The Last Chance Texaco

  I waited.

  One minute.

  Then one minute more.

  Nothing happened. The hedge didn't make a sound. Had it just been the wind?

  I couldn't wait there all night, so I stepped out into the front yard.

  When I was almost to the sidewalk, the hedge rustled again, just to my side.

  I was standing right out in the open, with no nearby bushes to duck behind. I didn't dare move for fear that I'd make noise and scare away whoever it was. So I stayed right where I was, frozen, not breathing, hoping that whoever was in that hedge hadn't spotted me yet.

  Then some branches snapped and out leaped Oliver, the Kindle Home cat. He stared at me, his tail swiping the air. He had that cat expression that looks both completely innocent and absolutely guilty at exactly the same time.

  I felt myself exhale. "Oliver," I whispered, "you had me scared."

  The cat sat down on his haunches, twisted his head around, and began to groom his back. The night was so still that even Oliver's quiet licking seemed to echo down the street.

  Stepping around the cat, I started for the sidewalk again. Once there, I stopped in the shadow of the hedge and listened.

  The only sound in the whole neighborhood was the sound of Oliver's licking. I looked up and down the street. I figured there would be fewer police cars now that they had caught Nate, the person they thought was setting the car fires. But I was pretty sure there would be a police car or two around somewhere.

  The sound of Oliver grooming himself echoed in the still night air. But suddenly, it seemed really loud. And it didn't even sound that much like licking. Yeah, it sounded wet, like a cat's tongue. And it was a lapping noise. But it was almost too wet. And it seemed to get louder the more I listened.

  I looked back at the cat.

  Oliver was gone. He had padded silently away.

  I glanced around the yard. I didn't see the cat anywhere. But I could still hear the sound of his licking.

  That's when I knew it wasn't licking.

  It was the gurgle of gasoline being poured from a gas can!

  I turned my head back and forth, trying to get a sense of where it was coming from. To the left? To the right?

  No. Directly in front of me--one street over at least. The sound was being funneled through the side yards of two houses, right to me.

  Gripping the camcorder in my hands, I barreled forward. When I reached the yard across the street, I bounded my way through the junipers and gravel and grass. I sprinted my way through the yard of the second house too.

  Finally, I burst onto the sidewalk one street over from Kindle Home.

  I listened again.

  The gurgling had stopped!

  I turned left, gazing down the street. It was well lit by a nearby streetlight, but I didn't see anyone. The street was deserted.

  I swung right. It was darker in this direction, between streetlights. I didn't see anyone here either, but my night vision had been ruined by the blaze of the other streetlight.

  I squinted, but I still didn't see anything in the shadows. Had I gone the wrong direction? Had the sound of the gasoline been echoing from somewhere else? Did I need to go yet another street over?

  Then the silhouette of a person sharpened in the gloom. He or she was standing, facing away, on the sidewalk, next to a car parked not even fifty feet away. There was a gas can at the person s feet--it looked like the same gas can I'd seen the night before. And the figure was holding a tiny white square in its hands--a book of matches!

  Whoever it was, they had just doused the car with gasoline and were about to set it on fire!

  Had the person heard me? I started to move, to duck down behind the car parked closest to me, so I could lean out and record the whole thing on the camcorder. But even as I did, the figure turned and looked right at me.

  It was Yolanda.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "Yolanda?" I said. I stood up again and was now facing the person with the gas can and matches. And I was confused. What in the world was Yolanda doing here? Why wasn't she back in our room, asleep? She wasn't wearing a jacket. She was dressed only in a T-shirt and sweatpants--what she usually wore to bed--plus sneakers without socks. Was she sleepwalking? But then how had she gotten out of the house?

  Yolanda looked just as surprised to see me. "Lucy?"

  Camcorder at my side, I hurried toward her. "Yolanda, what are you doing out here?" Whatever the reason, I needed to get her back inside Kindle Home before a police car came passing by.

  "Lucy, stop."

  I did stop, but not because she'd told me to. I'd just finally caught on to what was happening.

  Yolanda was the one who had been setting the car fires!

  Yolanda was the one who had been setting the car fires? It wasn't possible!

  Or was it? I thought back to the night of the first fire, four days earlier. I'd been awoken by the sound of sirens, but Yolanda hadn't been in her bed. She'd come into the bedroom a few seconds later, pretending to tell me all about the car fire, but maybe she'd just been returning from setting the fire in the first place. As for the two previous nights, Yolanda had been in her bed when I'd left the room, but who was to say she'd stayed there? Neither of those two fires had happened right away. Yolanda could have been awake when I left, then snuck out after me. I'd been pretty sure there was at least one other non-alarmed exit from the house somewhere--maybe down in the basement. And I hadn't immediately returned home after either of those two fires either, so she would have had plenty of time to return to Kindle Home before me. This would have explained the footprints I'd seen in the mud traveling from the backyard to the front yard and then back again.

  Okay, I thought, so maybe it was possible that she had set the fires. But why in the world would she want to?

  "Yolanda!" I said. "What the hell's going on?"

  She turned away, hunching her back. "Go home, Lucy. This is none of your business."

  "Oh, it's not, huh?" I said. "They're going to close Kindle Home because of these fires! It sure as hell is my business!"

  Yolanda ignored me. I saw her shoulders flexing. Then I heard a short hissing sound.

  The strike of a match!

  "Yolanda!" I said. I dropped the camcorder and started running toward her. "Stop!"

  The match must not have lit, because Yolanda's shoulders flexed again.

  I reached her at last, grabbing her from behind by the biceps. "Yolanda--!"

  I had barely touched her when she whirled around on me. "Get away from me!" There was a snarl in her voice. She looked like a mother bear defending her cub. But that was no cub she was defending--it was a gas-soaked car. And she was trying to defend it with a book of matches.

  I took a step back. I was afraid. This was definitely not the fragile, innocent girl I thought I knew. I had expected someone in Kindle Home to have a meltdown tonight, but I never expected it to be her. Then again, I knew she had behavioral problems--she wouldn't have been at Kindle Home seven months after the death of her parents if she didn't.

  "Please, Yolanda," I said, trying to keep things calm. "Tell me what you're doing. Explain it to me."

  She fumbled for another match from the little white book. "Go away!"

  She struck the match, and it lit up. "Ha!"

  As soon as it did, I reached out and snatched it from her hand. I felt it go out as my hand closed around the flame.

  "No!" Yolanda shouted, and she lunged forward to grab the match back. We struggled, but I didn't let her take it back. As we fought, she kicked the gas can at her feet. The top was open, and gasoline spattered up onto her clothes.

  "Give it back!" Yolanda said.

  "It's out!" I said. "It's already burned out!"

  Yolanda gave up at last, but I didn't let myself relax. For all I knew, that book in her other hand was full of fresh matches.

  "Why?" I said. "Why do you want to do this? Kindle Home is the best place I've ever lived!

  It's almost like a re
al home!"

  The fury was back in her eyes, even stronger than before. "It's not my home!"

  "What?" I said, confused again.

  "It's not! Those aren't my parents!"

  And suddenly, I remembered something I'd heard the first time I'd eavesdropped on the counselors in the office below the Magic Step. Leon had said that when an older kid loses a parent, that kid is sometimes afraid that bonding with any new adults would be "betraying" that lost parent. When he'd said this, I'd thought it was bullshit, at least when it came to me. But maybe it wasn't bullshit, not when it came to Yolanda.

  Is this what Yolanda thought--that the Kindle Home counselors were somehow trying to replace her parents? And were these car fires her attempt to punish them for that, or just to stop them? But would Yolanda really want to screw a whole houseful of kids just to get back at some adults who weren't doing anything wrong to begin with? That seemed pretty warped, even by group home standards.

  Unless it was all unconscious. Hadn't Leon said something about that too--that people didn't always know the real reasons why they did the things they did? It was like when I'd dogged Nate in the hallway. I hadn't known at first that I'd really been trying to push him away from me.

  "Yolanda!" I said. "It's okay! Everything will be okay!" I remembered how Nate and Leon had both hugged me earlier in the day, and how good both those hugs had felt. So I reached out my arms for her.

  She hissed at me, not like a person, not even like a wild animal anymore. She sounded almost like that match she'd lit, before I'd put it out with my hand. And suddenly, I saw Yolanda the way Emil saw me. She was out of her mind. I could see it in her eyes. She was a raging wildfire, ready to destroy anything and everything in her path.

  Part of me was scared by that wild look in her eyes. But another part of me wasn't. That part of me recognized the look in Yolanda's eyes. In a way, those were my eyes, and looking at them was a little bit like looking into a mirror. I'd been where Yolanda was now--out of control, overcome by feelings I didn't understand. I must have been there when I'd attacked Nate in second-period biology, and those times when I'd almost had it out with Joy, and all the other fights I'd been in too. It wasn't just Alicia who was Fire. I was too. I was Ice and Fire. But there was another side to me and Yolanda, a side that Emil couldn't see. Yeah, we were fires, and sometimes we did burn out of control. But there is a beauty in fire--and a strength, and a passion. And I wasn't about to let Yolanda's fire destroy itself.

  I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her. Sometimes, the only way to stop a fire is with another fire--the controlled burn--and if I'd learned anything at Kindle Home, it was that I could control my burn. No matter what, I was determined to stop her.

  "Listen to me!" I said, hugging her tightly, holding her back. "It's okay! Everything's going to be all right!"

  She immediately started struggling. She pushed and kicked and finally squirmed her way out of my arms.

  "Yolanda, stop!"

  She still didn't listen. Instead, she hunched down, wrestling with the little pack of matches again. She quickly tore one free.

  "No!" I said. "Don't light that!"

  It was too late. The match struck. It flared up.

  And it kept on flaring. When she'd kicked the gas can, some of the gas had splashed on her clothes. Now it was lighting up too.

  Yolanda yelped and dropped the match, but it was too late. Her sweatpants and T-shirt exploded into flames.

  She screamed, even as she helplessly flailed her arms.

  I didn't think, I just leaped forward, crashing into her, wrapping my arms around her, hugging her again. She was still screaming and burning, and I could feel the heat of the fire against my own clothes and skin, but I wrenched us both to the ground. Then, with my arms still wrapped around her, I started rolling back and forth on the pavement. I knew I was being burned now too, but I felt no pain. I just kept rolling, back and forth, back and forth, until we were like one person, one single fire. But I still didn't stop. I would roll forever until that fire went out.

  The second it did, I heard loud voices all around me.

  And that's when I must've passed out.

  Epilogue

  Whenever someone wakes up in a hospital in the movies, they always think they're in heaven. But when I woke up, I knew right away I was in a hospital. I doubt heaven smells like ammonia, and I bet the beds are softer too.

  But there was one part of that hospital that seemed a lot like heaven. It was Nate, sitting in a chair next to my bed reading a copy of Snowboarder magazine. To my eyes, he looked better than any angel.

  "Nate?" I said. My throat was sore, like I'd been shouting.

  He looked at me, and his face lit up like a fluorescent light.

  "You're awake!" he said. He rolled his chair closer to the bed so he was right next to me.

  "Where am I? What happened?"

  "You're in the hospital. You're fine. Especially now that you're awake."

  "Yolanda," I said, remembering. "Where is she? Is she okay?" I started looking around the room, which was pretty stupid, since there was only one other bed, and it was obviously unoccupied.

  Nate looked away. "She's okay. She's in the hospital too."

  "Where?" I said. "Is she nearby? I need to see her."

  "Not this hospital. A different one." He hesitated. "A different land of hospital."

  "What? Why?"

  "It's a mental hospital. Yolanda has problems, Lucy. Six months ago, she tried to poison her foster family. Three months ago, at her last group home, she left the gas oven on."

  So I'd been right. Yolanda was lashing out at anyone who tried to replace her beloved parents.

  "Is she okay?" I said.

  "She was burned more than you. But she's awake. She'll be okay."

  It was only then that I realized there were stiff bandages on my body, on my chest and legs. There was pain too, big patches of it, like really bad carpet burns.

  "You!" I said. "How'd you get out of Ragman Hall?" I couldn't believe that hadn't been the first question out of my mouth.

  He smiled again. "They let me go. They had to when they learned that I wasn't the one who'd been setting the fires."

  "But how did they--?"

  "The neighbors."

  "The neighbors?" I said.

  "Don't you remember?"

  I shook my head.

  "When you were talking to Yolanda, trying to stop her from lighting the fire? There were people all around you."

  "There were?" I hadn't noticed. I'd thought Yolanda and I were completely alone on that street. Then I remembered the voices right before I passed out.

  "The neighbors heard you shouting and came out to see what was going on," Nate said. "So they saw and heard everything. Mrs. Morgan filled in the rest. And then there was the camcorder. That pretty much clinched it. You know, you're even kind of a hero. Article in the paper and everything. And I bet there'll be another one now that you're awake."

  "Wait a minute. How long have I been here?"

  "Three days. You weren't in a coma or anything, but they had you on painkillers."

  "Three days?" That explained the tubes that were attached to my arm, and the little container of liquid hanging by my bed.

  "You did it," Nate said. "You solved the mystery, you saved Yolanda's life, and you got me free. You should feel pretty proud."

  "No," I said, but I guess I did feel a little proud.

  "Thanks," he said, and he leaned forward to kiss me. His shoulder pressing against my chest hurt my burns, but I didn't say anything, because it was worth it to kiss him again.

  Finally, we broke our kiss, and I said, "What about Kindle Home?"

  Nate sat back in his chair. Suddenly, he wouldn't look me in the eye.

  "What?" I said. "Tell me!" Nate wasn't touching my burns anymore, but I was a lot more uncomfortable now than when he'd had been leaning on my chest.

  "Lucy, they're closing Kindle Home down. But not till the end of Ja
nuary."

  "But you just said I'm a hero! There was an article about me in the paper!"

  "I know. It completely sucks."

  I sank back against my pillow. "So that's it. I'm still going to Rabbit Island anyway." Oh, well, I thought. I'd saved Yolanda's life, and I'd gotten Nate out of Ragman Hall. Those were the two most important things.