Fire Will Fall (24 page)

We still had some homework to do so we could graduate, but it was a breeze, and we had most of three months' work done by the end of March.

"I started a blog, and people keep signing the guest book. It's pretty amazing." She turned the screen and showed them the messages left by people from all over, her pretty smile making Dempsey stare into the side of her head.

He'd had a crush on almost every girl in school over the years, but he kept returning to Cora. None of us had ever really noticed Cora, and to that he always responded that he liked "going it alone sometimes."

Cora was almost as aloof to Jon now as she had been for years, though she was always polite. She pretended he wasn't there. I decided to help her out a little before she had to put a stop to it herself. "Did you hear about the speech Nurse Haley gave us the night before we left?"

"My mom told me, yeah," Jon said quizzically, returning to the bed. "Sounds complicated. Let's see. We can touch you, but we can't stick our fingers in your mouths when we got cuts on our hands. You can catch it by swapping spit—they think, but they're not sure."

Nobody laughed, waiting tensely for Rain's take on this. Whatever Rain joked about, everyone would joke about. But she was rammy and probably still frustrated about what never came down between her and me at the pond, and her finger burned. She would not tell about the pond to this crew—yet. They'd take a while to believe it.

"Nurses are so outspoken. They'll talk about anything. She says we're in the Gonorrhea Guild. It'll work like an STD, honest to god."

Dobbins shook his head. "That is so not right. There's no justice in the universe. How do the president of the 'No' Girls and the only guy who never misses a Young Life meeting get in a mess like this?"

"What's the 'No' Girls?" Rain's head went up.

I'd never told her this one. It's strictly locker-room speak. Dobbins grinned helplessly as Tannis and Jon and I laughed into our laps.

"Rain, it means that when it came time to decide who we were all taking to the junior prom, we had to pull straws to see who was going to get stuck with you," Dobbins said.

Rain and I could have been voted Least Likely to Catch an STD in school.

"Now I have to sit around here and wish I had been you." She nudged Jeanine.

I shushed everyone after laughs exploded. There are no secrets in this group. Jeanine drinks and has random sex, but she's remorseful on Monday and apologizes and explains herself and asks for forgiveness, which sounds like heaping more dumb behavior onto dumb behavior, but she gets away with it somehow. It's hard to cut up about somebody who's vulnerable and crying in your face. Twice she had "gone on a ride" with a few guys in the music crowd (we call them Head Bangers in our school) who kind of hate us, and she'd have us threatening to kick their butts by the end of school on Monday.

Jeanine is adorable, and in a very pseudo-sexy way. She's a tall, lean athlete, all strappy muscle and bone, always with the same unkempt ponytail, no makeup, and you never see her without her varsity jacket. Zero cleavage. You just can't imagine her doing this stuff.

"Oh, no. You don't wish you were me." She giggled, gripping her long ponytail nervously. "Something terrible happened a few weeks back. Are you ready for information overload?"

We said no, but that didn't stop her.

"I was shopping for my prom dress with my mom. And this other lady came in with her daughter. No names, okay? And my mom got in these silent giggle fits, and she exploded once we got back out in the mall. She said, 'Did you see that woman in there? When we were your age, she used to pull trains.'"

"Whoa..." I tried to quiet Dempsey and Tannis as their sides split.

Cora's bare feet were crossed on the bed, driving Dempsey mad. "Cora. You know what a pulled train is? It's when there's plural guys and a singular girl—"

"Don't taint her." Dobbins tossed a Dorito at his head. "Will you not be satisfied until her mind is just as scummed over as yours? Continue, Jeanine. Don't listen, Cora."

Cora's smiling face turned bright red, and I often thought the comments about her naiveté bothered her more than the unedited remarks that flew between us all.

Jeanine's voice got lower, and heads went in. "I was all 'Mom! How could you tell me a thing like that, and how can you even remember it?' She said, 'Certain things people never forget. So take it under advisement if you're ever thinking of creating a sex scandal.' Well, she didn't know I'd already taken a few stupid pills. So as I see it, I have to go live somewhere else as an adult. I have to marry someone from out of town."

"Maybe you'll have sons," Dempsey said. "That'd make for fewer trips to the mall. At any rate, I'll marry you, Jeanine!"

"You would marry anybody," she noted, and turned to the rest of us. "So, you see, Rain? Don't ever wish you were me, unless you want to be in the mall with your kids someday with moms suddenly crawling out of the woodwork, guffawing into their handbags. Would you want your daughter standing there, all 'Mom. Why's everyone staring at you?'"

Rain pinched her lips to keep a grin from forming, but I was glad to see it coming out her eyes.

"Remember all the abstinence speeches Mr. Hypocrite used to give us?" she asked. She was talking about my brother, who gave
her
plenty of abstinence speeches last year—while he threatened to sic a hooker on me if I didn't decide to Do It before graduation. "Scott tried to explain to me before going to sleep last night that I have five boyfriends. Right here."

She held up her fingers and wagged them. Jeanine tried to smack them down while her mouth made some horrified O shape that didn't last too long. She laughed spasmodically into her knee.

"What are you staring at
me
for?" Dempsey demanded of Rain.

"Because you get turned down so often. It must be, um, frustrating."

"I know nothing about my five girlfriends. Even if I did, I don't own a manual to loan you. And boys and girls are very different. In case you never noticed."

"This conversation grows gravely inappropriate," Dobbins said, studying the side of his soda can. For once, it wasn't me asking Rain to shut up.

She ignored him, as I could have predicted, rambling on about Miss Haley's speech opening Pandora's box. "Adrianna LoPresti, our illustrious field hockey co-captain who would say
anything
... she says if you're going to make a date with your five boyfriends, you need a 'trigger' and so to surf the Internet for dirty pictures. The problem? Dirty pictures do nothing for me except gross me out."

"All right ... enough," Dobbins said over the cackles dripping from the ceiling. He wanted to be a teacher. I figured he would be a good one because of how he could take control of situations. He talked on in total seriousness until everyone was listening. "Rain, the nurse said you got hurt near what you thought was an animal carcass? Tell me about this, as I might have some interesting fodder that would shed some light."

"It
was
an animal carcass," she insisted, swapping glances with me. "Or it was a pile of animal bones all caught in bramble. Very strange."

"Because when we were driving up here, I couldn't figure out how to turn off Ronnie's police radio, so I was listening to it."

Ronnie Dobbins was Scott's good friend, and he had just been accepted into the training program for state troopers in December. He had one of those endlessly babbling police CB radios in his bedroom, and I wasn't surprised he had one in his car, too. He'd obviously loaned his car to Bob tonight.

"Did you know there were weird animal remains found in Griffith's Landing this afternoon?"

I sat up and listened, and everyone must have seen or sensed it, because the room got very silent.

"Like ... goats?" Rain tore a marshmallow pack open and plopped one in her mouth. "It was definitely a goat. There's two other goats on this property, and they have bells on red ribbons around their necks. I started to feel the pain right after I lifted a red ribbon with a bell attached to it. It had been, like, imbedded in all this goo and bones in the bramble. I touched it with my pinkie."

He pinched his lips, slowly shaking his head. "Your nurse didn't say what kind of animal you found. What they found in Griffith's Landing were dead monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Rain looked totally lost. I figured it wasn't related, but the group's interest was piqued because you don't hear of monkeys in these parts unless they're in the Philadelphia zoo.

"Yeah.
Monkeys
." He spun his index finger in the air. "These guys were blathering, so it wasn't all so easy to hear, but I know they found two dead monkeys and said some strange stuff about the corpses."

Dobbins went on. "In a nutshell, the cops found these two piles of bones buried under the boardwalk in Griffith's Landing around three fifteen, having followed some stench that covered half the island. The CDC was at the scene. Your dad's name got mentioned, Rain. He was there."

With that, Cora's head shot up, and she stared at Dobbins, too. Rain looked even more confused. "Daddy had run off for some emergency just before I got hurt. Mr. Tiger said tonight that with the emergency, they forgot to tell Marg and just took off.
Monkeys?
He's leaving us unattended due to dead
monkeys?
I mean, monkeys, dead or alive, are weird in these parts. But they've got nothing to do with his job. I don't get it. And come to think of it, he hasn't come back yet. When Scott blew a fuse at the nurse, Dad sent Mr. Tiger back here to soothe him down. I guess my dad and Scott had a fight. I'm, like, forced into this bed rest that I don't want or need, and Dad's over in Griffith's with animal bones?"

I didn't get it either. Dobbins chewed a Dorito and swallowed, shrugging. "According to all this chatter, the CDC had to collect the remains in a steel drum, something about how the remains ate through three plastic garbage bags, and they were afraid of somebody getting burned."

"Burned by
what?
" Rain asked, her face screwed up into a total confusion fest.

"I don't know," he said. "What hurt you?"

The question hovered unanswered. Finally Rain said to me, "Bubba, do you remember that we smelled something kind of scorchy? I totally forgot about that. It smelled like an electrical fire ... something around there did."

I remembered but was distracted by other notable facts. "I couldn't find the spot again when I took Mr. Tiger out there. I swore I had the right spot. Mr. Tiger took a soil sample, just to be Mr. Polite-as-Always, because it looked like it had been dug out recently. But I couldn't smell anything at that point. Look..." I scratched my itchy head with impatience. "What happened to us was confusing enough. I'm sure it had nothing to do with whatever the hell is going on in Griffith's Landing. Let's find a more pleasing subject. You guys did not smell it. It was sickening."

"What's up, Cora?" Dempsey finally couldn't resist grabbing her foot, and he rocked it back and forth. I honestly don't think she noticed. She was staring wide-eyed at her screen. She didn't answer right away, but I'd warned all our friends about long pauses between when you ask Cora a question and when you might get your answer. They just watched her patiently.

"Um ... excuse me." She finally got up and walked into the corridor—almost floated, more like she was in a trance than that she had to go to the bathroom. I followed, concerned. Marg had just come up the stairs, and she and Cora met at my brother's closed door. I recognized what Marg had under her other arm by the red plastic casing. It was a morphine drip. At St. Ann's word filtered down to us that morphine drips were a last resort for the four of us, and it meant things were really bad. I stood numbly, watching her listen on her cell phone with the other hand.

"You can't go in there right now," Marg said to Cora, lifting the cell phone away from her mouth. Cora's face turned bright red and, faster than Marg, she stood between her and the door. "Cora, let me in there. He needs me."

"Then ... I want to go in with you."

Marg sighed. "How, oh how, can I redeem myself? Mike Tiger was here, I've got my security clearance papers from USIC down in my bedroom, if you want to see them. Now move out of the way. I've got Dr. Godfrey on the phone, who just sent this drip up from St. Ann's at my request. Want to talk to him? Here."

She shoved the cell phone out to Cora, who listened for a few minutes. I pulled Rain's bedroom door shut to keep this bad news from spreading as I watched Marg enter my brother's room. She left the door open a crack.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Cora said kind of quietly into the cell phone. "I ... just came into the corridor because I had to ask Scott a question, and the nurse is saying I can't see him and she's about to hook him up to something ... I, yes, I believe you about her. I just ... Why can't I see him?"

I tiptoed past her and actually stuck my head into my brother's room. I could hear him talking to Marg, which meant he was alert. But his whispers gunned, stop-start, stop-start, like he was in excruciating pain. He didn't sound angry with her anymore, which was one good thing.

Cora came in, handed the cell phone back to Marg, brushed my hand, and ended up gripping my finger so tight I thought she was going to break it. "Hey," I whispered right in her ear, "remember our motto. Don't panic. He's been in a coma. We've seen him worse."

I took her back out in the corridor, but as we waited for Marg, I tried everything possible to hook into a distracting thought.

"You were upset when you came out here. What's wrong with you?" I asked, but she only muttered, "I needed to talk to him." She looked a little nuts, so I didn't bug her.

Marg finally came out, pulling off latex gloves and dropping them into her apron pocket. "It's just a lot of pain, that's all we know. The shot of morphine Dr. Godfrey gave him didn't help for long. I finally won the morphine war with him tonight. He might be the emerging infectious disease specialist, but I'm the hospice specialist, and there's no reason under the sun for your brother to have to endure that kind of pain. Now he'll sleep."