(You) Set Me on Fire (20 page)

Part of my paper was about how Joan of Arc is a really great example of a woman who ran against what the expectations were for women back then. There were no other women with Joan on her horse, saving France and generally being a warrior, which is pretty much why she got persecuted and burned up.

Have things really changed?
I asked at the end of my paper.
If Joan of Arc were here today, fighting
for feminism, would she not be in peril of facing a similar fate?

When I got my paper back, Ms. Frances (Women’s Studies) had drawn a little grey line and a question mark through that part.

Are you saying that feminists today face the possibility of being burned at the stake?
she wrote.

I suppose it had been a slight exaggeration.

After, like, forever in the library I also found this book by a guy who said that Joan of Arc might have been a lesbian. He called her a “gender bender” and said she liked to have young women hang out with her. Jonathon said I should take that bit out of my essay because it weakened the flow of my argument and wasn’t relevant. I left it in. Jonathon’s a genius and all, but he doesn’t know everything+edy%;margin-left: 0em; about Women’s Studies. I mean, come on, he’s a GUY.

The thing about Joan of Arc is, she wouldn’t be a saint today if she hadn’t been burned. If she hadn’t been set on fire, she’d just be this woman warrior who none of us ever heard of. I bet people wouldn’t even believe she existed. But because of the way she died, and the fact that she was innocent and everything, she had a chance to be this inspiring story. She was a regular person, reborn through flames into a legend. Even though I’m sure the actual process was pretty horrifying.

Just so you know, me writing this paper was not about any delusions I have where I think I’m anything like Joan of Arc. Obviously I’m not Joan of Arc. I’m not a warrior. I’m not even a fighter. I wasn’t burned at the stake, just burned. Several times.

It’s just a paper I wrote about something I thought was really interesting, this story of a tragic fire situation turned into something meaningful and important. I guess it was something I was thinking about a lot as the semester ended and everyone started reminiscing about their first year of college, the things we’d all been through and what it all meant.

The last day of school, the day before load-out, Dylan Hall had this big special dinner in the cafeteria and then they showed this slideshow of pictures people had grabbed off Facebook and Flickr, pictures of residents.

Photos of everyone being friends and hanging out. There was a picture of the Patties doing yoga on the front lawn with a bunch of girls in pastel Lycra. There was a picture of Rattles with other people from the St. Joseph’s orchestra. There was a picture of Hope kissing some guy at the Valentine’s dance. There was a picture of Katy and two other girls volunteering at a soup kitchen (which someone said they only did once because some girl got lice from the chef hat they lent her). There were a bunch of
pictures of Carly: Carly looking like a cheerleader doing the run up the hill during freshman orientation. Carly at the dance with the rest of the
Grease
guys. Carly and the green-haired zombies.

If you looked really closely at a picture of a group of girls sitting on the front steps of Dylan Hall, waiting to go on a canoe trip, you could see a blurry Shar and me in the background, but you’d have to squint.

I remember thinking, when the picture flashed on the screen, that it was probably the only evidence I had left that Shar and I were even friends. One blurry photo.

They called the slideshow “At Play, New Friends.”

Which sounded backward to me, but what do I know?

People bawled their eyes out. Mostly I think because they were playing sad songs in the background, like “That’s What Friends Are For” and “Closer to Fine” and this ridiculous song about wind and wings.

When it was over, Carly came over to where I was sitting and handed me this Post-it Note with a doodle on it of our two heads. Her head was buzzed short, both on the Post-it and in person.

“Hey thanks. What happened to the blue?”

“Shaved it. Noticed your photo didn’t end up in the show so I made you a pic for keeps,” she said.

“It’s cool. Thanks.”

“Okay so! Tell me! What+ms cck“ happened when you talked to the dean?”

My academic semester had ended the day before with a meeting with Dean Portar, to check up on my mental state post several accidents and to confirm that my grades were a “satisfactory pass,” which is another way of saying “just pass,” which is a (metaphorical) warning bell.

Dean Portar talked for a long time about expectations, about how we make decisions about our future. The word “path” came up a lot. She wanted to know if I still felt that St. Joseph’s was a good fit for me. Like, for example, given that I was having so much trouble academically, did I think this was where I wanted to continue my academic career as such? Did I feel like I needed a change?

Her face was a serious, solid line. Concrete.

I was like, Gee, way to sell the St. Joseph’s College experience. What happened to all those preorientation materials I got in the mail telling me St. Joseph’s was a place where I could ACHIEVE?

I don’t know what happened to me, exactly, sitting in that office, looking at Dean Portar. I just got this surge, this sudden gut feeling, that, this one time, the look I was getting, that look of what could be
interpreted as disappointment, was … premature. Or, at the least, not completely right.

I explained that, yes, in a lot of ways it was a crappy year, but, I said, I was kind of trying not to blame it on the place where I was or any of that other stuff. Plus, I noted, I did have this one class, the Women’s Studies course, which I did really well in and I was kind of thinking maybe I would take more classes like that next year.

“More classes like what?”

“You know, classes where people question why people think what they think. Stuff like that?”

“Philosophy?”

“Maybe.”

Dean Portar took a moment to look at me, kind of hard.

“You seem to be a capable young woman,” she finally said, fingering the pile of academic program brochures on her desk. “You’ve got the world ahead of you. I hope, Ms. Lee, that you’ll consider what you want your future to look like and that you’ll take steps to make that future a reality.”

“I know. I know maybe it’s weird,” I said, “but I really do think that the step I need to take is to stay.”
So. Cheesy.

“Well, Ms. Lee. I’d love to see that happen.”

She was kind of … smiling at me.

It was nice to hear someone talk about the future I had ahead of me without the look of intense concern. Even if it was just a fleeting grin, I took it as a positive omen.

“Uh. See you next year, I guess.”

“Less in this office, Ms. Lee, I hope.”

The day I left Dylan Hall, after I’d done a final sweep of my room, I touched the mirrors, my desk, the little holes in the walls. I realized that if I leaned into the wall by my bed, I could still smell a faint whiff of smoke. The bottom of the door was warped and frayed, like an old shower curtain, from water damage.

It was weird to imagine the slightly less battered me standing in the slightly less batt+s, cered room less than a year earlier, hugging my boxes and feeling afraid. I felt, like, a million years older than that girl.

I left my key on the bed. I was going to leave Jennifer Taylor’s ID behind, but then at the last minute I figured I might need it next year, so that was the one thing I kept. And then I closed the door behind me.

I resisted the urge to trace the letters etched into the glass case of the new fire extinguisher, “BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF FIRE,” while I waited to take the elevator to the main floor where my dad was waiting, anxious to depart and avoid traffic.

After a summer working for my dad (I know! What thrills!), I’ll be back at St. Joseph’s next year and, kind of, starting all over again. Jonathon asked me if I wanted to live with him and this other girl, Lucy, who’s a cellist in second year. Lucy already has a house and it’s really nice. Back garden and everything. I said yes. I mean, I don’t know if Jonathon and I will be the most compatible roommatries that don&

And, you know, he’s been a really good listener and he’s basically the reason I passed my courses. Now that he’s out of Trident his skin even looks a little better.<"body-text_4">Just a little, but that’s pretty good.

Carly is living with a bunch of girls from film club next year, including Lila. I don’t think it’s the best idea, but who knows. Carly said I should make sure there’s a couch in my place so she can come
and crash if there’s drama. Which is a distinct possibility.

I pretty much owe her LOTS so. Yeah. I’ll make sure there’s a couch.

I don’t know where Shar is going next year. I don’t think she’ll be coming back to St. Joseph’s. I could be cynical and imagine that she’ll go to some other college, get her clutches into someone new, a girl she’ll become best friends with, and that girl will think Shar is like this amazing BFF or even a new beginning. When really it’ll all just be the same thing, the beginning of another cycle of manipulation and lies and destruction.

I don’t want to think that, though. I want to think that ma/p>