The Fiery Heart

CHAPTER 11 ADRIAN

IT WAS THE TEARS THAT BROKE ME.

Maybe I could’ve stayed obstinate and argued against her, making excuses about why I was trapped by spirit. I could’ve probably done a decent job, even against her superior logic. But as I began sobering up after she left, the image of those tears haunted me. I’d always rejoiced in those rare moments of passion I saw in her eyes, that deeper emotional side she kept guarded. She wasn’t someone who showed her feelings easily to others, yet I alone was special enough to see the full wealth of her emotions when she was full of joy and desire. And tonight, I’d apparently been special enough to witness her sorrow too.

It ate me up, especially because the next time I saw her, she acted as though nothing had happened. She was good to her word. She wasn’t going to leave me. But despite her smiles and her cool countenance, I knew she must be frustrated. I had a problem—no, I was a problem. One she couldn’t solve. It had to be driving her crazy, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized she shouldn’t have to solve it. I needed to step up. No one had ever cried for me before. Honestly, I didn’t think I was worth anyone’s tears.

“But I have to be,” I told Jill one day. “If she cares that much and can hurt so much for me . . . how can I let her feelings go to waste? She thinks I’m important. I have to prove that I can be.”

“You are important,” Jill assured me.

We were sitting outside her dorm, enjoying a surge of winter warmth. The shadow of the sprawling stucco building kept the worst of the light away from us.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I can offer her or the world. I thought it was spirit. I thought the things I can do with it would be my contribution to the world. Like you and Olive.” I’d heard nothing about Olive since she’d gone to Court, and for all I knew, my efforts might have actually failed.

Jill squeezed my hand and smiled. “Well, it’s certainly a contribution as far as I’m concerned, but Sydney was right—you don’t know what else you might be capable of. Most people don’t leave their mark on the world through big miracles. Some do,” she added quickly. “But sometimes the biggest impact is made by a series of small, quiet things. You won’t be able to do anything like that if you’re—”

“—locked away or dead?” I finished, echoing Sydney’s words.

Jill winced. “Let’s not think about anything like that. No point stressing over what hasn’t happened. Just work on what you can control now.”

I slung an arm around her. “There you go again, Jailbait. Being all wise beyond your years.”

“Your wisdom must be rubbing off on me. You’re already doing great things without even trying.” She leaned into me. “But seriously, Adrian. Try it. Try to stop spirit and see what happens.”

“I haven’t used it since then. Not even to look at auras.” I also hadn’t had a single drink, not even my daily allotted one.

“It’s only been a few days. Not to say your sacrifice isn’t noble. But are you going to be able to resist using spirit if . . . I don’t know . . . if, say, Sydney cuts her leg shaving? Are you going to be able to resist, or are you going to think, ‘Oh, a little spirit healing on that cut won’t hurt’?”

“She does have great legs,” I admitted. “I’d hate to see them marred.”

“Exactly. And you’d think that a teeny, tiny bit of spirit wouldn’t hurt anything. And then you’d think that the next time. And the next time—”

I held my hands up. “Okay, okay. I get it. Thank God Sydney’s too careful for this shaving fiasco to even be a possibility.” We both laughed at that, and then the severity of the situation settled back on me. “You win. I’ll try . . . but I just can’t shake the feeling I’m being selfish if I do this. I’ve been selfish my whole life. It’d be nice if I’d overcome that.”

Jill met me squarely in the eye. “Every time you use spirit . . . is it just to do good?”

I took a long time to answer. “You’re asking me something you already know the answer to,” I said. I used spirit for the rush because I felt blissful and godly. At times, I got the same high I would from drinking or smoking.

“Then there you go,” she said. “See what happens. If it doesn’t work, you stop. It’s a pill, not a lifelong commitment.”

“Why does that sound familiar?”

She grinned mischievously. “It’s what you told Sydney about birth control pills.”

Hard to believe I’d nearly forgotten about that. “Ah, yes. A conversation you’re best left out of. We need to preserve your innocence for as long as possible.”

Jill’s wry expression was another of those that looked too wise for her age. “That ended the moment we were bonded.”

Just then, Sydney and Zoe stepped out of the dorm’s front door. They didn’t see us, sitting on our far bench, and Jill called out to them. Zoe stiffened. Sydney smiled, though it was a polite Alchemist smile.

I leaned back and crossed my legs, hoping I looked as insolent as possible. “Well, well. The Sisters Sage. Where are you guys off to? Volunteer work at the library? Liquidation sale at the Container Store?”

Incredibly, Sydney managed to keep a straight face. Aside from reinforcing my love for her, it also made me want to take her to a poker game sometime. Between that and my aura reading, we’d make a killing. “Close. Zoe needs some graphing paper for her math class.”

“Ah,” I said. “Office supplies. That was going to be my next guess. I only held off because I figured you guys kept reams of that stuff under your beds.”

And still, Sydney managed that amazing control, though her lips did twitch ever so slightly. She glanced at Jill. “Need anything?”

Jill shook her head, but I piped in, “I could use a new sketchbook and some pigment sticks and—”

Sydney sighed and put on a tormented expression. “Adrian, I wasn’t talking to you. Come on, Zoe. We’ll see you guys later.” They started to walk away, and then Sydney abruptly halted. “Oh! I have to talk to Jill about something real quick. Here.” She tossed Zoe her keys. “You can bring it out of the parking garage.”

Zoe’s eyes widened like Sydney had just said Christmas was coming early. It was actually kind of sweet, and I had to remember that Zoe was a perpetual scourge upon my love life. “Really? Oh! Thank you!” She snatched the keys without a second thought and trotted away.

Sydney watched her fondly. “Really?” she asked me. “A Container Store liquidation?”

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t be all over that.”

She grinned and turned back to us. The sunlight made her hair turn to molten gold, and it took my breath away. “Maybe,” she agreed. “Depends on how tasteful the colors were.”

“I’m guessing you don’t actually have to talk to me?” Jill asked, with a sly smile.

Sydney shrugged and tucked some of that marvelous hair behind her ear. “Not specifically. Mostly I just wanted some breathing space. It’s nice to talk to both of you.” But her eyes fell on me, and I could’ve cut the tension between us. I knew that she, like me, was having a mental struggle in staying apart. I would’ve given anything to hold her just then, to trace the edge of her cheek or feel the strands of her hair between my fingers. Clearing her throat, she looked away and seemed to be groping for a safe subject. Well, a semi-safe one. Her voice dropped as her eyes turned back up with a gleam.

“I did it.” She cast a quick glance around before continuing. “The salt. I got all four elements into it.”

Jill caught her breath, just as consumed by the quest as Sydney and me. “You think you can use it to replicate Marcus’s ink?”

Sydney nodded eagerly. “The hard work’s done. It just needs to be ground up and suspended in any ink solution to use for tattooing. Then, I need a guinea pig. I guess the brave thing would be to try it on myself.”

“I have absolute faith in your abilities,” I told her, “but maybe you should wait and experiment with one of Marcus’s starry-eyed recruits.”

“I suppose I could. I mean, I don’t think it’ll cause any harm. The biggest problem will be whether it works or not. And the only way we can find out is if the Alchemists try to re-ink the guinea pig—which none of us want.” Her small, thoughtful frown was adorable. “Unless I could get a hold of Alchemist ink and do more experiments . . . but, ugh. That won’t be easy without sanctioning. And I don’t have an earth user around either.”

I scoffed. “I’m sure Abe would love to help.”

“Oh, yes,” said Sydney. “I’m sure he would. I’m sure he’d love to know all about my side project.”

Zoe pulled up just then in that beast of a car. She didn’t drive over the curb or crash into the building, so I supposed that was promising. Nonetheless, I saw Sydney’s sharp eyes studying the exterior for even the tiniest ding. Satisfied, she took the driver’s seat from Zoe and waved goodbye to us. Her eyes held mine, and for a few moments, I was suspended in that amber gaze. I sighed as she drove off, and when I glanced down, I saw Jill watching me knowingly.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll make an appointment.” She hugged me.

I called a psychiatrist recommended by Carlton’s health center and kind of hoped it would take a while to get in. After all, specialists were always busy, right? This one apparently was—but had just had a cancellation for tomorrow. The receptionist told me I was incredibly lucky, so what I could do? I accepted and then skipped mixed media the next day, earning “slacker” name-calling when I asked Rowena to let me know what I missed.

The doctor’s name was Ronald Mikoski, but I promptly forgot that because he looked exactly like Albert Einstein, complete with disheveled white hair and mustache. I’d thought there’d be a couch where I’d lie back and talk about my mother, but instead, he directed me to a plush armchair while he settled behind a desk. Instead of a notebook, he had a laptop.

“Well, Adrian,” Einstein began. “Tell me what brings you in here today.”

I started to say, “My girlfriend made me,” but that sounded petulant.

“My girlfriend thought it’d be a good idea,” I amended. “I want to get some antidepressants.”

The bushy eyebrows rose. “Do you? Well, we don’t just hand out prescriptions around here, but let’s get to the bottom of things first. Are you depressed?”

“Not at the moment.”

“But you get that way sometimes?”

“Sure. I mean, well, everyone does, right?”

He met my gaze levelly. “Yes, of course, but is yours worse than the average person’s?”

“Who can say?” I shrugged. “It’s all subjective, right?”

“Does your girlfriend think it’s worse than the average person’s?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“Why?”

That made me falter. I didn’t know if I was ready to talk about that. I hadn’t expected to. I knew enough about mental health from Lissa to understand that psychiatrists prescribed medicine and therapists talked you through your problems. I’d thought I could just come in here, say I needed pills, and get them.

“Because . . . I drink when I get down.”

Einstein’s fingers tapped away. “A lot?”

I was ready with another “subjective” quip but chose to answer bluntly. “Yes.”

“When you’re happy too?”

“I guess . . . but what’s wrong with letting loose?”

“Tell me how you feel when you ‘get down.’”

Again, it was another opening for a joke. Like, I should’ve said something about getting down at a dance club. After all, how could I describe what I felt in those dark moments when spirit’s shadow seized hold of my soul? And even if I could find the words, how could he understand? How could anyone truly, truly understand? No one could, and that was part of what made things so bad. I always felt alone. Even another spirit user couldn’t completely understand my experience. We were all in our own personal hells, and of course, I couldn’t actually mention spirit specifically.

Yet, I found myself talking to Einstein anyway, describing everything as best I could. After a while, he stopped typing and just listened, occasionally asking me to clarify my feelings. Soon, he shifted from how I felt when depressed and wanted to know how I felt when I was happy. He seemed especially interested in my spending habits and any “unusual behaviors.” When we’d exhausted that, he gave me a bunch of questionnaires that asked variations of the same questions.

“Man,” I said, handing them back. “I had no idea it was this hard to qualify as crazy.”

I saw a glint of amusement in his eyes. “‘Crazy’ is a term that’s used incorrectly and far too often. It’s also used with stigma and finality.” He tapped his head. “We’re all chemicals, Adrian. Our bodies, our brains. It’s a simple yet vastly sophisticated system, and every so often, something goes awry. A cell mutation. A neuron misfiring. A lack of a neurotransmitter.”

“My girlfriend would love this,” I said. I nodded at the paperwork. “So, if I’m not crazy, do I still get the pills?”

Einstein skimmed through the pages, nodding as though he was seeing exactly what he expected. “If you like, but not the ones you came in for. Your situation is more complex than just depression. You exhibit a lot of the classic symptoms of bipolar disorder.”

There was something sinister about the word “disorder.” “What’s that mean? In words that don’t begin with ‘neuro’?”

That actually got a smile from him, though it looked a little sad. “It means, in very simple terms, that your brain makes your lows too low and your highs too high.”

“Are you saying it’s possible to be too happy?” I was starting to get very uneasy about this. Maybe the fact that his patients canceled on short notice should’ve been a warning sign that he wasn’t a very good doctor.

“It depends on what you do.” He opened up the packet of papers I’d filled out. “You spent eight hundred dollars on a record set recently?”

“Yeah, so? It’s the purest form of music.”

“Was it something you’d been wanting for a while? Something you’ve been searching for?”

I thought back to when I’d walked past the handwritten sign on campus. “Um, no. The opportunity just came up, and I thought it was a good idea.”

“Do you have a history of other impulse purchases?”

“No. Well, I mean, I once sent a girl flowers every day for a month. And I also had a giant box of perfumes sent to her. And then I bought my current girlfriend some custom perfume that kind of cost a lot. And I technically bought a car for her. But you can’t judge those,” I added quickly, seeing his wry look. “I was in love. We all do things like that in pursuit of the fairer sex, right?” Silence answered. “Maybe I should just take a money management class.”

He gave a small, nondescript grunt. “Adrian, it’s normal to be happy and sad. That’s human life.” I definitely didn’t correct him there. “What’s not normal is to be so drastically sad that you can’t go on with typical activities or to be so happy that you impulsively engage in grandiose activities without thinking through the consequences—like excessive spending. And it’s definitely not normal to switch so quickly between these drastic moods with little or no provocation.”

I wanted to tell him that there was provocation, that spirit did these things to me. And yet, did the cause matter? If fire users burned themselves with their magic, it didn’t change the fact that they needed first aid. If spirit was causing this bipolar thing, then didn’t I still need treatment? My mind spun, and I suddenly found myself caught up in a chicken-and-egg dilemma. Maybe spirit didn’t cause mental illness. Maybe people like Lissa and me were already “off” chemically and that’s what made us gravitate to spirit.

“So what do you do about it?” I asked at last.

He took out a small notebook and scribbled something onto it. When he finished, he tore off the top sheet and handed it to me. “You get this prescription filled and take it.”

“It’s an antidepressant?”

“It’s a mood stabilizer.”

I stared at the paper like it might bite me. “That doesn’t sound right. Is it going to ‘stabilize’ me so that I don’t feel happy or sad? So that I don’t feel anything?” I stood up abruptly. “No! I don’t care if they’re dangerous. I’m not giving up my emotions.”

“Sit down,” he said calmly. “No one’s taking away your emotions. It’s what I said before: We’re all chemicals. You’ve got a couple that aren’t at the right levels. This will adjust them, just as a diabetic would correct their insulin. You’ll still feel things. You’ll be happy. You’ll be sad. You’ll be angry. You just won’t swing unpredictably into such wild directions. There’s nothing wrong with this—and it’s a hell of a lot safer than self-medicating with alcohol.”

I sat back down and stared bleakly at the prescription. “This is going to kill my creativity, won’t it? Without all my feelings, I won’t be able to paint like I used to.”

“That’s the cry of artists everywhere,” said Einstein, his expression hardening. “Will it affect certain things? Maybe, but you know what’ll really interfere with your ability to paint? Being too depressed to get out of bed. Waking up in jail after a night of drunken debauchery. Killing yourself. Those things will hurt your creativity.”

It was surprisingly similar to what Sydney had said about how I’d be able to accomplish things. “I’ll be ordinary,” I protested.

“You’ll be healthy,” he corrected. “And from there, you can become extraordinary.”

“I like my art the way it is.” I knew I sounded childish.

Einstein shrugged and sat back in his chair. “Then I guess you have to decide what’s most important to you.”

That required no thought at all. “She is.”

He stayed quiet, but his expression said it all.

I sighed and stood up again. “I’ll get it filled.”

He gave me some information on side effects and warned that it could take trial and error to get things right. Walking out of that office and going to a pharmacy, rather than a liquor store, took more self-control than I’d had to muster in a while. I forced myself to listen as the pharmacist talked about dosing—and warned me against alcohol while on the prescription.

But when I got home, I didn’t have the courage to open the bottle. I put on a record at random and sat on my couch, staring at the bottle in my hand, more confused than I’d ever expected to be. This mood stabilizer was a mystery. I’d thought I’d go in and take something like Lissa had, and even if I wasn’t a huge fan of pills, at least I had her as a reference. But this? What would happen? What if Einstein was wrong, and I stopped feeling any emotions? What if it didn’t do anything except cause the ghastly side effects he’d said were extremely rare?

On the other hand . . . what if it didn’t stop spirit but did curb the darkness? That would be a dream come true. That was what Lissa had originally hoped the antidepressant would do. The complete numbing of spirit had been a surprise. It was impossible to think I might still keep the magic yet stay in control of my life. The idea was so tempting, I opened the bottle and put one of the pills in the palm of my hand.

But I couldn’t take it. I was too afraid—afraid of losing control and afraid of gaining it. I tried to think of Sydney but couldn’t get a clear grip on her in my mind. One moment, she was laughing and golden in the sun. Another, she was crying. I wanted what was best for her . . . and yet, I knew what she actually wanted was what was best for me. It was so hard to know what that was, though. On a nearby table, Hopper—in statue form—seemed to watch me judgmentally, and I turned him so he faced away from me.

The music drifted over me, and I realized with a start I’d put on Jefferson Airplane. I laughed, but it soon turned into a sigh.

“‘One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small.’” I squeezed the pill tightly in my hand. “‘And the ones that Mother gives you don’t do anything at all.’”

Take the damn pill, Adrian. The chastising voice in my head was my own, not Aunt Tatiana’s, thankfully. I opened my hand and studied the edges of the pill. Just take it. I had a glass of water and everything.

But I still held off.

The chiming of the Love Phone made me jump. Still holding the pill in one hand, I found the phone with the other and read a text from Sydney:

Told Z I left my phone in the store, so I went back and got a sketchpad and some pigments. Know any starving artist who could use them?

My heart swelled, so full of love I didn’t know how any physical body could possibly contain such power. I felt like my chest would burst.

“Okay, Alice,” I said, eyeing the pill. “Let’s see what you can do.”

I put the pill in my mouth and swallowed.