How My Perfect Life Was Inverted

Chapter Three: Fire

"If I were to call you an idiot," Georgie was saying in that long-suffering way of hers, "would you take offence?"

Sierra raised and lowered her shoulders in a shrug, but noticeably refused to answer.

"Because you are, you know," she pressed on, determined as she was to draw out the punishment. "It speaks volumes for our education system if a girl predicted Level 7's in her SATs is the same girl who flirted with a complete stranger for half an hour without realising that he was indeed the same boy that picked her pocket."

Sierra straightened at this, her pale eyes turning to glare at her companion.

"In my defence," she snapped heatedly, "not once did I get a chance to look, truly look, at the boy that stole my purse, and besides, one would have thought that a pickpocket wouldn't have the gall to approach the girl whose pocket he'd picked."

Georgie merely ignored her argument.

"You're an idiot," she stated primly, sipping delicately from her plastic cup. Sierra made a noise of distaste in the back of her throat and turned away, arms crossed defensively over her torso in a sulk, fingers fidgeting with her plum-coloured sleeve in agitation.

"I wasn't an idiot; he was reckless and stupid."

"And drunk."

"Yes, that's true."

"And gorgeous; he was gorgeous, wasn't he?"

"Hmm."

"You fancy him, don't you?"

"No."

"Liar."

"Shut up," Sierra dismissed, turning to stare moodily out of the window, her pretty face contorted by a scowl of resentment. Looking at her, at her straight back, her folded arms, her childish pout, made Georgie think of a spoilt five-year-old about to throw a tantrum for not getting the doll she wanted for Christmas; a reaction so typical for girls of Sierra's upbringing. Georgie, of course, was allowed to make such observations as, despite her mother's transparently pathetic pretensions, she was in fact a rung or three below Sierra on the social ladder; not that this had ever affected the girls' friendship, of course.

Well, not directly, at least.

"Exactly what happened?" the almost-redhead pressed. "I leave you in the questionable hands of your ladies-in-waiting to find my cousin, and when I return, you and the courtiers were giggling over your dark knight."

"That punch is spiked, isn't it?"

"Yeah; I heard someone smuggled in rum. And vodka. And tequila. And some really cheap beers some of the older-looking boys bought at the corner shop."

"So it's not so much that someone spiked the punch as it is that we've all unanimously decided to get gloriously drunk."

Georgie merely shrugged.

"What can I say? We're British."

Sierra wrinkled her nose in distaste. "I've never understood why it's such an integral part of youth culture to drink; there's something rather pathetic about a person who has to be drunk off their arse before they're fully able to enjoy themselves."

"You're such a prude," Georgie dismissed, pushing another cup into Sierra's hands. The girl sighed and accepted, but chose instead to simply allow her index finger to lazily trace the rim.

"So? What happened?" her friend demanded, and Sierra sighed, clearly unwilling to share.

"Ask Frankie," she informed her, gesturing vaguely to a mousy-haired girl giggling and whispering with another of their mutual friends. "She has quite a story to tell, and she does so love to hear the sound of her own voice."

Francesca did, indeed, have a story to tell; but to truly discern what was fact and what were merely the drunken embellishments of a giddy teenager who had stupidly mixed vodka and acid took an effort that was beyond Georgiana's current abilities.

It had all started, apparently, just after Georgiana had left in search of Angie; within minutes, Sierra and her entourage—but mostly Sierra, of course, for she stood a little further away from the group, somewhat alone and therefore approachable—were approached by what at first glance appeared to be a drunken homosexual couple. (It apparently took Frankie several moments to realise that the gay couple were in fact nothing more exciting than a pair of drunken teenagers clinging tightly to one another's shoulders for support, and she was apparently very disappointed with this discovery.) And then the following occurred:

"'Evening," the boy greeted, stumbling and leaning on his equally unsteady companion. "I'm drunk!" he informed the girls brightly, clinging tightly to the other boy. "…But he's not…" he added, pointing at his friend with a surprisingly steady finger. At that very moment, the supposedly sober companion managed to stumble over his own two feet, causing both males to tumble in a manner most undignified. Even for teenagers. Somehow, the boy's—the one who had been talking, not the inebriated mute—eyes met hers, and she was startled at the warm intelligence, the… joy, was it?… displayed there. There was a familiarity in his gaze as he looked at her that instantly wracked her with guilt, for if he knew her, then shouldn't she ought to know him? Oh, look, and now he was attempting to stand. How adorable; it was like watching Bambi learn to walk all over again. This last thought brought an affectionate smile to Sierra's face, which soon turned to tears as she recalled how the little fawn's mother was shot by the big bad—

"Back to the story, Fran," Georgiana interrupted firmly, and Frankie blinked her brown eyes in confusion before shaking her head and continuing with her narrative; but Francesca never uttered another word, for at that very moment, Sierra had indignantly exclaimed,

"I was not startled by his 'warm intelligence'—I was startled by…" And she then proceeded to relate her own version of events.

"Whoa!" was the only warning she received before she found herself pushed back into the startled arms of her friends as some drunk tripped over his own feet and collapsed onto her. Her mouth had opened in a silent gasp of surprise, and it was only when she was nestled safely, albeit uncomfortably, in the clumsy, unreliable embrace of her startled companions that Sierra let out a shriek of surprise—not least because the boy was still pressed against her, an impertinently blissful grin adorning his features as he giggled incessantly.

"Oh God, oh God; I think I've bruised a rib…" she gasped out from beneath him, still bewildered and uncertain as to what exactly was happening, and how it had happened, and what was to happen next, and she was suddenly aware that her bra was suddenly unhooked—

"Unhooked?" Georgie pressed, her curiosity insatiable.

"Yeah, I think that somewhere in the drunken struggling, his hand sort of reached around and—flicked…"

"So you don't think it was an accident, then?"

"Of course not!"

Anyway, her bra had miraculously come undone, leaving her with a conspicuously absent feeling of support that made her squirm in discomfort (much to the boy's delight, if his drunken chuckles were anything to go by), and it was this, more than anything, that finally granted her the strength to push him away—and straight into the arms of an equally inebriated companion, who the boy immediately clung to, still grinning inanely. Straightening, Sierra's hand slipped as discreetly under her shirt as was possible, adjusting accordingly until she deemed the undergarment secure enough to be left to its own devices. So she crossed her now unoccupied arms over her chest in such an obvious gesture of defence that it invited yet another round of guffaws from the boy who had fallen on her, and the stranger was so overcome by mirth that he clung even tighter to his friend, head lowered as wave upon wave of hilarity washed over him, face obscured by dark curtains of hair.

Personally, Sierra didn't quite see what was so amusing, even if he did know about her silent, humiliating struggle with the brassiere; then again, he was drunk, and perhaps a little high, so she knew it was pointless to question his reasoning. Instead, she chose to wait, but for what, she didn't actually know.

Presently, the boy straightened, and she had to admit that she was vaguely surprised.

He doesn't… look… quite as I expected.

Then again, she wasn't the sort of girl that was easily won over by a… classically chiselled face, to use a mild cliché, so this didn't impair her judgement in the slightest.

"Oh, please!" Georgie snorted in disbelief, and some of the other girls tittered appropriately.

"Stop interrupting!"

"'Evening," the boy—the startlingly, almost distractingly handsome boy—said to her, leaning forward as far away from his companion as he dared, a hand outstretched in a handshake. For a moment, Sierra was so—so taken aback—because, surely, no one actually looked this good in real life—Better-looking than Julian, in fact!—that it was only after he retracted his limb that Sierra realised that it was ever offered in the first place.

So instead she gave him a slight smile of embarrassment and a quiet, almost shy, "Hello."

"'Evenin'," the boy acknowledged with a nod of his head that nearly had him capsizing. "God, I'm drunk…" she heard him mutter, even through the crap music (Red Hot Chili Peppers? Really?) blaring from the stereos in the other room and the talk of the other guests. His head snapped back up suddenly, his eyes shining.

"I'm drunk!" he told her happily, the lecherous chuckling having been replaced by a sweet, boyish pride stemming from an accelerated sense of achievement. "Drunk… Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk! …But he's not…" he added, gesturing at his friend, who took that very moment to collapse, which caused the boy to sway and totter slightly. Without really thinking, Sierra darted forward, her hands reaching out to grab his arm, to steady him, to support him, and, on some level, simply to touch him; the boy grinned at this, and wrapped his arm about her shoulder with such ineptitude that she couldn't help but find it endearing.

"Hi," he said to her, blinking his eyes—and they were lovely, beautiful eyes, she couldn't help but think to herself, framed with long feathery lashes that Sierra herself would have envied had she not her own thick, fluttery pair—as he looked down at her face—or the low V of her top. She had a slight suspicion that it was the latter.

"Y'know, you look so much prettier up close," he told her brazenly, and she smiled at this.

"Oh?" she said, still in that soft, gentle voice of hers—the one that Julian always seemed to like (it reminded him of puppies and kittens and rainbows and sunshine and a beach ball that inflated with every bounce across the golden Caribbean sand on which the two of them had first had sex, apparently; Sierra had slapped him at this, for Julian had all but admitted to cheating on her over the summer, for they had never had sex on a beach). "Have we—" she stopped at her words, wincing slightly, though she didn't think the boy noticed. Sierra was suddenly, painfully, unconsciously aware of her accent, affected and carefully cultivated as it was due to a combined influence of her parents, her schooling, and her peers—it suddenly seemed rather out of place here, where the hostess had the auditory indecency to own, much less play, a Red Hot Chili Peppers album; here, where the offensive stench of cigarettes mixed freely with the heady scent of sweat and marijuana and cheap perfume and generic alcohol; here, where the heat of the young, numerous bodies leant the small home an air of sexual electricity that she was suddenly painfully aware of; here, where—

"Have we…?" the boy drawled, pulling her from her thoughts. "Have we what? If it's what I think is what it is, then it doesn't matter if we have or not, for I wouldn't mind repeating what we've already done, if indeed, we have done anything, which I'm sure we haven't, as I'm certain I'd remember doing things with you, indeed, to you, as, perhaps, the case may be, if we have in fact done anything, which we haven't, 'cause you're too beautiful to forget by far; if indeed, we have done anything that warrants remembering. Which I'm sure we haven't. By God, I'm hammered."

Sierra's mouth fell open at—at his—at his sheer audacity! That, and the fact that she had relative difficulty following his drunken ramblings, which to her was an additional humiliation, for wasn't she the one receiving the best education money could buy? But oh, his voice; deeper than other boys' she'd spoken to—actually, might have been deeper than her father's! It was slurred, of course, due in no small part to the alcohol he had consumed earlier in the evening, and yet—and yet, every word, every sentence was grammatically correct, correctly pronounced. It wasn't really what she'd expected; there was a hint of Cockney, and Irish, and Australian, and a dash of… American, was it? And yet, his tone was so self-assured, and eloquent, and every word seemed both natural and spontaneous yet carefully measured, and was said with an indolent, seductive drawl… She supposed that if she were to strip away the traces of Cockney and Irish and American and whatever other foreign influences there were, his voice would be just as modulated as hers, albeit several octaves lower.

"Well?" he murmured in that soft, wonderfully ambiguous inflection of his. "Aren't you going to answer me?"

She was silent, still young and uncertain and suddenly fretful of her accent, which honestly never bothered her before, and the as of yet unnamed boy sighed in exasperation.

"Don't have to answer if you don't want to," he informed her, and even though he was taller than her, he leant down to rest his head comfortably on her shoulder, and she heard him inhaling—Breathing me in—deeply before releasing the air in a sigh of contentment. "To be perfectly frank for one perfect, honest, golden moment," he told her carefully, "I don't much care what you say, so long as you say it. Talk to me; please: You've such a beautiful voice…"

Such a beautiful voice… She'd barely spent two minutes with him, and he had already called her beautiful twice. Julian hadn't even told her she was beautiful once, and she'd known him since she was two years old.

"You've not introduced yourself," she said to him presently, and he seemed to sigh in pleasure as her words filled his ears; a reaction that sent a shiver of delight up her spine. "My name," she continued, "is Sierra de—just Sierra, for now. And you?"

The boy pulled unsteadily away, his dark eyes looking her up and down in approval as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket for a moment, evidently lost in his own drunken thoughts, before finally reaching a decision and offering her his palm. Sierra had gladly accepted, eyes widening in surprise as he brought her fingers, suddenly frail and pale and delicate in his own strong, brown grasp, to his lips; lips which were softer than they looked, she soon discovered, lips that were capable of being gentle and harsh all at once, lips which made her hand tremble in a sort of virginal wonder.

Or perhaps it was his eyes: Perhaps it was those clear, steady eyes, devoid of any drunken influence, that bore unwaveringly into hers; eyes that were dark with a sort of hunger she couldn't quite explain, eyes that seemed to say to her, to mark her, brand her: You're mine.

"Steve," he said to her, his breath warming her fingers, which were already scorching from his touch. "Stephen Ve—just Steve, for now," and between the rapid heartbeat and quickened breathing and sudden light-headedness that seemed to have snuck uninvited pass her senses, she found herself smiling softly as he gently mocked her.

The moment was suddenly shattered by Steve's drunken friend, who had taken to crawling up the boy's leg, getting as far as the knee before stopping to whimper that he didn't feel well and was very probably about to vomit. It was this last, more than anything, that made Steve drop Sierra's hand with a rushed apology before he bent down and yanked his friend up by the scruff of his neck, A little too roughly, she noted with delight.

When Steve's arm was haphazardly flung about the boy's shoulders, who did indeed look a little green, his dark eyes sought Sierra's once more, and this time his gaze was devoid of that dark, irresistible spell that had held her so helplessly enthralled; they were younger, lighter, friendlier, with a mischievous boyish sparkle as opposed to the dark fire that had lit them moments before. I'll be back, they assured her with twin smiles smacking of cheek, and then he was dragging his almost-unconscious friend away, leaving Sierra to stand there, heart fluttering, legs shaking, an unbearably painful fire igniting from within her that set her very soul alight.

(And she had remained dizzy and confused and a little hostile towards herself for feeling the way that she did at such short notice for quite some time; it was only after the frustratingly unruffled Georgie had sauntered over in that unperturbed way of hers to calmly ask her friend if Steve had relinquished the purloined purse or no that Sierra even began to consider that perhaps—just perhaps—the ever so charmingly drunken Steve she had spoken with mere minutes ago may quite just possibly be the very same Steve that had knocked her to the ground ten days prior, and she began to feel rather resentful towards the other girl as a result, for she was quite happy to continue hating one Steve whilst coveting another—not that she told any of her companions this, of course.)

As Sierra spoke, so her sycophants did listen, and listened with a sort of awed silence as their unelected leader described with a storyteller's effortless skill her encounter with Stephen Ve-something-or-other; even Georgiana hung on to her every word, for once, and why shouldn't she? What Sierra was describing was beyond their respectively limited experience, beyond that of most teenage romances; a sort of dark, fiery passion that even fully matured adults rarely found. It was an emotion that belonged in myths and novels and legends and plays, and rightly so: It was a fire, a raging inferno, blacker than night, uncontrollable, unquenchable, unappeasable, destructive. It was a beautiful, powerful, untameable passion, wild and selfish and ravenous and unrelenting in its chosen course, but like all fires, it will burn out, and the aftermath will be absolutely devastating.

But Sierra did not realise this, of course; all she knew was that she had felt something alien, something rare and exquisite and valuable, something to be hoarded, which was why she had been so reluctant to share. But in the end it had proved to be too much for a girl of her tender age to keep to herself; why, only yesterday she had turned fourteen, and she knew, even at that age, that what she had felt with Steve was something that only occurred in fantasy, not in real, everyday life. It was something big, something special, and she was suddenly overcome by the desire to let the whole world know… although she didn't quite know what it was.

And… Well, it was a bit embarrassing really, wasn't it? To feel so strongly towards a complete stranger with neither warning nor explanation. She'd have been far more accepting of it if she had known Steve for a while, or if it had slowly been building up between the two of them; God knows, she would have been very accepting of that. But to have these emotions erupt from her, springing forth from out of nothing, nowhere… Well, it was somewhat unnatural, wasn't it? And what's more, she'd fallen for his eyes, for God's sake! That greatest, least acceptable, most unforgivable of all romantic clichés! She didn't want any of her relationships, romantic or otherwise, to be clichéd, though; she wanted them to be real.

…But… But perhaps she did know, really, what it was. Did she? Did she really know, and was simply trying to reject it? After all, it was not in keeping with what she had been raised with. But no matter; there were more important matters at hand.

As Sierra was replaying the encounter in her head, seeking the right words to convey to her friends what had suddenly overcome her, it had suddenly dawned on her that what she had felt with Steve were not the gentle pangs of first love, but rather, lust. He was the first boy who… He… He was her first… lust. Puppy lust, if you will.

And as she weaved her tale to her spellbound and inexperienced audience, she found herself noticing her body, her actions, her words, as a stranger might see them: her hands, and how they seemed to move and flitter and dance like feathers on a gentle breeze, rising and falling and complementing her ever-changing voice; her heart, slowing and quickening, quieting and thundering in her ears, neither steady nor erratic, but so painfully present that she was certain others were aware of it; her skin, hot, not from the air around her, but rather, from that fire that she suddenly knew raged inside of her, and she knew that that flame, once lit, would remain with her until she drew her last breath… And she wondered—she honestly couldn't help but simply wonder—did this metaphorical flame produced a physical manifestation, and if so, was it a pretty, attractive one, the sort that men would fight wars for, the sort that would put Helen to shame and make Troy look like child's play, or was she just rambling incoherently so that she might distract herself from that which had just occurred?

She found her fingers reaching up, pulling at her long sleeves, which had seemed such a good choice when she had looked out of her window at the lightly drizzling world beyond; now though, the material seemed suddenly thick and stifling, suffocating her overheated skin. She found her hand flapping back and forth before her face, futilely inviting the cool air to grace her flushing cheeks with its gentle touch, before her fingers fell to pull and adjust her shirt, reaching up to brush her dark hair away from her heated neck.

Her neck, which suddenly seemed oddly bare…

My necklace! she thought wildly, her fingers scrabbling at her neck, tapping insistently at her throat, as though the jewellery would miraculously reappear. It wasn't the most valuable item she owned, and it was rather simple in its design, a sparkling dewdrop suspended from a slender chain of silver. That's why it was her favourite accessory: nothing to cry over if lost, and neither gaudy nor gauche.

And now it was gone.

"That—that—that—bastard!"

My eyes snapped opened, and I sat up suddenly in the bathtub, my arms wrapped protectively about myself, shoulders shaking, my pulse deafeningly erratic. To be perfectly honest, there was no actual reason, nothing to prompt my sudden action, save my own thoughts.

After shooing Flavio away, I'd been lying in the bathtub for a good ten minutes, you see, and in that time, my thoughts had stupidly been given free rein to wander. And wandered and wondered they had, to a subject I had not given serious consideration since—well, for a very long time, but, desperate as I was to purge that nightmare from my mind, I had willingly invited it, accepted it, embraced it; and now, I must live to regret it.

My thoughts had drifted to an ex-boyfriend of mine; his name was Steve, and I had found myself thinking of how we had first met, and my reaction to him: a sort of sudden, uncontrollable wave of lust, cunningly interwoven with sly hormones and heady first-time love. At the time, I had felt as though I was a candle, and he had with him a set of matches which he used to set me alight; afterwards, I found myself thinking of him constantly, and when I had spent long enough thinking of him, I had begun to notice how my body seemed to react in ways that I had never thought of before, and how I felt emotions which I couldn't even name. The night that I had met him… With just one look, Steve had driven me, young girl I then was, wild; and far too soon, I had become unhealthily obsessed, hopelessly enchanted, infected as I was by a sort of all-consuming emotion that was jealousy and idolatry and lust… And yet there was also love, and affection, and a frail sort of tenderness which, indeed, Steve seemed to cherish far more than anything else that we had, but which I always took for granted.

But all that came later; perhaps I should explain why my first encounter with Stephen Verne had me bolting up from my bath, splashing water all about me. I have already described the single emotion that seemed to consume me when I had laid eyes on Steve, and I remembered it well. Fair enough, you say; but what made me react so strongly was that, simply by thinking about him, that sudden… passion came jolting back, flooding through my limbs and leaving me helpless. A decade had done little to dilute the intensity of that instantaneous infatuation; so to feel what I did that night so overwhelmingly would have been shocking enough.

But wait, there's more.

Whilst I was lying in the water, confused and bewildered and vaguely bemused at my sudden reverie, a cruel parasite seemed to crawl into my ear long enough to say to me,

Have you ever felt that, with any other man? That sudden lightning bolt that strikes at your heart and sets your soul on fire: that fire that's more intoxicating than lust, more enduring than love, more delightful than the simple sweetness of affection?

No, of course not, the voice had scoffed at me. No one else has ever made you feel that way.

Not even Jack Sparrow.

-x!x-

AN: So… what are your initial impressions of Steve? Like him, loathe him, undecided as of yet? And any further thoughts on subtitles? I have an idea of naming them after principle characters, like How My Perfect Life Was Inverted: Pearl, or something, but then, which characters do I use?