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  My mother made a sound between her teeth.

  I stopped. I never meant to say it; it just came out.

  “I mean … not that,” I said. “Just, you know —”

  She was looking right at me now, her face drawing itself in like it does when she thinks something bad is happening to us.

  “What?” I said. I didn’t want to make too much out of it. All I wanted now was to get to my room and do homework.

  “The poor girl. What is she like — I mean, is she — nice?”

  “I don’t know. I guess she’s okay,” I said, slinging my pack over my shoulder again. “She doesn’t say much.”

  “She lives just over there.” She pointed at the wall of the living room.

  “I know.” I stepped into the dining room. I was sweating again, and my shirt was wet and I wanted to change.

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “I don’t know. It’s school. There’s stuff to do. Mrs. Tracy keeps us busy. Nobody talks to her much … there’s stuff to do….”

  “Well, it might help to talk to her.”

  I think I squinted at her. “Help?” What did that mean? “I don’t need help. I’m okay —”

  “Her. Help her.” She said this, shaking her head, as if she was going to say something more. But she didn’t say anything else right then. I stood for another few seconds, then I went upstairs to change and do my homework.

  After that first time in class on Monday, I had almost never looked right at Jessica Feeney. Not the next day or the next. It was really too hard to look at that face. It didn’t get any better if you looked at it; I mean, it didn’t get any easier to look at.

  She answered the teacher’s questions sometimes. Her voice was quiet and hoarse and not all that clear. She never raised her hand, but Mrs. Tracy called on her every now and again, and Jessica answered.

  During math, she left her desk to sharpen her pencil. Sometimes she went into the hall to her locker and was gone in the lavatory for a while, then came back. She moved around all right, even though her legs were always covered with thick stockings. Maybe it hurt for her to move, but if it did, she didn’t show it.

  Then on Thursday of that week, a whole bunch of strange things happened.

  I found that I started, in little bits, raising my head to look at her, but always when I knew she was turned the other way or couldn’t see me. I discovered that if you didn’t see the edge of her face or her hand or arm lying on the desk, she looked almost like any girl with dirty hair. It was sort of crushed and matted in the back. It almost began to feel as if there was a person in there.

  As if there was a person in there. It seems stupid to even say something like that. But that’s what I felt. It was hard to think about her as being at all like the rest of us.

  Still, I remember letting out a deep breath the first time I found myself looking at her from behind. It was as if I had been holding my breath ever since she stepped into our class. When she was turned away, you could almost forget about the way she looked. It almost didn’t matter that Jessica Feeney, the horribly burned girl, was sitting one seat away from me at the head of row two.

  Jeff, on the other hand, and Rich, were acting as if there was something else to know about Jessica.

  There was, they said, the whole question of how.

  Chapter 9

  It was hot outside when I trotted across the yard in gym class and heard Jeff say, “How did she get that way?”

  “Yeah, how?” said Rich, who was standing with him. The look on his face showed that he’d been wondering things aloud, too.

  “So what burned her?” Jeff said to us. “That’s what I want to know. Nobody’s talking about it. How it happened. That’s the point.”

  The point?

  “Somebody must know,” said Rich, his eyes darting around and his head nodding quickly, as if no one could possibly disagree with that. “Mrs. Tracy knows for sure.”

  Jeff snorted. “Why don’t you go ask her?” he said. He gave Rich a hard push toward the school. “Then go do a report on it.”

  “I’m not going to ask her!”

  “Why not, you love Mrs. Tracy. You want to kiss her —”

  “I do not!”

  I was moving from one foot to the other as I listened to them talking. It surprised me that with everything going on during Jessica’s first week at St. Catherine’s, I hadn’t even thought of that part of the situation. It suddenly seemed really odd to me that I never even asked myself how. I mean, of course, right? How did she get burned? How did it happen? How could she be like that?

  “It was probably in her house,” Rich said. “She was playing with matches and the curtains caught fire or something. That’s what I think. When I was three I supposedly lit a tablecloth on fire. It was Thanksgiving and I was under the table —”

  “She was burned about two years ago, maybe two and a half,” said Jeff as if he was certain. “From what my mother says, that’s what you look like. She should have died. That’s about as bad as you can get and still live —”

  “You talked to your mother about her?” I asked.

  “Plus, she’s big,” he went on, “so she’s probably a couple of years older than us. She must have been in the hospital for a long time after she got burned and lost at least a year of school. Maybe more.”

  “You know a lot,” said Rich, almost in awe.

  Now I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Jessica’s face came to me again and I must have begun to wince or something because Rich laughed and pointed at me. I turned away from him. But I did begin to wonder why Mrs. Tracy hadn’t said something like, “don’t play with matches,” or “don’t stick things in electrical sockets,” or “don’t fool around in the kitchen,” using Jessica as a sort of warning of what could happen.

  “Maybe it was just an accident?” I said.

  Jeff made a noise under his breath. “Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe it was something else.”

  “That’s what I think,” said Rich, as if what Jeff had just said really meant anything. “Plus, I wonder if anybody else was in the fire and then died.”

  Jeff nodded slowly. “Sure, probably. That bad? Oh, yeah.”

  Some girls, Courtney and Darlene and someone else, were beginning to shoot hoops across the yard, and the coach, Mrs. Brower, turned toward us, her whistle between her teeth. The necklace of the whistle strap looped behind her neck.

  “She’s going to call us now,” I said.

  “Joey said he saw her father, but he’s mostly normal not all burned up like she is,” Rich whispered.

  I felt my face go red, and I turned to Jeff. “Joey didn’t see her father, I saw him. And of course he’s normal —”

  “Maybe her mother, then,” said Jeff.

  For the second time, I felt as if I wanted to shove this conversation aside somehow, wreck it. It seemed so dumb to stand around wondering about how somebody got the way she was. It happened. So, okay. Why talk about it? I wanted to walk away from them, but I didn’t. I wondered why I didn’t, but I wasn’t sure. I was hoping Mrs. Brower would finally call us to do something, but she was still across the yard, talking to some of the girls and moving her arms.

  “Or a dog?” said Rich, his eyes large. “Maybe her dog died. Pets stay with you in a fire I heard —”

  “Anyway,” I said, interrupting loudly, not wanting to talk about pets and fires anymore. “Jeff, how about when we go driving around next Saturday, you know —”

  “Huh?” He turned to me, narrowing his eyes as if he wasn’t getting it. “You say the queerest things. What are you talking about?”

  “I was thinking that … uh …” I didn’t know why I said what I said next, but it just came out. “Maybe we can drive by Courtney’s house. We can go by her house and honk the horn.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was saying. My pulse was racing hard. My voice was quivering. My chest thumped. What’s this? Why this? Courtney? I’m saying her name? Here? I’m giving up my secret? Why? For h
er? For Jessica Feeney? So we wouldn’t talk about her anymore?

  Jeff looked at me. His face was a blank.

  “I mean, your uncle’s still coming over next weekend, right?” I asked.

  “What are you talking about?” said Rich, looking back and forth between us. “What uncle?”

  Jeff nodded. “He’s coming.”

  “And he’ll have the you-know-what?”

  “What you-know-what?” asked Rich.

  “You know,” I said, not taking my eyes off Jeff.

  Finally he grinned back. “Yeah … yeah … Courtney’s house,” he said, glancing at Rich, who was still in the dark. “Yeah. Cool.”

  But for some reason, that wasn’t enough to push it away. Rich already seemed bored with our talk. When he looked once more back at the school, he had a smirky little smile on his face. It seemed as if he was remembering some other thing he had heard about Jessica, and it wasn’t going to be nice.

  “I’m going to nominate Courtney, too,” I blurted out, spilling everything right there on the gym yard. Some idiot in my brain kept saying go on, tell them everything, tell them all about it, you jerk!

  “I’m going to do it first,” I said, “before anybody else has a chance.”

  The coach was finally coming toward us now. I heard one of her knees snapping loudly as she walked.

  Rich still had that face on. He was going to say something. His mouth opened. “And you know what else —”

  I had to finish it. It was complete idiocy. “I really like her,” I said quickly. “I like Courtney. She’d make a cool president.”

  Rich’s face grew suddenly huge. “What? You love her?” His eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open exaggeratedly. “Tom loves Courtney. Oooh! Jeff, he loves Courtney! Oooh, Tahom…”

  “She’s gonna win,” Jeff said quietly as Mrs. Brower finally blew her whistle. The class started, and we were pulled apart to different sides of the yard.

  Everything was a blur during the rest of gym class. I couldn’t believe that I had just told them everything. I had told them I liked Courtney!

  Later, just before lunch, when it was time for social studies, Mrs. Tracy clasped her hands together and looked around to get everyone’s attention.

  “Another announcement?” someone whispered from the back. “Not another new person!”

  That was a pretty stupid thing to say.

  “Before we start social studies,” Mrs. Tracy said, “Sister Margaret Christopher has suggested that the classes join in a special prayer for all the candidates in the real elections this year. A prayer that they may make the right decisions and will guide us and help us lead safe and prosperous lives in our state and our country. All the grades are doing it. So, hands, everyone.”

  “Hold hands? No way,” said Eric LoBianco, repeating what he said every prayer time.

  “It’s a short prayer,” Mrs. Tracy said, looking at Eric. “And we will all participate. The more of us who say the prayer, the better the chance it will be heard.”

  Kayla made a show of wiping her small hands, then held them out, one to Rich and the other to me.

  I glanced to the back corner to see Courtney holding Dave Tessman’s hand. I wondered for an instant if Dave felt anything for Courtney or knew how lucky he was. His other hand held his twin sister Karen’s hand. Dave and Karen Tessman.

  As everyone reached out, something rippled across the room, as if they all suddenly thought of the same thing at the same time: Jessica Feeney was in the class now.

  Coming in late and leaving early most days, she had always missed the morning and afternoon prayer rings. But now she was here. This was the first time her burned hands would be part of the prayer ring.

  She stood up and extended her hand to me.

  I felt as if everyone’s eyes were on me. I must have dropped a gallon of sweat into my shirt. I felt my arms and sides and waist dripping wet. But with that curled thing held out in the air toward me, I couldn’t not take it. I had to hold it. My hand reached out to hers and took it. I held it lightly, and I think she helped by not squeezing. My hand must have been sweaty. Her palm felt pretty normal. The skin felt cool.

  It’s not the burned side, I told myself.

  Of course. She must have kept her hands all fisted up when she was in the fire, banging whatever it was to get out of wherever she was when the fire was all around her.

  When she turned to Jeff, he kept his eyes down and his arms down. She extended her hand, crooked and red and bent open, but he made no move. Everyone stood there, completely silent and waiting.

  “Jeff,” said Mrs. Tracy, glancing over at him with a frown and eyes that were stern and dark. Her head was half-bowed to begin the prayer.

  Jeff did not meet her look. He set his feet firmly on the floor, legs apart as if he expected a huge wave or something to wash over him. He pushed his balled-up fists into his pockets and didn’t hold anyone’s hand. He looked ready to leave the classroom any second.

  “It’s okay,” said Jessica, letting her hand drop.

  Mrs. Tracy closed her eyes and said the prayer.

  Chapter 10

  “I can’t believe you did that,” Rich said to Jeff at lunch.

  “You’re in trouble,” said Joey. “You can’t just not do what Mrs. Tracy says you have to. Especially not a prayer thing. The nuns will get on your case. It’s at least detention for sure.”

  Jeff shrugged, dropping his brown bag on the table. “I’m not touching that girl,” he said coolly. “My mom’s a nurse. You think she doesn’t know how you can pick up diseases and stuff from touching sick people? She tells me all kinds of stories.”

  “You mean like AIDS?” asked Rich. “Whoa.”

  I stared at my sandwich. My heart was beating hard. “Like AIDS? It’s not like she’s contagious or anything —”

  “Oh, what, like you know?” said Joey, looking at Jeff.

  “She’s not still burning —” I said.

  “You’re lucky,” said Jeff, pulling a piece of his sandwich off and pushing it into his mouth. “You don’t have to stare at the back of her head all day.”

  “She looks like everybody else from behind,” I said.

  Rich shook his head, looking at Jeff now, too. “Not really, right?”

  “It’s like I can see her skull through her burned hair,” said Jeff, more angry now. “And her smell is making me sick. I should ask to move my seat. I’ve already pushed it back a lot. But not enough. I’ve got to move my seat.”

  I glanced around the cafeteria but didn’t see Jessica. It struck me that I had never seen her there. Where did she eat?

  “In fact, I’m going to talk to Mrs. Tracy now,” he said. He got up from the table with his bag in his hand. “Where is she? I’ll get her to move my seat. My mom will call her if I tell her to.”

  I watched Jeff storm away from the table and out into the hall.

  After lunch, Mrs. Tracy started teaching English without saying a word about the handholding thing. I kept expecting her to say something or give Jeff harsh looks, but she never did.

  And Jeff, who stayed where he was in row two but moved his seat only another few inches back, didn’t seem worried about getting punished, either, as Joey had warned he might.

  Had he already talked with Mrs. Tracy? Did he actually convince her that there was some danger in being near Jessica or touching her? Did he tell her his mother would call the school? That was just crazy.

  But Mrs. Tracy said nothing at all about it. She began by reading a poem about Chicago, one about trains, and then another about Abraham Lincoln.

  The whole afternoon, Jessica’s head was almost always bent down over her books. In fact, she hardly looked up for the rest of the day. I knew because I found myself watching her a lot.

  Jessica was absent the next day, Friday. For treatment, Mrs. Tracy said. Jeff wasn’t there, either. He had gone for a long weekend to visit his father, who lived in New York with his girlfriend.

  I was amazed a
t how relieved I was that neither of them was there. Friday was great. I could just do my work. I had felt so sick to my stomach the day before from the talk on the school yard and the prayer ring. But Friday turned out really good.

  At lunch I sat alone and did some catch-up homework. Rich, Joey, and Eric were two tables away making faces and waving their hands about some show they had seen the night before. Courtney, Darlene, and Kayla were running around with some of the kindergartners doing something I didn’t know about. That was all fine. It was the usual, and I liked it.

  A big chunk of the class time was taken up talking about and doing stuff for the elections. Mrs. Tracy said we would have our primary to choose candidates in a little over two weeks, so we had to get into high gear if we wanted to get everything done in time. That was fine with me. It felt like regular school again.

  I didn’t see Jeff until the morning bus on Monday. He was waiting at the stop. He seemed more or less okay, but quiet.

  “So, how was your weekend in New York?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “My dad gave me some of his stupid old comics. I don’t even know why he has them there, but his girlfriend wanted them out. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Yeah. What kind of stuff did you do —”

  “I never do anything there,” he snapped, finally looking at me. “The guy can’t wait for the weekend to be over and for me to be gone.”

  “Really? Sorry,” I said.

  He looked past me up the street to where the bus would come from. “We’re supposed to do all kinds of stuff. It’s supposed to be different when I go there. But all he wants is to go places with his girlfriend. The jerk.”

  “What, they do stuff alone?” I asked. “What do you do?”

  “Nothing. I just wait. Plus, they live in this really tiny place. It’s such a waste.”

  When the bus finally came, he stomped up the steps and slumped into a seat. I sat down next to him, but he just stared out the window. I wanted to ask about the car again, but bringing up his uncle didn’t feel right just then. When the bus was weaving around the streets near school, he suddenly ripped out a piece of loose-leaf paper and began to scrawl something on it. Then he balled it up and threw it to the floor under the seat. “Jerk,” he said a few times.