Awash in Talent (17 page)

So, after we got things in motion for our escape on January 30, we all decided to practice for the interviews. Brian and Raúl reported back to us every morning at breakfast. I wonder if Melinda was making Willa quiz her. Who else could she get to help? Or maybe as a rich girl, she didn’t need to worry. Jill and I asked each other a couple of serious questions every night, but before long, it would deteriorate into jokes and laughter. My favorite was when she asked me if, when I started at BoPLA, I thought I would be too much of a distraction for the male students. I about fell off my bed laughing. And then I said no, I was bringing my own man with me, so if the other boys were after me, they were going to be disappointed.

What a warm feeling it gave me to say things like that. Then we’d go to bed and under the covers I’d touch the tungsten bracelet, feel its smoothness and twist it around my wrist. I thought about Brian in his bed down the hall and wished my kryptonite was some kind of jewelry or even something like clay that you could fashion into something to wear so Brian could keep me always close to his heart, too. Who would’ve thought there would be a disadvantage to sulfur? Ha ha.

I also thought about Jill. I didn’t remember seeing on the website whether the BoPLA used a buddy system like ours. If they didn’t (and they don’t, I can now certify), then I would really have no need for Jill, which was a relief because I was thinking it over a lot, and Jill didn’t have any artistic inclinations that I was aware of aside from listening to music. She has great taste, but she never mentioned wanting to play music or learn to dance or even paint or write. She seemed to be the least likely one the BoPLA would accept. And then I felt terrible about it, thinking I must be letting my competitive side get the better of my friendly side. Because if it came down to it and they only accepted one or two of us, I wanted to get out of the PMA so bad, I was hoping I would be accepted over Jill, definitely over Raúl, and even over
Brian
. I would have left them
all
to rot in this freak show for the chance to get to Boston. I avoided that guilt by focusing on how great would it be if they accepted all four of us. (Melinda could come or stay here, I didn’t care either way—sorry if that seems ungrateful after she arranged the transport.) We would roam the halls as a group and with Brian’s control, our cool factor would increase so much that we’d be the alpha dogs in about a week.

I talked with my dad on the phone every day before the interviews, asking what they were planning with Mom. When he said they were almost ready to do the last desperate attempt at a skin graft, I hounded him for an exact date, but they were never sure. I didn’t want to go in there and subject my mother to Beth’s healing if she was fresh out of surgery or otherwise stressed out. It was sure to be a really taxing experience on the both of them, although I never warned Beth what she was in for.

A week before the interviews, I made the mistake of asking if I could come to visit.

“No, Kelly, I’m sure you’re needed in Providence. You don’t have time to come here.”

“Dad, this place is a sham of a school. If you need me, I’ll be there in a second.”

“No, it’s . . . Your grandmother can’t drive the 95 anymore . . .”

I was going to explain to him that I could probably get another ride and in fact on January 30 a bunch of us would be in Boston, so I wouldn’t have to bother Grandma at all, but it finally dawned on me that he was making excuses. I hadn’t seen my mother since the accident. There was some reason my father, or my mother, or both of them, didn’t want to see me. It made me feel hollowed out and preoccupied because all I could think is that I’m too horrible to be allowed to visit my own mother. They must’ve thought I would hurt her again. I would never hurt her again. But if it were up to me, I would never have hurt her in the first place. Maybe they were right. I guess I can do this school on autopilot because no one noticed how distracted I was except Jill and Brian.

Jill decided we’d done all we could and it would be useless to keep practicing for the interview the night before, so we went to bed early. I wish I’d had something to distract me so I could fall asleep more easily. I should’ve taken those last few hours to fantasize about BoPLA. That would have been as nice as a lullaby.

But I woke up the morning of the interviews feeling like I had the flu or something. My whole body ached and I could barely keep my eyes open. Jill grabbed me a muffin from the dining hall and we went to stand out front and wait for the transportation. It was already there, a giant, unmarked black van. Melinda opened the sliding door and said, “Get in. It’s freezing.” So we piled in and the driver looked back to see us. It was Ms. Matheson!

“The only way my dad could set up this fake field trip was if a teacher drove. So I told him Ms. Matheson was the most sympathetic to our cause,” Melinda explained with a wry smile.

Ms. Matheson winked at me and left me speechless. I might have started asking her why she was helping us, and whether she hated me as much as it seemed like she did, but Brian and Raúl knocked on the door and I slid it open. I wanted both Jill and Brian with me. If I couldn’t sleep, at least their support would give me comfort. But of course Raúl wanted to sit with Jill, so I moved back and Brian held my cold hands between his gloved ones.

“Hey,” I croaked toward the front as we started to move, “Ms. Matheson, do you know about our first stop?”

“Next stop, Rhode Island Hospital,” she announced as if it was a train station.

I rubbed the fog off the window and saw Beth immediately, waiting outside with her shoulders hunched, hands in pockets. She looked right at us, but didn’t make a move, and Ms. Matheson didn’t know who we were looking for, so she drove past.

“Wait! That was her,” I shouted.

“Stop!” exclaimed Brian.

“Sorry,” said Ms. Matheson. I think this was the first time she’d ever driven anything so big.

We circled the hospital and slowed to a stop right in front of Beth, but she still didn’t look up. Was she expecting a limousine? Brian opened the sliding door and said, “Hey, are you Beth?”

She looked up, startled, and climbed in to sit in the back by herself, docile.

“I hope you had a hearty breakfast,” I told her. “This is going to be a big day for both of us.”

“I’ve never been to Boston,” she replied.

Looking at her, so small and so clueless, I was astounded that this was where I was placing all my hopes for my family’s future happiness.

“Get some rest,” I said. If I couldn’t, at least someone should.

As we crossed into Massachusetts (maybe ten minutes into the journey), it started to snow giant wet flakes on the dry pavement. The traffic came to a screeching halt. It’s like people have never driven in snow before. Every time is the first time for these crazy drivers.

All the kids groaned. “We don’t want to be late,” said Brian. “That’s the worst thing you can do at an interview.”

“Calm down, everybody,” said Ms. Matheson. “I will get us there.”

But the sound of the engine idling created such a storm of emotions in me that I was scratching at my patch and clenching Brian’s hand and crossing and uncrossing my legs. I had to do something. So I called my dad.

Big mistake. But, if I hadn’t . . . Ugh. I’ll just write it. Dad told me they were ready for the last-ditch attempt at a skin graft and at noon they were going to start prepping Mom for surgery.

I knew I couldn’t yell into the receiver or in the enclosed space of the van, but my soul screamed for more than a minute. Dad thought he’d lost the connection, and then I took a gulp of air and said, “No, Dad, you can’t let them touch her.”

“Don’t you want your mother to have every chance to live?”

“Of course I do. But you don’t understand. I have a better way.”

“What?”

“I need this, Dad. I need to help Mom, to prove I’m not the worst person in the entire world. Can’t you understand that?”

“No one thinks that. Your mother and I still love you.”

“So postpone the surgery.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You don’t understand. I’m on my way to Boston now.”

It was my dad’s turn to send dead air over the phone waves.

Finally he said, “Go back to Providence or I’ll call the Pyrokinesis Academy.”

“Let me talk to Mom!” I squealed, desperate—I hadn’t spoken with her since my manifestation—but he’d hung up. My dad hung up on me!

I lay back in the seat. I was sweating against all my soft winter clothes. I looked out the window at the incongruously peaceful snow and felt like I was drowning. Suddenly Brian’s hands were shaking me. “Wake up, Kelly! Breathe.”

I must’ve actually passed out with the stress. I just blinked at Brian. “Ms. Matheson, we have to get there on time,” he shouted toward the front. “Kelly’s life depends on it!”

She backed up the van a little bit, causing a spate of honks, and squeezed slowly past a solid line of cars to get to the exit, where we sped past some town’s reservoir and a Friendly’s restaurant. I mention it because it made me want to stop and eat a meal with my mom and dad, to go back in time and have nothing ever change. It would mean I would never meet Brian or even Jill, but I was prepared to accept that. Nothing in the time since I’d manifested was so great I couldn’t give it up.

The van continued over hill and dale, but mostly through forest and glen. Eventually we emerged on Route 1 and it was hard to imagine the 95 would have been slower, but I tried to breathe under Brian’s guidance and everyone else’s concerned looks. I requested to be dropped off with Beth at the hospital, but Jill said they’d let me go first in the interviews if it helped, and really we should all be done in plenty of time to arrive before noon. I didn’t really have a good idea of how long it takes to move around in Boston, so I trusted her. Now I know she’d never been to Boston before, either, and was only trying to calm me down. Kind, but maybe not the most useful thing in the situation.

I started to think about the BoPLA, finally, and it was such a weird contrast from the fear and tension. “What do you think it will be like?” I said. “Will it be as beautiful as the pictures?”

“No way it could be,” said Jill. The snow gave way to nasty slush and I knew we must be getting closer to the city. And then there it was.

I love Providence—less since I’ve been a student at the PMA—but the Charles River has a majesty, an aching beauty, that the Woonasquatucket, the Moshassuck, and the Providence all together can’t dream of competing with. Love that dirty water? No, it sparkled clean and blue under the clearing sky. I imagined staring out at it from the BoPLA, people taking sail and rowboats out at the slightest sign of good weather, and the rowing teams from the universities, and maybe even a Duck Tour could come down that far. I imagined that if I could save my mother, she could recover taking in that view.

The Boston Pyrokinesis and Latin Academy stood before us like a beacon and all the kids were moving to get out of the van long before Ms. Matheson had zipped past the last T stop and found a parking space in the visitor lot. Like the nearby Boston College buildings, it was a neogothic sandstone with a short spire at each corner of the roof. It had melting patches of snow the students’ feet had managed to turn grey even though it had only stopped snowing maybe ten minutes before. Even with that, it held so much promise that Jill and I couldn’t help but hold each other’s hands, jump up and down, and scream when we finally did get out of the van. Luckily all the people we were trying to impress were inside the building and probably not watching the parking lot.

Before the front entrance was what would have been a fountain anywhere else. Here it was sort of a big bowl and when it wasn’t filled with snow, I was sure they’d put kindling in there and set the thing ablaze. The very idea of it put a spring in my step. We all watched our footing and entered the grand foyer as a group. You would have thought it was an open-air atrium with all the light pouring in. The ceiling was probably even with the fourth or fifth floor of the rest of the building, and stone columns went all the way from the bottom to the top, drawing your eyes to the most astonishing part: the column capitals were braziers. The whole top of the column looked like it was on fire. The ceiling sparkled gold, but around the columns it was black with soot and charred vents.

To someone or a team of people, fire is the most important thing, and they took the utmost in care to build this monument to it in a way that wouldn’t incinerate any of its viewers. All of us pyros stood in astonishment. I say us pyros because Beth seemed unimpressed. How could someone so young be so jaded? She went to the receptionist to ask where we should go and tapped her foot and looked at the time on her phone. It took me a minute to understand that she was waiting around for the trip to MGH, as I, if I were a good daughter, would be, too.

Suddenly the grand staircase the receptionist told us to go up wasn’t amusing, and the others’ footsteps seemed too slow by half. I was first into the room labeled “Admissions.” A hallway with three doors visible stretched into the distance beyond a restroom. Five couches upholstered in red velvet with gold accents awaited patient bottoms, but mine wasn’t. I walked right up to this new receptionist and told her she had five interviews on the schedule this morning and I was the first.

“You’re from Providence?” she asked.

“Yes,” we all said in unison. Everyone understood the urgency.

“They do appreciate eagerness,” she said, “but you’ll have to wait one more minute.” I nodded but stayed put in front of her while she punched a couple of numbers and told whoever was on the other end, a couple of times, “Providence crowd here to see you.”

After several excruciating minutes, two of the doors in the hallway opened and two interviewers stepped out and beckoned. I went to the first one and Brian took the second after we squeezed each other’s hands for luck. My interviewer was a mousy-haired woman wearing a red suit that made her look more Christmasy than powerful. I liked her immediately, which shows how dumb I can be.