The Fiery Heart by Richelle Mead Read Free Book Online

lightweight. Our sketch hadn’t gotten very far.
    â€œUp late partying?” she asked me now.
    I took a long drink of the coffee, feeling only slightly guilty that Sydney would be salivating if she could see me. “Just up late.” I yawned. “Where are we at?”
    She pulled out our sketch, which was on a bar napkin and read,
Insert sketch here.
    â€œHmm,” I said. “Promising start.”
    After an hour of hashing out ideas, we decided to do a model of the monolith from
2001: A Space Odyssey
and then cover it with advertising slogans and internet lingo. I’d actually gotten bored during that movie, but Rowena was going off about how it was a symbol of advanced evolution and how our designs would be an ironic statement of where our society had ended up. Mostly I was on board because I thought it wouldn’t involve too much effort. I was serious about my painting, but this was just a general required class.
    A good chunk of our day was spent just getting the supplies. Rowena had borrowed a friend’s pickup truck, and we went to a building-supply store in hopes of finding a large concrete rectangle for our monolith. We lucked out and even found some smaller blocks to put at the base of it.
    â€œWe can make a ring,” Rowena explained. She’d recently dyed her hair lavender and absentmindedly tucked wayward locks behind her ears as she spoke. “And then paint the various stages of evolution. Monkey, caveman, all the way up to some hipster texting on his cell phone.”
    â€œWe didn’t evolve from monkeys,” I told her as we wrestled the rectangle onto a pallet. “The earliest human ancestor is called
Australopithecus
.” I wasn’t entirely sure where vampire evolution fit in, but I certainly wasn’t bringing that up.
    Rowena released the block and stared in amazement. “How the hell do you know that?”
    â€œBecause I mentioned the monkey thing the other day, and my girlfriend had a, uh, few things to say about that.” A “few” things had actually turned into a one-hour lesson on anthropology.
    Rowena laughed and lifted one of the smaller blocks. They were still pretty heavy but didn’t require both of us. “I’d really like to meet this mythical girlfriend of yours, if only to see who in the world could put up with you. I could get Cassie, and we could all go out for a drink together.”
    â€œShe doesn’t drink,” I said quickly. “And she’s eighteen anyway. Well, almost nineteen.” With a start, I realized Sydney’s birthday was fast approaching at the beginning of next month, February, and I didn’t have anything for her. In fact, after my investment in vinyl, I didn’t have much money at all until my dad’s next deposit came in mid-month.
    Rowena smirked. “Younger woman, huh?”
    â€œHey, it’s legal.”
    â€œI don’t want to know about your sordid sex life.” She hoisted another block. “We’ll go to Denny’s or something. If you don’t bring her around soon, I’ll think you made her up.”
    â€œI couldn’t make her up if I tried,” I declared grandly. But inside, I couldn’t help but feel a little wistful. I would’ve loved to go out on a double date with Rowena and her girlfriend. I was pretty sure Sydney would hit it off with her, if only to gang up and tease me mercilessly. But public appearances weren’t an option, not unless we went for a night on the town with the Keepers.
    We took our concrete haul back to Carlton College’s campus and began the arduous task of transporting the blocks to a large quadrangle that our class had gotten permission to use. A few of our classmates were working as well, and they helped us carry the centerpiece, which made things a lot easier. Even if it wasn’t up to scale with the movie’s monolith, it was still a bitch to lift. That left us to bring