The Burned Rogue Book

Chapter Two: Monster in the Precalculus Room

Chapter Two: Monster in the Precalculus Room

My head was spinning when I got home. Heck, I had to steady myself before I fell down the stairs to the apartment.

I needed to gain my footing before my mom asked what was going on.

See, it was just my mom and me. My mom is Carrie Dahl. My dad had disappeared a while back, when I was a baby. My mom had raised me all by herself. She’s a warrior of a woman, let me tell you that. She has scars up her arms, like a fiery serpent coiled itself from her wrists to her elbows and eyes that told stories of a thousand years ago, but she’s beautiful. She has long, straight, dirty blond hair and blue eyes. I must take after my dad, because I have unruly, dark, reddish brown hair and light brown eyes. Nothing special. No freckles, no scars, and a few pimples dotting my cheekbones. Not that I cared anymore; nothing like a near-death experience to really put your life in perspective.

“Mom? I’m home,” I called when I walked through the threshold. I looked at my face in the mirror and saw I had soot on my face. Quickly, I wiped it off.

She walked in from the kitchen and smiled at me. “You’re home,” she smiled. I dropped my backpack by the kitchen table and gave my mom a hug. I was pretty grateful to be alive. “Spaghetti for dinner tonight; you want that?”

I pulled away and nodded. ‘That sounds really good.”

She went back to the kitchen and I pulled out my backpack so I could get started on the mountains of homework I had.

Ruthless teachers.

I decided to start history first. I had a huge debate I needed to get started on. I grabbed my book and opened up to the page about Puritans—were Puritan values still in American society?

For a moment, I looked outside. I took momentary daydreams often, just to escape from the world of high school. Today, it was falcons. Two were flying, chasing each other. In that second, I didn’t think anything of it, until I realized we didn’t have wild falcons in Chicago.

“Mom, look!” I exclaimed, and she came from the kitchen. “Falcons!”

Mom came out of the kitchen and looked out the window. “Wow. That’s weird,” she said, frowning. “That’s not something you see everyday.” She stayed standing there for a minute, staring almost with horror at the birds.

“Mom,” I said, trying to get her out of her daze. She shook her head and looked at me.

“Baby, come here,” she said. I stood and hesitantly walked over to her. Quickly, she pulled up my right shirtsleeve and glanced at my wrist, and then pulled the sleeve down again.

“What’s going on?” I asked. She let out a sigh of relief and pushed me gently to go back to my homework.

“Nothing. I was just making sure you didn’t have clay all over your arms. You know I don’t like it when you come home caked in clay.”

I nodded, not believing a word. “Oh. No, I was careful.”

I watched my mom tentatively as she disappeared back into the kitchen. I gave one last glance at the falcons, and then at my history homework.

Temptation. Ohhhh God, it was great. I really wanted to pull one on my mother and tell her I knew about the Burned Rogues, but to me it seemed like she really wouldn’t understand that world any more than I did, if she even knew of it.

That evening, after I ate dinner and took a shower, I lied down in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. My mom had gone to sleep already, and I was left to think about the day’s events.