The Last Chance Texaco (13 page)

And I did move it. There wasn't anything else I could do. Joy squeezed in to take my place. I knew I wouldn't see anything from the windows on the first floor, so I accepted the fact that I wouldn't see anything more. But I stayed anyway, listening to the shouts of the firemen and the murmur of the neighbors.

A few minutes later, Ben returned. "It was parked," he told us all, as well as Damon and Eddy and Melanie, who had joined us from their bedrooms. "No one was inside it, so no one was hurt."

I'd never heard of a
parked
car catching on fire. For a parked car to catch on fire, someone had to set it on fire. But I didn't say that to Ben. If anybody else was thinking that, they didn't say it either.

"Can we go see?" Eddy said, and almost everyone else joined him with pleading cries.

"No," Ben said firmly. "It's all put out now anyway. The excitement's over, so everyone back to bed."

But I had a feeling the excitement wasn't over. On the contrary, I had a feeling it was just beginning.

• • •

Sure enough, when I got home from school a little before four o'clock the next day, I immediately felt that little tingle of electricity in the air again.

Eddy was passing through the front hall on his way to the television room.

"God?" I asked him, and he nodded. Megan, the program supervisor, was back again.

I looked over at the office door, which was closed. I heard the soft rumble of voices from inside, but as

usual, I couldn't make them out.

I looked up at the stairs. Damon was standing two-thirds up, his head cocked as if listening.

I walked up to him.

"So," I said, "you know about the Magic Step."

"Of course," he said. "Now be quiet. I'm trying to hear."

I listened too.

"That's easy for you to say!" Megan was saying. "You don't have twenty angry neighbors screaming at you over the phone!"

"So everyone thinks it was one of our kids," Gina said.

"Of course they do!" Megan said. "Don't tell me you're surprised!"

"Of course I'm not surprised," Gina said. "But it's not fair. Who's to say it wasn't a fraternity prank?"

"Maybe it was," Megan said. "But that car was four houses down from here, and this is no fraternity."

"These aren't the only teenagers on this street," Ben said. "It could've been one of them. How come the police aren't interviewing
them
?"

"Because the other teenagers on this street don't all have juvenile records," Emil said, sounding

cranky. So he was at this meeting too. That wasn't good.

"How do you know?" Leon said.

"How do I know
what
?" Emil said.

"How do you know the other teenagers on this street don't have police records? Because they all have parents? Because they live in nice houses? That doesn't mean none of them have juvenile records, believe me."

"I'm not having this argument again," Emil said. "The fact is, these kids are natural suspects. I told the police as much this morning."

"
What
?" Megan and Gina spoke at exactly the same time.

"What?" Emil said innocently, like he really didn't know why they were making a hiss.

"Emil, you know damn well what'll happen if the legislature gets their hands on those comments!" Megan said. "Are you
trying
to get this place shut down?"

"I was thinking of the safety of this neighborhood," Emil said, and Leon made a quiet "Humph" sound. "Which is what all of you should be thinking about too!" I couldn't see Emil's face, but I could tell he'd directed that last part at Leon.

"It wasn't one of these kids," Ben said. "I'm absolutely positive. Gina and I did spot checks all night long. And even if one of them did get up between the checks, there's still the burglar alarm. None of the kids can open any of the doors or windows in the house at night without setting off the alarm."

"And you're sure it was set?" Megan asked.

"Yes, I'm sure! And none of the kids know the code."

"What about Lucy?" Emil said. So it wasn't my imagination. Emil really did hate me.

Out on the stairs, Damon flicked his eyes over at me, but I just gave him my most mysterious smile.

"What
about
her?" Leon said, sounding like he was on the verge of an outburst.

"Are you sure she doesn't know the code?" Emil asked.

"Yes, I'm sure!" Ben said. "And even if she did, the machine keeps a record! No one turned the burglar alarm off last night. I checked."

"Well," Megan said. "What's done is done. We can't go back in time. But I hope you all realize how serious this is."

"What do you mean?" Gina said.

"I mean the legislature just pulled our funding! This isn't exactly going to make them real eager to put that funding back in."

"That's not fair!" Ben said. "There's no proof any of these kids were involved. In fact, we can prove they
weren't
involved! How many of the parents of teenagers on this block can say
that
?"

"This is politics," Megan said. "Since when does 'fair' have anything to do with it?"

• • •

I really wanted to tell Nate what had happened, but I didn't want to talk about it in the school hallway. So I waited until after school, when we met to pick up garbage.

He smiled when he saw me. "Where to today?" he said.

"Under the track bleachers?" I said. And on the way there, I finally told him what had happened two nights before.

"Whoa!" he said. "Someone really set a car on fire?"

"Yeah. And the worst part is that the whole neighborhood thinks it was someone from Kindle Home." I went on to explain how the house had just lost its funding and that the fire couldn't have come at a worse time.

"Everyone thinks it was one of you guys just because you're in a group home?" Nate said, and I nodded. "That so completely sucks!" he said. I couldn't help but marvel at how much he had changed on the subject of group homes since a few weeks earlier.

"I don't know," I said.

"What does that mean?"

By now, we'd come upon the bleachers out at the track. I was glad to be back under there, even though I didn't quite know why. We stooped down together to prowl around underneath the seats.

"It means I think maybe it
was
one of us," I said. Ordinarily, this wasn't the kind of thing I'd admit to someone who didn't live in a group home--that a lot of us could be kind of wild. But I trusted Nate now, so I wasn't worried about what he'd think.

"It's true we have a burglar alarm," I went on, "but there's no motion detector. It just detects open doors and windows."

"Isn't that enough?"

I shook my head. "Doors and windows aren't the only ways in and out of a house. And if you're inside a house to begin with, it's especially easy to figure a way out again."

"What about the spot checks?"

"That's easy. You just wait to leave until right after they check on you. They hardly ever check more than once every two hours--usually not even that often."

"So it really could've been someone from Kindle Home."

"Yeah, but why? I mean, everyone there has to know that Kindle Home is ten times better than any other group home in The System. Why would anyone want to close it down? At first, I thought it was Joy-- that she'd set the fire so she could somehow pin it on me. But why do that? I mean, if she's trying to get rid of me, there are a lot less complicated ways than that."

As we talked, Nate and I were still scanning the ground under the bleachers for garbage. But it didn't look like there was any. Nate's friends had long since forgotten him, and the cross-country season was over now anyway. Any garbage that had been here Nate and I had picked up days ago. I'd known this, so why had I wanted to come here?

"Maybe it really was one of the other teenagers in your neighborhood," he said. He thought for a second, then said, "Alicia!" He'd spoken all of a sudden, making me jump.

"Huh?" I said, turning. Was she there? Had she come upon us again?

"No!" Nate said. "I mean, she could've set the fire!"

"Are you kidding? She'd break a nail." The idea of that bony supermodel-wannabe setting a car on fire made me laugh.

"Lucy, I'm serious. She's nuts. And you don't know about her temper. You should've heard her talk about groupies. And that was before I broke up with her to be with you! There's no telling what she'd do."

"But why?"

"To get the house shut down! She's smart enough to know how people in the neighborhood would react. And by getting you moved to another home in another school district, she'd get us broken up. She'd be punishing us both at the same time."

Alicia? I thought to myself. Was it possible? Then I remembered how when I'd first met Nate and Alicia, I'd nicknamed him "Ice" and her "Fire." My nickname for him had turned out to be all wrong, but it would be funny--ironic funny, not ha-ha fiinny-- if my nickname for her turned out to be accurate.

"Your eye," I said.

"What about it?"

"It's finally healed." I reached up and touched it. I don't think I'd ever touched anything or anyone so tenderly in my whole life.

"Yeah," he said. "Finally."

"I'm really sorry about that, you know."

"It was my fault. If I'd been you, I would have hit me too. But man, you sure were angry."

"What?" I was angry, yeah, but I didn't remember being
that
angry.

"Are you kidding? You should've seen the look in your eyes. It was like an explosion. I'd never seen anything like it. Scared the hell out of me, if you wanna know the truth."

I didn't like where this conversation was going.

"I'm scared," I said. "What's going to happen?"

"It's okay," he whispered, and then he opened his arms to me.

For a second, I thought about saying something mean or sarcastic--anything that would hurt his feelings. I knew if I dogged Nate right then, he'd probably never come back to me. But I didn't want to push him away anymore, not at all. What I wanted was to step forward into those waiting arms, which is exactly what I did. As his arms closed around me, I suddenly felt protected from the world, like I d been packaged for shipping--bound in bubble wrap and suspended in Styrofoam peanuts. And now I knew the real reason why I'd wanted to see Nate alone, and why I'd wanted to come under the track bleachers. It wasn't to find garbage, or even to talk about what had happened the night before. It was so we could be together. I guess that meant that somehow I had changed.

"Everything'll be okay," he whispered. "I promise." Then he leaned forward and kissed me. His lips were even more gentle than my fingers had been when I touched his bruise. I kissed him back, and suddenly what I was feeling was even better than the Styrofoam peanut and bubble-wrap thing. I was with Nate high up in the mountains, in that perfect cabin from
Heidi
, and safer than I'd felt since I didn't know when.

• • •

But that night, I woke up to the sound of more sirens.

This time, I didn't need to look out the window to know that somewhere in our neighborhood, someone had set another car on fire.

The next morning, Wednesday, the phone in the hallway rang as I was on my way to the bathroom, so I answered it.

"Kindle Home," I said.

"Damn juvenile delinquents!" said the man on the other end. "Go back where you came from!"

He hung up on me, and I put the phone back down. When I turned for the bathroom, I saw that Gina had stepped out of her bedroom and was watching me with a grim face.

"Another one?" she asked. Now I knew why we were suddenly getting all these early-morning phone calls.

I nodded.

"Ignore them," she said. "They're just a bunch of ignorant jerks. I'm taking the phone off the hook." She started for the phone. But before she had even reached it, it was already ringing again.