The Fight for Kidsboro (15 page)

“Drop your weapon!” she shouted at Rodney. He just laughed.

Valerie was standing to the side and suddenly seemed to realize she was responsible for doing something about this. She stepped forward. “Rodney, stop it! Luke! Cut it out, right now! Put down the torches!”

Rodney chuckled and said, “Uh-oh, Luke. Look out. Our mayor is telling us what to do.”

Luke joined him gleefully. “Yeah, we'd better obey or she's gonna throw us in jail!”

“I mean it, you guys!”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “She
means
it! Luke, I didn't know she
meant
it. I guess we'd better
mean
it too.”

With that, Rodney ran toward her angrily and poked the torch close to her stomach. Everyone screamed. Valerie backed away from him, but he kept after her. I've never seen such fear in anyone's eyes as I saw in Valerie's.

“Come on, Ms. Mayor. I heard somewhere that you
liked
playing with fire.”

She started backing away more quickly, but he lunged at her. Dodging the flame, she fell. He came right at her with the torch!

Without thinking, I dashed toward them. The flame was inches from her stomach. Just as Rodney turned to me, I dove at the torch, knocking it out of his hand. He jumped on top of me and we wrestled on the ground. Luke saw what was happening to his friend, dropped his torch, and ran to help. He tried to pull me away from Rodney. Scott ran over and tackled Luke, sending him sprawling to the ground.

Rodney was much stronger than me, and he had me pinned. Just as he was about to send his fist through my skull, he glanced to his right. His mouth dropped open. The fire had spread and a house was in flames!

We suddenly forgot about beating each other up. “Get off!” I yelled and pushed Rodney off of me.

“Scott!” I shouted. “Go to Whit's End! Mr. Whittaker has a fire extinguisher!” He ran to get it. “Alice, call 911!” She obeyed. “You people!” I pointed to a group of kids. “Find some buckets or something and get water out of the pool and dump it on these flames!” They all scurried off. “You guys!” I shouted at Rodney's gang. “Help me put this out!”

I frantically kicked dirt onto the fire. It had climbed all the way up the wall of a house and was making its way along the roof.

Mr. Whittaker and Scott ran back with the fire extinguisher. Mr. Whittaker charged the burning house and sprayed. The fire died wherever he hit it, but it had spread too far already. The house was consumed by flames.

A dozen people came back with glasses, buckets, hats, and anything else that would hold water, and began to pour it on the flames. But it was like trying to stop a tidal wave with a garbage can lid.

The spray ran out of the fire extinguisher, and we had nothing left to do.

“It's too dangerous!” Whit shouted. “Everybody get out of here!” He waved his arms, signaling all of us to move away from the town. I had a fleeting thought in the back of my mind.
What if the fire spreads to Whit's End
? We watched the flames from a hundred feet away, and waited for the fire department to arrive.

The fire department got there in five minutes, but had some problems getting back into the woods, so it was 10 minutes before they were able to do anything to the flames. By that time, four houses were already consumed by fire. Whit's End was saved, but not by much.

We got a stern talking to from the fire department. Scott told the fire chief what had happened, and then the fire chief took Rodney and Luke aside and lectured them for a while. Besides the four houses that were burned to the ground, two others were damaged. No one was hurt, though. Everyone just wanted to go home, take a bath, fall asleep, and forget about this night.

I wanted to go home too, but on my way I saw Valerie. She was sitting on a stump, all alone. She was shivering with a blanket draped around her. She looked in the direction of the burned houses, but probably saw nothing but the memory of a flame being shoved into her face. I sat on the ground next to her.

“Are you okay?” I asked. She nodded. Just about everyone else had gone by this point, and the crickets were starting to chirp as if nothing had happened. “Maybe you ought a go home,” I said. She nodded again. I guess she didn't feel much like talking. Neither did I.

“Thank you,” she said suddenly, “and I'm sorry.” Probably the two hardest things she'd ever had to say to anyone, and she accomplished them both in one sentence.

“That's okay,” I replied.

We sat for a few more seconds, and then she began again. “I'm resigning.” This shocked me, even under the circumstances. “This is your town. I'm giving it back.”

“Are you sure?” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Yes.” She stood up, now ready to go home. “Are you gonna start rebuilding the houses tomorrow?”

“We'll do something tomorrow, I'm sure.”

“Okay. I'll be here.” Valerie started to leave.

“Valerie,” I said, and she turned around. “You did some good stuff. The rec center, that's great. You did something else I didn't do. I was trying to force people into jobs that didn't exist. But you
created
jobs. I'm going to use that.”

“Thanks.”

“I might need you in the future. You know, to help me brainstorm ideas.”

“Sure.” She gave me a half-smile and left.

I got ready to leave too, but then I saw that I wasn't the last person there. Jill was looking at her house, which was one of the ones that had burned down. She was on the verge of tears as I walked over to her.

“The very first issue of the
Chronicle
was hanging up on the wall of this house,” her voice trembled. “Now it's gone.”

I didn't know what to say, so I just patted her on the shoulder. She didn't react.

“Come on, I'll walk you home,” I said. She looked at me, and then we turned and walked toward our real homes.

“Pretty wild night, huh?” she said.

“That it was.”

“I guess I'll be starting from scratch tomorrow.”

“Well … as for your house,” I said. “Don't worry about it. You've got insurance.”

13

BACK TO THE BASICS

T
HE NEXT DAY
I
TOLD
Max that he owed six people insurance money, and he informed me that he already knew this. He had to cough up about 100 starbills to pay for all of it, since his policies didn't just cover the wood, but also everything inside the houses. Some of the 100 starbills would go right back to him when people started rebuilding their houses with his wood. But he was still out a lot of money. The look on his face was all I needed to see. Justice had been served after all.

I put Max back up for another vote before the city council. I thought the others would feel, like me, that what he did to those kids on the merry-go-round was grounds for banishment. They disagreed, saying that he had a legal contract and we had to honor that. Plus … we needed wood.

Well, I'd given it a shot.

A week later, the town held a new election, and I was voted in unanimously. It wasn't a terribly glorious victory since there was no one opposing me, but it was sweet anyway.

Rodney and the rest of Valerie's friends told her that they weren't interested in coming back to town, so banishing them was not an issue. I'd been afraid that was going to have to be my first act as mayor.

Over the next month, we got the rec center going. We had a pool table/ping-pong table that was donated by someone's parents, and it became the featured activity there. You could also use other sports equipment in a room next to it. People who used the facility had to pay a small monthly fee, just like a real health club. The fees would help pay the salaries of any employees who worked there. James was the first employee, and he enjoyed taking care of the place. He handed out equipment and refreshments and kept the ping-pong players on a time limit. He was very happy with his new position.

The city council also voted on more government jobs. People took jobs mowing around the trees and building “streets” made out of thin pieces of plywood so that people could ride their bikes up to their houses. Under enormous pressure from people dying for a good cinnamon bun, Sid decided to reopen his business. With more people working now, he felt confident that he would have more customers. He was right.

Kidsboro suddenly seemed like a breath of fresh air.

One of the first things I did after I was reelected mayor was to persuade Roberto Santana to once again be a citizen of our town. And he agreed.

He moved into the same house he had before, and everyone welcomed him back. Some even apologized for accusing him of something he didn't do.

Roberto chose his job as well. He decided he wanted to work with Jill at the newspaper. I was surprised, because she had written about his father being in jail, but he told me that she had apologized to him and he had forgiven her. He didn't seem to have any hard feelings, and he really wanted to work on a newspaper.

Jill was more than happy to have Roberto on her staff, since he actually had some newspaper experience working for a school newspaper and she was running out of ideas for news. She had bought Max's extended insurance, so She was able to pay Corey back a good portion of the 30 starbills she owed him. She couldn't afford to pay Roberto much until she paid Corey off completely, but he wanted the job just the same.

At the end of the day, Roberto came into my office and told me about his first day on the job.

“I had a good time,” he said. “Jill's very nice, and she let me write an article about how it feels to be a new citizen.”

“Great.”

“I even put a part in there about you. About how you believed in me.”

“Well …” I blushed. “You didn't have to do that.”

“I just wanted to come by and say thank you and that it's nice to be here.”

“I'm glad you're with us,” I said.

He started to leave, but then turned back around. “There is something that I should tell you.”

“What?”