Fire: Fog, Snow, and Fire

  The cannery. Wharf rats. Empty shells.

  “Now you stay on the phone with me. I had somebody get on another line and call your school. Mr. Shevvington is coming right down to be with you. He’ll be kind and understanding. He’s a fine man.”

  Christina began laughing.

  “Don’t get hysterical on me,” said Mr. Gardner. “You’ve been calm so far. You probably prevented arson. We had some trouble with that last year in empty houses, and we certainly don’t want it again this year.” He paused, but Christina had nothing to say.

  The front door to Schooner Inne opened.

  Val leaped backwards, falling into the parlor with the cold fire.

  Mr. Shevvington filled the hall. Today’s three-piece suit was a deep, rich, navy blue. One of the colors of Val’s room. Had he seen Val? Did he already know? Would he tell Mr. Gardner to send an ambulance for Val as well?

  Mr. Shevvington took the phone out of Christina’s hands. “I’m here, Jim,” he said into the receiver. “Good of you to handle her so gently. Poor Christina often does not entirely understand what is going on.”

  His mad blue eyes rotated in his head as if they had come unattached. He was not only insane-mad; right now he was furious-mad. His fingers dug into Christina like lobster claws until she cried out in pain. In sympathy, Val moaned behind the parlor door.

  The phone mumbled.

  “Your wife is what?” repeated Mr. Shevvington into the phone. “Your wife is the personnel secretary?”

  Christina went limp. It was easy to forget what a small town this was; how everybody knew everybody, or was married to somebody’s cousin, or had been to school with somebody.

  “And Christina was in the personnel office getting addresses of my previous schools? For a surprise party?” Mr. Shevvington’s lips began to curl back away from his teeth. They drew out into a horrible lifted oval, so all his teeth pointed at her. He began bending over her, bringing his twisted face closer and closer to hers. Christina shrank back against the flocked wallpaper. Through the crack of the door Val’s single brown eye watched in horror.

  “But your wife asked other seventh-graders and there was no surprise party planned?” Mr. Shevvington straightened up. The lips closed again and then folded over, making several smiles — a whole series of smiles — like evil plans. “Why, Jim, how thoughtful of you to become concerned. And of course, you are so intuitive, you and your dear wife … yes … poor Christina … you’re absolutely right, these island children are ingrown … warped … a sort of wharf rat mentality … frightening in certain ways … thank you for telling me … my wife and I will certainly bear this in mind.”

  He hung up.

  The storm cottage was safe.

  But Christina and Val were not.

  Chapter 14

  CHRISTINA COULD HEAR THE double breathing. Her own shallow and moist; Val’s quick and dry. It seemed impossible that Mr. Shevvington did not hear both girls.

  It was on Christina alone that his hands tightened, and his fury mounted.

  She tried to get the telephone back, to call 911 again.

  “And what would you say?” asked Mr. Shevvington sweetly. “Dear Mr. Gardner, I think Mr. Shevvington is annoyed with me! Please send help.”

  Christina bit him.

  It was the most disgusting thing she had ever done in her life. Even the time two summers ago when Michael dared her to eat a jellyfish raw from the beach, and she did, it had not been so disgusting. She was the one who screamed, not Mr. Shevvington. He yanked his hand back and stared at her.

  “I’m rabid,” Christina told him. “You’ll need shots. Right in the stomach. Hundreds of them.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Mr. Shevvington looked at his watch and muttered to himself. Quickly he wrapped her tooth marks in his handkerchief. He always wore a lovely silk hanky whose tips decorated his lapel pocket. The crimson and royal-blue paisley seemed stolen from Val’s room. “It’s a potential buyer,” he mumbled. “A couple coming to look at the Inne.”

  Christina smiled. “I’ll be sure to tell them what it’s really like here.”

  But when the door opened, before Mr. Shevvington could go to answer it, Robbie and his mother peeked into the front hall. Christina squeaked. Behind her door Val swallowed as loud as an engine. The thunderstorm that had been brewing between the island and the coast, broke. Rain came down in sweeping torrents. Val could lie down and groan now and nobody would hear, thought Christina. They would still see, however.

  “Come in, come in,” said Mr. Shevvington testily, worried now about his wallpaper and his carpet getting wet.

  Mrs. Armstrong looked like Val, but haggard — the way Val’s grandmother ought to look. The Shevvingtons did that, thought Christina. They aged her, when they chose Val to ruin.

  “We haven’t found a trace of Val. Can you think of anyplace else to look?”

  Mr. Shevvington put his good arm around her shoulder, protectively cradling his bitten hand. “Poor, poor Genevieve,” he said.

  So that was her name. It was a good name for her. Gentle and old.

  Genevieve wept. Not the lumpy crying of Christina’s panic with Mr. Gardner. Nor the homesick tears that had drenched her pillow at the beginning of the school year. But old tears, as if she were recycling them from a previous disaster.

  Val won’t be able to stand this, thought Christina. She’ll come out from behind the door. I would, too, in her place. Her mother needs her. Anyway, any institution would be less risky than the Shevvingtons.

  “My father’s driving around town,” Robbie said. “He thinks maybe he’ll find her hitchhiking.”

  “Poor, poor Alan,” said Mr. Shevvington. His eyes were half hidden under folded lids, as if he were resting in there, swinging in a hammock, enjoying himself.

  Why, he has two extra victims I didn’t even know about, realized Christina. He uses their first names to make them littler, younger. Because that’s what he’s reduced them to: They’re hardly more than seventh-graders themselves. Genevieve and Alan. Not Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong. Not grown-ups.

  One good thing: Val was only a few feet away. Either she would surrender or she wouldn’t. The choice was no longer Christina’s.

  “They’ve explained to us,” said Val’s mother sadly, “that Val has to spend her life at the Institute. We have to get her back there.”

  “Her life!” cried Christina. “She’s only seventeen.”

  Robbie shrugged. “There’s no other answer.”

  “There has to be another answer,” said Christina.

  “Robbie, let’s go, honey,” said his mother, sagging. “I don’t know why we came here, really. Except we’ve been everywhere else.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” said Mr. Shevvington, opening the door again. The rain was even heavier. He hoisted a huge British umbrella and held it over Mrs. Armstrong.

  “Oh, Arnold, you’re so kind,” she wept. She leaned on him as they went down the granite steps, crossed Breakneck Hill Road, and stopped at the old economy-model Ford.

  Christina jerked Val out from behind the parlor door. “Run upstairs!” she hissed. “If they’re showing the house to buyers, they’ll look everywhere. Hide in your room.”

  Val wouldn’t budge. “They’ll look there, too, Chrissie. Did you hear what my mother said? My own mother? She is going to lock me up forever. And I’m only seventeen.”

  “The Shevvingtons probably told an all-new set of stories about you. Probably convinced the whole staff whatever it is is true. We’ll get you away. Just hurry up the stairs.”

  Val was thin from her hospital stay. Her skinny little legs churned up the long staircase.

  As thin as Dolly, thought Christina, or as Anya when she was at her most faded. Perhaps food and energy is the real key to keeping sane. So I’ll be sure to have a big dinner. Plenty of roast beef.

  Knowing Mrs. Shevvington they would be having eggplant lasagne instead. Ugh.

  Mr. Shevvington came
back in. Gently he shook the umbrella. Gracefully he closed it, setting it to drain in the elegant Chinese vase the sea captain had brought back from his voyages to the Orient. Mr. Shevvington’s smile peaked and valleyed on his face like the crest of a wave. Christina moved down the hall, to a place where she had several choices: kitchen, back door, stairs. “So, Christina of the Isle,” he said softly, “where is our little Valerie?”

  “Val? I haven’t even met her. She’s been in an institution since I came on the mainland, remember?”

  The evil inside Mr. Shevvington glowed. She could see it through his skin: lanterns of it. If she touched his glow, would it be hot or cold? Would it, once touched, pass into her body, too, like an electrical current? Turning even Christina of the Isle into someone evil?

  Upstairs a door snicked shut. Mr. Shevvington did not appear to hear it. The hand she had bitten came toward her. The paisley silk kerchief dangled on it like a flag over a coffin. The blue eyes fell down, as if unhinged, and the lobster claw fingers caught the fabric of Christina’s shirt.

  Christina did not dare leave Val alone — but she could not stay here, either.

  Val was on her own.

  Christina tore loose. She burst out the door into the pouring rain and ran to the gas station. The rain soaked her. The thunder jarred her joints. Lightning bristled in the sky like rocket launches. I’ll get Benjamin, she thought. He’s safe, he’s strong. I’ll tell him, he’ll know what to do.

  With the confusing abruptness of summer storms, the rain moved on up the coast to attack other towns. The sun came back out, the ocean turned blue-green again, and the road surfaces steamed. Christina sprinted through puddles and splashed herself with mud. I probably look about ten years old, she thought. And I still have teary-red eyes. What will Benjamin think of me?

  It was the first time in her life she had really wondered what a boy would think of her looks. Or cared.

  Christina ran through the empty lot behind the gas station. Tall weeds brushed her legs. A small white butterfly fled from her thrashing feet. Behind the garage was a car storage yard, fenced like a prison. Barbed wire curled on top. Far above, in the suddenly blue sky, was a bird, floating.

  Benjamin! Benjamin!

  She planned to fling herself on him, tell him everything, stand still while he solved it.

  But Benjamin was surrounded by tourists, expecting him to fix their cars. All her island training rose up: She must not look demented in front of tourists. They were lifeblood; they were money. She slowed, donning her “Welcome, Tourist” face.

  How pleased Benjamin was to see her. Why, even as disheveled as she was, she had only to walk up, and his face lit up in a smile so handsome, so fine, that she wanted to keep it for her very own. A smile he’d kept secret for just this: a girl.

  I’m the girl, marveled Christina. She stood in the shade of a maple tree, behind a wreck recently towed in by the state police. She was glad she was turning fourteen soon. Thirteen seemed too young for love. Her parents would not like it.

  “Be with you in a minute,” said Benj. “I have to change the belts on this car.”

  How impatient the tourists were. Christina had a fine eye for tourists. Before she was two years old, she could tell a tourist from an islander. Now she preferred finer divisions. Boston or New York? Michigan or Mississippi? She murmured the question to Benj. “I don’t divide them that way,” he said.

  “How do you divide them?” she asked.

  “Dragged and undragged.”

  Christina pictured a fisherman’s net hauled along the ocean floor, gathering scallops and tourists. But she did not understand.

  “The ones who want to come on vacation, and the ones who are dragged,” explained Benj.

  Christina checked them out. Sure enough, the man wanted to be on vacation and the woman did not. The wife would have liked to be back in whatever city she came from, making money, being important. Her husband just wanted to be sailing. Well, it was possible to combine these things on the coast of Maine. Christina almost said to them, “Want to buy an inn?”

  “Yep,” said Benjamin, actually laughing out loud. “Dragged and undragged. Like school.” (Benj was definitely dragged to school.)

  “Think Disney World,” said Christina.

  Benjamin, hands black with oil, coveralls stained, cheek smeared, smiled again. His smile lit her heart like a match. “Think sophomore dance,” he said.

  And so she told Benj nothing.

  For it dawned on Christina that she did not know Benjamin Jaye at all. Who would have guessed that his heart was full of romance and his soul yearned for love? She would have said his heart beat only for fishing; that his soul never noticed anything, except whether it was low tide.

  Perhaps nobody knows anybody, thought Christina.

  It was a terrifying thought: like the alone. That you could know people well, and know them again the following year, and then know them more … and yet remain strangers forever.

  Chapter 15

  CHRISTINA SAT ON THE open back of the garage’s pickup truck, swinging her feet above the pavement, waiting for Benj. Her feet were bare and dusty in her narrow leather sandals. In the stiff breeze, her thin skirt swirled and unswirled around her legs like pink cotton candy spun onto the white paper cylinder.

  “That little girl looks like the figurehead on a sailing ship,” said the tourist woman to her husband.

  Christina liked that, and kept her chin high, bending her small wrists into the air as if she were a prow, cutting through the Atlantic. Finally there was a moment of quiet at the garage, and Benj perched on the edge of the truck with her. His legs dangled, too, but he did not swing them. Benj was not a swinger, not of legs and not of life. She said, “My mother’s coming in on Frankie’s boat tomorrow. We’ll go shopping for a dress for the dance.”

  Benj said, “I don’t know what I should wear.”

  “What’s everybody else wearing?” asked Christina immediately.

  Benj smiled slightly. “Chrissie Romney,” he said, “I didn’t think you cared what anybody else did.”

  “For clothes I do. If you go to a dance in the wrong things you won’t have any fun, that’s all. What did the other boys say they were wearing?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  “Ask them.”

  Benj shrugged. “I don’t want to talk about dumb things like that.”

  “I’ll ask, then. Who shall I ask? I don’t know any other sophomores.”

  “But you did ask your parents if it’s all right, didn’t you?” said Benj anxiously.

  “Of course. They think it’s neat.” Christina smiled at him, and to her surprise he ducked his head, staring at the mess of car parts and broken tools and pieces off things that leaned against the side of the garage. We’re flirting, she thought. I bet no other seventh-grade girl is practicing to flirt right now. It’s because I’m so mature. It’s my island granite. And after all, he’s only two years and a few months older.

  She was seized by joy. She jumped up into the bed of the pickup, with its corrugated metal bottom, and began dancing. “Dance with me,” she commanded him, but of course he didn’t. He told her to stop, because she looked weird, you weren’t supposed to dance in trucks.

  Christina stopped. But not because you weren’t supposed to dance in trucks. Because a short, heavy man with a thick, bristly beard and a big barrel chest was coming toward her. He waved in a friendly way. He said, “Christina? Say, I’m glad to meet you.”

  Christina was normally very friendly to strangers. She loved strangers. But this was no tourist; she who knew her tourists knew he was a local. But unknown to her. She felt a strange quiver of suspicion. Why had he parked, blocking the garage? Why was he striding over like this? Who —?

  “Jim Gardner,” he said, a smile peeking out from behind the beard. There was too much hair over the smile to tell if it was a real smile or a fake smile: It was just a flash of teeth. He stuck his hand out. He had a huge hand, much bigger t
han he should have had for his body. The hand gave Christina the creeps, and when she shook it, the hot dry skin felt like a reptile’s. He hung onto her too long, as if he planned on keeping her. “Hi, Benj,” he said in a familiar way.

  “Jim,” nodded Benj.

  The man turned immediately away from Benjamin. His face was eye level to her dancing legs. “Christina, honey, I wonder if you and I could have a little talk. About the Shevvingtons. About the storm cottage.”

  Benj swung around to look Christina in the eyes. She was above him, too, in the truckbed. “What storm cottage?” said Benj, frowning.

  It made her so mad! The Shevvingtons weren’t coming after her themselves; they were sending Another Authority. Someone nobody questioned, even Benjamin Jaye. He was already prepared to assume Christina was in the wrong. “My storm cottage,” she said brightly, “the one I sneak into sometimes. I told Mr. Gardner about it. There’s nothing more to say. I won’t trespass any more.” Christina hated to apologize. The worst sentence in English was “I’m sorry.” She forced herself to spit it out, even though she wasn’t sorry and would never be sorry. “I’m sorry.” She did not sound sorry. She sounded as if she would like to throw dirt in their faces. Her parents would never let her get away with that tone of voice, but Mr. Gardner and Benj didn’t know what to do about it.

  Christina backed up against the cab of the truck, leaned on the rusting red paint, and folded her arms over her chest.

  “Christina, you have to believe I’m your friend in this,” said Mr. Gardner. He took hold of the side of the truck. His smile came back and stayed beneath the beard, little bits of white tooth sticking out, as if his teeth weren’t attached, merely sprinkled into the beard.

  He’s here to take me away! she thought. The Shevvingtons said I was insane. A crazy wharf rat. Plays with matches. “You think I need a friend right now?” she said nervously.

  He vaulted up into the truck with her and came closer, slowly, as if she were dangerous.