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Tom and Gwen sat on a dark hill on the far side of the high school's outdoor track and watched the police activity down in the parking lot. The red canister of gasoline sat on the grass between them. Tom leaned forward, watching the police talk to various students. It was difficult to see from this distance exactly which students were still there. Most of them had run when the police had shown up.

“Why don't we just go down and put this gas in your truck?” Gwen said. “You haven't done anything wrong, have you?”

“What if they ask where I got the gasoline?” Tom replied.

“Say you bought it at a station.”

“Which one?”

“Any one.”

Tom shook his head. “A lot of them are closed. If I pick the wrong one, they'll know I'm lying.”

“Hmm.”

“See what I mean?” Tom said. “Also…they might be looking for me.”

Gwen looked up at him sharply. “You? Why?”

“A Marietta guy was about to hit Carlos with a tire iron, and I yanked it out of the guy's hand. When I did, it flew out of my hand and sailed into a window of Mr. Davenport's SUV.”

Gwen cringed. “Mr. Davenport, the principal?”

“Yep.”

Gwen blew out a low, shrill whistle. “Glad I'm not you.”

“Thanks a lot,” Tom said, but found his lips twisting into a baleful grin despite the seriousness of his situation. She was a funny girl sometimes, with her wry, bleak view of things. “Nice whistle, by the way,” he added.

“Thanks.” She flopped down flat with her legs bent. “Are we going to be here all night, do you think?”

“Just wait a little longer and I'll drive you home,” Tom suggested. He would have told Gwen that she didn't have to wait there with him, but it was late and angry Marietta kids were still driving around looking to pick fights. It wouldn't be safe for her to walk home alone.

“Who'd you go to the bonfire with?” Gwen asked casually.

“Niki Barton.”

Gwen sat up straight again. “Do you really like her?”

“Yeah. Don't you?”

“No,” Gwen said, shaking her head and picking at a moon-rimmed blade of grass. “Where is she now?”

“I don't know. I couldn't find her again after the fight. She's not picking up her phone, either. Somebody told me she might have gotten a ride from some Marietta cheerleaders. She's been staying at her lake house over there.”

“Oh, how fancy of her! Nice of Niki to stick around to see if you were okay,” Gwen quipped sourly.

“It's all right. There was a lot of confusion.”

The sound of slamming doors alerted them that the police were getting back into their cars. (There were only three police cars left on the whole squad, so this was clearly a big deal in Sage Valley tonight.) A van probably driven by someone's parent arrived, and the remaining students climbed in.

About thirty parked, empty vehicles remained in the parking lot, nearly half of them with broken windows. “Let's go,” Tom said, getting to his feet and lifting the gas-filled canister.

Gwen scrambled up alongside him, and keeping to the darkest parts of the grassy hill, they made their way down toward the truck.

When they got near it, Tom cringed at the gash someone had gouged into the right door.

“At least your side windows are okay,” Gwen pointed out, taking in the sight of his smashed windshield.

Tom grunted in agreement as he opened the small door to his gas tank and began pouring in the fuel. They climbed into the front seats and Tom turned the ignition key.

The engine revved, then sputtered.

Tom swore under his breath.

The second time he tried, the engine roared to life. Tom drove out of his parking space just as a police cruiser turned into the drive to the school. “Say you already had the gas. You don't remember where you got it,” Gwen coached.

The patrol car came alongside and Tom rolled down the truck window. The officer got out of his car and shone a flashlight's beam into the truck, forcing Tom to squint against its glare. “Just picking up my dad's truck, Officer,” Tom explained.

“Out of the truck, please. License and registration,” the officer commanded in a matter-of-fact tone. “You, too, miss. Out of the truck, please.”

His heart banging in his chest, Tom stepped down from the driver's seat. Would he be connected to the damage to Principal Davenport's SUV? Did the policeman suspect that he was using stolen gasoline?

Tom took the requested identifications from his wallet and showed them to the police officer, who perused them critically. “Have either of you been drinking or taking any kind of drug this evening?” the officer asked.

“No, sir,” Tom replied emphatically.

“No,” Gwen mumbled.

The officer stepped closer to Gwen and sniffed. “Why do I smell gasoline on you?”

“I slipped in a puddle of it earlier this evening,” Gwen lied quickly. “It's spilled all over the place,” she added, gesturing at the oily splotches that now stained the parking lot.

He looked her up and down. “Would you breathe out for me, miss?”

“I told you, I haven't been drinking.”

“That's not what I'm checking for,” the officer insisted. “Breathe out, please.”

Gwen's breath formed a cloud in front of her face and the officer leaned toward it. Then he straightened once more and took a pad from his back pocket. “Name and address, please.”

“Rae Gonzalez. 57 Dartmouth Street, Sage Valley,” Gwen lied.

“Get back in the truck, please. Wait there.”

“You're a fast thinker,” Tom commented when he and Gwen were once again in the truck's front seat.

“Well, I wasn't going to tell him the truth, was I?” she replied.

“No. I'm just saying—you're pretty cool under pressure.”

“Thanks. Why was he checking my breath, if it wasn't for alcohol?”

“He wanted to know if you'd been sucking up gasoline,” Tom told her.

“What?” Gwen asked incredulously.

When Tom had first come down to the parking lot, he realized that some of the Marietta guys were getting the gas out of the tanks using black rubber tubes, which they were sucking air from and then sticking into a fuel tank's opening. The vacuum created by sucking the air from the tube drew the gas out of the fuel tank and into a container. He explained to Gwen how it worked. “It's basic science, like when you draw liquid up in a straw.”

“Why would that make my breath smell like gas?” Gwen asked.

“Those guys were using the same tube over and over. After a while, there was so much gas residue in the tubes that they were sucking it in. You should have seen them. They were belching like crazy—sickening gas burps.”

Gwen scrunched her face in disgust. “Glad I missed
that
. Someone should have lit a match in front of one of the guys when he burped. That would have scared the snot out of him.”

Tom chuckled. “I'd like to see that.”

“And this cop thought
I
was sucking up gasoline?”

Tom smiled at her revulsion and shrugged his shoulders. “He smelled gas on you. It makes sense, I guess.”

The police officer came back from his car and returned Tom's paperwork to him. “Who worked you over like that, son?”

“I was trying to leave when some guys jumped me. I didn't know them.”

“So they were from Marietta?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you see who broke any of the windows on your truck and these other vehicles?”

Tom shook his head. “I heard crashing, but I didn't see who was doing it.” In truth, he didn't know who had smashed his windshield. He could have given the officer at least five names of Sage Valley guys he saw whaling on Marietta-owned cars and trucks, but he wasn't about to turn in his friends, and he hoped his classmates felt the same, since his name would be among those reported.

In this fight, the Sage Valley kids had stuck together. If it hadn't been for Brock pulling one guy from his back, Tom didn't know what would have happened to him. His injuries would certainly be a lot worse right now. He hoped that sense of camaraderie would last through the police questioning that was sure to follow.

“All right, you can go,” the officer said. “But there's a good chance that someone will be coming by your home with further questions.”

“No problem, Officer. Thank you,” Tom said.

The policeman stepped back, allowing Tom to drive forward. “I wonder if you should have given that phony name and address,” Tom considered, turning toward Gwen. She might have gotten herself into trouble and there was still time to turn back and correct it. “What if they check and come after you?”

“They'd have to find me first,” Gwen replied.

“Sage Valley isn't that big. You wouldn't be impossible to find. And they know you were with me.”

“They won't bother,” Gwen insisted.

Tom glanced at her from the corner of his eye as he drove out the school's front entrance. Despite her words, she looked worried. Gwen wasn't as tough as she tried to pretend; he'd gradually realized that in the course of talking to her at school. He wondered why she felt the need to throw up such a harsh front and remembered the rumors about her mother being gone. That had to be rough on her.

They were on Creek Road near the trailer park and about to turn up toward her house when Tom noticed an odd glow in the night sky. The moment he rolled down his window, acrid, smoky air wafted into the truck. “Something's on fire,” he said, alarmed. “Maybe we should turn back.”

“Don't turn back,” Gwen said. “I want to see what's burning.”

“I don't think it's safe,” Tom objected, backing into Birchwood Lane and then turning in the opposite direction on Creek Road. They had to be crazy to drive straight into a fire emergency. “Let's go to my house and see what we can tell from there.”

“All right,” Gwen agreed, sounding reluctant.

They were nearing his driveway when they heard the first fire sirens. “It sounds big,” Tom remarked. He knew that various Sage Valley volunteer firefighters responded or didn't, depending on how many siren blasts they heard. It sounded like all of them would be running for their blue-light-equipped cars tonight.

His mother was standing on the sidewalk, in her pink winter jacket and clutching a box. Quickly pulling to the curb, he leapt from the truck and ran to her. “What's happening, Mom? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, but the house behind ours is up in flames,” his mother said, her voice cracking with fear. “I grabbed this box of family photos and ran outside. Just pray it doesn't spread.”

Gwen came out of the truck and joined him. “That's my house,” she murmured.

“No,” he said. But maybe it was. “Are you sure?”

Without waiting for her reply, Tom stepped into his driveway to check. Sparks, like fireworks, blew up over the high hedge at the back of his yard. By the time he was halfway up the driveway, he could feel the wall of heat.

The fire sirens suddenly grew loud on his street. Turning, he realized they were pulling in front of his house.

A firefighter in a yellow slicker appeared at the end of the driveway. “Do you own that truck?” he demanded of Tom.

“Yes.”

“You have to move it. More trucks are coming. We're going to soak all this property back here and hope it doesn't catch.”

“How's that house back there doing?” Tom asked, heading back down the driveway toward the firefighter. “Can you save it?”

“Do you think we can save that?” the firefighter asked scornfully as he gestured toward the flames dancing above the high hedges at the back of Tom's yard—flames turning the night's blackness into a purple haze shot through with orange sparks. “That old thing was a fire trap to begin with, but it would be bad if this nice block went up in flames.”

Going toward the truck, Tom saw Gwen standing at the end of the driveway, gazing at the dancing lights of her home being destroyed.

What was that wild expression in her eyes?

It wasn't grief or fear. It struck him as something close to exaltation, as though she was actually happy to see the house go up in blazes.

“The house is gone, isn't it?” Gwen asked when he reached her, in a voice he found strangely bland.

“It sounds that way, yeah,” Tom confirmed. “I'm real sorry. I hope Luke's all right.”

“I called him,” she murmured dreamily, not taking her eyes from the fire. “He's okay.”

Tom scrutinized her mesmerized expression. For a moment, he wondered if she was hypnotized by the flames, or even in a state of shock. “Gwen, you know my name, don't you?” he tested.

She turned toward him, brows furrowed skeptically. “Of course I know it. What kind of question is that?”

“What is it?” he pressed.

“You're Napoléon Bonaparte.”

He stared at her, not sure what to do next. She
was
in shock.

“Or maybe you're that dorky Mr. Ralph, who tried to teach creative journalism,” Gwen added. Then the side of her right lip pulled up into a cynical grin. “I know you're Tom. What did you think? That the fire shocked me out of my head?”

“Maybe,” he admitted, his voice taking on a sulky tone that embarrassed him. He suddenly felt like an idiot. “It's pretty shocking to have your house burn down.”

“I was just waiting for this to happen. I've been telling Luke not to store gasoline.”

“Like I said, I'm real sorry,” he told her, meaning it. “Want me to drive you to Luke?”

Gwen shook her head. “I'm okay. I won't miss that house. It's not as though it was filled with happy memories.”

In the next moment, Gwen's blankness fell away and was replaced by an expression of panicked worry. He could tell something new had just occurred to her. “I shouldn't be standing around here. This is a total disaster,” she said, looking up at Tom, her eyes wide. “It's worse than you can imagine. There are going to be questions—about my mother, about Luke, about me. I'm not sticking around for that.”