Christina coughed.
Val choked.
Down below, Mr. Shevvington said, “Just unlock the front door my dear, and we’ll go next door and be safe. What a pity the girls forgot elementary safety rules. Anybody knows that fire and smoke rise.”
Val was fastening herself so tightly to Christina that it was like wearing another layer of extremely heavy clothing. Christina reached the final step. With scrabbling fingers she struggled to find the latches that would release the cupola windows. They opened outward to a narrow wooden ledge where once there had been a widow’s walk. Christina had been out there once. But the latches were too tight for her to budge. Or else they, too, were locked. Christina’s small fingers were the right size to get under the little latches, but too small to have enough force to open them.
“The fire will burn the floor out from under our feet,” sobbed Val.
Below them, Mr. Shevvington said, “Open the bolt, my dear.”
“I’m trying,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “I can’t see it. There’s too much smoke.”
Christina could not see her latches either in the dark swirls. “Hold your breath, Val,” she muttered. Her lungs seared with pain, from the hot smoke or from needing another fresh breath. But she did not breathe. She fought with the latch. “I can’t get it,” she said to Val.
“We’re going to burn to death,” whispered Val.
Downstairs, Mrs. Shevvington screamed, “I got the bolt out. But where are the keys? We have to get the lock, too! Give me your keys!”
“No, we’re not,” said Christina. She kicked in the window. Glass spattered out into the air and shot through the sky. Glass, and only glass, leaped over the roof and fell below on the rocks of Candle Cove. High tide thundered in to meet it. The spray of waves met the spray of falling glass and no eye could tell one from the other.
Christina stepped out onto the ledge, dragging Val with her. “It’s over for me now,” said Christina dully. “I might as well step off into Candle Cove.”
“What do you mean?” cried Val sucking in wonderful clean ocean air, laughing in the blue sky. “We got out! You did it, Christina! We’re going to be all right. Look, somebody’s already reported the fire. I hear sirens. We’re so high up I bet we can see the firehouse doors open. Yes — here comes the first truck! They’ll take us down the ladder.”
Great heat rose up the stairwell, as if in a huge, stepped chimney. Wreaths of smoke danced around the two girls. Under their feet they could feel the temperature increasing. Val danced lightly on the narrow wooden shelf.
In the road fire engines gleamed scarlet, with the brightness that only fire engines have. Two kinds of sirens screamed. Tourists yanked cars halfway onto sidewalks and children turned to see where the fire engines were going.
Christina and Val could see the whole village, the whole school complex. Christina thought of the seventh grade, and what they would think of her. Of Jonah and Benjamin, of Anya and Blake, but most of all, of her mother and father.
“The Shevvingtons will tell everybody I lit the fire,” said Christina. “The Shevvingtons will say I did this. They’ll have all their terrible stories to back it up. Nobody will believe me. Not ever.”
The first shining truck came out of the narrow roads above Breakneck Hill Road. Breakneck Hill was named for a little boy who a hundred years before had ridden a bike down it, and lost control. I’m in control now, thought Christina. But I never will be again. The Shevvingtons have won.
A ladder wound off the top of the immense truck, like some enormous chain necklace. On the pavement, firemen began yanking on huge protective yellow and black suits. Val screamed and yelled and waved as if it were a Halloween parade.
“You go first,” said Christina, as the fireman began coming up the ladder toward them.
She stood alone on the ledge, her hair blowing in the wind from Burning Fog Isle. Under her feet, the ancient wood crackled and burned. For Christina, the worst nightmare had come true. She was alone, friendless, and lost. Forever, and ever, and ever.
Chapter 23
IT WAS A VERY tiny airplane.
From where Christina stood, between Mr. Gardner and Mrs. Gardner, it looked like a paper airplane a seventh-grader might throw across the room when the teacher wasn’t looking.
“I thought my parents would come in on Frankie’s boat,” she said.
“Certainly not,” said Mr. Gardner. “Not when it’s this much of an emergency. They chartered a plane.” He picked Christina up, as if she were three or four years old, instead of nearly fourteen. He hugged her hard and said, “They love you, Christina. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“You see, Christina,” said the fire chief, standing behind Mr. Gardner, “the only fingerprints we found at the storm cottage were Mrs. Shevvington’s. That made us wonder. Why had she trespassed? It’s one thing for a little girl like you to slip into a locked summer house — but the seventh-grade teacher? And then both Robbie and Jonah came to us, telling us that they were pretty sure that Mrs. Shevvington was stuffing your purse and pockets with matches. That was such a sick and frightening image. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.”
“And,” said Mrs. Gardner, the personnel secretary, “I made those telephone calls, Christina. I adored the Shevvingtons. I admit it. I thought they were wonderful. Loving, caring, generous. But I reached people in Oregon, in Louisiana, and in Pennsylvania, with stories like Val’s. Like Anya’s. Like yours. You were absolutely right, Christina. It was their hobby. The way some couples collect antiques or refinish cars, the Shevvingtons like to destroy.”
“And when they were trying to label you a wharf rat,” said Mr. Gardner, “even saying your mother and father were — why, we’ve known your family forever, Christina. It was impossible. Why would they say things like that? What was the point? I kept turning it over in my mind.”
“We were slow figuring it out,” said Mrs. Gardner. She rubbed Christina’s back, comforting her. “We didn’t want to admit that we had brought into our community a man and a woman who were genuine sadists. People who would start rumors for the joy of seeing the damage.” She suddenly clung to Christina’s shoulder, as if even Mrs. Gardner needed to hang onto the granite that was Christina Romney. “We began to see,” said Mrs. Gardner, “that of course if you like to hurt people, you would choose a child who can’t fight back. And in this town, you would choose an island child, whose parents are not there to see. And you would choose the sweet ones, because where would the pleasure be in hurting the nasty kids? The fun is the emptying of a soul everybody loves, not a soul everybody loathes.”
The fun, thought Christina.
Their final moment had not been fun.
“I feel terrible that you had to go through so much torture, Christina,” said Mr. Gardner, “before we did our part in stopping the Shevvingtons. All the same, I wish it hadn’t ended like that.”
Everybody turned involuntarily, to look back across the cove and the village at the cliff where once a huge white sea captain’s house had stood. Schooner Inne was gone. No sooner had Val and Christina been scooped off the cupola than flames shot from every window and the entire building turned black and collapsed. Nobody could have gotten out.
“We got a video,” said another fireman. “What a shot! You girls will want to see that.”
Christina did not think so. She remembered the screams from beneath her feet, when flames took the carpet under Mrs. Shevvington’s heels, when the woman ran from room to room screaming, “Where are my keys?” When flames melted the doorknob under Mr. Shevvington’s hand, and he jerked back, screaming, “Get the keys!”
The fireman said to Christina, “You’ll be fantastic on that film footage. The way you stood on that ledge, your hair blowing in the wind, looking for all the world like the figurehead of some ancient sailing ship, pointing toward justice and port.”
The tiny plane landed, bounced, slowed down, and taxied toward them. Christina freed herself from the Gardners and ran
toward her mother and father. The little door opened and out popped her mother, holding out her arms, crying her daughter’s name. And then her father, shouting, “Christina!” The plane motor cut the syllables of her name up into sections, and vibrated them across the pavement.
And then she was safe, wrapped in her family.
They held the seventh-grade picnic anyway. The school board said it would frighten the children to have to think about what Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington were really like, and it was best to have them think about three-legged races and watermelon seed-spitting contests instead. “We don’t want our little boys and girls to have any knowledge of evil,” said the man who had hired the Shevvingtons.
Christina thought that was silly. The more knowledge you had of evil, the better you could combat it. How could anybody learn from what she had been through if nobody would admit it had happened? Out there somewhere, in another state, in another village, another thirteen-year-old girl might come face to face with evil for the first time. She had to know what to do, how to tell the world.
The smell of wet towels and bathing suits filled the air. They had a lip-sync contest and a Frisbee toss. They had corn on the cob and blueberry cobbler. Parents stood around laughing, teachers sat cross-legged swatting gnats, and neighbors looked yearningly at the games, wishing they were children again.
Christina’s parents could not stop hugging her, holding her, telling her how wonderful she was. “You triumphed,” said her father. “You won.”
“And without us,” said her mother sadly. “We didn’t believe you. I will never forgive myself that we didn’t believe you.”
Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were awkward with Val. Christina could imagine why. How would it feel to know you had put the opinion of the high school principal ahead of the word of your daughter? How would it feel to know that your child had spent a year under lock, key, and tranquilizers because you did not believe in her?
Close, thought Christina. I came so close.
Blake came, and Anya, and they, too, hugged her and said how proud they were of her courage. Christina was surprised to find that a hug from Blake was only a hug; it did not take away her senses and fling her into crazy love. It was just two arms.
And when they walked away, she thought, I was the one with courage. Not Blake. He could have come back weekends from his boarding school. He could have spoken up for me after the thing with the cliff. But he was afraid he would sound dumb, and people would think he made it all up. So he said nothing.
She took a marshmallow when her father offered her one, and poked a green twig through it.
There were many marshmallow-roasting techniques. Some people liked to get their marshmallow an even, light tan all over, and some liked to set it on fire, and some liked it to start dripping down the stick so you could lick it up, tongue-burning hot and crispy black on the outside.
Like Schooner Inne.
They had brought forth what they said was Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington. It was teeth, actually, and belt buckles, and bones.
When Anya had been afraid of the poster of the sea, she had thought she could see the hands of the drowned reaching up through the waves. The sea wants one of us! she had cried.
The sea had two now. By its wind and tide, it had set its own fires to take the Shevvingtons.
I was afraid, she thought. More afraid than Blake or Benj could ever know. And nobody believed me. But I was born in the arms of Good, and I am made of granite, and if I had let them go — Anya and Dolly and Val — I would have been Evil myself.
There is Evil in silence.
But there is no silence at a seventh-grade picnic.
Rock music jarred Christina awake. Throbbing, strumming guitars, drums, and electric keyboards. The seventh grade was dancing without her. Everybody was dancing. Summer people and townspeople, firemen and teachers, parents and children.
The music screamed; the tide slapped; the sun set.
Her father and mother danced; Mr. and Mrs. Gardner danced; Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong danced. Blake danced with Anya and then he danced with Val.
It’s primitive, thought Christina. Like ancient warriors by the sea, we are having our funeral celebration for the death of Evil among us.
Benjamin and Jonah came toward her, one from the sea and one from the land. One with broad shoulders and strong arms, one with long skinny legs and a long skinny smile.
The boys hardly saw each other. They had eyes only for Christina of the Isle. And, at the same time, they said, “Chrissie? Let’s dance.” Each held out a hand. The silver and gold of Christina’s strange hair divided, and tangled, and told her secrets.
She remembered all that was to come: the sophomore dance, the fund-raising for the band trip to Disney World, the ferry on which Jonah could come, the lobster boat she could go out on with Benjamin. Summer on Burning Fog. The roses that bloomed among the rocks and the cats that had kittens in the barns.
“Oh, yes,” said Christina Romney. “There is so much to dance for.”
And she took both hands.
A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney
Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller The Face on the Milk Carton. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.
Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.
Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!
Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book, Safe as the Grave, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.
Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.
Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning The Face on the Milk Carton, about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in Whatever Happened to Janie? (1993), The Voice on the Radio (1996), and What Janie Found (2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book, Janie Face to Face, will be released in 2013.
Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the Mayflower.
The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses,
wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”
Cooney at age three.
Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.
Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote reviews of Lois Lenski’s Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison and Jean Craighead George’s Vison, the Mink. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.
Cooney’s report card from sixth grade in 1959. “Mr. Albert and I are still friends over fifty years later,” she says.
Cooney in middle school: “I went through some lumpy stages!”
In 1964, Cooney received the Flora Mai Holly Memorial Award for Excellence in the Study of American Literature from the National League of American Pen Women. “I always meant to write to them, and tell them that I kept going!” Cooney says. “I love the phrase ‘pen woman.’ I’m proud to be one.”
Cooney at age nineteen, just after graduating from high school. (Photo courtesy of Warren Kay Vantine Studio of Boston.)
Cooney with Ann Reit, her book editor at Scholastic. Many of the books Cooney wrote with Reit were by assignment. “Ann decided what books she wanted (for example, ‘entry-level horror, no bloodshed, three-book series,’ which became Fog, Snow, and Fire) and I wrote them. I loved writing by assignment; it was such a challenge and delight to create a book when I had never given the subject a single thought.”
Cooney with her late agent Marilyn Marlow, who worked with her on all of the titles that are now available as ebooks from Open Road.