I know I should be thankful. My burns are healing. But while the physicians were able to save my skin, they couldn’t save my eye.
Half-blind. Half my vision gone, just like that.
I’m still not used to it. Sometimes someone will start speaking and I’ll jump because I didn’t see them standing there. I have no peripheral vision on my left side. You don’t realize how much you can see – until you can’t any more. Now I have to swivel my head round like some skittish owl. My sight is impaired, and it’s … well, it’s terrifying.
But there’s something else, too. Something I’m afraid to admit, because it makes me sound superficial and conceited, and maybe that’s because I am.
It’s like this – I have spent my whole life being someone people enjoy looking at. Yet now, I’m damaged. Disfigured. An eyesore with a missing eye.
Sheen was right to call me vain. Only since the third trial, I’ve had no reason to be. Where there was once vanity there is now shame and a crippling self-consciousness.
I never realized before just how much of my happiness, my identity, my sense of self-worth, was so tragically dependent on how I looked. I took such pleasure in it, seeing the effect I had on people. Only now, that’s undoubtedly a thing of the past. I’m not sure the phrase ‘bedroomeye’ has quite the same ring to it.
But then there’s Spinner. The way she smiles at me, the way she kissed me in the Ridge tunnels … it was like nothing had changed. Am I a fool for wanting to believe she feels the same attraction to me? Or am I just so insufferably shallow as to imagine she wouldn’t?
Grandmother always used to say,It’s what’s on the inside that counts.
Except I’m just as screwed up on the inside as I am on the outside. But unlike my burns or my blindness, at least I’m able to hide it.
Nobody knows about the times when the panic descends. When my lungs stop working and I feel like I’m dying and part of me … part of me doesn’t care.
And nobody will.
In my dreams, I see Ember.
The world burns as firebombs rain down from the sky. I throw up my arms to shield my face, and when I lower them, it’s no longer Ember standing in front of me but Blaze, a flame igniting in her palm. She smiles, then launches the fire straight at my head.
I scream as agony explodes across my skin.
‘Flint? Flint!’
I wake to Spinner shaking me. It takes me a moment to realize I’m still screaming.
‘Flint, what is it?’
I make out her face in the light from the smouldering fire, shadows dancing along her tattooed cheeks where some of the panstick has been rubbed away.
‘I … I’m fine,’ I croak. ‘I just … I had a bad dream, that’s all.’
Spinner looks unconvinced. ‘Are you sure?’
I will my hands to stop trembling as I find hers and squeeze it. ‘Go back to sleep.’
At last she relents, kissing me lightly before lying down again. I wait until her breathing turns slow and rhythmic before carefully disentangling myself.
I take a few shaky steps away from the camp, far enough that I’m sure I’ve gone beyond the wind shield, then collapse to my knees and vomit into the heather.
I retch and heave until I’m empty and shivering, then return to the camp, seeking Spinner’s warmth. She mumbles something incoherent, pulls my arm over her and snuggles into me, yet somehow, I feel more alone than ever.
I lie awake, clenching and unclenching my fists, and begin to count.
My fingers.
My heartbeats.
The clicking of insects in the undergrowth.
The soft snuffling sounds Spinner makes in her sleep.
