The Last Chance Texaco (17 page)

I ran all the way to Ragman Hall. At the front desk, I told them I was Nate's sister, because I knew he didn't have a sister, so she couldn't have already come to visit him. Plus, I knew if they asked Nate about me, he'd back me up completely. The only problem would be if Nate's real family was visiting him right then, or if someone at Ragman Hall recognized me from one of my stays there.

"Wait," the receptionist said to me. Then she called somebody up on the phone. A minute or so later, she motioned me back over and gave me directions to the waiting room. I pretended to listen, but I already knew exactly where to go, even though I'd never had a visitor there, or anywhere else for that matter.

Nate was waiting for me in a room with orange vinyl couches and windows that were just narrow slits. He was wearing a blue jumper, and it really did look like something you'd see in prison. He looked surprised to see me, but happy too.

"What are you--?" he started to say.

"I needed to see you." I
had
needed to see him. I just wasn't sure why.

"But how did you--?"

"I'm on detention," I said. "I'm collecting garbage right now."

I stepped closer and kissed him full on the lips, even though I knew we were on short-circuit television. I doubted the person minding the camera had been told I was Nate's sister, but if he had, I figured it might spice up his day.

"I wanted to say thanks," I said.

"For what?" Nate asked.

"For taking the blame. For making me leave last night." Was this the real reason I had had to see him--to thank him for the sacrifice he had made? But even as I thought this, I knew it wasn't.

He shrugged. "It only made sense. If they'd caught you, it would've been all over. They would've sent you to Eat-Their-Young Island for sure." I'd already explained to Nate how Kindle Home was the Last Chance Texaco. "But it's only my first offense. And my dad can afford a lawyer. I'll be out of here in a couple of days. It's no big deal."

Nate was wrong. It was a big deal. Short of killing someone, fire was the biggest deal of all. Rich parents helped, but there would still be consequences for him. If other rich people complained loud enough, there might even be a lot of consequences. Depending on the judge, he could even be sent to Rabbit Island for a while. No matter what, his life was going to be very different from here on out. And it was all because of me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "Nate, I'm so sorry for all of this."

He rolled his eyes. "There's nothing to be sorry for. Like I said, this is no big deal." But even as he smiled, I saw a tear running down his face.

So Nate knew the truth. He'd been trying to lie to make me feel better. The fact was, he was terrified.

He tried to turn away, ashamed of his tears, but I pulled him toward me and took him in my arms.

Suddenly, he was crying outright, deep, wracking sobs that made his whole body jerk, like he was starting to crumble. It was up to me to hold him upright, to keep him together.

"Everything'll be okay!" I whispered. "I promise."

"How can you be so sure?" he said.

I looked at him. I knew my face was opening at last--shutters, windows, doors, and all.

"Because I love you," I said. There. For the first time in my life, I'd said it. And I knew that my telling him that was the real reason I'd had to come to see him.

I held him in my arms, breathing him in, letting him inhale me too, and suddenly I knew something else, something I had to do.

Somehow, I had to get him the hell out of there.

• • •

"So, Eddy said to Ben and Gina over dinner that night. "Is Kindle Home closing or not?"

Once again, I was glad that someone had said out loud what everyone else was thinking.

Ben's eyes went wide. "How do you know--?"

"We just do," Melanie said. "So is it happening or not?"

As usual, Gina and Ben exchanged a glance.

"Maybe," Gina said.

"Gina!" Ben said.

"What? It's their home. They have a right to know what's going on. Besides, they obviously already know."

"But they can't close us down now!" Eddy said. "They caught the guy who was setting the cars on fire. It wasn't one of us! It was some rich jock dude."

"You'd think that would make a difference, wouldn't you?" Gina said bitterly.

"It
does
make a difference," Ben said. "They won't close us down. They
can't
, not now."

I looked around the table. Everyone just sat there looking gloomy. No one was eating their tacos, not even Gina or Ben. Joy was scowling, but I wondered if she was feeling what everyone else was feeling. Maybe she was just annoyed because Nate and I had ruined her plan to get the house shut down.

"This should be a real fun Christmas," Gina mumbled.

I glanced around at the Christmas decorations. We'd really gone hog-wild, more than in any other group home I'd ever lived in. In the dining room alone, there were paper snowflakes and bows taped to the walls and little sprigs of holly from the backyard on the bureaus, and someone had hung a big tinfoil star from the fixture above the table. It all seemed land of ironic now.

"They wont close us," Ben said, and he deliberately picked up a taco and started eating. It crunched and crumbled in his hand. "Shit!" he said angrily, but no one laughed.

"You okay?" I said to Yolanda, sitting next to me.

"Huh? Oh, yeah." But she looked like she was going to burst out crying.

This was too much tension for group home kids to take. There would be a meltdown tonight, I thought to myself. The only question was, Which one of us was going to do the melting down?

• • •

That night, after dinner, I was alone in my room putting clean laundry into my dresser when someone knocked on my door.

When I opened the door, I saw Leon tightly gripping the two sides of the doorframe.

He said, "If Kindle Home closes, Emil's going to send you to Rabbit Island."

"I know," I said.

He stared at me for a second. "The step on the staircase?"

I nodded.

He smiled a little wistfully. "That still works?" I nodded again. "Anyway, I just thought you should know."

"Thanks." I kept putting away my T-shirts. Then I said, "Why does he hate me so much?"

"Emil? I wish I knew. But he hates us all. He hates every group home kid." I liked that Leon thought of himself as a group home kid. I thought of him that way too. But what he'd said about Emil--did Emil hate us enough to set a series of cars on fire? I thought so, but I wondered if Leon would.

"I also wanted to say I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?"

He snatched his hands from the doorframe. He'd been holding it so tightly, I almost expected the house to fall down around him.

"For Rabbit Island," he said. "It's not fair. It's
really
not fair."

"It's not your fault." It wasn't. I'd heard how he'd fought for me.

"Still. I made you a promise. You lived up to your half of it. But I didn't live up to mine." Now that Leon's hands were free, he didn't seem to have anything to do with them. So he stuffed them deep into his pockets.

"It doesn't matter," I said. "I don't care if I get sent to Rabbit Island anymore." Suddenly, I remembered my first day at Kindle Home, and how I hadn't wanted to unpack my clothes in that dresser. I'd been certain I wouldn't be at Kindle Home long enough for it to be worth my while. But I wanted to put my things in the drawers now, even if they would stay there for only another week or so.

"Lucy," Leon said. "I don't think you--"

I turned to him, tightly clutching a pair of my socks. "Leon, I do understand. And it's not that I
want
to go to Rabbit Island. I know how much you hated it there. It just feels different now. More bearable. Now that I know there's someone who gives a damn about me." Two people, I thought--Leon and Nate.

Leon stared at me. Finally, he shook his head and laughed. "Wait a minute. Remind me who's the counselor here, and who's the kid."

"Does it matter?"

"No," he said, and we stepped together for my second great hug of that day."

• • •

Just after midnight, Mrs. Morgan did the first of the night's spot checks. When she was gone, I made sure Yolanda was asleep, then slipped out of bed and started for the attic. It was the third night in a row that I'd snuck out after hours, but I wasn't even a little tired. I was too excited. I was going to catch myself an arsonist.

I'd thought about the clues--the burned-out tail-light, the footprints in the mud, Alicia's smug expression--but I still had no idea who it was. Was it Alicia, still trying to destroy Nate and me both for daring to defy her, and determined to strike a blow for spoiled rich girls everywhere? Or was it Joy, convinced that she'd have an easier time being Queen Bee at some other hive, and maybe still trying to get back at me for standing up to her? Or was it Emil, blinded by his hatred of all things group home, and driven by some mysterious inner demon of his own?

I didn't know who it was, but I knew they would strike again. Why was I so sure? Because the whole city now thought Nate Brandon was the one who had lit the fires. But if the point of the fires was to get Kindle Home shut down--and I was certain it was!--Nate Brandon was exactly the wrong person to be fingered for the crime. As long as everyone thought that Nate had set the fires, the pressure was off us Kindle Home kids. No, the arsonist needed to

set another fire, soon, while Nate was still locked up in Ragman Hall, so the suspicion would be thrown back on us.

I reached the door to the attic and quickly stepped inside, softly closing it behind me. Then I crept up the darkened steps, just like I d done twice before. I was tingling, I was so eager. I'd never felt so determined in my whole life. But catching the arsonist wasn't about not getting sent to Rabbit Island, or even about staying at Kindle Home. Those things didn't matter anymore. Neither did the Group Home Code. If it turned out to be Joy who was starting the fires, I'd happily turn her in, no matter what the consequences to me were. No, catching the arsonist now was all about Nate. He'd sacrificed everything for me by taking responsibility for a crime he hadn't committed. I needed to prove him innocent. And the only way I could do that was by using his camcorder to prove that someone else was setting those fires.

At the top of the steps, I started down the narrow pathway across the darkened attic, to the window on the other side. I took it slowly, but now it was as if I had some kind of ESP and I knew where absolutely everything was. The floorboards didn't even creak under my feet.

I reached the window and opened it. Then I turned to the place where I'd hidden the rope, camcorder, and change of clothes. I picked up the rope and began tying it firmly around one of the attic's center beams.

Now the floorboards creaked.

I froze. The sound hadn't come from near me, but from the other side of the attic, on the opposite side of the stairwell. Was it the house settling?

The floorboards creaked again.

I wasn't alone. Someone was in that attic with me--I was sure of it!

Suddenly, I was drowning in the darkness. I clutched the coil of rope like it was a lifeline, but it offered no comfort. Then I heard a metallic chink, like a chain being pulled, like the sound of a bare light bulb being turned on.

Light flooded the attic. For a second, the flash blinded me. Then I blinked and finally saw the face of the person who had pulled the chain on the light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

It was Mrs. Morgan, and I don't think I'd ever seen anyone frowning so deeply in my whole entire life.

"Lucy," Mrs. Morgan said, glaring at me in the attic, in the harsh light of that bare bulb. She only spoke that one word, but it contained a whole dictionary's worth of disappointment.

"What are you--?" I had been starting to ask her what she had been doing there, in the dark, in the attic, in the middle of the night. But I knew. There was only one explanation. She had been waiting. She had probably planned to wait up here all night long, in between her spot checks. She had been trying to catch whoever was climbing out through the window in the middle of the night. It figured it was Mrs. Morgan, the strictest counselor in the house. Why couldn't it have been Leon?