"Well, then, aren't you better off with someone else?" Claire offered.
"Not necessarily. I mean, as a long-term boyfriend, obviously he's not a good choice. But I need someone to take me to the dance, and it would have been nice to have a couple of warm-up dates first. I could have dumped him afterward if he was still playing Prince Charming to half the school. Now what am I going to do?"
"You have time to find another guy to go with." Claire bit one of her cuticles, trying to think through some possible dates for Emily.
"Not really. People are mostly paired up. The posters Amy plastered all over school kicked everybody into date-finding high gear. I so don't want to go stag, Claire, not when this is the first-ever dance that you're actually going to. Stupid Ryan with his stupid flirting. Hang on." There was a muffled sound as Emily dropped the phone and blew her nose. "Sorry. Anyway, I'm going to end up being that lame-o dateless chick who's hovering by the DJ during all the slow dances. I just freaking know it."
A mix of sympathy and frustration rolled through Claire, sweet-sour as a lemon drop. She wondered if this was how Emily felt all those times she'd gone to a dance while Claire stayed home.
They spent awhile batting around possible date ideas, none of which went very far.
Claire sat up suddenly. "Hey! What about one of Matthew's friends? The whole soccer team can't possibly have dates. I could ask him—see if he could put out some feelers."
"Okay, first of all, don't say 'put out some feelers,' because it sounds squicky. Secondly, I do not want to be that überdesperate loser friend who needs a mercy date. I have some dignity left, you know."
Claire squeezed her eyes shut. "I didn't mean it that way. Really. I was just thinking it might be an easy solution is all."
Emily's exhale hissed and rattled in Claire's ear. "I know. I didn't mean to be so edgy. I'm just not used to being in this situation. I swear to you, this is the last time I ever put all my eggs into one potential-date basket."
They talked awhile longer, until finally, Emily quit crying and started to pull herself together.
"Okay," she said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's not the end of the world."
"Not even close," Claire assured her. "We'll fix it, I promise. Tomorrow is another day and all that, right?"
"Right," Emily said. "Actually, shit. Today is another day. Oh my God, it's already after midnight. I'm sorry—I didn't mean to keep you up so late."
"It's okay, I didn't have anything else to do," Claire lied. "But you'd better go to bed or you'll be all puffy in the morning."
"You're right. You, too. I mean, not the puffy bit, but the rest of it."
They hung up, and Claire stared through the open bathroom door at the clock on her nightstand.
Damn.
She hopped off the counter. She'd shower later. If she hurried, really hurried, she'd still have a little time to practice. Claire knelt on the damp ground, focusing on the tiny pile of sticks that lay in front of her. She'd searched the thickest parts of the forest to find branches that weren't completely sodden. She'd made a little circle out of stones and everything. There were dead leaves underneath, for tinder. But the sticks were in exactly the same state they had been an hour ago.
Not burning.
Frustrated, she tossed her head, attempting to get her bangs out of her eyes. She was going to have to get home, and soon.
Claire stared at the little pyre she'd made. One of the leaves fluttered in the breeze, and a shower of leftover raindrops pattered down onto her.
Why couldn't she do this?
She could hear her mother's voice in the back of her head admonishing her to move inside the wood and leaves with her mind. To bring in a hot little spark, the same way she could hold a feeling of heat in her wolf form when it was cold. Claire groaned in frustration. She'd tried imagining a spark. She'd tried picturing big flames and little flames and freaking house fires' worth of flames. Nothing ever happened. No matter how hard she tried to visualize the branches getting hot enough to light, they never so much as twitched.
She wanted to just reach in there and start rubbing two of the sticks together until they caught. At least she'd be able to say she started a fire without a match. That would almost count, right? Of course, she didn't really know how to start a fire that way, either. She was pretty sure it was something about friction, about the way the edges of the wood rubbed up against each other until they made so much heat, a little spark just sort of appeared between them.
Just then, a sensation she couldn't quite place slipped through her muted human senses, bringing her sharply to attention. It was like she was standing on a boat that had suddenly listed just a bit—a shifting.