Shuffle: A Novel Part 11

Amanda patted her hair and slid the card the rest of the way out of the envelope. "One more nominee, folks. Put your hands together for... Arbor Vitae Damo da Rosa!"

Everyone in the cafeteria went crazy. I mean, I knew Arbor was pretty popular already, but a lot of people must have had more fun at his party than I did. Some juicy rumors were probably circulating amongst the student body at large, most of whom weren't even invited.

Arbor wasn't there to wave and distribute largess or whatever it is the English do when they're famous and loved. It probably just added to the mystery surrounding him. I bet a lot of people would vote for him just to hear him give his acceptance speech.

The band marched off and the cheerleaders dispersed. Britta turned back to her lunch.

"I can't even eat after that sickening display."

Ellen asked, "Do you think that kiss meant that Jim already asked Amanda to the dance?" She was quiet and a little tentative. I could tell she still wasn't sure of Britta's opinion of her after the revelation about her secret relationship with Jim.

But she shouldn't have worried. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love my friends.

Britta turned up her nose. "If he did ask her, I bet he's in for a rough night. I mean, what with all the foot fungus."

Ellen cracked a grin and Britta winked at her.

"I heard that."

Amanda's voice flooded my spine with ice water. She was standing right behind Britta, staring at Ellen. Up close, I could see the orangey lines of foundation on her forehead and globs of black mascara at the corners of her eyes.

"You," said Amanda, pointing at Ellen. "You watch your back."

"You watch yours," countered Ellen. But she sounded scared.

"Yeah right. And you, Goldberg..." Amanda redirected her attention to Vi. "Keep your big nose out of my business and away from my crown. You're only nominated because of Luke. Don't forget it."

She waltzed away, swinging her hips.

"Gross," said Shelby.

"I know," I muttered. "I feel like I need to take a shower."

"You'll get to," said Ellen, a resigned look on her face. "Gym next, remember?" The bell rang, and we rushed to put our lunch trays away and walk down to the fieldhouse.

"So," I said, elbowing Ellen in the ribs. "Totally devastated that you weren't nominated?"

"Beside myself," she answered. Her voice was dry, her hand swept over her forehead in a melodramatic arc. "I don't know if I can find the strength to go on."

"Yeah, me either."

"Actually," she said, smile flitting across her face, "I thought maybe you would be nominated. You know, because of Arbor."

Now it was my turn to goggle in surprise. "You think he's going to ask me to the dance?"

She shrugged. "The entire school's been expecting it. Haven't you heard any of what's going around about you two?"

"Um, no. Highlights, please."

Ellen fidgeted. "I'm the messenger, remember."

I nodded. "Out with it." I pinched her for good measure and she stuck out her tongue before continuing.

"Everyone saw you dancing, and saw him kiss you. All of the girls are freaking out. They're talking tons of s.h.i.t about you a stuff you don't want to hear. They won't even say most of it around me, but I've overheard plenty."

I felt that ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach again. "Let me guess. I'm fat and gross and don't deserve a guy as hot as him. If they only knew how creepy he is..."

"I know! You don't even like him! I've told everyone that he's the one that's into you. But they don't believe it. They think you're like, having s.e.x with him so that he'll date you."

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me!"

Ellen put a protective arm around my shoulder. I'm sure I was beet red with anger and embarra.s.sment. We made it to the locker room and I was able to get a grip on myself while I changed a not looking down even once at my body.

Good thing volleyball's therapeutic.

Callie picked me up in the squad car after school. She made some small talk, asked how my day was. I lied a said it was boring. I mentioned that Arbor hadn't been in cla.s.s. I wondered where he was, and whether all his absences would start getting him into trouble soon. It sucked that he just got to skip out on all the stupid cattiness that had permeated my day, though it's probably more unfair that the rumors about us having s.e.x made me look bad and him look good. Double standards, people!

Just when we were about to turn into our driveway, Callie's radio crackled.

"Attention all units. 10-70 reported at intersection of Kingfisher and Fremont. All units backup. Priority one."

Callie picked up her walkie-talkie mouthpiece thing and said, "Copy that." Then she turned on her siren and did a U-turn.

"Sorry, Evi," she said. "There's a fire up in Oldtown."

We sped down the street, taking a right on Division. Other cars on the road stopped and pulled over for us a that was pretty exciting, but my mouth was dry and my chest was weighted with dread. After a few blocks we turned west and swung around the southern edge of Stevens Peak, making our way up the mountain to Oldtown. We drove past some deserted storefronts, boarded up, unintelligible graffiti spray-painted over crumbling brick. The houses were smaller here and packed closer together, broken gla.s.s windows patched with duct tape and fluttering tarp. I could hear the blaring honk of a fire engine ahead of us; we turned on Fremont and saw black smoke billowing out the second story window of a dingy-looking gablefront house.

"Oh, no."

The engine was extending its ladder.

"That means there are people inside, right?"

Callie nodded grimly. "There'll be an arson investigation..." She was already thinking about the police side of things. As we pulled up, firefighters scurried around the hoses in their dirty black-and-yellows, like worried bees. They worked to uncoil the heavy equipment and start the powerful spray of water.

We hopped out of the car.

"Stay back," Callie warned me, and jogged up to a couple police officers who were shepherding a group of dazed-looking people, one of them an old woman in a bathrobe and bunny slippers. There was some sort of disturbance. A man broke away from them, crying and shouting, pointing up at the window.

An officer approached, holding out his hand and beckoning the man to come away, but he was ignored. The man sprinted toward the house, aiming for the front door. I saw Callie dash at him, a blur of blue. She tackled him, and they both hit the ground hard.

I put my hand over my mouth, stifling a cry.

Someone squeezed my shoulder. I looked up. It was Lieutenant Collier a he'd just arrived on the scene. His hand was warm and comforting, fatherly almost.

"Don't worry," he said. "Callie was top of her cla.s.s in Police Academy. She had to do this all the time. Even took me down once." He grimaced. "I won't soon forget that."

He was right. The man didn't put up much of a fight after being slammed so hard. He shook his head, muzzy. Slow to stand. But even from a distance I could see the pain in his face. There were tears running down his cheeks. He kept pointing to the group of refugees and then up to the window.

"His kids must be in there," I murmured.

Toby sighed and nodded. "Absolutely heartbreaking." He gave my shoulder one last squeeze before limping up to the other officers.

I slumped onto the side of the car. Callie led the man to a safe distance, sat him on the back of an ambulance and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. He was hyperventilating. The EMTs gave him an oxygen mask, but he was talking rapidly, still gesturing, and they had to struggle with him to place it over his nose and mouth.

I caught a few of his words on the breeze, which had picked up as the fire began to suck in more and more air.

"No, no, my babies, my babies, no..."

The firefighters seemed to be moving in slow motion. Like they were wading upstream through a river of mola.s.ses. My heart thumped against my ribcage as the ladder lifted one of them closer and closer... agonizingly slowly... inch by inch... to the window. I squinted, straining my eyes for any sign of life through the smoke. The house was still spewing it as from the mouth of a volcano.

As the ladder rose, activity on the ground intensified. Another fire engine parked on the gra.s.s and a new batch of firefighters went to work. More and more police arrived through the fall of mist and ash. Callie and Toby were lost among them. I felt awkward watching. Especially the poor man in the ambulance, who'd finally given up all resistance and was just sitting there, dead to the world.

Finally the firefighter on the ladder was within an arm's reach of the window. The ladder shuddered and stopped; she swung herself in through the opening and disappeared. I crossed my fingers for luck, almost unaware that I was doing it. I know it was no real help, but...

A minute ticked by. Then two. The ground was becoming a sloppy, sooty mess. I could feel cinders in my hair. Even my mouth was gritty, like I'd been chewing on sand. Every few moments an intense rush of heat broke over my face like a wave on the sh.o.r.e. My cheeks were red and tight, like two blisters, and my forehead was coursing with sweat. I wiped it out of my eyes; they stung. Still I watched the window.

The first thing we saw was a limp arm. Small. Pale. Still pudgy with baby fat. One child was lifted out and relayed down to the waiting medics. A cheer went up, but there was no spirit behind it. Then the firefighter emerged, an infant in her arms. It wasn't moving.

A few of the EMTs started CPR. Complicated-looking masks were attached to the children's heads, with plastic bladders that were squeezed in a rhythm to blow pure oxygen into their lungs. I saw the chests rise and fall, but I knew it was only the incoming air making them expand like that. The limbs were boneless, lifeless. The man a their father a couldn't watch.

The ambulances rushed them away to the hospital, but I think everyone knew. Those children were gone. The fire was dying now. Gray rain settled over the scene like a bitter fog.

Then came the long, boring part. Police officers stood around in neverending circles. One firefighter came up and joined them, then another. Then another. Talk, talk, talk. A few people were delegated to unspool yellow police tape around the trees, cordoning off the area. I was envious of them for having a menial task to focus their minds and distract from the tragedy. More officials arrived. Apparently the house was in danger of collapsing.

That's when I saw him.

At least, I'm pretty sure I did. My eyes were red and weepy from the fall of ash.

He was standing by an old oak. His dark head was turned toward the empty house. Just another spectator like all the other gawkers behind the police line, but at the same time existing apart from them. And silent. Still. In fact, he was the only calm thing amidst the chaos. Like the eye of the storm.

"Arbor!" I cupped my hands around my mouth and called his name.

Either he didn't hear me or he didn't want to. His gaze was locked on the house. I was about to run over to him, to ask him what he was doing here, when Callie came up.

"Get in," she said, wearily. Her face was smudged with black soot and her uniform was mussed, gra.s.s stains from when she'd tackled the man to prevent him from running back inside his house. "We're going home."

She didn't need to tell me twice. I collapsed into the front seat of the squad car, headache pounding through my temples. By the time I managed to look out the window to the oak tree, Arbor was gone.

What were you looking at?

The question tumbled through my mind on the way home. We let ourselves in; the front hallway seemed cold and deserted. A sense of defeat hung over everything. Callie dragged herself upstairs to take a shower. I went to the kitchen for a gla.s.s of water, slinging my backpack over one of the kitchen chairs.

I chugged it down, exulting in the relief that washed through my parched throat. Two and a half gla.s.ses later, my eyes were swimming and my stomach hurt. Music blared down the staircase; Callie had turned on the radio in the bathroom. Loud. She does that when she wants to drown out her own thoughts.

Speaking of which, the thought of doing homework made me sick. I wondered if there could be a worse Monday a then kicked myself mentally, because for those people, the man and the woman in the bunny slippers, this was a worse Monday.

For the dead children, it was the worst Monday of all.

I wandered upstairs, feeling lost. I remembered what Callie had said about all the accidental deaths Stevens Peak had seen lately. The man falling off his roof... the old woman on her way home with roses for her husband...

A shiver ran down my back.

The car accident. That was almost me. If not for that weird gust of wind, I would be nothing but a tally mark in some statistical column. I opened the door to my room feeling seriously freaked out.

The first thing I did was check the Arbor-catcher I'd set up. It had gone off twice while I was at school. There were a couple of pictures of squirrels racing across the branch outside my window, caught in mid-leap. Not case-breaking evidence, by any means, but they were kind of cool. I set one as my new desktop background. Just something to do. Something else to think about.

I got on Gchat and told Ellen and Shelby about the fire. When the discussion devolved into Homecoming-related topics, I said I was tired and logged off. It was already dark out a we'd been gone for hours, and I hadn't eaten. When I dragged myself out of the chair and thumped downstairs, I found a sandwich and a banana laid out for me. Callie was wrapped up in a blanket in her green armchair, staring at a book. I noticed that she wasn't turning the pages. I ate quickly and went up to wash my face and go to bed.

Back in my bedroom, I fiddled with the camera, making sure it was pointed the right way and wouldn't tip over during the night. Then I opened the window.

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I could still smell ash in the air.

I climbed into bed, covering my head with the blankets. It was hot under there, hot like the stifling swelter of the house fire. But I didn't want to smell the smoke. I had this idea that it would choke me.

My dreams that night all seemed to play through a gray filter. At first I was in a movie theater, watching the fire flicker on the big screen. I could even see myself, down in the corner of the shot. Standing silent. Doing nothing to help. I focused on the oak, waiting for Arbor to appear. But the engines weren't coming. The police weren't there.

The fire raged on and on, unchecked, until the house burned to the ground. The movie jumped forward and there I was, stalking through the ashes. Charred wood, the remnants of a home once loved and lived in, rose up around me like black, broken teeth. My feet blistered. I saw that I was barefoot, standing on embers still glowing beneath the rubble.

I saw a body in another room.

I moved toward it over a cindered joist and a bare piece of electrical wire, stepping through what had recently been a wall.

The body was laid out. It wasn't burned, but whole. The hair was long, blond. Wavy. I couldn't see her face. A chilling fear splintered my body, holding me rigid. Slowly, I walked forward and knelt beside her.

I turned her chin gently toward me.

My mother's green eyes were open, gla.s.sy. Her lips still rosy and moist. But the life was gone from her. I glanced down, her belly was open. Blood was seeping out.

And then she smiled. A grinning death-mask. Her voice bubbled a question like soft spittle at the corners of her mouth.

"All five?" she asked.

I held back tears. "Five what, Mom? Five what?"

She did not answer. She was dead.

The screen went black and the audience clapped. They stood up and applauded, whooped and hollered and whistled for an encore.

Everybody yell Go Fight Win Go Fight Win I screamed. I screamed so loudly I thought my own eardrums would burst.

And I woke up to suffocation. Drenched in sweat, I was fighting. Fighting and losing. The enemy's strength overwhelmed me; the camera flashed like a strobe, taking picture after picture. I rolled around, squirming desperately under the great weight, trying to free myself.

Oh G.o.d, I'm going to die. I'm going to die.

My lungs burned for air. My throat was clogged with fuzz, my nose shut off by an unseen hand. I scrabbled and kicked and tried to cry out...