When I wake up the next morning my mind and vision are blurry, I feel nothing but the soft blankets, enveloping me in warmth. I want to stay there and bury my face into the pillow I find myself cuddling with. And I do. I don't know how many times I woke up before falling back into the comfort of my bed. The daylight streaming into the window suggests that it's well past the time I would normally have to wake up, but still I lay there, not caring about school; school was gone, burnt up in my vengeful inferno.

Finally I wrench myself awake, because my prolonged rest caused my stomach to grumble angrily. I get out of bed slowly, groggily, taking forever to straighten out the sheets. As I shuffle around I come across my clothes from last night, blackened by smoke and reeking of it too; I'd have to wash that without Ashley noticing.

Ashley.

Quietly I slink my way to her room, only to find her still knocked out in bed. I take that chance to gather up my clothes and rush them downstairs to the washer, and then start on breakfast, might as well make something for Ashley, return the favor.

As I cook, I don't even hear her come down from her room, but I hear the TV buzz on, and the flickering noise as the channels are being flipped through. Ashley stops on the news; I can hear the familiar, annoying voices of the newscast droning on as I mix the batter for pancakes.

As I pour the batter into the pan I hear a the female reporter say in a serious tone, "In other news: Tragedy has struck uptown Gotham. Officials found Gotham High School burnt to the ground this morning. It is believed that it had burned all night, leaving only a dark smoldering mass behind. Although it is not known why the alarms at the school did not warn the fire stations, officials believe they have located the source of the fire. We now go over to Lloyd Goodman for more."

"Thank you Amy," says a male voice, as I picture the screen switching over to the news reporter at the school. I can even hear the bustle of sirens and chatter in the background, "I'm here at the scene of the fire. As you can see there is nothing left from this blaze but a pile of ashes and scalding bricks. I have here with me the head of the fire department, Chief Daniels. Chief Daniels, will you tell us how this fire started?"

A gruffer male's voice, "Well, there isn't much to go on, but sources say that there was a teacher here at the time of the blaze; a Mr. Kevin Benson, and he was a smoker, and the building he worked in was an old one, it didn't have the modern insulation that the newer buildings have. Now there has been a single corpse found amongst the wreckage, but we are still unsure as to whether it is Mr. Benson."

"Is that all officials have to go on right now?" Lloyd asks.

"I'm afraid so. The fire was left burning for so long that it's destroyed virtually every other piece of evidence or information from the scene. We're on the verge of just filing this whole thing as a tragic accident." This is Chief Daniels final word, and I can hear the scene switch back to the newsroom.

Amy begins again, "As of this moment millionaire Bruce Wayne is said to me building a new school just a few streets away from the first, on one of the cities outskirts. It will take a week to complete, and until then students are asked to just continue their studies alone at home." She pauses and then continues, starting another story, but I'm not listening anymore.

I'm too busy watching as the beautiful flames sparkle and crack before my imagination. Picturing the rubble of it, blackened and grey, still blossoming with red-hot embers. Small wisps of dark smoke curl up and around my mind, fogging my senses with the delicious scent of it.

"How did you know school was out?" the voice pulls me from my fantasizing, and I see Ashley standing in the entryway of the kitchen, and—I've never seen her look so bad before. Huddled up under a huge quilt I hadn't seen since our grandmother died, mane a tangled mess, make-up smeared, bruises blushing through on the pale skin. She looked tired, her eyes haggard; caked with bags of a sleep wrought with horrible hallucinations and blood-shot from the fresh mourning of her dead boyfriend. And it was my entirely my fault.

And still I found myself lying easily to her face. "A friend called and told me." I don't even feel guilty about it, about anything.

Without words I pull out a chair for her, and obediently she sits; I pour her some orange juice and flip some pancakes onto a plate for her, syrup? A nod. Silently she eats, and as she does, I sit beside her and I comb out her wild strands of hair, gently wipe off her make-up.

"I'll take a shower after this." She says feebly. I just nod.

It's like that for the next week, quiet, no words, just the actions. Ashley doesn't go to work, and I don't have school, and so I stay at home. For that week I took care of her; of her; and not her aching heart. That she would have to get over herself.

Brent came around every night, and every night I'd have to tell him, "Not today," and he too, silently, without words, would go about his own business. Every time I watched him drive away, I felt a little tug, somewhere in my chest, which made me feel really stupid. But blood was thicker then wine, and I was so relieved that he understood that.

"Sis?" Ashley said to me one night, "Who's that that always shows up in the nice car?" she leans against the doorframe of the kitchen with a drink as I wash the dinner dishes, soup up to my elbows.

"A friend." I reply to the suds.

"A girl friend?"

"No. A boy."

"Oh." A small smirk makes the corner of her mouth twitch, "A boyfriend."

"No. Just a boy, that's a friend."

"Will I get to meet him?"

I look at her for a moment. "I don't think you'd like him."

"I like your other friends. How different could he be?"

"Well, he's not like them really. He's—worse, I guess. He doesn't smoke, and he doesn't have piercings but…he'll do things that they wouldn't even dream of."

"Ooh!" My sister's trademark smile was back, "So he's bad."

I knew when my sister thought 'bad' she thought of a bunch of different things: hot guys in leather on motorcycles, that drink nothing but hard liquor at the busiest bars in town, who hung out with the richest people but always wore that grungy look.

But when I thought of 'bad' I imagined clown masks and guns and murder and blood and grins—

I stare into the soapy water, pausing with the sponge against a plate. "Yeah," I say quietly, a smile pulling up my lips, "Yeah, he's pretty bad."