Fire Girl Part 1 (2 page)

“Ya okay?” Grandpa stood to the side of the
gasoline barrel, the spout extended in mid-air.

I lifted my hand. The gash wouldn’t be
that
noticeable. I squeezed it into a fist. A breakdown
would not be feasible at the moment.

Then I saw it. The lilac bush sprouted
against the gasoline pump, unmanaged and weed-like. Blood oozed
from my palm like the trailing of a watercolor picture. Stupid. I
pulled my hand into my chest.

Grandpa didn’t move to fill the car. “Madds,
let me look—”

“Don’t.” I would
not
have a breakdown.
I would
not
have a breakdown about a stupid clothes line and
a chipped white fence. Or that lilac bush. I would
not
have
a breakdown in front of him. I moved toward the house.

“Madds—”

Without preamble, loud music sounded and
gravel exploded.

I turned to the side of the house and looked
for whoever would be coming down the lane.

An overly large, neon blue pickup truck
cruised around the corner. Chance leaned out the driver’s window
and gave me his token tongue sticking out, rock and roll hand
sign.

Happiness surged inside of me like sprinklers
on a hot day.

Chance lurched to a stop next to Grandpa’s
station wagon and pointed at me. “Madds!”

I ran to the side of the truck as he opened
his door. “You
got
it.”

Since we had been kids, Chance’s only dream
had been to drive a big, blue truck.

He jumped down from the truck, the blond
curls that had plagued him since youth, stuck against his neck and
were drenched with sweat. His dimple deepened and he crushed me
into a bear hug, lifting me off the ground and swinging me into a
circle. “Spent all my savings, but it’s so worth it!”

I giggled.

“You’ve lost like a
ton
of weight.
You’re like a paper weight now. Actually, it’s probably just my
enormous strength.”

I kicked against him. I estimated he now
pushed six feet. He’d put on about twenty pounds of muscle. “Let me
down you, Oaf.”

He righted me on the ground and put his arm
into a bicep contraction. “Check out the guns, I’m thinking about
naming them.” He lifted his eyebrows up and down rapidly and poked
me playfully in the shoulder with his other hand.

I laughed and took a play jab at him.

He started into his Rocky impersonations and
danced back and forth. “Yo, Adrian!”

I laughed, again.

“I’m the starting full back this year. And
you get to watch
every
game.”

I punched back with my non-bloody hand.

Abruptly, he stopped. “Okay, I like the long
hair. I even like the red highlights with your blonde. It makes you
look,” he widened his eyes, “edgy, like one of those vamp
chics.”

“Shut it.”

He pointed to my boots and then my leggings
and then my short skirt. “Really? Are you dressing all retro urban
or something?”

“Are you really criticizing the way
I
dress?”

He snapped his head back to my face. “And
your eyeliner is too thick! Are you going goth? There’s a goth chic
that moved here last year, you could be friends with her.”

I landed a harder punch into his
shoulder.

This spurned him on. “End zone, baby! You get
to see
every
single catch.”

Secretly, I looked forward to seeing him
spike the ball all celebrity-like in the end zone. “Oh my gosh,
could you
please
put on more cologne?”

He went back to air boxing and cracked a
grin. “You like it? Bonnie picked it out.”

Bonnie. The girlfriend. I tried not to
cringe. “Yeah?”

“What?” Chance’s face fell to a frown.
“What’s wrong with it?”

I grinned and changed the subject. “I think
I’ll be too busy to watch your games.”

He wagged a finger in the air. “Oh whatever!
You had a breakdown. Football is the
best
distraction
ever
!”

Chapter 2 The Truth

“Breakdown?” I spit out the word like
poisoned food.

Chance landed a soft punch into my shoulder,
unaware that he’d said anything wrong. “Remember that summer you
gave me that shiner? What was that, like fourth grade? I bet you
don’t hit as hard now.”

I wanted to slam him. I swung back and gave
Grandpa a traitorous look. To have Chance know I’d been in the
mental made me feel—exposed.

Grandpa let out an exasperated sigh. “You’ve
gone and done it, boy!”

“What?” Chance looked around like he’d missed
a punch line.

“C’mere, Chance. We need to have a talk.”
Grandpa spoke in a tone that said, ‘now I get to finally give the
miserable lecture that Grandma hasn’t let me give all day.’

Chance resumed batting at me like the puppy
my father had brought home for a week when I was ten. He puffed out
his chest. “C’mon, Madds, punch me. Give me your hardest
punch.”

My mind whirled with questions.

“C’mon, seriously! Punch me!”

I blasted my fist into the center of his
gut.

“Ahh!” His eyes widened and he slouched.

A wave of satisfaction rolled through me.

“You asked for it.” The house gate clicked.
Uncle Bill moved toward us. A low rumble of laughter escaped him.
“Don’t ask Pippy to throttle you, ‘cause she just might.”

Instantaneously, I relaxed. Uncle Bill.

He wore his wide-brimmed Indiana Jones style
hat that Grandpa always complained about. The side of his mouth
tugged into a smile and he took me into his arms. “What did he
say?”

The smell of hay and earth and old spice
clung to him like all things that never changed in Sugar Valley.
“Don’t worry about it.”

He clicked his tongue at Chance and released
me. “You should know better than to challenge our Pippy. Remember
when she laid you out flat that one summer?”

Chance flashed an uber annoyed look to Uncle
Bill. “Doesn’t anyone forget anything around here? It didn’t hurt.
Just startled me. Do it again.”

Uncle Bill let out a sigh and took my bag. He
started toward the house in that easy gait old athletes have. My
father had that same type of walk, like they were still sore from
the big game twenty years ago. They had both been small town sports
heroes. Uncle Bill had excelled at basketball. Now, he was like
Farmer Zen. He had a peace about him. It radiated off of him like a
long, slow winding river. “Come on, Pip, let’s get you
settled.”

Chance let out a grunt. “What? What did I
say?”

Uncle Bill pushed open the gate and held it
for me. His face looked resigned. “What did he say?”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon, Chance.” I heard Grandpa call
out.

He would suffer with a lecture. A small smile
crept onto my lips.

“So how was the drive?”

I went through the gate and paused. Two tiny
sets of old cement footprints glared up at me, my father’s name
etched in a light cement scrawl next to Uncle Bill’s. I shoved down
the emotion that welled up. I bit into my already tender nail
bed.

“Chance talks too much.” He moved in front of
me and held out the screen door.

I quickly brushed past him and into the
house. “Fine. The drive was fine.” I moved through the narrow hall
and into the front room. Nick-knacks lined tiny, white shelves. Two
mounted animal heads scrutinized me as though
I
were the
spectacle. I cringed under their glare. I used to know what type of
animal they were, a deer or antelope. That information had been put
into the recycle bin inside my brain and I was leaving it
there.

My eyes raked across all the things I’d grown
up dusting every summer—the wood statue of Moses holding the Ten
Commandments, the long staff in his right hand broken, but
glued—that could be attributed to a wrestling match between Chance
and I a few years ago when Chance had been . . . less muscly; some
ceramic cookie jar cats that I’d gone to a ceramics class and
helped Grandma paint one summer; rows of salt and pepper
shakers—she had a thing for collecting them and they were
haphazardly scattered through the shelves of other assorted knick
knacks.

I turned to a crocheted, white scripture
verse framed on the wall. It was the only verse I knew, because I’d
read it every summer. ‘Mosiah 2:17 When ye are in the service of
your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.’

And then I saw it. I took a breath. My
parent’s wedding picture—the one where my mother posed in a
half-sit on my father’s outstretched knee. They stared into each
other’s eyes in that way they always had. The way I’d always
counted on. The way that had always steadied me and made me solid.
The way I hadn’t even known I’d counted on so much until it was
gone.

Bill put my bag on the couch. “I want you to
know you can talk about it.”

He said it quietly and it made me almost want
to talk to him.

Bill’s breath hitched in his throat. “We
loved them, too.”

I swallowed hard and let out the kind of
laugh that sounded forced. “Are you my new therapist?”

The sides of his eyes moistened. “Nope.”

Therapy. The thing I’d been sent to like a
jail sentence for the past year. The thing that never made sense to
me. Why don’t you sit in the weirdest chair and tell your problems
to a stranger? Better yet, a stranger that you’re paying.

But it hadn’t worked.

Uncle Bill procured a small box on the dining
room table. He held it out to me and gave a satisfied smile. “I got
one for Chance, too.”

The newest model iPhone. I knew he couldn’t
afford this. “I can’t . . .”

His hand wouldn’t budge. “It’s already done.
Have Chance help you get it set up.”

The way he gave it to me without
acknowledging the sacrifice it cost him made the phone even more
precious. I’d told myself I wouldn’t get sucked in. That I
couldn’t. But I couldn’t stop the real smile that emerged.
“Thanks.”

Grandma appeared beside us. She moved Uncle
Bill’s all-state basketball picture an inch to the left on top of
the doily-decorated television. She’d wrapped her hair back into a
red bandana that signaled it was time for her to work. “Isn’t he so
handsome?”

Uncle Bill moved into the kitchen. “Mom,
stop.”

She turned to me and cupped my chin. “He
loves you.”

I looked down.

The screen door slammed, wood on wood.

Grandma moved into the kitchen. “Dinner’s
almost ready.”

“What’s ready?” Grandpa had a knack for
hearing everything. He stopped next to me and looked at the box
inside my hands. “Those newfangled things. I told Bill it was a
waste of money.”

The tension throbbed through the spot in my
neck that would hurt if I slept on it the wrong way.

Grandpa flipped out his pocket knife. He
pushed it gently under his fingernail. “I want ya to know that
Chance doesn’t know about the court appointment. We just told him
you were in the hospital. Only your Grandma, your Uncle, and I
know.”

If I had to have another conversation with
Grandpa, I would use the razor sooner rather than later. I picked
up my bag and turned for Bill’s old room. “Whatever.”

“Maddie,” Grandma paused behind me. “Not this
room, Sweetie. Come with me.”

Confused, I followed her. I’d always slept in
Bill’s old room.

She led me down the stairs. “I sleep in
Bill’s room these days. Your Grandpa snores something fierce.” She
laughed melodically. “Heck, he’s probably been tired of me for
forty years and is happy to have his own room too. Ah, Lord knows
how we’ve made it, but the important thing is that we have.”

At the bottom of the stairs the smell of mold
permeated my nose.

Grandma’s quick frame moved into the only
bedroom and she rushed to the bed. She smoothed the fabric with her
hand. “I had this on Grannie’s bed. She lived with us for a couple
of months when your mom and dad first got married. The year of the
flood. I wanted her to be comfortable here, what do you think of
it?”

The purple duvet looked like it had been new
in 1800. I nodded mutely. It wouldn’t matter anyway. “It’s
fine.”

Cupboards lined the back wall of the room. A
white deep freezer clung to the other wall. I hefted my army-style
bag onto the bed.

Grandma clasped her hands together in a
satisfied way. “Good.” Her eyes turned misty. “Maddie, I know the
past year has been hard for you, but we are
so
glad you’re
home now.”

Home.

That word again. It felt abstract and funny,
a magic trick that I’d outgrown.

“I hope you’re doing all right. I know the
judge released you temporarily into our custody but—”

“I’m fine.”

Grandma cleared her throat. “Well, I hope
it’s comfortable anyway.”

“The bed is fine.” I began to unpack.

She smoothed the bedspread and sat.
“Okay.”

I worked without looking at her.

Grandma smiled. “They have a wonderful choir
teacher here. She—”

“I don’t sing anymore.”

Grandma swallowed.

I took a pile of clothes and stuffed them
haphazardly into the lime green dresser next to the freezer.

“I don’t understand, Maddie.”

I squared myself to her. “What?”

“Wh-why you wouldn’t be singing still? You
have such an amazing voice.”

“Had.”

“What?”

“Had an amazing voice.”

“Maddie?”

“I just don’t.”

Grandma looked me up and down. “Okay, that’s
fine.”

I knew it wasn’t fine.

She took a breath. “Look, I’ve worked it out
with Bishop Kenny that you can use the piano in the church to
practice since we don’t have one. We just need to stop and get the
key from his wife.”

“No.”

Grandma hesitated. “Why?”

I turned the army bag over and shook out the
last of my things. “I don’t play anymore, either.”