The Last Chance Texaco (18 page)

I thought about lying, about saying that I had come up to the attic because I couldn't sleep. Or that I thought I'd heard someone up here, and that I'd come up to check it out. But there was no chance that Mrs. Morgan would believe me. I was standing by an open window with a coil of rope in my hands. If I tried to lie now, I knew I'd just piss her off more.

"How did you know?" I asked.

She breathed a heavy sigh. "Lucy, I know this house like it's my own. When the attic door was left unlocked, I knew someone had been up here." She stared at me, then shook her head. "So you're the one who's been setting the fires."

"No!" I spoke loudly, without remembering where I was. "No," I said, more quietly. "I was trying to
catch
the person setting the fires."

"Oh, Lucy." When she spoke my name, her voice dropped like a rock. My words weren't pissing Mrs. Morgan off--they were just disappointing her more. I almost wished she would get angry, like she had the day she'd found those pills in my bedroom. Anger I could react against. Disappointment just made me feel shitty. The funny thing was, I was actually telling the truth.

"Was that boy your boyfriend?" Mrs. Morgan asked.

"No," I said, and I felt my eyes shift. "Well, yes, but it's not the way it sounds. He wasn't guilty either. We were both trying to catch the person setting the fires. I know I shouldn't have snuck out, but I was only trying to save Kindle Home. I figured if I could prove it wasn't someone from here, then they couldn't shut us down. And we
did
catch them--last night! We got the whole thing on Nate's camcorder. Only it was too dark to make out who it was. And then the car started burning, and we tried to put it out, and that's when the police caught us. Nate made me leave, and he took all the blame, which is why I was going out tonight--to prove that it wasn't Nate who had set the fires in the first place!"

The words came gushing out of me like water from a fire hydrant, and it was still all the truth. But as I was speaking, Mrs. Morgan lifted her hands to her face, rubbing her eyes like she was starting to cry. I kept thinking she couldn't possibly look any more disappointed in me, but then she did.

What was the point? I thought. There was no way she was going to believe me. It was too incredible. No adult would ever believe me. Probably not even Leon.

"Forget it," I said. I turned to the window, then closed and locked it. "Let's just go. I won't try to sneak out again, but you can sit outside my door if you want. And tomorrow morning, you can send me wherever you want."

Mrs. Morgan frowned at me some more as I untied the rope from the beam, then added it to the coil around my shoulder. Then I reached down to get the camcorder and my change of clothing.

I stood up again. "I'm ready."

Mrs. Morgan was still staring at me. But she didn't look disappointed anymore. Now she looked confused.

"What?" I said. Then I realized she wasn't staring at me, but at the object in my hand. Nate's camcorder.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Huh? Oh. Forget it. You won't believe me anyway."

"Lucy Pitt, what is that?"

It was comforting to hear her call me by my full name. Wasn't that how parents talked to their kids when they were angry? "It's Nate's camcorder," I said.

"Why do you have it?" Her eyes narrowed. "Did you steal it?"

"No. No! I told you, it's Nate's. We were trying to catch the person setting the car fires."

She kept staring at me. But the hesitation still hadn't left her eyes.

"Take a look," I said. "I told you we got the person on video last night. It's just too dark. You can't tell who it is."

I stepped over to her and showed her the tiny view screen. Then I played the file we'd made the night before. There was the darkened figure with the gas can, the quiet sound of the splashing. It even had the date and everything. After a second, you could also hear Nate's and my voices.

"We need to get closer," said the recording of my voice, just as the shadowy figure on the view screen lit a match.

From the little speaker on that camcorder, Nate and I both sucked in our breath.

"No!" I shouted in the recording.

On the view screen, the shadowy figure turned toward us. Then it whirled away. The screen was too small to see the flinging of the lit match, but I knew what would happen next.

Tiny flames leaped up in front of the car.

"No," said the recording of my voice.

"The gasoline!" Nate's voice said. "It must've dripped from the car!"

"We have to put it out before the car catches!" my voice said, and that's when the screen went dead. That's when I'd taken my finger off the button on the camcorder and it had stopped recording.

Mrs. Morgan didn't say a word.

Suddenly, she needed to sit. She turned for the nearby rocking chair and lowered herself into the seat. For the first time since I'd met her, she seemed very old.

"Why didn't you tell anyone this?" she said.

"Huh?" The question made no sense. Who would I tell?

"Lucy Pitt!"

"Well, I guess I thought no one would believe me."

Mrs. Morgan's eyes had lost all focus. "So it's true. You really were trying to catch the arsonist. You were trying to save Kindle Home."

I wasn't sure if these were questions or not, but I nodded anyway.

Her eyes latched on to me. "If I hadn't caught you here tonight, what would you have done?"

I had to think about that. Not because I didn't know, but because I wasn't sure what I wanted to tell her. Finally, I decided to just tell the truth.

"I would've gone out and tried to find the arsonist," I said. "If I had, I would've tried to get the whole thing on the camcorder."

"But if you'd been caught, the police would have thought you were setting more fires. The consequences for you would have been horrible. And even if you hadn't been caught and you
had
recorded the arsonist, how would you have explained the tape? You would have had to admit you snuck out of the house at night. The consequences for that would have been almost as bad."
Would have
been bad? I thought to myself. Did that mean I might not get punished for trying to sneak out--or for admitting to sneaking out twice before?

But all I could do was shrug. "I didn't care what happened to me," I said. "I had to help Nate."

Mrs. Morgan began to rock ever so slightly. It looked like she was nodding, but it may have just been the rolling of the chair. Underneath that rocker, the floor squeaked again.

"Do you know why I'm here?" she asked.

"Well, you knew that someone had been coming up into the attic--"

"No, not here in the attic. Here at Kindle Home."

"Oh. No."

"You children never wondered about my past? About where I came from?"

I had to think again. Finally, I said, "No." I'd heard gossip about every other counselor at Kindle Home, just like I'd heard gossip about every counselor at every group home I'd ever lived in. But I didn't remember anyone ever saying anything about Mrs. Morgan, except that she'd lost her sense of smell. She was the kind of person who you thought would somehow know if you dared to gossip about her, the way dogs can sense fear.

"I had a husband and two children," Mrs. Morgan said as her eyes lost their focus again. "Seventeen years ago, they were killed in an automobile accident. The sense of loss was indescribable. The only way I could cope was by moving away. Eventually, I found myself here, and I've been working here ever since."

Why was she telling me such a personal story? Didn't she know I could use it against her? At the same time, I couldn't help but realize that Mrs. Morgan's story was a lot like mine. We'd both ended up at Kindle Home because our families had been killed in car crashes.

"So much despair," she muttered. "It's a wonder it all fits inside one single house."

I watched as Mrs. Morgan continued to rock slowly in her chair, nodding at me--or maybe not.

Finally, she looked up at me again. To my surprise, she didn't look old anymore. Suddenly, her eyes had never seemed so sharp.

"Go," she said.

"What?" I said. "To bed, you mean?"

She stood up and started for the stairs. "No, I mean out the window. I won't tell anyone I saw you here, and I won't report you missing from your bed. Stay out all night if you have to. Just go catch whoever is lighting those fires, and get it all on tape. If you do catch them, I'll go to the police with you, and I'll say we made the tapes together. That way, we can save your boyfriend and Kindle Home too."

"But--"

She reached the stairs and stopped. "Just don't get caught. Because if anyone catches you outside alone, you'll be sent to Rabbit Island, and I'll be fired." With that, she turned and started down.

"Mrs. Morgan!"

Just before her head disappeared into the darkness of the stairwell, she stopped and looked back at me.

"Why?" I whispered.

"Because I've already lost one family," she said. "I'm not about to lose one more

• • •

The moment my feet touched the ground, I heard a faint rustle from the front yard. Could it be? Had I stumbled upon the arsonist so soon? I couldn't imagine who else would be lurking around in the bushes this late at night.

I crept closer. If it was the arsonist, I couldn't let myself be seen. It didn't do me any good to just
catch
the person I was looking for. I needed to get them on the camcorder starting a car fire. That meant I might have to follow them for a while.

At the corner of the house, I stopped and peered out into the front yard. It seemed even bigger than I remembered.

The rustle had sounded like it was coming from somewhere inside the long hedge that separated Kindle Home from the yard next door. The hedge was neatly trimmed on the neighbor's side--they had a yard service that came every week, even this late in the fall. But on the Kindle Home side, it was wild and unruly. So unruly that I couldn't tell if there was someone hiding inside or not.

I waited.

One minute.

Then one minute more.

Nothing happened. The hedge didn't make a sound. Had it just been the wind?

I couldn't wait there all night, so I stepped out into the front yard.

When I was almost to the sidewalk, the hedge rustled again, just to my side.

I was standing right out in the open, with no nearby bushes to duck behind. I didn't dare move for fear that I'd make noise and scare away whoever it was. So I stayed right where I was, frozen, not breathing, hoping that whoever was in that hedge hadn't spotted me yet.

Then some branches snapped and out leaped Oliver, the Kindle Home cat. He stared at me, his tail swiping the air. He had that cat expression that looks both completely innocent and absolutely guilty at exactly the same time.

I felt myself exhale. "Oliver," I whispered, "you had me scared."

The cat sat down on his haunches, twisted his head around, and began to groom his back. The night was so still that even Oliver's quiet licking seemed to echo down the street.

Stepping around the cat, I started for the sidewalk again. Once there, I stopped in the shadow of the hedge and listened.

The only sound in the whole neighborhood was the sound of Oliver's licking. I looked up and down the street. I figured there would be fewer police cars now that they had caught Nate, the person they thought was setting the car fires. But I was pretty sure there would be a police car or two around somewhere.

The sound of Oliver grooming himself echoed in the still night air. But suddenly, it seemed really loud. And it didn't even sound that much like licking. Yeah, it sounded wet, like a cat's tongue. And it was a lapping noise. But it was almost
too
wet. And it seemed to get louder the more I listened.

I looked back at the cat.

Oliver was gone. He had padded silently away.

I glanced around the yard. I didn't see the cat anywhere. But I could still hear the sound of his licking.