On Fire (10 page)
I had a system by then that made it easier for me to fall asleep. I'd moved my sleeping bag over against the gym wall so I didn't feel so exposed and I could tic- off as much as I needed to without anyone hearing me.
I used a flashlight I'd brought in my bag to read for a while after the lights were out. Then I shined it on my hands and watched the shadows they made against the wall. After that I stared at the red exit lamp over the gym doorway until my eyes closed.
Once, just before I fell asleep, I thought I saw Dan standing underneath it. He looked exactly like I remember, except pinker, from the lamp above his head.
I
WENT UP TO THE CAFETERIA
to get breakfast about 8:30 the next morning. The cheerleaders were there again. This time they wore pleated skirts that were so short they barely covered their butts. I wouldn't wear anything like that myself, but it looked good on them.
The old people were gone. They'd been moved from the high school to some place more comfortable. And breakfast was just little boxes of dry cereal with fruit and milk so there wasn't a lot for the cheerleaders to do except stand behind the table where the food was set out and look stylish.
I took my cereal and went to a table by the door. I was sitting there and eating when the cheerleader with the golden hair came over to me. My heart almost stopped.
“Are you Matilda?” she asked. I shook my head because my mouth was full of cereal and I didn't want to swallow while she was looking. “You're not Matilda Iverly?”
I gave up and let the cereal go down. “Matti Iverly,” I said.
“But Matilda's your real name?”
“No. My real name is Matti, like I said.”
The cheerleader got a tiny little wrinkle between her perfect eyebrows. “It's only I have a message for Matilda Iverly and the description the lady gave me sounds like you.”
“I suppose she was an elderly lady,” I said. “And small.”
“Yes. She stayed here for a while.” The cheerleader unfolded the slip of paper she had in her hand. “Her name is â ”
“Mrs. Stoa,” I sighed.
“Then you do know her?” I was almost blinded by that smile again.
“Unfortunately,” I said. “What does she want?”
“I don't know. But she's waiting downstairs by the registration table. Why don't you ask her yourself?”
“You certainly took your time,” Mrs. Stoa said when she saw me. “I've been here almost an hour.” She pointed to a grey-haired woman at the desk. “She wouldn't let me in,” she whispered. “She said this is your home for the time being and people can't just walk in and out when they feel like it. I told her I lived here myself briefly but â ”
“Good,” I said. I took hold of the fluorescent sweatshirt Mrs. Stoa was wearing and pulled her through the door and outside. “How did you get here?”
“I took the bus,” she said. That was hard to imagine.
“Well, I'm getting ready to go out. What do you want?”
“Your manners haven't improved, I see. But I'll ignore it because I have some news for you.”
I felt like a giant talking to her. And I didn't want anyone to overhear our conversation so I hunched over and got close enough to her ear that I didn't need to yell. “I already know,” I said. “Frank told me last night.”
That seemed to stop her in her tracks, but only for a minute. “What do you intend to do about it?” she asked.
“I intend to go back to Blackstone Village and do my ninth grade from home.”
Mrs. Stoa frowned. “I'm not following,” she said.
“The fire didn't touch our house. It's still there. And Frank's going back to rebuild. I'll do my school work from home and fax it in. Or mail it.” I said the last three words loudly in case the distance concept had tripped her up. Like maybe they didn't have that option for school when she was a teacher.
Mrs. Stoa gave a few fast little shakes of her head. “That isn't the news I'm talking about.” She got on her tiptoes and whispered, “Dan's alive.” I jerked up straight. “Yes,” she said.
“You heard that right.”
“I'm not talking to you about this,” I said. I started to walk away.
“Yes, Missy you are talking about it.” Mrs. Stoa tucked her little paw into the crook of my arm and held on. “And you're talking about it with someone who knows for a fact it's true. Come with me.”
“Where?” I asked her. “And how are we going to get there?”
“On the bus,” she said. “And don't pretend you don't have a bus pass. I know better.”
They say the world is small and it must be because Mrs. Stoa's nephew, who owned the house she was staying in, also owned King Koffee. I guess that made him the king. It also made Chuck, the barista who'd been making my coffee, the prince, because he's the king's son. Also the person Mrs. Stoa wanted me to talk to.
“Chuck,” she said, “this is the young woman I told you about. Get her whatever she wants and then come and sit with us, please.”
“Will it be decaf this morning?” he asked me.
“Yes, please,” I said. Mrs. Stoa rolled her eyes.
We sat outside at my usual table and in a minute Chuck came out with my decaf and two glasses of lemonade. “I can only take a minute,” he said. “We're getting busy.”
“Tell Matti what you heard,” Mrs. Stoa said.
“I don't know if it's true,” Chuck said.
“Tell her anyway.”
Chuck was wearing a pair of mirror sunglasses. They gave him kind of an alien look, but at the same time made it easier for me to listen to him. I could look at his face without being able to see him looking at me.
“I have a friend whose dad is a helicopter pilot,” he said. “He's doing a lot of search and rescue this summer because of the fires.”
Mrs. Stoa nodded her head at him while he talked like she was one of those birds you set above a glass of water to make its head move up and down.
“He and his co-pilot picked somebody up from that old ghost town across . . . ” He stopped for a minute. “Across from where you used to live.”
“Cato City, you mean,” Mrs. Stoa said.
“He just said a ghost town.”
“Probably an old mountain man,” I said. “We had a few at the Evac. Centre to start with.”
“No. He was young.” Chuck started to get up like he was through talking, but Mrs. Stoa snagged him by the shirtsleeve.
“And what else?” she asked him.
He sat back down again. “The guy yelled at them and tried to kick my friend's dad. They were going to leave him there because he was dangerous.
Then he fell and knocked himself out so they tied him up and got him in the helicopter and flew him into town.”
“What did this guy look like?” I asked.
“He was tall and he acted crazy. That's all I heard.”
“Are you're sure they didn't help him fall?”
I must have looked at Chuck very hard when I asked that because he said, “Hey. Don't get mad at me. I'm just telling you what I heard.”
“Matti can be very intense,” Mrs. Stoa said. She looked over her glasses at me and shook her head.
“Did the guy know his name?” I asked.
“I don't think they had much of a conversation.” Chuck stood up. “I have to get back to work. Customer comes first.”
I was sure he'd be king himself some day if he kept that attitude. “I am a customer,” I said. “And my bank balance is dropping fast because of it.”
Chuck didn't sit back down, but he stayed put.
“Where did they take this guy?” I asked him.
“The police station, I guess.” He looked at Mrs. Stoa. “Who's paying for the drinks?”
Mrs. Stoa looked at me.
“Now what will you do?” Mrs. Stoa asked me after I'd given Chuck my bank card and he'd gone to put the charge through.
“Try to get a loan from Frank or Marsh,” I said.
“Don't avoid the question. I mean what will you do about Dan?”
“If it is Dan, which I'm positive it isn't . . . ”
“Yes?”
“There's no use phoning the police station. I'd have to ask in person and then they probably wouldn't tell me anything. I'm just a kid.”
“Police stations,” Mrs. Stoa said. “There are two here. And I did find out something when I called the one downtown.” She got little satisfied crinkles around her mouth. “If Dan was hurt, as Chuck says, or disoriented, the police wouldn't keep him.
“They'd send him to the community hospital here. But if he was violent, which means a danger to other people or even himself, they'd take him to the hospital out in Metal Springs.”
“Where they take crazy people,” I said.
“Mental health patients,” Mrs. Stoa corrected me.
“Dan wasn't crazy.” I stood up. “And anyway he's dead. So it has to be somebody else.”
“I've told you your evidence for that is all circumstantial.”
“And yours is all gossip, so neither one of us knows squat.”
I was suddenly thirsty. I got up and poured myself a glass of ice water and gulped it down. Then I belched. That was the T. S. speaking. Manners didn't have anything to do with it.
“Even if Dan's alive,” I said, “which I doubt, he couldn't be the one they found. He isn't violent.”
Then I thought about how I ran Billy Butler up that tree in the sixth grade. The reason he stayed up there so long was that I was patrolling back and forth underneath with murder in my eye.
Anybody can be violent I guess, if you push the right buttons.
M
RS
. S
TOA
WENT BACK TO HER
nephew's to take a nap just after the meeting with Prince Chuck, and I went back to the high school. I needed to find a place where I could be alone and think about what to do. That sounded like the library, but when I got there a sign on the door said, “Closed. We're getting our collection ready for school.”
I could see people in there moving furniture and pushing carts of books around so I knocked anyway. They didn't come to the door.
Next, I tried a few classrooms. Only one of them was open. I went in and saw something really disturbing in it â a huge black bookcase on the far wall with its shelves full of things in jars.
I don't mean pickles and vegetables. I mean frogs and worms and lizards and snakes. Even a baby pig with the umbilical cord still attached.
“Can I help you?” someone said. I turned and saw a woman in a white coat beside a shiny metal sink.
“Why would you kill all these things and put them in jars?” I said.
“I didn't kill them,” she said. “They're from a scientific supply company.”
“Then why would they kill them? And why would you want to collect them?”
The woman turned on a curved faucet at the end of the sink and filled a glass jar with water. “So we can dissect them and understand them better.” The way she said it I could tell she thought I was an idiot. She drank some of the water.
“Wouldn't it be easier to understand them while they're still alive?” I asked. “I'm sure it would be easier for them.”
The woman made a curve toward the door with her hand. “This part of the school isn't open to students now,” she said.
“I'm not a student,” I told her.
“Lucky me,” she said. She drank the rest of her water.
I ended up doing my thinking outside while I walked around and around the school yard. By the time I got to the front for the third time, Marsh was there, leaning up against a cedar tree.
“Too much coffee makes you hyper,” he said. “Aren't you afraid it will stunt your growth?”
“Too late,” I said.
About then a family came out of the school with their suitcases. The man was one of the snorers so I should have been glad to see him go. But it actually made me a little queasy. I was just getting used to the way things were and now there were going to be more changes.
“Are you still sort of helping me out when Frank's not here,” I asked him.
The sun glinted through the branches behind Marsh's head. I had to squint to look at him.
“As long as it's legal.” He took the keys to his truck out of his pocket and jingled them. “Anywhere within reason you want to go?”
“There's someplace I need to go,” I said. “I wouldn't say I want to go there.” Then I told Marsh what I'd found out from Chuck.
“Don't get your hopes up,” Marsh told me, which was the opposite of what Mrs. Stoa kept saying.
The problem was, I didn't really know what my hopes were. I wanted Dan to be the person they found in Cato City. I wanted him to be in the hospital getting better.
But if he was there, I'd have to face up to the fact that he'd pretty much run away from me. And unless the ring I was still wearing around my neck was a message, he hadn't even cared enough to say goodbye.
We tried the community hospital first. They said they couldn't give us any details because we weren't family, but they could tell us he wasn't there
then
. That sounded like he might have been there and was gone now, which was encouraging.
But it was also discouraging because if he'd been released or whatever you call it when you leave the hospital, where would he go?
We went back to the truck and sat. “I don't know what to do next,” I said.
“Yes, you do,” Marsh said. “If the . . . if Dan is in the condition you heard he was in, the hospital wouldn't just send him out into the street. Not that fast, anyway.”
“So you think maybe they sent him to the mental hospital?”
Marsh started the truck. “Believe me,” he said, “I'm not any more excited about going there than you are.”