Chapter Eight: Fire (I.).

1.

Mary and Grady slept Monday away, waking up in each other's arms Tuesday morning. When the alarm sounded they disentangled themselves, dressing without a word.

Mary was famished. Before embarking for cla.s.s she ate half a granola bar, then crumbled up the other half, dumping it in the garbage.

The first cla.s.s of her college career was English 101, held in a building across campus. Everyone was chattering when she strolled in five minutes early. It turned into t.i.ttering when the sheet-white teacher, who was in a form fitting dress-which would have worked had she a form-entered and wrote Mrs. s.n.a.t.c.h on the board. The t.i.ttering turned into guffaws and Mrs. s.n.a.t.c.h wearily turned, as if this ritual kicked off every semester. In a voice both commanding and small she asked the a.s.sembled to explain which part of their anatomy her surname reminded them of. At this, the good freshmen shut up.

After cla.s.s Mary crossed campus alone. She was pleased to see that Grady had beaten her back, and, after much talk about calories and fat a.s.ses, they decided to have lunch.

The cafeteria was boisterous, rowdy. By the doors two rent-a-cops watched the influx of kids while the cash registers clicked incessantly, the ticker tape scrolling steadily from the gullets of the machines. The lunch line progressed from a buffet-style series of pans in which various meats and pastas sat under heat lamps, to a salad bar that Mary and Grady immediately favored. They scooped lettuce and cheese onto their paper plates, added two ladles of dressing, then smacked pudding into separate dishes. They called this dieting.

It was while they searched for a table that Mary laid eyes on Mike Randall and his jock cronies. She nearly dropped her plate.

"Ignore them," whispered Grady.

Mary joined her at a table in the middle of the cafeteria, but couldn't take her eyes off Randall. While Grady babbled and picked at her food, Mary didn't lift her fork. The sunlight from the window behind Mike gleamed off his heavily sprayed hair, making him look like a movie star shot in soft focus. He and his boys laughed convulsively every few seconds as their eyes darted from clique to clique. Mary imagined they laughed about girls like her as she watched their teeth flash, their tongues working in meaty jerks. They huddled around Mike, brays of laughter rolling from their midst in waves. Mary's eyes zeroed in, panning tighter and tighter on Mike until she saw only his crooked mouth twisting on his face, convulsing with sound.

"Mary?" Grady rubbed her palms over Mary's shaking hand. "We don't have to sit here.

Mary looked at Grady. "What?"

Grady dug in her pocket, came out with a pack of Winston and a lighter. She palmed the Bic. "Look at him, Mary."

Returning her gaze, she saw Mike glancing around, as if he felt her eyes. Finally, he saw her and smiled. He raised his middle finger and mouthed, 'I love you'. His boys tuned in. They chattered and three of them flipped her off. One of them ran his tongue over his middle finger.

"Look at him."

Mary felt confused a moment, then she got it and nodded.

"Yeah," whispered Grady. "Just look at him."

2.

Grady tossed the lighter into the air as she took her feet, and it returned to her palm with a click. She calmly circ.u.mnavigated the tables, processing toward Randall and his group like a bride. The clinking of dishes silenced, salad bar tongs clattered into the bins, and the voices that transacted campus business quieted for a moment. Mike's boys stared as she came. When she stood over Mike they encircled her. "What's up, Grady?" he asked, smirking. She reached over him, grabbed his gla.s.s of sweet tea, tongued the straw like a phallus, then plunged her mouth onto it, taking a mouthful of the tea inside her. Her cheeks swelled. "b.i.t.c.h, you can have my sweet tea." Mike p.r.o.nounced it sweat tay.

She winked, surveyed the surprised faces of his admirers, and spat the tea into Mike's face.

Randall took his feet so quickly she had no chance. He clamped hold of her neck. Three of Mike's boys scrambled to their feet, shouting for him to stop. They grabbed at his arms, their fingers attempting to pry his from Grady's neck. One of them smacked the side of his head, but Mike didn't seem to notice. His eyes were trained, like a hypnotist's, on Grady's.

The lunch room, in which the sound had dissolved in an antic.i.p.atory hush, exploded now with screams. Students swarmed around them, pressing together to see, jumping up to catch a glimpse of the violence. By the registers, the two rent-a-cops fingered their guns and made for the melee. Teachers fought hesitantly through the mob.

That's when things slowed for Grady; abruptly, the scene stopped its smooth forward motion; single frames clicked over to the next, the next: Mike's face above her last year, on the eve of the inaugural frat soiree, and he was mentioning how hot she was and how he'd like to give her something special. She wanted it, didn't she? Was she freaky enough to be his girl? Did she mind if he did whatever he felt like whenever he felt like it? He fed her a sip of Jungle Juice, then another. Around midnight, she let him and his friends do what they wanted, and for two entire days. It was the weekend before first cla.s.s.

In the aftermath she had been merely stunned. Daddy had had it, and so had half the high school football team, and so when it came to another set of customers, she had found it hard to muster up the anger. But she could do it for Mary.

She stroked the lever on the butane lighter. He was throttling her, but his hair did not move. His flesh was ivory, his eyes a spectral white. She was losing consciousness.

When she flicked the lever, a flame danced on the steel and she pressed against his clamped hands, nearing the hair around his ears. The flame curled about the nape of his neck, a barely flickering tongue. His violent thrashing fanned the single flame and licked up in slithers, inching from individual hairs as he pulled her to him, then flattening against the forest of his hair and spreading in a breath. The back of his head burned in spasms.

His eyes drifted up and he let go. At first, only a startled yelp escaped him. He raised his head as if the heat was above him, lifted his hand, then jerked it away and screamed, "OH s.h.i.t!" He jumped like a frog trapped in a jar, batting away at his blazing head. He clipped his shin on a table, then leapt onto it, his bone white Converse landing on a plate of pasta. Particles of it floated like flecks of confetti before dropping. Still smacking away at his head, he skipped across the tables in a flourish of movement, as if hopping from one lily pad to another. The flames danced.

There wasn't a fourth table to catch him. He extended his leg but met the floor instead, stretched out like an absurd, flaming hurdler.

For a moment, everyone was laughing and pointing. But the fall had clearly torn or broken something and Mike howled. The mob gasped. Someone screamed.

Rolling around on the lunchroom tile, Mike clutched his knee with one arm and madly smacked at his head with the other.

The kids quieted. While some turned and yelled for adults, most watched silently, their eyes filled with fire.

3.

The dean had called for Mary. She was nearing hyperventilation as she put down her dorm-room phone. Grady was rubbing her leg. "It's cool, baby, it's cool," she said. Mary took her friend's hand and held it. "What do I say?"

"Don't stand in front of the bus for me."

"I can't tell him everything, Grady. I can't."

"Mike did attack me. Tell him that."

Mary stood, nodded her head, ran her hands over her jeans. When she reached the door she looked back, wondering if Grady had dealt with worse. Had she done worse? "Okay. I'll be right back."

Grady smiled her wide-mouthed smile, sardonic and cynical and beautiful all at the same time. "Give him h.e.l.l," she said.

Mary returned her smile, thinking she probably looked steadier than she felt. As she strode into the hallway, her flat tennis shoes clopping on the dorm house tile, she reconsidered, knowing she looked like a wreck. "I think G.o.d made a slight mistake when he made you," her mother had told her once, back in the days when they'd made it out to the little Methodist meeting house every week, back in the days when G.o.d had been on their mind. Mary had asked her mother what she meant, and she'd told her, "He put your heart on your face, honey. You wear your feelings like a bad poker player wears his tell."

Everyone Mary pa.s.sed looked at her but didn't speak. Some she knew by name, but she said nothing, keeping her head down. She flushed and felt sick to her stomach; it felt like everyone knew what had happened in that filthy house. The campus was humming, as it always did and presumably always had, but today the currency of campus life involved her. If what was floating around was more truth than not, that was one thing, but the likelihood of truth being tossed around wasn't good. Whatever was making the rounds here at Carmichael no doubt bore little relation to what had actually happened, and it reminded her of a girl she had come to know during her senior year of high school.

Alberta Nitz, heavy-set and plain and more than a little top heavy, had moved from a place called Subsidy a week before school. According to Alberta, Subsidy was "four farms, a dirt road, and a church, somewhere in Idaho." They called her Alberta's t.i.ts, and soon a rumor popped up that she'd slept with five boys at a party she'd been invited to as a joke, f.u.c.ked them one after another, like in a p.o.r.no. Mary heard it so often that the thing just stuck; to say you didn't buy it was like telling people you weren't quite sure we'd ever landed on the moon.

After that first week, no one talked to Alberta. She sat by herself at a far corner of the cafeteria, and every now and again a jock would stroll close enough to lob a slice of lunch meat at her face. Cries of Home run! and Another facial for Alberta's t.i.ts! would fill the air when a toss was successful and the cafeteria would explode with a laughter so evil that Mary left Scott one day and crossed the lunch room, feeling the boys watching her a.s.s and the bounce of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as her feet rose and fell. She sat next to Alberta, placed a hand on hers and glared at anyone who looked their way.

I know just how you felt, Alberta.

Mary slid her hands in her pockets, kept her eyes on the asphalt and walked in short, timid steps. Conversations paused, people broke into laughter, and Mary wanted nothing more than to be small, unnoticed, invisible.

I either need more, or I need to leave. She'd thought that, hadn't she? It was the last thing she could remember going through her mind before- Mary stopped. A tear dropped from her eye.

Before- She took a step, wondered if people were staring at her, and got in gear, putting one foot in front of the other.

Before it happened.

The realization was coming slowly, but coming all the same, that all her life, her boring but peaceful childhood, her time with Scott, didn't really exist anymore, not for her, anyway. There would be no smooth transition from girl to woman, no gradual emergence as a responsible adult. Her past was before now, her future whatever happened from here on out, and this was the way it would always be. Mike Randall and whoever else had been in the room, in her, that night had erected a barrier in her life: with their fingers, their hips, their legs, but most of all with their hearts, they'd built a wall.

At the end of her high school days, her favorite English teacher had told her, "The past is prologue, Mary. Everything changes now. Try not to f.u.c.k up." His curse had caught her unawares, and she hadn't thought too much about it since-she'd been too busy preparing for college-but his comment struck her now as nothing short of portentous. The past was most definitely only prologue, everything had changed, and she had f.u.c.ked up. After all, she had realized that she needed to leave before the Everclear had charged through her system, and didn't that mean a measure of responsibility for what had happened was hers? In her heart she was still angry at Scott, and she had wanted someone to take something from him. But no one had taken a thing from Scott.

Fine, she told herself. But what do I do now?

Mike deserved prison. But to go that route would involve explaining to her mother what had happened. There would be statements to police, perhaps a trial. . . .

Mary walked on. She'd never been so confused, so frightened, so filled with terrible expectation. So she thought back, back into a past that lived now over a wall. When she was nine, ten, and on until she'd met Scott, she'd often laid awake at night, the pristine, ghostly light of a street lamp spread over her room like an ethereal fog, asking G.o.d to send her a friend, someone who would make her feel less alone, a companion she could trust in all things.

She closed her eyes, still slowly heading toward the Administration building. "Please, G.o.d," she whispered. "I need a friend."

Dean Marshall Gay was short and fat and misfortunately groomed. "Are you going to tell me?" he asked, sitting in the wing-backed chair behind his desk. The tight burgundy leather exhaled. Everything around him was plush and sedate, burgundy and oak, blood and old bones.

Mary stood next to a less ostentatious chair. He hadn't offered it to her. "Mike attacked her. She defended herself," she said. But Grady goaded him, she thought. And she'd known what he'd do. She'd set the trap. The plan had been good, the execution perfect.

The dean sat back, looking her over, his mouth pinched. Disappointment played in his eyes. "It's a mess, Miss McDylan. I've got a news conference in an hour."

"I'm sorry," replied Mary. She was sorry the moment she said it.

The dean rose, leaned over his desk on his knuckles. "My basketball star has third-degree burns on his face, neck and hands. Your friend gave him those burns."

"He attacked her," said Mary, and this time she believed it herself.

"Before or after she set his head on fire?"

"After," she said hotly.

They stared at each other. After a while Mary looked around, at the mahogany bookshelves that had been built into the walls, at the volumes that rested within them. All that knowledge, all those keen minds; the savagery of dynamic thought captured on reams of yellowed paper, bound by ancient leather and forgotten in the upper reaches of austere academia. How long had it been since the dean had climbed that oak ladder? How long since he'd taken down a volume and been touched by the fire?

All of a sudden, as if he'd heard her thoughts, the dean stiffened. "Have a wonderful day, Miss McDylan. I imagine your future here at Carmichael will be short."

She nearly turned to walk away, but stopped. "All these books, all this showy stuff-and for this," she said, turning, gazing into the darkly colored, deep room.

The dean looked up. "What, Miss McDylan?"

"You're surrounded by this," said Mary, thinking of Jesus and the money changers in the temple. "But all you can think about is basketball money and what the alumni might think. Have you really thought much about Mike? About his face?"

The dean stepped back as if he'd been pushed. Slowly, he shook his head and opened a folder before he glanced back up. "I've got a mess to clean up, Miss McDylan."

Mary stared at him a moment longer. Then she turned around, pulled open the tall, heavy doors, and walked out.

Unable to sleep, Mary lay in bed and thought of Mike Randall. Wind pawed at the window. The tree outside, seen through the quilt tacked over the window, cast a dancing man on the wall. She lay awake for hours, thoughts coursing through her like electricity.

Before Grady stood up with the lighter, Randall had been captain of the basketball team; he'd dropped his pants on a large anatomical incongruity; he'd owned every s.p.a.ce his body took up. Life had been good.

No more.

And a measure of the blame was hers. Mike had chosen to mistreat her. But deep in her heart, just as she'd known that the evening would turn sour if she continued to drink, she'd known Grady would hurt him. She'd watched her palm the lighter, and although she hadn't known exactly what was coming- She and Mike were the same. No different.

Mary sat up, crept from her bed, her feet slapping on the tile. She felt along Grady's boxspring. Her fingers slid along the floor, over a hairbrush, around a half-filled gla.s.s and into Grady's purse. She nabbed the keys, hoped they wouldn't jangle. Then she hesitated, keys in hand. Would it be stupid to apologize, to do the right thing regardless of circ.u.mstance?

Mary glided past the cracked door, closed it and made her way downstairs.

By the illumination of a single streetlight she found Grady's Toyota, a late-eighties relic. The lock turned easily, but the door wouldn't open. It hitched, stuck on something. She tugged on the handle, but it didn't budge, so she yanked, stomped her foot against the wheel well and pulled. After two or three minutes, she tired, stepped away. And saw it. The door was lopsided. With an anxious sigh, she got on her knees, jammed her fingers under the metal, forcing it up. It wrenched past the jamb. She toppled back. From the macadam she climbed into the car, tapped the business end of the key at the ignition, but it didn't fit. "d.a.m.n it!" she screamed, slapping her hands on the steering wheel.

Beneath the console was a b.u.t.ton. She stared at it a minute, then pressed it and tried the key again. It slid in. She turned it. Nothing.

"Can anything else go wrong?" she sobbed, slamming her palms against the wheel. Then her eyes drifted down. "You've got to be kidding me." The Toyota was a stick shift. She'd never driven one. "Okay," she said, taking deep, calming breaths. "You've seen Daddy in the 'Vette. You've even paid attention."

On the floor were three pedals. The accelerator, the brake, and the next one over had to be the clutch. Hadn't her father said that shifting wasn't difficult? Did you depress the clutch just to start the car, or to shift as well? Closing her eyes, she recalled her father in the Corvette, his legs working. She shoved the clutch to the floor. The car rolled. She cried out, took her foot off the clutch. The car jumped. She stepped on the brake, then the clutch; pushed the b.u.t.ton, twisted the key. The engine turned over, sprang to life, hummed pleasantly.

The drumstick was digging into her side. She slid it from her sweats, laid it on the pa.s.senger seat, and grabbed hold of the gear shift, rubbed her palm over the ball, on which an idiot's guide to a manual transmission was printed in white grooves. Slipping the stick from first, she left it in the center of the console a second, recognizing from the grid that this was neutral. The car teetered on its wheel base. "Okay, okay, here we-" and she released the brake. The Toyota rolled back. Instead of lightly pressing the gas, in her fright she stomped it down. The engine raced, the car spun back in a wide arc, and she screeched in operatic spasms.

She missed a late model Porsche by inches. The Toyota only stopped because as the car lurched and lunged her foot slipped fell off the gas and onto the brake by fortuitous accident. The car gurgled, belched and died.

That's when Grady knocked on the driver side window.

Mary screamed, jumping half out of her seat. Moon and starlight flashed off the windshield.

"Roll it down!" yelled Grady, smacking her palm on the gla.s.s.

Mary grabbed the lever and turned it, half expecting Grady's hands to come shoving through the opening like a set of claws. Instead, Grady tossed her arms over the down window, resting her chin on them. "What'cha doing?" she asked, as if Mary were sneaking off to a party without her.

"I'm so sorry, Grady, I was-"

"You okay?"

Mary hesitated. "I need to see him."

"He got what he deserved."