The Last Chance Texaco

"No. You can't. No one can."

  "Then I'll wait for you! And I'll write to you!"

  "If you want," I said, eyes on the ground. "But you don't have to."

  "But I do want to! I have to! Because I love you."

  And that's when I looked him in the eyes.

  "What?" I said.

  "I love you. I love you! I love you."

  No one had said that to me since before my parents had died. No one had ever really said it to me, not the way Nate was saying it now.

  I'd never said it to anyone before either, not even as a joke. But then I'd never felt it for anyone before. So why couldn't I say it out loud now? It was like my lips were frozen solid.

  Suddenly, he was kissing me. I was smelling him, tasting him, touching him, all at once. I'd never felt anything like it before. We pressed our bodies together, and I felt myself becoming more and more relaxed, but also more and more tense, at exactly the same time.

  I'm not sure how long we kissed, but I think it was for a really long time. We might have kissed all night if I hadn't heard a very strange sound from somewhere nearby. Some kind of soft gurgle--a gentle glug, glug, glug.

  I stopped kissing to listen.

  "What?" Nate said.

  "Listen," I whispered.

  Now Nate heard it too, water gently splashing from a canteen. Except it didn't sound quite like water, and it didn't really sound like a canteen.

  It sounded like gasoline from a gas can.

  I looked back at Nate in alarm. Once again, we were four eyeballs in the dark. Our bodies weren't pressed together anymore, and they weren't relaxed either. Now we were just tense.

  "Shhh!" he said, and together we crept through the bushes.

  Peering out into the street, we saw movement halfway down the block--a hunched, shadowy figure pouring gasoline all over the hood of a car. But the streetlight was out, and it was impossible to see the figure clearly. Was it bony like Alicia? Average like Emil? Solid like Joy? I couldn't tell! In the darkness, it could have been Alicia or Emil or Joy. It could have been anyone at all!

  "The camcorder!" Nate whispered, and I remembered the object in my hands.

  I lifted the camera and pointed it at the figure. But even with the zoom lens, things were no clearer through the eye of the camcorder. It was too dark, and we were still too far away.

  "We need to get closer," I said, even as I realized the gurgling had stopped.

  I turned back toward the shadowy figure just as something sparked in the night. Nate and I both sucked in our breath at exactly the same time. Whoever it was, he or she had lit a match!

  "No!" I shouted, and my voice echoed out into the street. I'd spoken without thinking, but I didn't regret it. Things were bad enough for Kindle Home as it was--we didn't need another car fire!

  The figure turned toward us, toward the sound of my voice. But even with the lit match in its hand, I still couldn't make out a face.

  The figure whirled away. But as that figure darted deeper into the darkness, it threw the match back at the car.

  I held my breath, even as I held my finger on the button of the camcorder.

  The match landed on the concrete a few feet in front of the car. It hadn't been thrown far enough to set the car on fire.

  I let myself exhale.

  Suddenly, little blue flames sprang up from the street in front of the car.

  "No," I said.

  "The gasoline!" Nate said. "It must've dripped from the car!"

  "We have to put it out before the car catches!" I said, already fighting my way out of the bushes.

  Out on the street, I ran for the car. I sensed Nate was right behind me.

  In an instant, the street in front of the car exploded into flames. And an instant after that, the fire leaped up onto the hood of the car.

  "No!" I shouted, but I kept on running.

  "Forget it!" Nate said. "Let's get out of here!"

  "No!" I said, approaching the car at last. "We can still put it out!" But how? Throw dirt on top of it? But there was no dirt nearby--just grass and gravel and concrete.

  "Our coats!" I said. "We can swat it out with our

  coats!" The flames had engulfed only part of the hood, and it didn't look like the fire had yet slipped down into the engine.

  I whipped off my coat, even as I kept hold of the camcorder. Then I crouched down in front of the car, ready to give battle to the flames, like a gladiator with a whip.

  But before I could even take my first swing, I saw a porch light flicker on. Then another one came on, and another, until there were lights rising all around us. These weren't motion activated--people were waking up! And suddenly, there was a spotlight from farther down the street. It was shining right on Nate, who was farther out in the street than I was, and it was coming from a car.

  A police car.

  "Don't move, son!" crackled the voice from the speaker, even as silent flames swept higher into the sky. "Stay right where you are!"

  The shadows of night were long gone now, banished by the spotlight, the porch lights, and the light of the fire. The fire itself was out of control, unstoppable even with something more than a coat. The heat of the wild flames burned my naked face, but I didn't dare move away. We were trapped, Nate and I. The police had caught us at the scene of the crime. And now everyone would think it was us who had set the fires.

  Chapter Thirteen

  "Go!" Nate whispered to me.

  "What?" I said. It was seconds later, as the car fire in front of us continued to rage out of control. Nate was still caught in the police spotlight, trapped like a bug in amber. But I was confused by what he had said. There was no way we could outrun the police--they had him right in their sight!

  "They haven't seen you yet!" he said through clenched teeth. "Just me! You can still get away!"

  In an instant, I saw he was right. The police were still halfway down the block. I was crouched down in front of a car, hidden from their view. I ducked down lower, hiding behind the grille and the flames. Sure, maybe some of the neighbors on their porches had seen me, or might see me, but the police hadn't, not yet. And there was a big clump of bushes nearby-- part of a network of bushes and fences and alleyways that I now knew very well, even in the dark. Kindle Home was only a couple of blocks over. I could almost certainly slip away.

  "But Nate," I said, "you--"

  He whispered urgently. "It's too late for me! But you've got to go!"

  I stared at him. The ice was back in his eyes, a frozen glare commanding me, bullying me.

  "Now!" he said, even as I heard the static of the police radio, and the rise of sirens one block over. They had called for other cars. They would all converge in the seconds to come. If I was going to leave, I had to do it now.

  I turned and dove into the bushes. I was getting so good at this that they barely rustled. Once I was hidden from sight, I scurried upright and ran.

  In less than two minutes, I was back underneath the rope that led up the side of the house to the Kindle Home attic. I slipped the camcorder into the waist of my pants and started climbing.

  But halfway up the wall, I happened to glance down. Since I'd climbed down an hour or so earlier, the partial moon had shifted. Directly above me now, its light was shining on the mud below. And in the flaxen glow of that moon, I saw footprints. There were my own footprints, leading from the bottom of the rope out to the front yard, and back again. But then there were two more sets of footprints, one set made by someone going from the backyard to the front, and a second set made by someone going from the front yard to the back.

  Footprints? Had they been there before, an hour earlier? I remembered the mud, but I didn't remember any footprints. But there hadn't been moonlight then, so I might not have seen them even if they had been there. Still, they looked fresh--deep and cleanly treaded, clearly made since the afternoon rain. Maybe they'd been made earlier, after the rain stopped but before dark, by someone walking around the house to the basketball court.

>   But what if they'd been made after dark, after lights-out--even after I'd climbed down the rope an hour before? Could it be that someone else from Kindle Home was sneaking out in the middle of the night--maybe someone who had found a way to sneak out of the basement into the backyard? But that could mean it was one of us kids who was setting the fires after all! Was it Joy? It would explain her being all smiles on the Magic Step the day before.

  I needed to get a closer look at those footprints, to see if they were made by a guy or a girl, and by what kind of shoe. Then maybe I could match them to someone inside the house.

  But the second I started climbing down the rope again, I remembered the sirens. The house would be woken up by now, and people would soon notice if I wasn't around. And the longer I stayed dangling down the side of our house, the more likely I was to be spotted by a policeman, or by one of our neighbors hurrying by our house on the way to the scene of the crime.

  The footprints would have to wait until morning. Quickly, I climbed the rest of the way up to the attic. Once there, I pulled up my rope, hid it and the camcorder and my clothes, and slipped my way back down to the second floor.

  But, of course, it rained again during the night. The next morning, the footprints were gone

  • • •

  That morning at school, I ran into Alicia almost first thing. I was walking down the hallway on the way to my locker, and suddenly the crowd opened and there she was, standing right in front of me.

  She glared at me, gold jewelry dangling. Then, like I wasn't even worth the bother of a bitchy remark, she turned away. But as she did, I saw the smug smirk on her lips. I also noticed she wasn't bothering to hold her books tightly against her chest anymore. Now she was holding them confidently out in front, which I guess meant she thought that I was no longer a threat to her--that she'd put Nate and me in my place. In other words, she knew what had happened the night before, what had happened to Nate. But how did she know? Because she had been there?

  Did she also know what had happened to Nate after the police had taken him? I desperately wanted to know, but I couldn't exactly ask her. But if she knew, other people would too.

  Sure enough, less than two minutes later, I walked by Arthur Pratt in the hallway and heard him say to his friends, "Nate Brandon's at Ragman Hall! The police caught him setting car fires in the North End!"

  Ragman Hall was the city's temporary juvenile detention center. I'd been there a few times myself--a couple of times when I was caught doing something stupid, but mostly when I was waiting for a bed to open up somewhere else. Like on Rabbit Island, security was really tight, basically like a prison.

  I had to see Nate. So that afternoon during detention, I decided to sneak away from campus. This was risky--if Principal High Expectations found out I'd left, he'd expel me from school for sure. And I had only sixty minutes to make it all the way over to Ragman Hall, which was more than a mile away, then back again to school, and somehow fill my sack with garbage somewhere along the way. Then again, I wasn't risking that much, since chances were that I wasn't going to be at Principal High Expectations' school much longer anyway.

  I ran all the way to Ragman Hall. At the front desk, I told them I was Nate's sister, because I knew he didn't have a sister, so she couldn't have already come to visit him. Plus, I knew if they asked Nate about me, he'd back me up completely. The only problem would be if Nate's real family was visiting him right then, or if someone at Ragman Hall recognized me from one of my stays there.

  "Wait," the receptionist said to me. Then she called somebody up on the phone. A minute or so later, she motioned me back over and gave me directions to the waiting room. I pretended to listen, but I already knew exactly where to go, even though I'd never had a visitor there, or anywhere else for that matter.

  Nate was waiting for me in a room with orange vinyl couches and windows that were just narrow slits. He was wearing a blue jumper, and it really did look like something you'd see in prison. He looked surprised to see me, but happy too.

  "What are you--?" he started to say.

  "I needed to see you." I had needed to see him. I just wasn't sure why.

  "But how did you--?"

  "I'm on detention," I said. "I'm collecting garbage right now."

  I stepped closer and kissed him full on the lips, even though I knew we were on short-circuit television. I doubted the person minding the camera had been told I was Nate's sister, but if he had, I figured it might spice up his day.

  "I wanted to say thanks," I said.

  "For what?" Nate asked.

  "For taking the blame. For making me leave last night." Was this the real reason I had had to see him--to thank him for the sacrifice he had made? But even as I thought this, I knew it wasn't.

  He shrugged. "It only made sense. If they'd caught you, it would've been all over. They would've sent you to Eat-Their-Young Island for sure." I'd already explained to Nate how Kindle Home was the Last Chance Texaco. "But it's only my first offense. And my dad can afford a lawyer. I'll be out of here in a couple of days. It's no big deal."

  Nate was wrong. It was a big deal. Short of killing someone, fire was the biggest deal of all. Rich parents helped, but there would still be consequences for him. If other rich people complained loud enough, there might even be a lot of consequences. Depending on the judge, he could even be sent to Rabbit Island for a while. No matter what, his life was going to be very different from here on out. And it was all because of me.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "Nate, I'm so sorry for all of this."

  He rolled his eyes. "There's nothing to be sorry for. Like I said, this is no big deal." But even as he smiled, I saw a tear running down his face.

  So Nate knew the truth. He'd been trying to lie to make me feel better. The fact was, he was terrified.

  He tried to turn away, ashamed of his tears, but I pulled him toward me and took him in my arms.

  Suddenly, he was crying outright, deep, wracking sobs that made his whole body jerk, like he was starting to crumble. It was up to me to hold him upright, to keep him together.

  "Everything'll be okay!" I whispered. "I promise."

  "How can you be so sure?" he said.

  I looked at him. I knew my face was opening at last--shutters, windows, doors, and all.

  "Because I love you," I said. There. For the first time in my life, I'd said it. And I knew that my telling him that was the real reason I'd had to come to see him.

  I held him in my arms, breathing him in, letting him inhale me too, and suddenly I knew something else, something I had to do.

  Somehow, I had to get him the hell out of there.

  • • •

  "So, Eddy said to Ben and Gina over dinner that night. "Is Kindle Home closing or not?"

  Once again, I was glad that someone had said out loud what everyone else was thinking.

  Ben's eyes went wide. "How do you know--?"

  "We just do," Melanie said. "So is it happening or not?"

  As usual, Gina and Ben exchanged a glance.

  "Maybe," Gina said.

  "Gina!" Ben said.

  "What? It's their home. They have a right to know what's going on. Besides, they obviously already know."

  "But they can't close us down now!" Eddy said. "They caught the guy who was setting the cars on fire. It wasn't one of us! It was some rich jock dude."

  "You'd think that would make a difference, wouldn't you?" Gina said bitterly.

  "It does make a difference," Ben said. "They won't close us down. They can't, not now."

  I looked around the table. Everyone just sat there looking gloomy. No one was eating their tacos, not even Gina or Ben. Joy was scowling, but I wondered if she was feeling what everyone else was feeling. Maybe she was just annoyed because Nate and I had ruined her plan to get the house shut down.

  "This should be a real fun Christmas," Gina mumbled.

  I glanced around at the Christmas decorations. We'd really gone hog-wild, more than in any other grou
p home I'd ever lived in. In the dining room alone, there were paper snowflakes and bows taped to the walls and little sprigs of holly from the backyard on the bureaus, and someone had hung a big tinfoil star from the fixture above the table. It all seemed land of ironic now.

  "They wont close us," Ben said, and he deliberately picked up a taco and started eating. It crunched and crumbled in his hand. "Shit!" he said angrily, but no one laughed.

  "You okay?" I said to Yolanda, sitting next to me.

  "Huh? Oh, yeah." But she looked like she was going to burst out crying.