Firegirl

  He jumped off the bus, pretty much just stormed to the classroom, and slapped his notebooks down on his desk. Jessica wasn’t there yet. Our bus must have been first because Courtney wasn’t there, either.

  Shaking his head, Jeff looked over at me again. “I mean, Deb, his girlfriend, is okay. But so what? You wouldn’t believe the tiny, tiny place they have. I have to sleep on the couch with my feet practically in the oven. Plus, it stinks of bug spray. He keeps saying it’s all he can get because my mother is forcing him to pay for school for me, and I should go to public school instead. He says I would probably even like it better. When I got home last night my mother was on emergency shift anyway. I didn’t see her till this morning. So she’s not even there, either. So who even cares?”

  Jeff let all his breath out.

  It sounded really horrible for him. I couldn’t picture it all because things were okay at my house. It was like trying to understand what it felt like to have cancer or something. I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. But it seemed like after every visit, he hated his father more and more. It made me feel guilty that I had both my parents. “Sorry it stinks so much,” I said. “You could come to my house after school maybe. There’s food at least.”

  He shook his head. “My mom always leaves me food. She just works a lot. Plus, you don’t have any good stuff. The only comics you have are the ones I gave you.”

  It still seemed so incredibly dumb to talk about cars when he was having such a bad time at home, so I just said, “Yeah, you have better stuff.”

  Class started, and Jessica came in twenty minutes later. She was quiet and stayed to herself as usual. Since it was now only two weeks before the actual election, the whole project began to take up more and more class time. The day started with a half period of what Mrs. Tracy called the “background” part of the project. Talking the whole time, Samantha Embriano and Kayla tacked their extra-credit poster project about primaries to the bulletin board. It was drawn with lots of different colored markers. Right after them, Darlene marched up with a better one, a flowchart with little orange Halloween lights fitted through the poster board. The lights showed how candidates for an office start up a campaign, how they raise money, how they get nominated, and how elections are done.

  Mrs. Tracy wouldn’t allow us to campaign for class president until the end of each day, when we could get up and present five-minute speeches about ourselves. But Darlene, at least, started right from the beginning. She wore a homemade “Darlene” button every day, and she brought in brownies for lunch two days in a row. “Just because,” she said. “The ones with nuts are marked with a nut on top. The others are plain.”

  Eric LoBianco came in on Wednesday with his own plate of cookies. He said he baked them himself, which Darlene didn’t believe. When the cookies were found to not be very good, Ryan said it was probably true that he made them after all.

  Finally, it was time for the speeches and the real election posters to come out. Mrs. Tracy wanted everybody to do something, but not everyone did. Some kids just didn’t want to run and said so. I didn’t want to run for anything, but I didn’t say so because no one asked, so I just watched and listened.

  Karen talked about write-in candidates, which is when the person who votes can write in the name of someone who hasn’t been officially nominated. It was a dual presentation with Melissa. They were thinking of running together as co-presidents, and Mrs. Tracy said that was okay, for now.

  At the very end of the day on Wednesday, Courtney gave her talk. I listened to every word. She spoke the same way she did at the reading group, her voice going high and low. She looked at index cards some of the time, but didn’t for quite a bit of it. She told us about how the people who hold office really need to listen to the people they represent, even if they don’t say much. She said that listening was what being elected to a position was really all about.

  “It’s the heart of the democratic process,” she finished.

  When she said heart I think I shivered. Her face did a little frown when she prounounced the word, as if she meant everything the word could mean. She looked out at the whole class but at no one in particular when she said it. Then she nodded once and sat down.

  Jessica was out that day and the day before. I thought at first that she went into the hospital for more graftings, but then I thought that maybe she just had a cold or wasn’t feeling well or something. Mrs. Tracy didn’t say why.

  Mostly because my mother kept at me to get out there and get involved, even though I didn’t want to, that night I made a small poster with my name stenciled under a blown-up photocopy of my last year’s school picture.

  We were all around the kitchen table after dinner on Wednesday night looking at it.

  My mother frowned. “It needs more.”

  “It needs somebody else,” I said.

  “Just a little pizzazz,” she said, making a face at me.

  We were all thinking of things, when my father’s eyes lit up.

  He sat upright in his chair, a smile growing on his face. “I’ve got it,” he said. Then, not to me, but to my mother he said, “A vote for Tom is a vote for tomorrow. Except that the t-o-m of tomorrow is capitalized. So that it reads —” He moved his hands over the poster on the table in front of us. “A Vote for Tom is a Vote for TOMorrow. Get it?”

  He looked at me now.

  I looked at my mother. “What?” I said.

  “That’s good,” said my mother.

  A few minutes later, the poster was done.

  A Vote for TOM is a Vote for TOMorrow!

  I didn’t like the slogan. I didn’t like it because I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant. How do you vote for tomorrow? What would a vote for tomorrow look like? Isn’t tomorrow just a big question mark? They always say tomorrow never comes, right?

  The more I thought about it, the more I believed the slogan might mean nothing at all. And after Courtney talked about the whole democratic process thing, and frowned when she said heart, how could I put up a poster that didn’t mean anything?

  I looked at it in my room later, propped up against my backpack and ready for school.

  “Tom … T-O-M,” I said. “Get it?”

  That night, as I lay in the dark, I kept replaying the scene where Courtney would look at the poster and frown.

  “What does it mean?” she would ask me seriously.

  My mind would go completely blank. Then I would suddenly stare past her to the end of the hall, where the tiles began popping up out of the floor.

  My father stopped me on the stairs the next afternoon. “How do your friends like your poster?” he asked.

  “They love it,” I said. “It’s funny, but also true.”

  He seemed to like that. “Did you do your talk yet?”

  “Tomorrow, I think.”

  The idea was that I would talk about how politicians were in office for two or four or six years and were supposed to leave office with things better than when they got elected. If politicians kept doing that, the world would really become a better place.

  I felt bad, but there was no way I was going to talk in front of the class, and I sure didn’t want to show the poster to anybody, not even Jeff. I had already decided to keep it in my locker until after the election.

  In the meantime, Joey Sisman kept threatening to nominate himself if no one else did and vote for himself, too.

  On Friday morning, Jessica came in just after prayers. I think she timed coming in so she wouldn’t have to be there for that. The day was a warm one again, and while I helped Mrs. Tracy hook the window pole on the latch of one of the upper windows, wondering whether tomorrow was going to be sunny, too, I thought I saw Courtney and Jessica talk to each other when Courtney was handing back papers. I remember I felt all nervous in my chest and guilty, as if I’d done something wrong again and was going to be found out.

  They probably just said a couple of words, like “here you go” and “thanks,” but it made me think that even tho
ugh she’d been there for two weeks already, no one had really said much to Jessica. What I’d told my mother the week before was still true.

  I hated it, but everyone (the whole class and me, too) seemed happier the days she wasn’t there.

  Then, in the three minutes between subjects on Friday morning, while Mrs. Tracy was chatting in the hallway with another teacher, something else happened.

  Chapter 11

  As everyone put their religion books away and got out calculators and pencils for math, Jessica reached under her seat for her pencil case. Her fingers fumbled a bit in it, and as she leaned over to peer into the case, a pencil and a photograph fell out of it. The photo landed face up near the foot of my desk.

  “Oh,” she said. She reached for it, but it was nearer to me.

  I lifted the picture from the floor. It was an odd size, almost exactly square. It was a picture of a girl. She was short and pretty and blonde and looking straight into the camera. Propped on her left shoulder was a tennis racket. Behind her stood a man in a white sweater and shorts. He had a big smile on his face. Squarely behind them both was a big shingled building that looked like a fancy beach club in the summer. The right side of the photo, next to the man, was clipped off. But my eyes were drawn to the girl.

  Her eyebrows were cocked at a slight angle, and her eyes were big and beautiful. Her lips were half-curved in a little, cute smile.

  “Who’s she?” I found myself asking at the same time a shiver went right up my back. For a split second it occurred to me that the picture might actually be of her.

  That girl might be Jessica.

  Idiot! How could I blurt out, “Who’s she?”

  I began to feel really nervous again, but I tried to make it pass. It couldn’t be her. This girl was smaller, much smaller. With my hand trembling, I started to give it back.

  But Kayla stopped me, practically lunging at my hand and stopping it. “Oh, my gosh,” she whispered. “Is that her?”

  Her? My stomach began to roll now, and I thought I was going to be sick all over the place. You idiot. Jessica’s right here!

  “Here,” I said, trying to hand it back again, but Kayla wouldn’t let go of my wrist. It was insane. This little girl was holding onto me. Mrs. Tracy was talking intently with Darlene and Dave now, and then began digging in the bookshelves under the window and didn’t notice what was going on. Samantha Embriano suddenly rose from her desk to look at the picture now. Rich Downing was sliding out of his seat, too.

  “Hey, that’s the guy that picks you up!” said Rich, pointing his finger at the man in the picture, hut at least talking to Jessica. “That’s your father isn’t it?”

  Jessica said nothing, so I said, “Maybe. Here.” I still tried to move my hand.

  “It’s my sister,” said Jessica quietly, reaching for the photo. “That’s my sister. Anne.”

  We were all quiet. Her sister? That was the first we’d heard about a sister. Not that we ever asked or anything.

  “Anne,” said Kayla. “Cool.”

  Samantha Embriano suddenly said something completely out of nowhere, but it was kind of good. “I used to play tennis. That’s a good racket she’s got there. You can tell from the P on the face of it —” She practically touched the photograph. “I know, because my tennis teacher has one like that.”

  “You have a tennis teacher?” Rich asked.

  “Since third grade,” she said.

  “Your sister’s really cute,” said Kayla, finally releasing my hand.

  Her sister. Anne. I don’t know what Jessica thought about all this. Since we were all bunched so close together it was impossible to look at her without seeming to stare into her face. Plus her head was down, so it was hard to figure out what she was thinking.

  But I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that she probably couldn’t believe any of this. I couldn’t believe it! All these words at once. It was more than anyone had spoken to her since she came to our class. So many words!

  And I knew why.

  We had all been waiting so long for things to be more normal again. It was what everybody felt when Jessica wasn’t in school for a day. Only this was a hundred times better. We didn’t have to pretend she didn’t exist. We suddenly found a regular thing about her — her sister.

  Her sister wasn’t burned. Anne was a normal girl. A really cute girl, in fact. And now that we saw this picture and we knew about her, we had found out another thing about Jessica … lots of things, in fact — normal things that we could think about and talk about. Tennis. The beach club. Summer vacation. Their father. About anything. It was as if someone had opened a window in a hot room and cool air was rushing in over us.

  Jessica hadn’t moved during all of this and said nothing, but I almost felt happy for her. Wouldn’t it be so much easier this way? We could show that we could be friends with Jessica, by being interested in her sister. This was it. We could almost be normal again.

  “Cool,” I said, reaching over to give the photo back.

  Suddenly it was Rich’s turn to be the idiot. He said something so incredibly simple, but right away everything I had just been thinking began to fall apart.

  “She looks like she’s maybe in fifth grade,” he said. “Is she in one of the downstairs classes?”

  It was quiet for a moment. Everyone was quiet, waiting for her to answer. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jeff sitting facing away from us, his legs sticking out between the second and third rows.

  Then Kayla asked, “Does she have Mr. MacDonald? My brother would know her.”

  I gave Jessica the picture back finally. When I did, her hand sort of brushed against mine. It was rough. A jolt of something electric went straight down my back to my legs. It felt as if a skeleton had just tapped my shoulder.

  She put the photo back in her pencil case, and then gripped the zipper with her thumb and first finger and pulled.

  “Is she in his class?” Kayla asked, looking at each of us.

  “She’s not here,” said Jessica. Her voice was unsteady.

  I felt cold again. Seeing Jessica fumbling to close the pencil case, I just wanted the questions to stop now. But everybody was looking at her. When Rich spoke again, it was the end of it.

  “Where is she?” he asked, glancing over at Jeff who was still leaning back, saying nothing.

  Jessica pulled the zipper closed. “She died.”

  The words were almost inaudible, but it felt as if all the air was pulled out of me when she said them.

  Without waiting, she stood up and went to the teacher and said something to her.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Rich said to us. “That’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just asked her where she was. I didn’t know anybody was dead. Who cares if her dumb sister’s dead? She better not say anything about me—”

  But nothing happened. Mrs. Tracy didn’t even look over at Rich or Kayla or me or the others going back to their seats.

  It was like it didn’t involve us. Mrs. Tracy nodded, and Jessica left the classroom.

  Chapter 12

  It was everywhere by the end of lunch … that Jessica Feeney had started a fire in her room while playing with matches and that’s how she got burned; but worse than that, the fire had killed her sister. And the reason why Jessica had to enter school after the year started was because people found out she killed her sister and they made her leave the town she lived in before.

  It was totally bizarre. And it probably wasn’t even possible. People didn’t get thrown out of their towns anymore. That was something they did in the Old West or in Frankenstein movies. People with torches marching to your house.

  Meanwhile, I found that all I could think about, all I could wonder about, was what Jessica looked like before.

  If her sister was so cute, was she cute, too? It was hard to get straight in my mind exactly what she might look like. When I thought about all the stuff I had dreamed up about Courtney, I realized that most of it was because of how beauti
ful she was. But what if Jessica was like that, too? I couldn’t hold it in my head without feeling like I was going to cry.

  But the talk kept up all afternoon.

  After lunch, the class split up into French and Spanish language sections in different rooms, and by the time we all got back together in our right seats, the story seemed to have gone through ten more versions with every new off-the-wall idea added into the mess.

  Now there were curtains involved, and candles, and matches, a dog (who also died), a curse whispered on the prettier sister, and a big flowery tablecloth — with blood stains.

  It was as if everybody’s worst fears about why Jessica looked the way she did were suddenly turned loose, and it was okay to say them. It was okay now because the fire had all been her fault. What started as a real possibility for us to be normal again turned into a nightmare.

  The big turning point — all that talk I had hoped for when I first saw the photo — had come, all right. But it was all wrong. I had wanted it to be about tennis and beach clubs and summer, but by last period it had turned into a freaky murder story.

  In some versions of it, Jessica and her (now) genius sister had had an argument — some people said over a boyfriend, some said over dolls — then Jessica got mad and set the dolls on fire. Her sister didn’t make it out of the house (neither did the dog), and Jessica was saved only because the firemen chopped through the walls to get to her.

  Which they probably shouldn’t have, someone said.

  And now her family had to keep moving because she was running from the police, who suspected the real story and were close to proving it.

  “That’s why she cut herself out of the photo,” said Eric LoBianco in the lavatory before health class. “So the police couldn’t use it to identify her.”

  I sighed. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Jessica’s at our school because she has to go where the good burn hospitals are.”

  “That’s what she says—”