachers do.” He glanced down at me, his eyes cold before softening into a teasing smile. “But if you do, we can go.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, embarrassed to have cared, to assume he would care about getting in trouble. He was a junior—he didn’t have to give a fuck.

  We turned and walked back past the cafeteria, beyond the foreign language hall and out the side door. He followed me, not speaking as I jumped over a pile of unmelted snow left over from the last storm.

  He chuckled—laughing at me or with me? Didn’t really matter, given the smile that brightened his face.

  When we rounded the shed to the unofficially designated smoking area, he pulled out a cigarette, lit it and inhaled deeply. His thin face appeared even more drawn as he held in the smoke before exhaling through his nose.

  I rubbed my hands on my pant legs. I didn’t have my bag with me, so no cigarettes.

  Troy didn’t seem to notice, though. He just gazed out over the parking lot, tapping his foot as he smoked.

  I wrapped my arms around my middle, trying to keep warm.

  Skipping earth science turned out not to be the best decision I’d ever made, and it landed me in the office. I sat in the outdated green chairs with wooden arms that were too low for anyone on the planet to actually sit in comfortably, waiting for Ms. Perkins, the Vice Principal.

  I thought about that stupid spelling trick they’d taught us in elementary school: principle... princiPAL... yeah, whatever. My mind ticked off all the adults who’d said they were my friend or my pal, or on my side, or some other bullshit they feed to kids, thinking we won’t realize it’s all nonsense. Even Mr. Harris wasn’t really on my side. Everyone wanted something.