Page 9 of Crushed
“Or I could light myself on fire and they’ll be scared shitless and concerned.”
“I’d go for impressed over concerned,” Iris said, bobbing her head. “I’m rooting for you.”
I returned the smile. “Thanks.”
After Teagen finished, clapping sounded through the main floor. I peeked out from the wings and saw that more club members were there. It wasn’t a traditional setup—as in rows and rows of uninterrupted chairs—but instead, there were circular tables and bucket chairs with plenty of space in between. Still, every table was taken. And I sawhimthere too. In the middle of everyone, glaring up at the empty stage with those piercing green eyes.
I could use this performance to talk to him. One step closer to Cormac Stone meant one step closer to finishing my first solo assignment. One step closer to making Lizzy proud.
Once Teagen had moved her instrument off of the stage, the lights dimmed and Iris’s performance began, moving her body in bendy ways that didn’t look human. I zoned out, trying to remember the things Dahlia wanted me to do. Make eye contact. Gravitate towards both sides. Arch my back. Thrust my breasts. Make my body as alluring as the flames. Entertain everyone as if they’re the only person you see. As if everything you do is specifically for them.
There was barely any time between Iris’s performance and mine. The music ended and she gave me a thumbs up.
“You’re on once these lights dim again,” she said.
I took a deep breath and lied to myself: I had been doing this for years. Fire dancingwasin my nature. I was an expert. I was a professional dancer who happened to use fire as a prop. If I made a mistake, that’s because I was human, not because I was an amateur who hadn’t done this since I was a teenager.
It was funny, wasn’t it? To think that dancing in front of an audience made me more anxious than taking a man’s life.
The lights dimmed and I picked up the handle to the metal chains, the kevlar balls on the other end unlit. I dipped them in the paint canister filled with white gas and waited for the excess to drip off. I sealed the can and nodded to a staff member hiding in the wings, who lit the balls. She took the canister and the music started.
I kept the balls away from my body and walked to the middle of the stage, the heat licking at my skin. As soon as I started spinning my wrists, the whooshing sound carried over the music like a storm through the trees. I weaved my wrists in and out, and as the song’s rhythm picked up speed, so did I, flicking the balls into fiery, flowing circles.
I was doing it.
Between the flashes of light, I could see the audience. The servers, the club members, the security, the bartender,everyonewas watching the fire, completely mesmerized by it. It didn’t matter what I did, because I could control them with the primal aspect of my performance.
I picked up speed again, making the flames look like dazzling wheels of light, smiling at myself. The heat radiated to my body. The song was almost over. I had pulled it off. The bass thudded and I lifted my arms higher, letting them spin in circles, arching my back.
Then the handle flung off of my fingers, and the ball of fire crashed into a concrete post, landing on a wet towel in the wings.
“Did she just—”
I ran off the stage and quickly folded the towel over both props, pressing into them, extinguishing the flames. The fire extinguisher mocked me as I looked up.Thiswas why we had these items hidden in the stage, for accidents like this. Thankfully, it hadn’t started a fire, but the song was over now and the lights were back on. Any sort of attraction I had inspired in the audience was now buried underneath the mayhem of whether or not I, the new server, was a liability. A steady murmur from the audience grew. A few curious people waited at the edge of the stage. And in the back, Cormac leaned into his seat, eyeing me.
Iris shooed the people away from the stage. “She’sfine,” she repeated, “Nothing burned down. No one was hurt. Please enjoy a drink in the lounge.”
Teagen bounced beside me, the harp necklace dangling on her neck. “Hey,” she said. “You all right?”
I shrugged. “I mean, it could have been worse, right?”
“You did great! Considering how much practice you put in between today and yesterday, I’m really impressed.”
It was nice of her, but it was a lie. She felt bad for me. “Are you impressed by the way I made the fireball disappear?”
“There you go,” she nudged my shoulder, “We can call you the magician instead. The mysterious Scarlett can make fire fly through the air and disappear! Like magic!”
Iris joined the two of us looking at the lumpy balls tucked inside of the wet towel. “At least we had the towels ready.”
And at least I could count on one of my fellow servers to give it to me straight. Iris patted me on the back.
“Do it a little slower next time,” she said, “and you’ll be golden. The performance high can make it hard to remember that sometimes. I get it.”
I rolled my eyes. “You trust me to perform next time?”
“You’re kind of on schedule, so yeah.”
Except for a few stragglers, most of the audience had cleared. I was supposed to do this performance again tomorrow night, but now I was dreading it. The only thing worse than an audience waiting for the elusive new fire dancer, was an audience waiting for the clumsy fire dancer to screw upagain.
