The Fire (18 page)

The fun, thought Christina.

Their final moment had not been fun.

“I feel terrible that you had to go through so much torture, Christina,” said Mr. Gardner, “before we did our part in stopping the Shevvingtons. All the same, I wish it hadn’t ended like that.”

Everybody turned involuntarily, to look back across the cove and the village at the cliff where once a huge white sea captain’s house had stood. Schooner Inne was gone. No sooner had Val and Christina been scooped off the cupola than flames shot from every window and the entire building turned black and collapsed. Nobody could have gotten out.

“We got a video,” said another fireman. “What a shot! You girls will want to see that.”

Christina did not think so. She remembered the screams from beneath her feet, when flames took the carpet under Mrs. Shevvington’s heels, when the woman ran from room to room screaming, “Where are my keys?” When flames melted the doorknob under Mr. Shevvington’s hand, and he jerked back, screaming, “Get the keys!”

The fireman said to Christina, “You’ll be fantastic on that film footage. The way you stood on that ledge, your hair blowing in the wind, looking for all the world like the figurehead of some ancient sailing ship, pointing toward justice and port.”

The tiny plane landed, bounced, slowed down, and taxied toward them. Christina freed herself from the Gardners and ran toward her mother and father. The little door opened and out popped her mother, holding out her arms, crying her daughter’s name. And then her father, shouting, “Christina!” The plane motor cut the syllables of her name up into sections, and vibrated them across the pavement.

And then she was safe, wrapped in her family.

They held the seventh-grade picnic anyway. The school board said it would frighten the children to have to think about what Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington were really like, and it was best to have them think about three-legged races and watermelon seed-spitting contests instead. “We don’t want our little boys and girls to have any knowledge of evil,” said the man who had hired the Shevvingtons.

Christina thought that was silly. The more knowledge you had of evil, the better you could combat it. How could anybody learn from what she had been through if nobody would admit it had happened? Out there somewhere, in another state, in another village, another thirteen-year-old girl might come face to face with evil for the first time. She had to know what to do, how to tell the world.

The smell of wet towels and bathing suits filled the air. They had a lip-sync contest and a Frisbee toss. They had corn on the cob and blueberry cobbler. Parents stood around laughing, teachers sat cross-legged swatting gnats, and neighbors looked yearningly at the games, wishing they were children again.

Christina’s parents could not stop hugging her, holding her, telling her how wonderful she was. “You triumphed,” said her father. “You won.”

“And without us,” said her mother sadly. “We didn’t believe you. I will never forgive myself that we didn’t believe you.”

Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong were awkward with Val. Christina could imagine why. How would it feel to know you had put the opinion of the high school principal ahead of the word of your daughter? How would it feel to know that your child had spent a year under lock, key, and tranquilizers because you did not believe in her?

Close, thought Christina. I came so close.

Blake came, and Anya, and they, too, hugged her and said how proud they were of her courage. Christina was surprised to find that a hug from Blake was only a hug; it did not take away her senses and fling her into crazy love. It was just two arms.

And when they walked away, she thought, I was the one with courage. Not Blake. He could have come back weekends from his boarding school. He could have spoken up for me after the thing with the cliff. But he was afraid he would sound dumb, and people would think he made it all up. So he said nothing.

She took a marshmallow when her father offered her one, and poked a green twig through it.

There were many marshmallow-roasting techniques. Some people liked to get their marshmallow an even, light tan all over, and some liked to set it on fire, and some liked it to start dripping down the stick so you could lick it up, tongue-burning hot and crispy black on the outside.

Like Schooner Inne.

They had brought forth what they said was Mr. and Mrs. Shevvington. It was teeth, actually, and belt buckles, and bones.

When Anya had been afraid of the poster of the sea, she had thought she could see the hands of the drowned reaching up through the waves. The sea wants one of us! she had cried.

The sea had two now. By its wind and tide, it had set its own fires to take the Shevvingtons.

I was afraid, she thought. More afraid than Blake or Benj could ever know. And nobody believed me. But I was born in the arms of Good, and I am made of granite, and if I had let them go — Anya and Dolly and Val — I would have been Evil myself.

There is Evil in silence.

But there is no silence at a seventh-grade picnic.

Rock music jarred Christina awake. Throbbing, strumming guitars, drums, and electric keyboards. The seventh grade was dancing without her. Everybody was dancing. Summer people and townspeople, firemen and teachers, parents and children.

The music screamed; the tide slapped; the sun set.

Her father and mother danced; Mr. and Mrs. Gardner danced; Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong danced. Blake danced with Anya and then he danced with Val.

It’s primitive, thought Christina. Like ancient warriors by the sea, we are having our funeral celebration for the death of Evil among us.

Benjamin and Jonah came toward her, one from the sea and one from the land. One with broad shoulders and strong arms, one with long skinny legs and a long skinny smile.

The boys hardly saw each other. They had eyes only for Christina of the Isle. And, at the same time, they said, “Chrissie? Let’s dance.” Each held out a hand. The silver and gold of Christina’s strange hair divided, and tangled, and told her secrets.

She remembered all that was to come: the sophomore dance, the fund-raising for the band trip to Disney World, the ferry on which Jonah could come, the lobster boat she could go out on with Benjamin. Summer on Burning Fog. The roses that bloomed among the rocks and the cats that had kittens in the barns.

“Oh, yes,” said Christina Romney. “There is so much to dance for.”

And she took both hands.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life. 

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.