Spark (17 page)

“Emma is too dead, Bertie.” Dahlia's pain brings tears to my own eyes. “I said I'd watch out for her. I didn't save her.”

In the background, a distant siren finally begins to wail.

M
y eyes pop open. Dahlia's little-girl scream is pulsing inside my ears. The dream was different. For the first time in the roughly ten years I've been having it, the details have shifted. I've never seen Nick's and Emma's deaths. I've never heard Mom scream on the square. The scene was alive—
is
alive. I can still feel the intensity of the fight that erupted between Nick, Emma, and George—the desperation that shredded the air inside the Avery.

More than that—I feel like I'm caught in a fight of my own. I feel as though I'm being shaken awake. I kick at the blankets, jumping out of bed as if I've suddenly found it filled with spiders.

The Avery.
It comes to me with urgency:
Go look at the Avery.

I race across my room, sliding on my glasses as I press my face close to the window. The neon sign above the theater is broken, no longer able to send out a yellow “Avery” to glow against the black sky. The marquee is blank—no current production, no starring names. Streetlights on the square—and throughout Verona, for that matter—give the horizon a soft-white glow. But it's too dark to tell if the rust-scab is still stretched over the front door, barring entrance.

The dream feels so close. I wasn't just watching this play out on a screen; I was in the balcony with Dahlia. In the square with Bertie. It wasn't like I had the ability to change anything that happened. No one even knew I was there. But I
was
there—wasn't I? I had to be. I can easily recall the plush, velvety feel of the balcony seat's upholstery. I can smell the lingering scent of butter in the lobby. Usually when I dream of the night in 1947, I see it all in larger brushstrokes. This last dream—it was as though someone drew it in using the tiniest, most intricate pen tip. I saw it all—including the strands of hair that had worked loose from Dahlia's pigtail and the mole under Emma's left ear. How does a mind come up with all that? Or does it? Are dreams ever that elaborate?

What just happened?

I'm waffling back and forth: Do I dismiss the dream as an overactive imagination able to see more clearly because the story is far more real to me now than it ever has been? Do I empathize with Mom—and Emma and Nick—more than
ever? Or do I think the Avery had something to do with it? That it's sending me a message?

I'm still staring at the front of the building when a white crack tears forcefully through the sky. It draws a jagged line between the stars, smashing against the earth with an eardrum-shattering boom. My hands fly to my ears, which pop and ring like my head is a cymbal that's been whacked with a mallet.

“What was that?” Mom calls from her bedroom.

She patters into my room, sticks her face against the window. She stares through a separate pane from the one I'm looking through, but our faces are so close, our cheeks nearly brush. Smoke billows from a distant spot on the horizon.

The phone rings; Mom and I both jump. She darts back out of my room to answer. Her voice is agitated. Her conversation short.

I stare, watching the smoke continue to billow.

“Quin!” she shouts. “Hurry. We've got to go. The school's on fire.”

We burst out of the house, Mom wearing mismatched flannel pajamas beneath a beige overcoat and chenille slippers. I come out in my sleep sweats and flip-flops. It's too cold for the flip-flops; the moment the chilly night air starts chewing at my toes, I instantly regret them. But there's no way I can ask Mom to wait for me to grab another pair. Not the way she's moving; the car engine roars to life before I've even
swung the passenger door open all the way.

My eye is on the Avery—dark and silent in the rearview—as Mom's car lurches out of her parking space. As she backs up, the front of the old theater looms larger. I think I see it, beneath the nearby streetlight: a padlock on the front door.

Is the rust-scab gone? Why? Has it healed? Has it opened itself back up? Why did it lock me out in the first place?

What are you saying?
I want to scream at the Avery.

The theater quickly shrinks as Mom's car careens out of the square.

She flips through radio stations until her dial hits a spot offering local news. I recognize the voice—this is her former student, the one who interviewed us at his station. “. . . word that a fire has broken out at Verona High. Verona fire teams are on their way. As soon as there's an update, we'll be breaking into regular programming live. . . .”

Mom swerves into the lot, her tires squealing. At least, I think they squeal. It's hard to tell for sure because sirens are on top of us now. She pulls to the side as a red fire truck passes by, kicking up the kind of gravel-filled burst of wind that makes my eyes sting.

The truck comes to a stop in front of the school, and firefighters in enormous yellow suits climb out. Knee-high rubber boots hit dry pavement.

There are no puddles here in the parking lot. Absolutely no sign it rained. But I know I saw a lightning bolt. A giant
white crack etching its way through the sky. Followed by thunder. But there was no rain?

The parking lot lights illuminate Verona High. The familiar two-story redbrick building has always seemed to take on different appearances depending on the time of year: In early fall, when summer heat lingers, it looks like a pizza oven. In midwinter, surrounded by two inches of snowfall, it looks like the start of a Norman Rockwell painting. Now, though, under the garish parking lot lights, with headlights from vehicles drawing an ever-moving pattern across the front and with smoke pouring out through the roof, it looks kind of sinister.

I cross my arms over my chest, trying to protect myself against the chill of night. Mom stomps toward a crowd of faculty members, all of them in their pajama bottoms and house shoes.

Other cars are pulling into the lot, too—students and parents arriving, coming to see the show. My classmates are aiming their phones, some of them at the building, some at the shocked faces of the crowd, and others at the sight of the principal in his red-checkered robe and matching pants.

Most of the faces in the crowd are recognizable: the teachers, Vanessa from Duds, Dylan's dad, Cass's mom, the librarian. I pass by most of their faces often enough that they seem like town landmarks. And every one of them stares up at the school with the same mix of disbelief and shock. Because they all once called Verona High their own. After all, nobody
moves to Verona as an adult—what would draw them here? You're born in town, and you either move away or you stay and get old. If they've got gray hair, they were born in Verona. Period.

Verona High is part of who they are. It's the gym where they scored the winning game point and the lunchroom where they met their future husband. The hallway where they had their first kiss, in the middle of their first formal dance. The desk they carved their initials into in room 103, English III. The stairwell where they sat to cram, last minute. The water fountain they tampered with to squirt straight into the eyeball of anyone who stopped for a drink.

No matter the sign of aging—graying hair, reading glasses perched on the ends of noses, potbellies hanging over the drawstrings of sleep pants—tonight as they sadly put their fingers over their mouths and shake their heads, memories wash over them, making them all look seventeen again.

Verona High is our story. Mine, and Emma's, and Mom's, and anyone else's who happens to be standing in that parking lot.

And it bothers me—a lot, actually—that our combined stories might very well be going up in flames inside the school.

I watch the action playing out around me. My eyes settle on the firefighters barking into walkie-talkies, then on the hoses, which they've tugged free from the truck and which now lie flat on the parking lot. No water.

Why aren't they aiming giant, forceful streams at the building? Why aren't they extinguishing anything? Why are the majority of them standing by—doing nothing?

Advanced Drama clusters together, muttering questions and getting no answers. The red ball caps whisper, point at the building, shuffle their feet. Liz tugs at her bottom lip, worriedly muttering, “Oh, dear.” Kiki wears her signature scowl. And Cass and Dylan appear at the same time, stepping into place beside me.

Cass even sleeps in vintage—or as close to vintage as possible. I already know that, but it's a source of amusement for everyone else. Tonight, her fuzzy pants are covered in a pattern featuring forties-era pinup girls in boy shorts, long legs, high heels.

Once everyone stops talking about Cass's sleepwear, the group falls serious again. The entire parking lot starts to take on the feel of a hospital waiting room crammed full of the anxious family members of a patient in surgery.

We fidget. After what seems like an eternity, the fire chief pulls his helmet from his head and waves the crowd closer.

We rush toward him, like fans at a concert all vying to be the first to touch him. He's got something we all crave—the answers: “How bad is it?” “What happened?” “Is it all gone?”

Because of my lousy shoe choice, I'm slower than the rest—at this point, my feet are practically numb, they're so cold. I get pushed toward the back. The fire chief's already
speaking by the time I get to him. “Lightning,” he's saying. But his voice is muffled. I can't make out the rest. And I can't see him at all.

Others begin to shout, “Speak up! We can't hear you!”

He grabs a megaphone from the truck and begins again as I push my way closer.

“Lightning hit the auditorium directly.”

I look for Mom. It's easy to pinpoint her stark-white hair in the crowd. And even though I'm staring at her back, I can tell from the curve of her shoulders that she's dropped her face into her hands.

“Now, the strike was strong in intensity but relatively short in duration. It didn't start a fire. Its effect was more like an explosion.”

“How could—” I'm not even sure I've said it out loud until every face in the crowd turns toward me. “How could there be a lightning strike when there was no rain? No storm?”

“Good question,” a bathrobe-clad science instructor praises in his best third-period Intro to Earth Science voice. “There is such a thing as a dry thunderstorm.” His voice gains strength, as if to indicate we should all be taking notes. “Precipitation evaporates before it hits the ground—”

“But we're the completely wrong climate here in Verona,” another answers. “A dry thunderstorm occurs in the desert.”

“Rogue strike,” the firefighter says as a way to end the debate.

A flurry of questions flaps its wings all around me: “Electrical system?” “Rest of the building?” “School tomorrow?”

But my mind is stuck on the lightning—the wrong climate for dry storms.

“Now, the lightning,” the firefighter goes on, “came straight through the ceiling, hit the stage. Knocked a nice-sized hole in it. Lots of smoke, no fire, like I said. We're doing a building check, but the way it looks right now, I see no reason why you can't hold classes tomorrow. Especially since the auditorium's the only area hit. You still have electricity. But the auditorium will definitely be off-limits.”

My eyes turn toward the sky.

I shiver as the pieces begin to slide into place. We're in the wrong section of the country—too far south—to witness the aurora borealis. That's what Bertie told Mom the night Nick and Emma died. The sky has power over us—the power to change the course of events. Bertie said that, too. And now we find out we're in the wrong place for a dry thunderstorm.

Everyone else accepts it, breathing relieved sighs. The crowd breaks apart. Crisis averted. They simply peel off their worry, like dirty clothes to be tossed aside. Car engines crank to life and begin to leave the lot.

But the lightning was no freak accident. The sky is working its magic. Just like Bertie said it would. I was pushed into bed, into my dream, and hauled out of bed, then forced toward my window. I was supposed to see that last scene on
the stage as it truly was, in graphic detail. I was supposed to see that lightning, too.

Connect the dots, Quin.
The voice sounds like it's my own and coming from outside my head, all at the same time.
Connect the dots. . . .

I
've got to get to that auditorium. See it for myself.

But I'm not the only one who feels that way. The entire student body shows up early; the parking lot's so crammed, I have to circle it three times looking for a space. Cass is on my heels as we race inside, into the building that smells like a rained-on campfire, trying to wiggle through the crowded hallways.

The biggest crowd of all is congregated in front of the auditorium doors, which have been roped off by yellow Caution tape.

I'm not sure what to expect—that the entire auditorium will look like the bottom of a grill, maybe, with its gray charcoal smoldering. When I stick my head through the doorway, though, the seating is perfect. The walls are fine.

The only visible damage is to the front of the theater, where a giant, gaping crater has appeared in the center of the stage, leaving splintered boards to stick out at crazy angles. The damage also makes the stage seem smaller somehow, more fragile—it looks like a bowl with toothpicks sticking out.

The spotlight still apparently works, though. It shoots light straight down from the ceiling.

Nearby voices begin to bark instructions. A rattle fills the air. I lean into the auditorium, my side pushing against the Caution tape. Contractors in hard hats and reflective vests are on the roof—visible because of the hole in the ceiling. They drape a tarp over the hole, and the spotlight dies.

Of course it does. It's not a spotlight at all, but the sun, streaming through the hole the lightning created.

That lightning struck the stage like it was the bull's-eye in a target practice.

Everyone's in their seat in Advanced Drama a good two minutes before the bell. We lean forward. We don't blink. We stare at Mom, anxious to hear what she's got to say.

But she doesn't move after the bell announces the start of class. Mom's seated at her desk, under her “The Play's the Thing” banner, staring out her window. Exhaustion and the harsh sun make her look every last one of her years.

Unable to stand it any longer, Toby blurts, “Is there any
way we can still do the show?”

“Obviously not,” Kiki says. “Didn't you see the way the fire department has the auditorium roped off?”

“Well, yeah,
now
it's roped off,” Toby argues. “But if they put the tarps up and there's nothing wrong with the electrical system—is there a way to do it? We're all sitting here right now. It's not dangerous to be in the building. Why not take the ropes down, let us come in and do the musical?”

“It really would be a shame for all that work to go to waste,” Liz says with a shake of her head. But she says it in the same way that a seven-year-old might feign sadness on learning they were allergic to vegetables. “I was so looking forward to seeing everyone in the audience wearing their vintage clothes. Still, you know, we probably would have gotten
far
more participation in the vintage clothes idea if it had been advertised on radio.” She shoots me a look. “But it would have been fun just the same. Everyone would have enjoyed that, I think.”

I practically need ropes to tie my eyes down, the urge to roll them is so strong.

Still, Mom stares through the window. Did she even hear us?

The clock ticks. The red ball caps shuffle their feet.

“Ms. Drewery?” Liz tries.

Mom finally pulls her eyes away from the window.

“We're going to have to cancel? Right?” Liz asks. “We won't be penalized for that, will we? We wouldn't get bad
grades for the senior project because we won't be performing?”

“It's not our fault,” Kiki says, palms stretched out innocently. She smiles like a cat with a canary in her gut.

Mom sighs heavily and stares at her hands as she flips a pen in her fingers, over and over again.

“I still think we can do it. I got the sign fixed,” Toby insists, at the same moment he raises his hand. The other two red ball caps shake their heads at him as he says, “Come on! We just need one night.”

“We can't touch anything in the auditorium,” Mom finally mutters.

Every head in the room turns toward her as she goes on, “Not before the insurance adjuster gets there. Then it has to be repaired—even though the damage was isolated, it's still a bigger job than you're assuming it is. The gym is too small. And the cafeteria—that's out of the question. Which means we have nowhere to perform our musical.”

We all hold our breath. Here it comes—the time to wave the white flag, throw in the towel, give up the ghost—and any other tried-and-true cliché that says the same thing:
defeat
.

Mom's words come out in a disjointed manner. “Too little too late.” “Tried valiantly.”

But as she talks, my mind is spinning, faster even than those records Cass has for sale on consignment in Duds. The lightning bolt destroyed our stage. Strategically. Only one theater remains in the entire town of Verona.

“Let's do it in the Avery,” I blurt before I can stop myself.

The class turns their surprised stares at me. But I really only feel two of them: Cass's and Dylan's.

“You can't be serious,” one of the red caps moans. “The Avery? We might as well do it in the parking lot. Or the city dump.”

“Quin's right,” Cass chimes in. “We should do it in the Avery.”

She turns to offer me a thank-you grin laced with all the secrets she thinks she's been keeping from me. She wants back in. To be transformed one more time. To feel as she does when she and Dylan are standing beside each other on the stage.

But there's so much more at stake here.

We can't shut this play down. We have to perform it. It has to be on the stage of the Avery. I have no idea how. Not with the rust-scabs on the doors and Kiki, who was unwelcome before, and the sparks that no one else on the square has seen—not Vanessa or the Fergusons or even Mom. What will the rest of the class see when they arrive at the Avery's door? Dust and a toppled set and broken glass? Is that all? I'm terrified of what I've just suggested—and at the same time, completely sure it's right. The skies are insisting on it.

“The Avery,” Mom repeats. She wiggles her jaw back and forth, thinking. “I have to make a few calls. I'll see what I can do.”