Burning Read online

  “Can I?” I ask.

  “By all means.”

  I tug the bottom photo out from under the stack. It shows Jessica and the little boy kneeling next to the front porch, tracing pictures in the dirt with a twig. The corner of her mouth slants upward, like she’s thinking of smiling but hasn’t decided yet. I grin at the photograph before sliding it back beneath the others. I’ve seen that look before.

  “Has she mentioned them to you?” Dr. Gruen asks.

  “No. I didn’t know she was in foster care.”

  “I see.” Dr. Gruen taps the photographs into a neat stack and paper clips them together. “Prepare yourself. These next photos are a bit shocking.”

  She flips a page in the folder before I can respond. A new photograph stares up at me: fire eating away at the run-down house and racing over the field. Smoke billowing into the sky, obscuring everything but the angry orange flames.

  I don’t realize I’m digging my fingers into my legs until I feel a prick of pain on my thighs.

  “She didn’t tell me,” I say, flexing my fingers. Dr. Gruen nods and turns the page. There’s another photo, this one of the little boy with the floppy brown hair lying in a hospital bed. Tubes wind out of his nose and around his head. His glasses sit on the table next to him, cracks splintering the lenses.

  “Her foster father was killed in the fire,” Dr. Gruen explains. “And her little brother is still in the hospital. They don’t know if he’ll ever wake up.”

  “Jessica did that?” I ask.

  “We believe so. She’s awaiting trial for arson and manslaughter. The State of New York wants to try her as an adult.”

  I stare at the little boy lying in that bed and imagine Charlie. Charlie with tubes coming out of his mouth. Charlie unable to open his eyes. Acid stings the back of my throat, and for a second, I think I might throw up.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I ask.

  “You and I both know that Jessica didn’t set this fire intending to hurt her family. What happened was an accident, the unfortunate side effect of something she can’t control. But the police didn’t see it that way. A judge certainly won’t. Angela, I came here hoping that I could keep Jessica from life in prison. But since you’re spending so much time with her, I thought you needed to know the truth. The whole truth.”

  I close my eyes, trying to sort out this conversation in my head. But it’s hard enough for me to make sense of words written down on a page in front of me, and this sounds like one of my dad’s scary stories.

  “What about SciGirls?” I ask, finally. “Everyone’s signing up for that test. Are you planning on accepting any of them? Or are you just here for Jessica?”

  Silence stretches between us. It feels weighty, somehow. Like it’s filled with more mysterious, creepy things.

  “There’s a little more to SciGirls than what’s in those brochures.” Dr. Gruen glances over her shoulder, at the photograph of the girls in lab coats. “When I started my career as a caseworker, it was my job to keep kids like you from falling through the cracks. But kids like Jessica don’t have anyone to protect them. No one understands their unique abilities and challenges. No one believes them when they say it wasn’t their fault. That’s where SciGirls comes in.”

  A chill spreads through my body. “I don’t understand. Kids like Jessica? There are others?”

  “Oh yes. And when they get in trouble or make something strange happen, it’s my job to evaluate them and make a case to have them sent to our facilities, where we can help them. But I never forgot about all the other children I met back when I was a caseworker. There’s a place for them at our program as well.”

  “I don’t understand. What kind of place?”

  Dr. Gruen taps an ink-stained finger against the folder. “SciGirls focuses on helping children who’ve developed unusual abilities, but we also employ scientists and researchers and doctors. We reach out to girls who might never have pursued a career in science and help them explore those roles in our labs and hospitals. They start as assistants, of course, but over the years, many of our girls have gone on to study science and medicine at a college level. Like I mentioned before, it’s a very prestigious program. I’m not just here for Jessica. I’m here for all of you.”

  College. I’ve never even considered college before, but now an image rises in the back of my head: perfect imaginary Stacy with her shiny hair and crisp white lab coat. Then the picture shifts, and it’s not Stacy wearing the lab coat anymore. It’s me. Mateo stands beside me, holding my hand. He leans over and kisses—

  I close my eyes and shake the image out of my head. Kids like me don’t go to college. “How can I help?”

  Dr. Gruen opens the folder again and checks a Post-it on the inside cover. “Jessica’s trial is scheduled for two weeks from today. I mostly need you to keep doing what you’ve been doing. Be her friend. Get her to open up to you. If she says anything . . . notable, it’d be best if you told me directly.”

  Nerves buzz up my skin, though I can’t quite place why. It’s like feeling a prick of water on your arm when it looks like rain, only a second later you can’t remember if you felt it or imagined it. “You want me to spy on her?”

  “I want you to help her,” Dr. Gruen amends smoothly. “You might have seen Jessica carrying around a stuffed animal.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “A teddy bear, right?”

  “Right. I gave her that bear when she first arrived. It was a kind of experiment, you see. It’s common for pyretics to—”

  “Pyretics?” I interrupt.

  “It’s a technical term,” Dr. Gruen explains. “We use it to describe children who can start fires with their mind. As I was saying, pyretics often direct their abilities on specific objects. We believe the objects help them to focus their power. Like a token, or a good-luck charm.”

  I think of blue flames eating at charred fur. “The other kids also set teddy bears on fire?”

  “Or dolls or action figures,” Dr. Gruen says. “I wasn’t certain of Jessica’s abilities when I first met her, so I gave her the bear as a test. I know it sounds strange, but the behavior is quite helpful to us. When Jessica burns something, it leaves behind a trace signature. Like a fingerprint. We learn all sorts of things by studying them. Where she got her powers from, for instance, and how developed they are. Pyretic abilities aren’t passed genetically, so this information is essential for our research.”

  Something suddenly clicks into place. “That’s why you took my sink,” I say. Dr. Gruen nods.

  “Exactly. Unfortunately the fingerprint Jessica left on your sink wasn’t strong enough to give us the information we need. We’ll need to take a look at her bear to gain a full understanding of her abilities. For reasons we don’t quite understand, pyretics tend to bond with a single object. The fingerprints they leave elsewhere are never quite as strong.” Dr. Gruen pauses, studying me. “We didn’t anticipate her hiding the bear. Do you think you might be able to bring it to me?”

  There it is again—that nervous feeling. Like a tiny prick of water. I wrap my fingers around my arms, trying to ignore it. I don’t love the idea of spying or stealing Jessica’s things. But then I think of that burning house and the little boy with the tubes running up his nose. Dr. Gruen’s right—Jessica didn’t set that fire on purpose. She doesn’t belong in prison. But she needs help.

  If SciGirls can help her, that’s where she should be.

  I nod. “I can get it.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I lie awake in bed that night, my eyes pressed shut so it looks like I’m sleeping. It feels like hours pass before I hear blankets rustle in the bunk next to mine. I wait. The mattress moans. Our door creaks open.

  One second. Two seconds. I hold my breath until I start to feel dizzy. The door clicks shut again. I exhale and open my eyes, pushing the blanket off my legs.

  I wait until Mateo’s flashlight disappears around the corner, and then I creep through the door. Brunesfield yawns before me,
dark and threatening. I shiver. Fifteen minutes until he passes this way again.

  Jessica drifts down the hall, the charred teddy bear dangling from her hand. Ashy fur flakes away and flutters across the floor. Silvery light pours in from the windows at the ceiling, illuminating her like a ghost.

  She goes to the same bathroom. I hide at the end of the hall. Wind presses against the windows. The walls creak. I wait until the smell of burning fabric reaches my nose. Then I follow her.

  Cold spreads from the concrete floor to my toes and up the back of my legs, like Brunesfield itself is reaching through my skin and wrapping its fingers around my bones. I wish I could turn around and hurry back to my dorm. But then I think of Dr. Gruen tapping her ink-stained fingers against Jessica’s file, and I force myself into the bathroom.

  Orange light dances across the moldy tile. A faucet drips, and the sound bounces off the walls. Jessica sits cross-legged at the same spot on the damp floor. Her teddy bear lies in front of her, flames flickering over its ruined fur. She stares at the bear, and when the fire grows too high, she jerks around to face the sinks on the right wall. Water gurgles in the pipes and pours from the faucets, boiling. It bubbles as it splashes across the tile.

  She’s practicing, I realize. She’s pushing her powers as far as they can go, then looking at the water to calm herself down. Jessica’s shoulders quake. She lowers her hands to the floor, and rocks back and forth.

  I step forward, and water gathers beneath my toes. Dr. Gruen said that a lot of the kids she works with do this, but all at once I put together why: the humming, the rocking, the way Jessica refuses to talk or look people in the eyes.

  “You’re scared,” I say.

  Jessica flinches, then turns so quickly that I duck behind a wall. I imagine flames eating away my skin, smoke choking my lungs. My heart beats so fast and hard that it makes my chest ache. But nothing happens. I inhale, then peek around the corner again.

  Jessica stares at me with those black eyes, digging her fingers into the spaces between the tiles. I’m suddenly aware of the empty hallways twisting around us, the girls fast asleep in their locked dorms, and Mateo wandering around on the other side of the building. I’m alone. Completely, perfectly alone.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” I step into the bathroom, holding my hands in front of me. She cocks her head, like a bird.

  “Stop.” Her voice comes out sounding raspy and thin. It raises the hair on the back of my neck, like fingernails on a chalkboard. I stop where I am, though I feel like I should be running.

  Ragged breathing shakes Jessica’s chest. The black fades back into her pupils, and she’s normal again. She could be a girl at Charlie’s school. The next-door neighbor’s daughter. She shuts her eyes, and relief floods her face. Something inside me twists.

  “Are you okay?” I lower myself to the floor and pull my knees to my chest.

  “I almost hurt you.”

  “But you didn’t,” I say. “You stopped it.”

  “This time,” she whispers.

  I think of the photographs Dr. Gruen showed me: the boy in the hospital with tubes running up his nose, a little gray house being devoured by fire. “Is that why you don’t talk to anyone?” I ask. “You’re afraid of hurting them?”

  A minute passes. Jessica presses a drop of water into the floor. Wind howls through the distant trees, and I swear I can hear the shaking branches even though they’re miles away.

  “You can tell me,” I say. Jessica swallows.

  “I’ve hurt people before,” she says in a small voice. “My foster brother. He’s in the hospital.”

  “And you think it’s your fault?”

  “It is my fault.”

  “Why?”

  Jessica doesn’t answer. Her teddy bear lies in front of her on the tile. Forgotten. I could grab it now, take it directly to Dr. Gruen and be done with this whole night. But something stops me.

  I clear my throat. “Did I ever tell you why I’m here?” I ask. Jessica shakes her head. “Uh, so I was dating this guy, Jake. He was really cute, you know? Best-looking guy at my school.”

  I pause, remembering Jake’s face. He had a gap between his two front teeth, and a dimple in his left cheek. He wore his hair long, so it flopped over his pale blue eyes. I used to run my hands through it and tuck it behind his ears. Afterward, my fingers always smelled like pine needles, and like the clove cigarettes he smoked.

  “I knew he was bad for me,” I continue. “But I pretended I didn’t.”

  “Because he was cute?” Jessica’s voice is barely a whisper.

  I roll my eyes. “Right. Because he was cute.”

  The corner of her mouth twists into an almost-smile.

  “It was more than that, though,” I continue. “He looked at me. Really looked at me, you know? Everyone else thought I was just some rotten kid, but with Jake . . . well he didn’t even care. Like, maybe, that’s kind of why he liked me. So when he started breaking into apartments, I helped.”

  Jessica traces her finger over the tile. “That’s why you’re here? Because you robbed someone’s apartment?”

  I open my mouth, but my voice catches in my throat. I never really learned how to tell this story. I stumble over details and misremember the exact chain of events. How do you talk about the worst thing you’ve ever done? How do you describe the way the floor falls out from under your feet? How you drop down to a place you can never crawl back out of?

  I swallow and force myself to keep talking. “Someone got hurt at the last place we broke into. The woman who lived there heard us and came into the hallway to see what was going on. Jake and I tried to run past her and she lost her balance. Fell down the stairs.”

  I remember that moment like it just happened. We’d already finished getting the good stuff: the computers and electronics were in the car, and I’d stuffed all the cash from her purse into my back pocket. We were just taking one last sweep of the place to see if we missed anything when I heard a door rattle and a woman’s voice ask, “Who’s there?”

  Jake took off. He was down the hall and out the door before the woman knew what was going on. I’m the one who messed up. She grabbed for me as I ran past, caught me by the wrist. I tried to pull my arm loose, and she lost her balance and fell.

  I shiver and pull my sweatshirt sleeves down over my hands. She didn’t even scream, but the sound her body made as it rolled down the steps was worse than anything I’d ever heard.

  Jessica stops tracing the tile. She watches me from the corner of her eye.

  “I’m telling you this because you should know that I deserve to be here.” I inhale, and the raspy sound of my breathing echoes off the walls. “I did something bad even though I knew it was bad, and a woman got hurt. Because of me.”

  “But you didn’t mean to,” Jessica says.

  “Did you mean to?”

  “Yes.” Jessica touches her teddy bear, and a flake of black fur crumbles onto the tile. “I wanted to hurt him.”

  I think of the photograph of Jessica crouching next to that little boy drawing pictures in the dirt. “You wanted to hurt your foster brother?”

  “No.”

  “Then who?”

  Black tendrils race across Jessica’s eyes like clouds in a storm. The tenderness I’d started to feel toward her snaps right off. I scramble to my feet, fear raising the hair on the back of my neck.

  “Holy—” I murmur, covering my mouth with my hands. Jessica rocks forward, pressing her hands flat against the floor. I want to run, but I picture flames chasing me across the bathroom, fire eating into my skin. The floor grows hot. The bottoms of my feet blister against the scorching tile, and tears prick the corners of my eyes. The air around Jessica hums. Like the air around power lines.

  “Jessica,” I whisper. I can suddenly feel each inch of space between me and every other person in this building. There’s no one to help. No one to come if I scream. “Jessica, calm down. Please.”

  “It was my foste
r dad,” she whispers in that too-high, nails-on-the-chalkboard voice. “He was the one I wanted to hurt.”

  “He’s not here,” I say, but Jessica doesn’t seem to hear me. She rocks back and forth, her eyes oily and dark. The light above us flicks on and then off again.

  “He was mean to us,” she says.

  “You’re safe now.”

  “He called me a monster.”

  The teddy bear sparks. Crackling red and orange flames explode from its fur. Smoke curls around my arms and legs and singes the skin inside my nose. I leap backward, banging my hip against one of the cracked porcelain sinks. Pain spreads up my back and through my pelvis. I bite my lip to keep from crying out.

  “I don’t want to be a monster,” Jessica says.

  For a moment I’m too terrified to do anything but watch the stuffed bear burn. But that word, “monster,” cuts into me, touching something deep and hidden. I know about monsters. They’re dark, beautiful things, just like in my dad’s stories. They’re as familiar to me as his deep voice and the spicy smell of his cologne. There’s no reason to be afraid.

  I lower myself to my knees, careful not to touch the burning bear. Firelight dances in Jessica’s eyes. Hands shaking, I reach for her shoulder. Her skin burns hot beneath her T-shirt.

  The words come to me, and it’s like they were always there. Like I always knew what I was going to say.

  “Monsters are more interesting.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jessica lurches forward, like she might vomit. The flames on the floor burn down to embers.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  Jessica’s eyes clear, the black fading back to brown and white. She nods, and the heat drains from her skin, leaving her arm cold beneath my fingers. The last embers go dark, and thin ribbons of smoke twist toward the ceiling. The smell of burned teddy bear stings my nose.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  “That’s okay.” My voice comes out fast and high. I clear my throat. “We should get back to the dorms.”