Fire with Fire

I’VE BEEN CRYING FOR TWO STRAIGHT DAYS. I CAN’T eat; I can’t sleep. I can’t do anything.

I hear Aunt Bette in the bathroom, washing her face and brushing her teeth. Her nightly routine. On her way to bed, she stops in my room. She has her robe cinched tight around her waist and a newspaper under her arm.

I’m lying in a heap on my bed, staring at the ceiling. I can’t even bring myself to say good-night.

Aunt Bette stands there, watching me for a second or two. Then she says, “There’s an article in the paper today.” She holds it up for me. The story above the fold is about the dance, the fire. There’s a picture of the gym, black smoke trickling out the windows, a stream of students pouring out the door. “They think it was electrical.”

I roll away from her, toward the wall, because I don’t want to talk about homecoming. I don’t even want to think about it. I’ve already gone over it a million and one times in my head. How everything went so wrong.

I was finally ready for him to see me that night, in my pretty dress, proud and strong and changed. I had this idea of how it would go. Reeve, completely spaced out on the drugs we’d slipped him, would keep noticing me in the crowd. Something about me would seem familiar. He’d be drawn to me. He’d think I was beautiful.

Each time our eyes met, I’d touch the daisy pendant necklace he’d given me for my birthday, smile, and wait for him to figure out who I was. Meanwhile, the teachers would be watching Reeve act more and more crazy. They’d sense that something was off. And as he realized who I was, they’d haul his butt off to the principal’s office and he’d get the punishment he deserved.

Only that wasn’t what happened. Not even close.

Reeve knew who I was as soon as he laid eyes on me. Despite all the ways I’ve changed since seventh grade, he saw the fat girl who’d been dumb enough to believe he was her friend. Reeve saw Big Easy. Hearing him say it knocked the wind out of me, the same way it had when he’d pushed me into the dark, cold water. I’d only ever be one thing to him. Nothing but that. I was so angry. And I snapped.

“One of the students who got hurt, it sounded like he was a big football player at the high school.”

“His name is Reeve,” I say quietly. “Reeve Tabatsky.”

“I know.” I hear Aunt Bette take a step closer. “He was the boy who used to tease you, Mary.”

Instead of answering her, I press my lips together tight.

“We had that long talk about him over hot chocolates when I came for Christmas. Remember?”

I do remember. I’d hoped that Aunt Bette would have some good advice for me—a way I could get Reeve to act like he did on our ferry rides when other people were around. I thought she’d understand. But Aunt Bette told me to just grab a teacher and tattle the next time Reeve teased me in front of other kids. “That’ll teach him to leave you alone,” she’d said.

Leave me alone? It was the last thing I wanted.

That’s when I knew that no adults could understand. Nobody would get the kind of relationship that Reeve and I had.

I can hear Aunt Bette breathing shallow breaths a few steps away from my bed. “Did you . . .”

I roll back toward her. “Did I what?” It comes out so mean, but I can’t help it. Can’t she tell I’m not in the mood to talk?

Aunt Bette’s eyes are wide. “Nothing,” she says, and backs out of the room.

I can’t deal. So I get up, wrap a sweater around my night-gown, slip on my sneakers, and creep out the back door.

I walk down to Main Street and head toward the cliffs. There’s a big one I used to love to look out from, because you could see for miles.

But tonight there’s nothing but blackness beyond the cliff. Blackness and quiet, like the edge of the world. I shuffle my feet until the tips of my shoes hang over the rock. Some gravel tumbles over the edge, but I never hear it hit the water. The fall goes on forever.

Instead I hear Reeve whisper to me at the homecoming dance. Big Easy. Like an echo, over and over and over.

I ball my fists, fighting to push the memory of what happened next out of my head. But it doesn’t work. It never works.

There were those other times too. Like when Rennie fell off the cheering pyramid.

And the time all the locker doors slammed closed at once. Something is wrong with me. Something’s . . . Off.

A cloud pulls away from the moon, like a curtain in a play. Light reflects off the wet rock and makes everything glisten.

There’s a path where the rocks stagger down the side of the cliff in crooked stairs. I make my way down them until I can’t go any farther. I peer over the edge. Waves crash down far below me. They beat against the rocks and fill the air with mist.

One more step . . . One more step and it all goes away. Everything I’ve done, everything that’s been done to me, it just washes away.

Suddenly there’s a gust of wind and a splash of water. It nearly knocks me over the edge. I fall to my knees and crawl backward to the path.

There’s one thing I can’t let go of.

Reeve.

I love him in spite of everything he did to me. I love him even while I hate him. I don’t know how to stop.

And the worst part is that I don’t even know if I want to.