Firegirl (8 page)

The bed was pushed up against the far wall, and the end was right under a window that was open wide. There were a desk and chair against the inside wall and a bookshelf next to it.

The afternoon sunlight was blocked by trees in the yards around the condos, so the air coming into the window was cool.

Jessica sat heavily on the bed. Her hands were folded in her lap as if she were waiting for something. Having been brought all the way to her room, I felt I had to stay for a couple of minutes at least. I slipped into the chair, put the math books on her desk, and dropped my backpack to the floor.

I wondered if she would say anything about leaving school early. Then I thought that maybe I should, but I didn’t know what. I opened the cover of the top book and waved it back and forth. “The homework isn’t too hard,” I said finally. “You could do it easy. There’s a quiz on Tuesday on this stuff. Hey, it’s a long weekend, remember … and a test a week from Monday.”

When she didn’t say anything right away, I said, “So anyway …”

“The elections are that Monday, too,” she said. “The seventeenth.”

I nodded. “Right. The elections. Yeah.”

“Courtney will probably win.”

I looked up from the books which I had more or less been staring at. “Really? You think so?”

She shrugged. “Everybody likes her. She’d be good. I hope she wins.”

“Me, too.” I glanced at her face briefly. A glint of salve or some kind of cream was on her cheeks and neck. That’s what the smell was. Medicine. She probably got it in New Haven. I couldn’t imagine a fire that would do this to someone.

“You have a nice room,” I said, looking around. It sounded lame when the words came out.

Jessica looked at me under the thick folds of skin around her eyes. “I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but my bedroom is the first thing they do when we move to a new place. My parents, I mean. They brought all my stuff when we came from Boston. I spend most of my time in here. When I’m not at school or at the hospital. It’s okay.”

She was saying a lot for someone who didn’t talk in class.

“My room is small,” I said. “This is nice.”

“I usually get to be alone here.” She kept going. “Except when my parents come in and yell. They get mad all the time.”

“They yell? Your dad seems okay.”

“They get mad about me.” She moved back on the bed.

Sure, I thought. Because of her sister, right? Because she died? Was it true what people said? Is that why Jessica cut herself out of the picture? Because of what happened?

“They shouldn’t bother you,” I said.

“Yeah, well, they’re parents. What else are they going to do?”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so it got quiet for a minute. It still seemed too early to leave.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Mine are okay most of the time. They wanted me to run for class president. Like that would work. My dad thought of a dumb slogan. My mom bought stencils for the poster and everything. I just sort of shoved the poster into my locker —”

“I hate my mother,” she said suddenly.

I shivered. “What?”

“I hate her.” She said this without emotion, still looking at me.

“Because she’s mean to you? Always getting on your case?”

“She doesn’t get on me. I just hate her.”

Okay, this was weird. My chest was feeling all buzzy and electric; my ears rang with a high noise. I fumbled around with the math books. Could I just leave now?

“My mom’s okay,” I said, trying to change the subject. “My dad, too, pretty much. He thought of this slogan for my poster. A vote for Tom is a vote for
Tomorrow.
Get it? They’re okay, I guess.”

She shrugged. “Good for you.”

Yikes. I felt as if I was going to explode or something. A breeze came in the window and not wanting to, I shivered again. “Do you want me to close the window?”

“No. I like the air coming in.”

I nodded like I understood. It was because of the fire, right? You felt trapped. You couldn’t breathe, right? I mean, I guess, right? What was keeping me here? Was it okay to leave yet?

“Sometimes I just lie on my bed really still,” she said, glancing out the window. “I have to stay really still sometimes when I go to the hospital —” She stopped. “Do you read comic books or something?”

I turned to her. “What?”

She motioned to my backpack. The top edge of Jeff’s comics were sticking out from between my books. The red and yellow and orange title was partly visible.

The Human
…

I quickly pushed them down. “A little. Not much.”

“It’s not like I care,” she said. “I read them in the hospital sometimes, when there’s nothing else. It’s so dumb. They think all kids read comics, so they have them in the ward. Somebody donates them.”

I imagined rows and rows of beds with burned kids screaming and moaning in them.

I tried to be light. “Really? Which ones do you like?”

She shrugged, and I felt like an idiot. Of course she doesn’t have a favorite, you dork! She doesn’t read comic books. Why would she read comic books? This is insane. I’m going.

“What do
you
like?” she asked. “
Superman?
”

“
Superman!
No way,” I said, almost instinctively. I shook my head, wanting to end it all right there. But the way she just kept looking at me, I began to think that maybe she was talking because she didn’t get a chance to talk much. After all, when was the last time any kids came to visit her? And she just said her parents yelled a lot. She stayed in her room all the time. Plus, her sister, who she probably at least hung out with, was gone and everything.

“Well,” I said, “I mean, Superman has super everything. X-ray vision and super strength, and he can fly. It’s sort of too much power, if you know what I mean. He can do pretty much anything he wants. It’s not real.”

“It’s a comic book.”

I snorted a laugh. “I know, but still. You shouldn’t have all those huge powers. It makes everything too easy. Who’s going to stand in your way? You’d win every time. Small ones are better.”

Was I going
there?
Why was I going there?

“What do you mean?” she asked. “Small ones?”

I fidgeted. “Small powers. Never mind. It’s too stupid to talk about.”

She said nothing, but sat there waiting for me to go on. Just like Mrs. Tracy had waited for me to say I would bring the homework.

“Small powers?” she said.

I laughed. It was a nervous-sounding laugh; I knew that. But I tried to make it sound natural. “It’s dumb. But it’s just that, you know, you have the ability to fly and X-ray vision and superstrength and stuff. But sometimes I think it’s probably better to have a really dumb power.”

“A dumb power,” she repeated.

“Something really dorky and useless, like, I don’t know, having one indestructible finger or something. I think that would be really cool.”

Oh, man, was I really saying this?

She looked down. “A finger? Why just a finger?”

I sat forward in the chair. “Because otherwise it’s like asking for too much. If you want to be immortal or to fly or to control people’s brains or something, it’s like you think you deserve this huge ability. But if you’re regular in every other way, but just have one indestructible finger, who would ever say no to that?”

“So you don’t ask for too much.”

“That’s right. It’s just something small and cheap, what no one else would ever think of. It’s so much better that way.”

“Something nobody else wants,” she said.

“Right,” I said. I realized then that I had never said any of this out loud before. I wasn’t sure why I was telling her then, except that maybe I thought it didn’t matter. Who else would she ever tell? Even if she made fun of me, it would be okay because it would end here. “But maybe the best part,” I said, “is thinking how you could turn that really small dumb power into something completely awesome.”

She scratched her arm as she thought. “What could you do with an indestructible finger?”

I shrugged wildly. “I don’t know. Maybe you could stop an attacking animal or a runaway airplane just by sticking your finger out. Or scratch into the earth with it and find something you need, or poke right through the door of your enemy’s hiding place. Stuff like that. The more you think about a little power, the more big things you come up with. Pretty soon, you find you could do anything.”

“What would they call you?”

I laughed. “I don’t know. Superfinger?”

“Power Pinkie?”

I laughed again. “Or what if your power was that you could whistle really loudly? You aren’t that strong and you can’t climb buildings, but you go in there and tell them they better stop or you’ll whistle very loud. It’s so dumb your enemy just laughs at you. While he gets ready to use his vapor vision on you, you whistle so loud his eardrums hurt, and he gets an instant headache. Then you move in on him because his hands are up here —” I put my hands over my ears and screwed up my face as if I were in pain.

She nodded like she understood. “Uh-huh.”

I laughed again and found myself leaping to another idea. “Or what if you could skip really, really fast?”

“What would you do? Just skip around?”

“I don’t know, yeah. People would be stunned by how quickly you could get to them.
Whooosh!
You’re across the room! Then you skip around them and make them dizzy just watching you. Having dumb powers is like having a secret identity because no one knows you have this power until you use it. Mostly you’re fairly useless; nobody thinks you can do anything at all. Until you really need to do something; then it comes out. I mean, the more you think about it, the more you realize what cool things you can do with the lamest powers. You can do a lot.”

I stopped to breathe and was suddenly totally exhausted hearing myself talk. I thought now that she was bored and might just be pretending to listen.

Then she said, “If I lay really still on my bed, and if there’s a breeze, it feels like I could glide right out over the yard. Not fly really, but just sort of swim in the air. Slow.”

“Glide? Yeah. That’s good.”

“The wind goes through the leaves in the trees and I feel like I could move out into it. I figure if I go out far enough I’m not here anymore.”

I looked at her for a second, then away. “Uh-huh.”

We sat not talking for a few minutes. She was still sitting on the bed. I was in the chair, looking around her room.

Then I remembered the reason I was there and told her exactly what the math assignments were by reading out Mrs. Tracy’s note, and showed her the pages in the book, although of course she could find them. But I found myself flipping to the pages in the book and even coming over and putting the book open on the bed next to her so that she wouldn’t have to move.

I didn’t even want to, but while I was standing over her I sniffed in with a little quiet sniff. I don’t know why.

She glanced up at me suddenly.

Oh, no. Did she hear me? I stepped back —

“Superheroes are supposed to do good things for people, aren’t they?” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“They’re supposed to help them, right?”

“Help them … sure …”

“Well, it might be hard to actually help people with just a loud whistle or skipping around in a circle.”

I frowned. “I guess. That’s always harder to do.”

In my daydreams I always ended up saving Courtney from some nutty enemy so she could fall in love with me or whatever. But helping?

My mother was all about helping, too. Why did everybody have to wreck things by talking about helping people? Having small powers now seemed totally stupid and pointless.

Time to go.

“I better leave. I have a church thing.”

I went to the door and out to the landing outside her room. When I turned I found her looking straight at me. She had followed me there and was standing close.

“Uh, sorry about your sister,” I said.

She looked right at me, not blinking. “Thanks for holding my hand for the prayer thing,” she said.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Sorry about all that.”

“No one really touches me anymore.”

What was I supposed to say to that? “Uh-huh.”

“Do you want to touch my face?” she asked.

I felt my own face go red. My legs became icy. I think I teetered on the landing.

“Uh …” I raised my hand a little, but Jessica pulled back from me right into her room and closed the door. I heard a brief slapping sound, like a book being closed. Then I heard what must have been the squeak of bed-springs as she lay down.

Chapter 14

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, my legs felt like water. I turned and found Jessica’s father standing in the living room.

“Sit down for a minute,” he said.

Oh, man, no. Please, no. I have to leave. But I couldn’t think of any way to just get out of there. He moved over to a big chair, so I sat down.

The corners of the room were full of moving boxes. The few pieces of furniture — a couch, three chairs, a low table — seemed placed any old way around the room as if Jessica and her family had moved in only minutes before.

Nothing matched, for one thing. The chairs were all different fabrics and clashing colors, too big for the room, and they were old.

Rich had said that the Feeneys were hiding out from the police, and probably their furniture came from the dump, which is where all criminals get their furniture. You could prove it by calling the dump to ask if anything was missing.

Remembering that, I nearly laughed, except that the air in the room seemed so heavy it probably would have sucked away any sound. Then Mr. Feeney started asking questions. General stuff, like about St. Catherine’s and my family and where I lived and stuff. Nothing very deep.

There was a picture frame on the coffee table that was mostly turned away from me. I leaned in to try to see what it was and was shocked to find that it was a larger copy of the little one that had fallen out of Jessica’s pencil case: her sister and her father at the beach club. Except that this one wasn’t cut off on the side. I was suddenly all confused.

I had expected to see Jessica in the picture. Instead, there was an older brown-haired woman standing there. She was smiling, too.