Firegirl (9 page)

A terrible idea had begun to grow in me, just like it had when I first saw the picture in school.

“I saw this,” I said, moving the frame around so that we could both see it, “but not all of it.”

Looking at the woman, I guessed it was Jessica’s mother. But if Jessica didn’t cut herself out of the photograph, where was she? I glanced around the room, but I didn’t see any other pictures. Well, of course not, stupid. Why would anyone want to torture her by having a picture of the way she used to look and never will again?

“That was a few weeks before the accident,” he said.

The accident. It was an accident. I nodded. “Sorry.”

“Jessica likes it,” her father went on. “Well, I don’t know if she
likes
it, but she wants us to keep it around where we can all see it. I don’t think it helps anybody. Not me, for sure. And not Mrs. Feeney. Jessica wants to … I don’t know….” He sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. I knew I had to say something, but I didn’t know what. I looked closely at the girl. She really was beautiful and fun-looking, with that little smile on her lips.

“It must have been really terrible,” I said. “I remember when my grandfather died. I was little, but I knew that everybody was upset because it was sort of sudden. I’m sorry, it must have been bad when she died.”

“When she died,” Mr. Feeney repeated softly. His eyebrows wrinkled. “I thought you said it was your grandfather that died?”

I looked at him. I started to feel sick again. “No, no. It
was
my grandfather. I meant when
she
died.” I motioned to the picture. My hand was trembling. “Her. Jessica’s sister?”

“Jessica’s sister,” Mr. Feeney said, leaning over the table almost as if he was going to jump at me. I was shaking. “Jessica’s sister? Who do you think you’re looking at? She doesn’t have a sister. Where did you get the idea that she has a sister?”

I kept staring at the picture, trying to get it. Words formed in my head, but they got all garbled on my tongue. “But she had it in school … and somebody asked her if it was her but she said …”

“No, no, no, no,” he moaned, jerking back into the chair. “That is Jessica. That is Jessica.”

My blood froze. Oh, god, no. It
is
her. The smile on that girl. I just stared at the picture and kept staring because I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t get it, and I didn’t want to see his face again. My stomach was twisting inside me. This girl is Jessica? Where is her face? Where did it go? Oh, no, no, no.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Feeney said, slumping again into his chair and letting out a huge breath. “Did Jessica play a trick on you?”

My chest heaved suddenly, and my throat felt thick. I shook my head. That wasn’t it. That’s not what happened.

“She’s done it before, I think. She’s done lots of strange things. I’m sorry she did that. Jessica has her ways of dealing with what happened I guess.”

We were silent for a while. A part of me couldn’t believe that I was talking to her father; the burned girl’s father.

“I’m sorry she did that,” he said again.

“So … how did it happen?” I said finally, surprised at the way the question just came out.

He made a short gesture with his hand, as if it was so long ago that there was no point in telling it all again. He seemed to go inside himself, but then he started rambling around and around for a while as if he didn’t want to go over the old story and didn’t want to say all the words again, but couldn’t stop himself. From what he did say, I sort of pieced together an answer.

Sometime when Jessica was in the sixth grade, she and her mother had gone to a place called World of Dance or Dance World to pick up tickets for a recital Jessica was in. She loved dancing as much as she loved tennis and biking.

While Jessica was waiting out front in the car — which Mr. Feeney said was still running — some old man had a kind of attack while driving down the street in his truck. He was going too fast and smashed into the back of the car Jessica was in, ramming it really hard into the car parked in front of it.

Gasoline burst from the gas tank and went everywhere inside the car. Everything caught fire and so did Jessica. Because of the flames and the heat and the truck jammed against it, it was a while before anyone could get her out. Her mother came rushing out of the dance place, but she couldn’t get anywhere near the car. No one could. By the time the fire rescue trucks arrived, most of Jessica’s body was burned.

I couldn’t stop myself from crying while Mr. Feeney was saying all this, amazed at what he was telling me. Finally, he stopped, shrugged his shoulders again, and settled back into the chair.

Wiping my face and trying to keep my voice low so that she wouldn’t hear what we were saying, I asked him, “Will it get any better?”

The expression on his face showed how many times people had asked him that. He smiled stiffly and said, “A little. Over time. Not right away.”

But how long would it be? Will I see her as she looked before? Could the doctors make her look like the picture again? Were they even trying for that? Could they do it? Could they find her face under all that?

“We try not to think about how long it might be,” he said. “It’s hard. Every time a doctor says something your mind goes on, you know? You want it so bad. It’ll be … it’s a long road. She’ll never look the way — like that again. But that’s only part of it. Her lungs were badly damaged. The circulation in her legs. But I couldn’t imagine going on without her around. We love Jessica. More now than ever before. We’re glad she’s alive. That’s pretty much it.”

And that was it.

Mr. Feeney rose from the chair as if he were balancing a big sack of something heavy on his shoulders. He wobbled for a couple of seconds then made his way back to the kitchen. He started cleaning again.

To my horror, I heard someone rushing back up from the bottom of the stairs. Jessica had been listening. Oh my God.

I left, going past her father and out to the side step just as a minivan was pulling into the driveway. A woman got out, holding a bag of groceries. She had brown hair that was pushed back behind her ears. This was the mother Jessica hated.

I stopped in front of the garage door next to the back step. I wondered what she would sound like. She was there, after all, two years ago, when the thing happened to Jessica. She’d left the car running. Did that make a difference?

“Hi,” I said. “I’m Tom….”

But she must not have seen or heard me, because she didn’t say anything. She went around the back of the car, opened the rear door, and pulled out another bag of groceries. She was thin and about as tall as my mom, but seemed small somehow and shorter because she was bent over the bags she was balancing. She went past quickly and in the side door, which Mr. Feeney opened for her, but I didn’t hear them say anything to each other.

On the way home, I felt as if I had been beaten over and over with a baseball bat. I just couldn’t imagine being burned like that, trapped in a burning car. And she was alive and going on. She was going to school! It was too much to understand, too much to get. I started crying again, and when I got inside I rushed to the upstairs bathroom, where I got sick.

Chapter 15

“My uncle’s coming in four days,” Jeff said on the bus first thing Tuesday morning. “He called last night.”

The long weekend had gone by so slowly. Jeff was out of the picture, spending the three days with his father in the city. On Sunday, my mom and dad and I drove up forever on a bunch of long, windy roads to a little town named Kent, where we bought two small pumpkins and three big ones for Halloween (“Too many,” my mom said, “but that’s okay!”) and I drank too much cider.

Most of Monday I was in and out of the bathroom, but I felt better by the time the school bus came the next morning.

Through it all, through the drive and the cider and the bathroom, I had spent pretty much every minute thinking about the picture and Jessica’s face and what her father told me and how small her mother seemed all pulled inside herself and how Jessica said she hated her.

Hated her, I guessed, because she’d left the car running and didn’t save her. Or couldn’t save her. I don’t know.

The whole thing about the dead sister, the questions from the Friday before — all of it seemed pointless now. It was so completely meaningless. I wasn’t even going to try to put into words what I now knew was true about her. The other kids didn’t matter now with their stupid stories. It wasn’t anyone’s business anyway.

Watch. I won’t say a word. They’ll all know I went to her house, but I won’t say a word.

“Cobra time.”

Or should I tell them? And what should I tell them, exactly?

“Tom,” said Jeff from the seat next to me. The bus was pulling into the school parking lot already.

I turned. “What?”

“Cobra, Saturday.”

I almost didn’t hear him. That hour at Jessica’s house. Listening to her. To her father. Something’s different now. I’m different now. I know more than anybody about how it happened. About the sister thing. There was no sister. I know about what she went through and still has to go through. I shivered as we got off the bus and stepped down to the sidewalk in front of the school. She had heard her father and me talking about her. She knew that I knew what nobody else knew. Was that bad? I wasn’t even sure.

All I kept seeing in my mind was her car in front of the dance place. First I imagined that it was a minivan. When I remembered that they actually had a minivan, I decided it had to be a regular car, a Toyota or a Taurus. First new … then old … forest green … then maroon … then black. The more I tried to think of something else, the more I saw the car all covered in flames and the more I saw Jessica’s face. Each time a wave of sickness came over me.

But Jeff kept saying stuff. At least five more times before first period — on the playground, in the lavatory, in the hall. Saturday, he said, was going to be the day. Our day.

“My uncle’s coming. Noon. Noon is gonna be Cobra time. You and me, Cobraman. Rich wanted to come over, but I told him no. Even Eric asked, but I don’t want him peeing in the car.”

All morning he went at it, not saying a word about my lie of having to help my mom at church, but whispering, even in religion class, a little chant: “Cobra … Cobra.…” He tapped his pencil to get my attention then showed me where he’d drawn a picture of the car in the margin of his notebook. “Cobra …”

Each time Jeff told me, I just said, “Yeah, great.” On Wednesday he did the same thing, and I kept on trying not to show any emotion about it. I couldn’t believe, didn’t want to believe, it was really going to happen, because I didn’t want to get suckered into waiting for the car to come. I wasn’t sure that it even meant anything to me anymore.

Jessica wasn’t in school. More tests and treatments, I guessed. It was amazing how school sank right into being like before she had ever come. I didn’t hear anybody talking about all the crazy sister ideas of last week. School was just school again.

By Thursday morning, when Jeff was still at it with his “Cobra, Cobraman, oh, yeah,” a thought was beginning to grow inside me, as if it was swimming up from somewhere deep down.

And the thought was that maybe I deserved this.

After all, I had done the tough thing, hadn’t I? I’d done more than anyone else had, right? I’d actually gone to her house. I knew all about Jessica. I’d been in her room. Talked to her. I even talked to her father. Who else had done that? I heard the truth about the accident. I knew what happened. I had cried, too. It had been so strange going to Jessica’s house, but I did it. No one else did it. I did.

“We’ll drive by Courtney’s house at noon,” Jeff said, grinning as if it were his idea. “I told her you wanted to.”

“What?” I finally said, turning to him. “You
told
her?”

“She’ll be waiting,” Jeff said with a nod. Then he headed into first period, leaving me stuffing books into my locker.

Jessica still wasn’t there. Maybe she wasn’t going to be in all day again.

So, okay, I thought. Okay. It’s cool that Jeff doesn’t care that I skipped going to his house and went to see her instead. So maybe we will drive by Courtney’s house. She’ll think I’m cool. Maybe she’ll even go for a ride with us. It’s possible. There are only two seats, but we can squeeze. That would be cool. And when I nominate her for the election next Monday she’ll thank me. We’re back to that, now. The Courtney thing.

It was me and Courtney, after all. How long had it been since I even thought of that? With all the craziness going on, I’d almost forgotten to think about it. All the adventures. The earthquakes. Volcanoes. Marauders. Our pockets full of money and stuff. Tearing off in the car. That’s what everything was about. That was the main thing. Tom and Courtney.

Not Tom and Jessica. What
was
that?

A warm feeling came over me, like something familiar was happening. I thought of roaring away in the Cobra, from Courtney’s house. Of rolling uphill to a lost temple of terror. Of leaping from a crashing plane, holding hands.

No Jessica. Courtney.

When I slammed my locker door, the sound echoed down the hall, and I thought about all of it. I crossed the hall to the water fountain and took a long drink, letting my mouth fill with cold water. I closed my eyes.

Yes. The car and Courtney and me. Saturday bright and early. No. Noon. Noon was Cobra time, right? I smiled. I breathed in slowly, swallowing the water in small gulps. Things were simpler already.

“Thank you, Tom.”

I almost spit the water out on my shoes.

Thank you?

I lifted my head from the fountain and turned to face the light shining in the hall from the doors at the end.

Only, it wasn’t Courtney. It was Jessica’s bulky shape silhouetted against the light coming from behind her. Suddenly, I don’t know, my heart sank. It was her again. Farther back beyond the doors stood her father, looking so tiny as he leaned in to watch her go.

“Thank you,” she said again.

I stood all the way up. “Okay. But for what?”

“For the homework. I never thanked you for bringing it over. I ended up taking the math quiz today because I’ve been out all week.”