• “Hold on.”

    Scarlet looked at the silver car skeptically. She was having second thoughts about this. For the fourth time. “I'm not getting in there unless you tell me where you're taking me. Can you even drive?”

    “Ouch. I’m sixteen, you know. And I’m taking you to a different school."

    Scarlet narrowed her eyes. She didn't think that schools regularly sent students out to recruit others by kidnapping them and taking them by force. "Really."

    "Yes, really. Hook me up to one of those polygraph things if you want. Whatever gets you in the car so we can go. I don't know if you noticed or not, but we're sort of burning daylight here." Jake tapped at his watch impatiently. It was square and a storm-gray color.

    "Fine. All right, all right!" She flapped her arms. Why did I just do that?

    He smiled, opening the passenger door for Scarlet. She almost laughed out loud. Who said kidnappers couldn't be gentlemen? “Right,” he said, getting into the car.

    --

    For a guy that had kidnapped a girl from a school, Jake was a very law-abiding citizen when it came to driving. Scarlet hoped her mouth wasn't gaping stupidly. He even maintained the speed limit! She found herself hoping that the speedometer would creep just a bit (just a bit!) over fourty-five and a policeman would pull them both over. She also hoped that the policeman was a particularly observant official and would notice that both of them ought to have been at school. And that she wasn't exactly consentual, and that maybe Jake would land in jail and she could go along in life normally. Then she remembered the fire.

    Well. Maybe not as normal.

    The car lurched to a stop. After regaining her feel on balance, she looked up. Damn. Another red light. "...said that you could have flawless skin? With all those other skin care treatments, you're bound to be skeptical. But ProActive is diff..." The actor's voice lowered until silence took over.

    Scarlet stared as Jake's hand lingered on the volume knob. She wondered briefly whether he was carressing it or something. Her eyes traveled along, to an arm, to a shoulder, to a head, to his eyes, which were looking at her. The way that he was staring at her...like she was some complex math equation - no, scratch that. Like she was a very simple equation, but it was giving him hell because he forgot the first step. "What?"

    Jake opened and closed his eyes in a way that wasn't quite a blink. "Huh?"

    "Why are you staring at me?"

    Jake not-quite-blinked again; Scarlet immediately put him off of her 'armed and dangerous' list. Armed, maybe. Dangerous? More like stupid. "Oh. Well...just..." A sentence would suffice, Captain Idiot. "...Just how old are you, again?"

    Scarlet tore her eyes away from his. Figured. "Fourteen."

    “Oh. Uh. You don’t look fourteen,” he finished lamely. “I thought you were ten or something.”

    Deep breaths. Deep breaths. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know her age. It wasn't his fault that her lanky, long build made her look like a tall girl that hadn't reached puberty. It wasn't his fault that she couldn't seem to grow taller. Then she remembered that he had found her at Ruby High. It was his fault. Entirely his fault.

    "Green light," she muttered, in case he was too busy oogling at her age versus her height to notice the change in traffic colors.

    She glared at the black concrete that the silver car was currently running over. Stupid thing couldn’t make her grow taller. Finally feeling a bit dumb for blaming an inanimate object that would probably be enduring a lot of pain if it weren't, her gaze rose, and she found herself staring at a copy of her face. She blinked. The copy blinked back. It took her a while to realize that it was actually a mirror.

    "You're actually really pretty, Scarlet. I'm so proud to have such a beautiful daughter. Really, Scarlet."

    Scarlet scoffed, then suddenly turned to see if Jake had heard. Seeing that he hadn't, she looked back. Well, sure, she was proud of her eyes - who didn't want such dark, emerald irises? - but her hair, ugh! She loathed those crimson locks that she was so carelessly named after. Leave it to her parents to name her because of a bit of scarlet hair. She recounted a time when she was more approachable and an old lady had happened upon her at the park.

    "What pretty hair you have! It's almost like a fox's fur! So lovely. Isn't it lovely?" was what the woman had said.

    "Foxes are stupid," was what she had replied with, effectively ending the coversation. So strange that she remembered these moments; they were so long ago. Had she been eight? Seven? Nine?

    Jake broke her out of her reverie. "We're here."

    She felt herself not-quite-blink, and thought of how hypocritical she could be. "Huh?"

    Jake nodded to the windshield. "Here. As in, our destination" Our. Ha ha. "As in, Sontel High."

    Her brows furrowed. "So tell me again what this whole thing is about?"

    Thudthudthud went her heart. Fear replaced suspicion. Maybe it was because Jake was smiling an I-eat-babies smile. Then he winked, and irritation replace fear. "Well, you'll just have to find out, won't you?"

    The irritation had evolved into anger, now. She let out a frustrated grumble, fiddling with her seatbelt. Why couldn't he be a not-jerk? And why was the seatbelt so damn hard to unlock?

    She almost didn't notice that he was out of the car. But then she saw him, two or four feet away. He smiled again, beckoning. Then he promptly turned and started walking away from the car.

    One side of her said, "Good riddance." Another said, "Don't leave me here!" A second later, she fumbled with the car door. "Wait up! Hey!"