*Excerpt by KAT BROOKES copyrighted 2006
CHAPTER ONE
I took another step back despite the wall of flames that shot up behind me. He closed the distance between us as his beady little eyes pinned me down like a hawk does its prey. Heart pounding, my gaze shifted to the weapon of torture he clutched in his hand as he moved toward me. I had only a moment to choose my fate. I chose the fire.
�Miss James,� Mr. Talbert, my eleventh grade Lit teacher, prompted in irritation.
Pulled from my musings, I looked up at him. Not that I had to look up very far. Maxmillian Talbert wasn�t much taller than a Hobbitt and a lot less interesting. �Yeah?�
�Your final exam,� he said, shoving the neatly stapled stack of papers at me. �You might try and stay with us long enough to finish your test. You�ll have all summer to daydream.�
Several snickers erupted around me.
I was tempted to point out that it was more like a nightmare and he�d had the starring role, but decided it was better just to keep my mouth shut. The last thing I wanted to do was piss him off enough to flunk me. Then I�d have to suffer through another year in his class.
Mr. Talbert thrived on performing mental torture on his students, stuffing our brains with tons of useless information. What the education system needs was more classes related to the real world out there. Getting a job at Mickey D�s 101. Self Defense 101. Or better yet, Skydiving 101.
I looked around my ninth period Lit class. Mostly braniacs who thought extreme sports involved calculator competitions and speed-reading books where every other word is thou and doeth. Okay, so maybe skydiving wasn�t for everyone.
�Eyes on your own paper, Miss James.�
More snickers.
As if I needed to cheat. I could manage a �C� without any help from the kids seated around me. There really ought to be some kind of law against making kids take finals the last week of school. Hell, if we didn�t know the stuff by now, what good was a test going to do?
I glanced up at the clock on the wall above Mr. T�s desk. Twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes until summer break. That meant just one more day of school and tests and bad lunches until freedom. It couldn�t come soon enough for me.
* * *
�I�m so freaking sick of finals,� I muttered as I shoved my Lit book into the back of my school locker.
My best friend, Miranda, opened her locker, which was three away from mine, and dumped her books inside. �You and the whole school. "
�I�m serious. What the hell is the point of reading poetry written during the Civil War or knowing what to do with dangling modifiers? The only dangling I want to do is from a helicopter or a bridge.�
�That�s because you�re crazier than shit, Jet James,� my friend wasted no time in pointing out.
I couldn�t argue the fact. You had to be a little on the crazy side to do what I did, but I loved it. I�m a third generation stuntman. Well, in my case I guess that would be stuntgirl.
I�m named after one of the greats � Jet Li. He was an up and coming action hero star my dad had worked with when my mom was pregnant with me. The name stayed, my mom didn�t. She walked out on us when I was three. I�m okay with it though. My dad and I have done just fine without her these past fourteen years.
My dad, Alex �Ace� James, and I have a place on the outskirts of Long Beach, California. He�s one of the best stuntmen in the business, just like his dad before him. I never knew my grandfather, �Jackknife� James. He bit the dust in a freak accident two years before I was born. I mean the guy drove cars into cement walls for a living and never died, but his first time out on the golf course while vacationing in Florida he got struck by lightning. That was all she wrote. It just goes to show that when it�s your time to go it�s your time. No getting around it. So enjoy life while you can.
