Firegirl Read online

  I couldn’t believe it. Jeff had wrecked everything. Courtney was mine. He knew it was my idea to nominate her. I noticed Rich looking at me. He knew it was my idea, too. He was there when I told Jeff about it. It wasn’t Jeff not caring this time, though. He did it on purpose. He had planned it.

  Now it was too late to do anything.

  I heard Kayla naming Samantha Embriano next. Dave fidgeted in his seat and seemed to be waiting for someone to say his name. He caught Kayla’s eye; she shrugged and nominated him, too. Samantha frowned.

  Joey nominated himself then retracted it, naming Eric LoBianco instead and laughing through it all.

  Mrs. Tracy wrote the names on the board. “Anyone else?” she asked. “No more? So, we have Courtney, Darlene, Samantha Embriano, Dave, Eric …”

  Jessica’s hand went up.

  “Yes, Jessica? Would you like to name someone?”

  In her small, breathy way she said, “Tom.”

  It was as if I’d suddenly been zapped with a thousand volts of electricity. A hundred thousand. Every part of me felt a jolt of hot energy. What did she say my name for? I’m no candidate. I didn’t even show anyone my poster. I didn’t even want to be president — not that anyone would vote for me. Then I thought Mrs. Tracy might object because I didn’t campaign, but she didn’t.

  “Jessica named Tom,” she said in the same plain way she said everything else. Then she chalked my name on the board beneath the others.

  It was so strange, so embarrassing to hear my name connected with Jessica’s. With all those eyes turning to me, Jeff even turning, I felt my face go so red. I didn’t want this. I didn’t deserve it. The images in my dream rolled back again.

  I felt finally as if I had lied a really horrible lie (worse than any of Jeff’s), and now that Jessica had named me, everybody knew the lie. I was suddenly ashamed and angry with myself. I wanted to run. My stomach churned. I felt cold.

  “Good. Any other names?” Mrs. Tracy asked.

  Then a strange thing happened. If I felt nervous and ashamed, the other part was that I felt I had to do something. My name was right up there on the board with everybody else’s. The teacher had written it the same way she had written the others. The same way she had written Courtney’s.

  And now that Courtney was already nominated — stolen from me by Jeff — it seemed there was only one thing I could do. A thing no one else would do. And I had to do it. The only way to get Jessica into the class, really into the class, was for one of us to get her in.

  I mean, why not? I don’t know if anybody would vote for her, but Jessica was smart and nice and she’d been to lots of schools, so she knew how things worked. And she even made that joke about the beach. Maybe the only way she could really come into the class was if she got involved. We would all get over the problems about her being burned and different and just get down to business. Maybe this was even better than nominating Courtney. I would do it. I would.

  Mrs. Tracy looked around again. “Is there no one else? Are we all done nominating?”

  I swallowed hard. “Jessica —”

  “Well, all right, then,” she said, turning to the board to scratch numbers next to the names. “We have Courtney, Darlene, Samantha, Dave, Eric, and Tom.”

  And Jessica.

  Sweat poured down my chest and onto my stomach. The sides of my shirt were soaked. My waist was soaked. I glanced around the class. They were all looking at the board. No one was looking at me. Even Jessica’s head was down.

  I turned to Mrs. Tracy again. She has to write Jessica’s name. Add the name. Do it now.

  Mrs. Tracy set down the chalk and dusted her hands. “Six altogether. Three girls. Three boys. Good.”

  She hadn’t heard me.

  Did I even say it out loud? I didn’t!

  Mrs. Tracy stepped to her desk and picked up the voting slips, and suddenly it was too late to do anything. I couldn’t say Jessica’s name now. That would be stupid. My mouth wouldn’t even work. I was suddenly a tiny invisible thing with no voice. Too small to do anything. And it was too late.

  “We’ll now begin our voting,” she said.

  Confused, hot, my blood racing, I tried to busy myself with the tiny piece of paper and my pen. But there wasn’t much you could do to make yourself busy with such small things. I stared at the little yellow slip.

  “Please vote by writing the name or the number of your candidate on the paper, and then fold it over,” the teacher said. “When you have voted, raise your hand and Ryan will collect the votes in a box. Ryan will not look at the votes.”

  A few minutes later it was all over.

  Ryan collected the votes and Kayla tallied them. Mrs. Tracy laughed and said that Kayla’s skill in math would probably not be strained by counting only twenty-one slips of paper. Then the teacher recounted them herself and gave them back to Kayla to announce.

  “Courtney won seven votes,” she said. There were cheers and applause. “Darlene four, and Samantha Embriano three.”

  Eric and Dave had two each. Joey did end up writing his own name on his vote, but then crossed it out, disqualifying himself altogether.

  “There’s one vote for Tom Bender and one that was blank,” Kayla finished.

  Jessica turned to me after the tally was read. “Sorry,” she said, as if she were apologizing to me that I got only one vote. “You should have voted for yourself. A vote for Tom …”

  She didn’t say the rest of my stupid slogan. Right. Vote for myself. So I wouldn’t be dead last, the bottom of the list, the complete loser.

  But I was the loser. I didn’t do anything. How could I vote for myself? I didn’t vote for Courtney or even Jessica, who I wanted to nominate. It occurred to me that even if I couldn’t manage to nominate Jessica, I could at least have voted for her. I could at least have done a write-in vote. But no. I couldn’t even manage to do that.

  All I did was prove that I was just like everybody else when it came to her. I was like everyone who ignored her or was afraid of her or hated her or wished she didn’t exist. Like all those people running around her burning car. They didn’t get her out. They watched and ran around all stupid, but they didn’t get her out. And now she was like this forever. Even here and now, she was still in that car. Like every single one of those people, I did nothing. I ran and ran and ran.

  “Jessica,” I began to say, “I …”

  She just did a sort of tight, painful thing with her lips and kept her head down.

  After I got home that afternoon, I called her house, but after three rings I hung up. I could have held on longer or tried again. I knew that. But I didn’t right away, and the day sort of flew by with stuff to do. Yard work. Emptying the dishwasher and reloading it. Ironing my uniform shirts. Cleaning my sneakers. It was just stupid little stuff around the house that seemed to take me forever. I ended up not trying again, and then it was suppertime.

  After we ate, the phone rang. “It’s Jeff,” my mother said. My father looked at me when I didn’t take the phone. I didn’t move, then told my mother to say I was busy and couldn’t answer.

  A little later, the phone rang again.

  “Tom, phone,” said my father.

  “I’m not here. I’m at the mall with Mom.”

  “It’s a girl.”

  I felt tired all of a sudden. I just wanted to sleep. “Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s Jessica. Can you come over?”

  I breathed out. It suddenly seemed the hardest thing in the world to go over there. I didn’t want to see her. Please. Her father with the “Sit down, Tom.” What more was there? I felt so tired.

  My mother was looking at me from the counter. “I guess,” I said. “Sure. Okay.”

  Chapter 18

  The sun was just under the horizon when I made my way across the yard and down the sidewalk to her street. I remember thinking that night was coming sooner these days, even though it was still warm. Good. I was already so tired by everything that had happened, I just wanted
the day to end.

  Why did she even ask me over? What was she expecting? What did we have to talk about? And why was I just going over as if I had nothing to do? Okay, sure, I’ll drop everything and come. I was so tired. I stopped.

  This is stupid. Why should I go there? So I didn’t nominate her. So what? Did I have to? Was I supposed to —

  A rumbling sound came from somewhere behind me.

  I turned, and even before I realized it, the Cobra was there, coming fast around the corner, tightly hugging the curb. I froze as it roared up the street toward me, its headlights blazing.

  So here it was, after all. The awesome Cobra. As red as blood and fantastic. I couldn’t believe it. I just stared.

  “Hey! Woo-hoo!” came a shout from the passenger seat. Jeff was sitting next to a man with thinning, peppered hair who wore a blue sweatshirt with ragged, cut-off sleeves.

  The uncle. So he did exist.

  The engine gave out a sudden gunned roar as he rolled the fat car up really fast, then braked sharply, three or four feet away from me. Even stopped, the car looked as if it were moving. It was clear it was just pausing for a couple of minutes before roaring away. The engine sputtered and popped like gunshots. The street vibrated under me, and the thundering went up my legs.

  I still couldn’t believe it.

  “Woo-hoo!” Jeff hooted again, arching up. “Get in!” He stood in the seat, swinging the little scoop neck door open for me. The car was so red. The finish was deep, liquid and hot, just like at the car show that time.

  “Tom, this thing is so fast,” he said. “You won’t believe it. We’ve been everywhere. Come on, we’ll go get ice cream or something. My uncle’s paying.”

  The guy at the wheel checked his watch, then he gave a nod as the car inched nearer to where I was standing. Heat poured up from it.

  “Come on, Cobraman,” said Jeff, grinning. “This is for you, you know. I made him come up here from the city. On a Monday night. I told him you really, really love this car and you gotta ride in it now!”

  I looked at him, then at the uncle. The half-bored grin on the man’s face was what I imagined Jeff’s might look like someday.

  “Come on,” said Jeff, his eyes still fixed on me. “We’ll drive past Courtney’s house. I already called her to tell her we’d stop by. There’s enough room for all of us, if you guys squeeze in with me.”

  I looked in at the seats. Could I fit in there? With her? Man.

  I looked across the street at Jessica’s house. Lights were on downstairs.

  “So let’s do it already.” Uncle Chuck looked at his watch again, and the car rolled forward. “I gotta get back.”

  I didn’t move.

  “What?” said Jeff. “Are you coming?” He glanced across the street now, too. He must have known it was her house. “Come on, Cobraman, let’s fly. Or are you going to see her? I can’t believe it. Will you let it go? The Cobra. Are you the Cobraman or not?”

  “Don’t —” I said, holding my eyes on Jeff.

  “Don’t what?” he asked.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “This is crazy!” he said. “Why are you just standing there? Do you love her or something? Look. I got him to come here for you. Don’t be a dork.”

  I felt as if I were a wire filled with electricity, burning up. My chest felt ready to burst. My jaw was tight. My feet tingled. I was so stiff that I felt I could lift right off the ground like a statue or something. I just stood there forever between taking a step and not taking it. Then all of a sudden I sort of jerked in front of the car. It rolled toward me and I felt its heat pouring on my legs.

  “Don’t be a dork. Get in.”

  “Jeff,” I said, “why don’t you just —” My breath caught suddenly in my throat and I had no voice. I finished what I was saying by flicking my finger toward the end of the street.

  “Freaking firegirl!” Jeff said. Then he came out with a curse, said it again, and slumped back into the seat, yelling, “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Hey, I don’t give a —” the uncle said, slamming his foot down and ripping off down the street, swaying wide around the far corner and away.

  I looked there for a while, then turned toward the black square of screen on the side door of Jessica’s house.

  Every part of me was shaking as I went up to it.

  Chapter 19

  I was in her house again.

  Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table when I knocked, but it was her father who came from another room and let me in. “She’s upstairs,” he said. Her mother looked at me, and smiled slightly when I went by, but she didn’t get up or say anything. Her hands were folded around a cup. There were papers spread over the table in front of her.

  I went upstairs to Jessica’s room. The last of the day’s light was fading now across her wall. She was sitting on her bed, as she had been the first time I went to see her.

  “Hey,” I said. I wanted to sit at the desk again, but her chair was piled with clothes. I sat at the other end of the bed. Right off, I wanted to say I was sorry for the way the election thing had been all goofed up, but that there was always next time. And even now she could help Courtney on some project or something. Even I could help. That would be the way to do it.

  “Today was so dumb,” I started. “But I was thinking —”

  “I’m leaving,” she said.

  I looked at her. “What?”

  “I’m leaving on Wednesday. I won’t be back in school.”

  I felt as if somebody had just punched me in the chest. “What?”

  “It’s not working out,” she said. “We thought it would work out here. That’s why we rented this place. It was supposed to be until Christmas, at least. But the doctor doesn’t like how it’s going…. There’s a thing with my circulation, and he wants me to go back up to Boston again.”

  I wasn’t getting it. “It’s only been like three weeks. You should be here more. You have to be here more.”

  Words were getting jumbled in my head and on my tongue. I was sweating again, and I didn’t even have my uniform on. I tried to look into her eyes. I knew they were so green, but the light was nearly gone. “I mean, you can’t —”

  “You can get back to normal in school now,” she said.

  That was just too much. I felt myself begin to lose it. My eyes stung. “Jessica … don’t …”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t hate me….”

  “I don’t. What for?”

  It was coming out now, and I was mad. “For today! For the whole stupid thing! I should have talked to you more. Said more stuff to you. But I didn’t. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. I’m just like every other idiot.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  She breathed out. Then she said quietly, “It doesn’t matter. I really have other stuff. Important stuff. About getting better. Or not getting better. Every time I go in the hospital, I find out all over again about what really matters. This doesn’t.”

  I was shaking, imagining the hospital, then the car, and Jessica on fire inside it. Tears started boiling up out of me. “But people are actually scared of you,” I said. “Of the way you look. They don’t want you around. You have to hate them —”

  I noticed she was trembling now, her hands shaking in her lap. “Sure I hate them. You don’t even know. But there are always some people who won’t be that afraid.”

  “I’m afraid!” I said, surprising myself because I thought it was the worst thing I could say, but it was true. “The way you look … it scares me. I’m too scared to be close or nice to you. I don’t say anything. I don’t talk to my parents about you. I never talk to you where anybody can see me —”

  Jessica laughed abruptly. “Who cares who sees you talk to me? Besides, you said my name; that was something.”

  I turned to her. It was getting so dark in the room I almost couldn’t see her face anymore. “You heard me?”r />
  The night sounds were starting outside the window.

  “You really have to speak louder,” she said.

  “I’m such a jerk!” I said, laughing and crying at the same time. “No one else heard it —”

  “It’s okay. Besides, I’d probably only get one vote, so I’d never win. Then you’d feel a lot worse.”

  “Yeah,” I snorted. “You’d be tied with me as the loser.”

  “A vote for Tom,” she said. Even though I couldn’t see, I could tell there was a smile on her face when she said that. You can tell if someone is smiling when they speak.

  For the next few minutes we didn’t say anything. I wiped my face and rubbed my hands on my pants. The room was almost totally dark now.

  As the minutes went by and we didn’t speak, the silence went around and around and dropped down over us like the night dropped into the room. It was strange, but it was okay. It was good. We were quiet, both of us, in her dark room. I practically couldn’t see her anymore. She was just the shape of a person. But I felt that of all the places I could be — at supper, in my room, watching TV with my parents, in Jeff’s car, anywhere — I was in the one place I should be, doing what I should be doing.

  The room darkened finally and completely. I still knew the rest of the world was outside the window, but it was okay without us. Everything was just waiting for us to finish what we were doing.

  “It’s dumb to ask for a lot now,” she said after a while. “It took me a long time to figure it out, but when I throw up or pass out or hurt all over or get some new test results, it seems stupid to want to be pretty or to have friends or to fit in or to be in high school. I just feel amazed each time I wake up after a treatment and still know who I am. My mother … my mother was the first one with me when I woke up after the accident. She gave me this —”

  She moved in the dark and I just made out that she took the stuffed green frog from her pillow and held it up.

  “You said you hated her.”