Fire With Fire (9 page)

I’m sitting on the couch in this guy Ricky’s basement. It’s dark
and smoky, and the TV is on. It’s some horror movie. I’ve got
a beer in my hand, but I’m not drinking it. It smells funny,
like yeast.

Next to me, Kat is straddling the sofa armrest, swigging
from her beer till the last drop. “I’m out,” she announces.
“Ricky, help me bring down some more beers.” She leans in
close to me and whispers, “He’s cute, right?”

I nod. Ricky has these sparkly brown eyes and thick black
lashes. “Very.”
“Why did I ever waste time with a tool like Alex Lind?”
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to answer her question. Alex
and Ricky are very different guys. I come up with
Alex Lind
seems a nice
, but before I have a chance to say it, Kat and
Ricky head up the stairs. I watch them go, and then turn
back to Kat’s brother, Pat, who’s watching them too. He’s in
a grim-reaper costume, sprawled out on a La-Z-Boy, a glass
bong between his legs.
I hope Kat comes back soon. I feel out of place and kind of
awkward here, and the excitement I felt earlier on is starting
to fade away. On the couch with me there’s a guy wearing a
monster mask, and he’s breathing heavily through the rubber.
I turn and watch the TV. A guy is chasing a girl with an ax,
and when he finally catches up to her, I can’t help but let out
a shriek. Kat’s brother finally looks away from the stairs and
laughs. “You scared?” he asks me.
“I don’t like horror movies,” I say, holding the beer bottle
to my lips but not actually drinking.
“How do you know Kat?” Pat asks me.
“Um, we’re friends from school.”
“I thought Kat didn’t have any friends at school,” the guy
in the monster mask says, and Pat snickers.
“She does,” I say, annoyed. “She has me.”
Pat’s grin slips away and he gives me a look, one of respect.
He holds up his bong. “You want a hit, Mary?”
I shake my head. “Oh, no, thank you,” I say. The guy in
the monster mask snorts. I worry for a second he’s laughing
at me, because I sounded too polite and straightlaced for Pat’s
weed-smoking invitation. But I am who I am. I can’t help it.
Then I realize he’s just watching the movie, the girl getting
chopped in half. I’m about to cover my eyes when I notice
how fake it all looks. The blood like ketchup, the guts like
spaghetti. I laugh too.

There wasn’t a haunted maze when I used to live on the
island. It started after I moved away. The same entertainment
company that puts on the carnival in the summertime runs it.
They’ve leased a big field on the rural side of T-Town, where
some people still have farms.

The maze is as big as a football field. They make the whole
thing out of hay bales, stacking them ten feet high so you
can’t see over the tops. The company sets up a few big stadium lights so people won’t trip over each other, but there
aren’t enough to light the place up. There’s a PA system that
plays spooky organ music and a couple of strobe lights to
make you even more disoriented. They also hire people to
dress in scary costumes and wait in the dark corners to grab
you while you try to find your way out. It’s full of dead ends
and wrong turns.

“Well, that blows,” Kat says, when a parking attendant
waves us away from the entrance. The lot is full. We have to
drive about six blocks before we can find an open spot. The
maze opens two weeks before Halloween, but according to
Kat, most people wait until tonight to go.

Kat and I walk together. There are a ton of people out,
either walking toward the maze or heading back to their cars.
Absolutely everyone’s in costume. There’s a lot of energy.
The closer we get to the maze, the more screaming you hear
coming from inside it.

I link my arm through Kat’s. “I’m scared!” I admit, but it
feels good.
“You stick with me, kid,” Kat says, patting me on my head.
We get in line. You have to sign a waiver to enter the maze,
promising you won’t sue if you have a heart attack.
“I wonder what kind of costume Alex is wearing,” Kat
says, out of the blue. I shrug my shoulders. Kat shakes her
head. “Probably something lame.”
“I hope Lillia’s thing with the kids went okay,” I say.
“I’m sure it was fine. Cho’s as type A as they come. I guarantee she didn’t leave anything to chance.”
“Maybe we’ll see her tonight. Maybe she’ll want to hang
out with us. You know, if Rennie’s still being mean to her.”
“Yeah,” Kat says, but she sounds doubtful. I don’t know
why. I feel like Lillia’s made a real effort to stay friends with
us. Way more than I expected back in September.
“I’m sure she’ll at least say hi,” I say, and knock into her
playfully. Then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I spin around and
come face-to-face with a cute boy. Well, at least I think he’s
cute, based on what I can see through his mummy bandages.
“Hey,” he says to me, “aren’t you in my English class?”
“I don’t think so.”
He rubs his chin and looks at me skeptically, like I might be
lying to him. “You sure? I could have sworn that you were.”
I shake my head. “I have Mrs. Dockerty, third period.”
He frowns. “Oh. I’ve got Mr. Frissel.”
“Honest mistake!” I chirp, and turn back around. Kat’s
moved a few steps ahead in the line, so I hurry to catch up
with her.
Kat cocks her head toward me. “Why didn’t you keep talking to him? Go back and give him your digits!”
My eyes go wide. “Why. He thought I was someone else.”
Kat looks at me, slack jaw. “He was flirting with you,
dummy! That English class garbage was the icebreaker, the
opening line to get a convo going. Hello!”
“What?” I turn around and the mummy boy is standing in
a circle of his friends, looking at me, but his eyes quickly go
to the ground. I spin back to Kat and whisper, “Oh my gosh!”
Kat laughs. “Innocent little Mary. Do you see what I’ve been
talking about now? You’ve gotta put yourself out there more.
Who knows? You could have a boyfriend by Christmas.”
The thought makes me warm inside. Me? A boyfriend?
“You need to quit with this whole meek routine. This bumbling shy shit. You’re not twelve years old anymore. You’re
seventeen!” Her eyes go to my chest. “Look. You’ve got
boobs. And guys love boobs!”
“Quit it!” I say, laughing, and wrap my arms around myself.
Kat shakes her head. “I won’t quit it. Own the fact that
you’re a smoking hot girl who any guy would want.” I open
my mouth to say something like
No guys want me!
, but Kat
shoots me a look, so I keep my mouth shut.
But really. They don’t. At least they never have before.
Or maybe it’s that I’ve never even tried to get a boy to
notice me. A boy who wasn’t Reeve Tabatsky.
It takes me until we reach the front of the line to work up
the courage to sneak another look at mummy boy again. He’s
still looking at me, and this time he doesn’t play it off like he’s
not. He gives me a sweet smile.
I manage to give him one quick smile back before I totally
lose my nerve.
But it’s something!
There are two huge strobe lights going at the very entrance
of the maze, flashing so fast it makes it nearly impossible to
see what’s right beyond the first bales of hay. We take a couple
of steps inside, to the first big intersection. You can go left or
right, or keep heading straight.
Kat grabs my hand. “You’re freezing.” She pulls me along
with her to the left. “Now, stick close to me. Suckers are going
to jump—”
Right then two ghouls leap from the shadows. I scream and
start laughing, while Kat practically leaps into my arms.
“Personal space, asshole!” she screams at the ghouls.
“Are you okay?” I ask her. “Do you want to go back
through the entrance?”
She gives me a face like I’m being stupid. “They caught me
by surprise, is all. Come on. This shit is going to get tiring
real fast. And the sooner we get to the end, the sooner we can
hook back up with Ricky and the guys.”
I pat her on the back. “O-kay, Sister Katherine.”
We only take a few steps before I feel someone come up
alongside us as if she were part of our group. Kat notices her
too, and we both turn and look. This is an older woman, but
she’s dressed up like a little girl in a blue dress, white lacetrimmed socks, and black velvet buckle shoes. She’s carrying
around a doll covered in fake blood, and she holds it up to us.
“My dolly’s sick!” she cries in a weird, whiny voice. “Help
my dolly!”
Kat lets out a shriek I didn’t know she was capable of, high
and shrill and raw. She drops my hand and takes off running.
“Kat!” I’m laughing so hard I can’t breathe. “Kat!”
I push my way in the direction Kat ran off, but it’s hard
with all the other people in the maze. I take a left, then a right,
and head straight right into a wall. I walk backward out, and
someone taps me on the shoulder. “Kat?” I say, but it’s just a
psychotic farmer wearing bloodstained overalls and carrying
a pitchfork. I mean, another one of the workers.
He spins me around, and when I take a step forward, I
realize I have zero idea where I’ve come from and where to
go next.
“This way, you guys!” a girl’s voice calls out.
It’s not Kat. It’s Lillia.
I stumble in the direction of her voice, but it’s hard to tell
exactly where she is, with the music and the other people
screaming and laughing.
I take a couple of turns, but I don’t hear Lillia again. It’s
dizzying, and the flashing strobe lights are starting to give me
a headache. I shout, “Kat? Kat?”
Another ghoul jumps out at me, and this time I scream. He
grabs my arm and tries to keep me from getting away from him.
I shake him free and quicken my pace down a long maze alley. I
need to find Kat. I don’t want to go through this thing alone. It’s
definitely way scarier when you’re all by yourself. And Kat’s
probably having a heart attack right now, for all I know.
I take another left and walk for a few feet until I hit a deadend hay wall. I shake out my hands, take a deep breath, and
try to calm myself down. Am I ever going to get out of here?
Then I turn around and run right into Reeve Tabatsky.
I mean that literally. I run right smack into his chest. The
force sends me stumbling backward a step. Reeve’s crutches
clatter down on the ground, and he totally loses his balance
with his bum leg. Thankfully the maze alley we are in is narrow, and one of the hay walls breaks his fall and keeps him
from hitting the ground.
“Shit,” he says.
“I . . . I didn’t see you,” I say, breathless.
“Are you okay?”
It takes me by total surprise, Reeve asking me this. My
cheeks heat up bright, but I lean down and pick up his crutches
for him so he won’t see it.
“Don’t worry about me,” I say, the words tumbling out of
my mouth super fast and nervous. I can’t believe I’m finally
face-to-face with Reeve, having an actual normal conversation with him. After all these years, here we are. I straighten
up and ask him, “How’s your leg?” Reeve doesn’t take the
crutches from me, so I lean them against the hay wall for
when he’s ready.
He says, “It’s fine,” but I don’t believe him. He looks like
he’s in serious pain. I can see it all over his face. His teeth
clench as he bends over to check his black soft cast and adjust
the Velcro straps.
“Should, um, I get someone to help you?” I take a step
back and give him some room. I hope I haven’t messed up any
of the progress he’s made in the pool.
“No, don’t,” he says, quiet. Reeve pushes a hand through
his hair, composing himself. He says with a groan, “It’s my
own fault for coming to this stupid maze anyway.” He reaches
for his crutches, slides them under his arms.
I can tell he’s about to walk away from me, but I don’t
want him to. I’m not ready for this moment to be over. Not
yet. It’s like when we rode the ferry together. I’d wish and
wish and wish the ride could last a little bit longer. Even a
minute longer.
I reach out and touch his arm. His shirt is so unbelievably
soft, and I feel his bicep underneath. It’s big and tight and cut,
probably from the weeks he’s spent on crutches. I say, “I’m
so sorry you got hurt at the dance.” And despite everything
Reeve did to me, it feels good to apologize. Because I truly
did not mean for him to be hurt so bad that his whole life
might be screwed up.
He shrugs his shoulders. “Shit happens, you know?”
“Yup,” I say, nodding, because it is true. “Shit happens.” It
happens to all of us.
There’s an awkward second, where neither of us knows
what to say. Reeve rustles his hand through his hair. “I should
go find my friends. Hope you make it out of here alive.” He
positions his crutches and goes to take a step forward, but I
shift my body so he can’t. It gives me a surge of adrenaline.
Put myself out there. That was Kat’s advice.
What do I have to lose?
“It’s, um, been a long time, huh?” The words get kind of
caught up in my throat.
Reeve’s head falls slightly to the side. “Yeah . . .”
The wind picks up and blows my hair around. I tuck as
much as I can behind my ears. “I’ve always wondered if you
ever thought about what happened.” Reeve lets out an awkward laugh and then blinks a few times. I can’t tell if he’s
embarrassed or blindsided. “If you felt bad about what you
did. I hoped so, anyway.”
And then I hold my breath, because it’s the perfect opening.
I’m giving him the best shot to apologize to me, to finally take
responsibility for his actions. To make things right between
us, once and for all.
Reeve’s eyes narrow in confusion. He’s trying to place me.
Which throws me off. Sure, I’m wearing a Halloween costume, but it’s weird. It took him five seconds to call me Big
Easy at the dance. Does he really not recognize me now?
“I mean, calling someone Big Easy? Making everyone at
Montessori hate them? I know people say middle school is
the worst, but you took the cake on that one.” Reeve’s whole
body stiffens, and he stares at me hard, this time with cold
eyes. I feel him peeling back the layers I’ve got on. The
makeup, the pink hair extensions, the crazy outfit, until I’m
stripped clean to the bone. I’m shaking. Shaking like a leaf in
the wind. “Aren’t you sorry? Even a little bit?”
He wets his lips and growls, “Go fuck yourself.” The three
words come out like they are sentences. Punches.
Tears fill my eyes, and I worry my legs might give out
underneath me, as Reeve pushes past me and down the long
corridor.
“I’m sorry,” I call after him. I don’t even know why. But
I immediately hate myself for saying it. Twice. Because those
are the words
I
deserve to hear. Not him. Only I’ll never get
an apology from Reeve, because he isn’t sorry.
Not one little bit.
And then I feel it coming. A tidal wave. A tsunami. The
surge inside of me. Anger, sadness. Like on homecoming
night. I close my eyes, but I don’t see darkness. I see the hay
maze lighting up, walls of fire penning in all these people.
Oh God, oh God.
I have to get out of here before I explode.
CHAP
TER THIR
TEEN