Bracken Carnegie is the “bad boy” at Grover Cleveland Boarding School. He transferred to the school just two weeks before Rahab. Rumor has it that he was kicked out of his previous school and was recently incarcerated for murder. I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations.
B is for Bracken
Bracken has been a part of Into the Flames since its inception. In fact, I wrote “Bracken scenes” before I wrote anything with Rahab in it. Originally I had planned on giving Bracken his own point of view, but I soon realized that it would disrupt the flow of the story. I ended up giving Bracken his own novel and let him stay a secondary character for the time being.
Below is part of the first scene I ever wrote that included Bracken Carnegie (by the way, he doesn’t have a middle name).
Bracken was walking down the sidewalk, his tennis shoes scuffling across the cracked concrete. He realized that he didn’t know where he was going, but then, it didn’t matter; he just ambled along, inspecting the store fronts to his left.
A couple of girls appeared from around the corner and saw him. “Look, Superman!” they squealed to each other.
Bracken looked down at himself and saw that he was indeed wearing the famous hero’s blue suit and red cape. Hey, cool, he thought.
But the teenage girls didn’t react as one might assume. Instead of goggling and fawning, they shied away.
“Hello,” Bracken said, wondering if they would ask for an autograph or for him to right some horrendous wrong.
“Get away from us, freak,” one girl said in disgust.
Bracken froze, confused.
The other girl, who looked like Analiese, cried, “I don’t want you looking at me with your x-ray vision!”
And suddenly the whole street was filled with people, pressing in around Bracken and throwing insults at him.
“Think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t you?”
“Just because you can do things we can’t.”
“We’ll have none of it!”
“Go back where you came from, freak!”
They were all just a blur of faces, except for the girl who looked like Analiese. She just stood there, her dark blue eyes boring into him, a frown of deep dissapointment on her face. It troubled him more than the others’ mocking. But he couldn’t get away. The real Bracken couldn’t fly away or fight them off with his super-strength.
And still she was there, staring.
Bracken snapped. “Let me go!” he hollered. “Leave me alone! I didn’t ask to be like this! I would give it all back if I could, I swear!”
He started pounding the nearest people as hard as he could. “Please! You gotta believe me. I didn’t mean it. Please. Please.”
Someone was grabbing his wrists, keeping him from beating anyone with his fists. “Let go!” he yelled. “I didn’t ask to be like this.”
“Bracken,” came a voice that, though hardly more than a wispher, was on the edge of tears. “Bracken, please wake up.”
Bracken gulped and opened his eyes, realizing with a shock of relief that the whole thing had been but a dream.
Okay, You’ve got me. I can not wait to read this book! The characters are going to drag me under, I can tell and i am just dying to know what is going on with the plot. Can not wait! (Did I say that already?)
Thanks for the comment, Heather! I hope it doesn’t disappoint you too much to find that this scene never made it into any of the books. It still happens, of course, just not during the time frame of Into the Flames.