The Fire Artist (10 page)

“Good luck, fire girl,” he says, and walks away.

“Hey!” I call out before he reaches the door. I never go for it with guys. But I won’t see him again. “There’s a group of us getting together before I go. Let me know if you want to join us.”

“That’d be awesome.”

I hand him my cell phone so he can enter his number. He keys it in, then hands back the phone. “It’s under ‘Shortstop.’ Just in case you forget my name.”

I never remembered it in the first place.

Elise and I do doughnuts in her brown hatchback on my last night in Wonder. We turn in tight circles, easily outpacing Kyle in his truck. The tires squeal as Elise takes the car on yet another orbit around the empty mall parking lot. The black asphalt is all ours tonight. Just Elise, and Kyle, and the mall security guard who knows Kyle and so won’t say a word about the kids blasting tunes and burning rubber at the back of a mall that’s
got nearly as many stores going out of business as staying in business.

Elise hollers loudly as we make our final circle, then slams on the brakes. I bounce forward a bit, but my seat belt keeps me in place.

She turns off the ignition and looks at me, a half-sad, half-happy, all-wistful look. Kyle’s stopped his truck too and has the door open, but he’s a gentleman and when he sees ladies talking, he knows not to interrupt.

“I’ll see you in August. It’ll be fine.”

“Right,” I say, nodding. “August. We’ll do it in August.”

Elise reaches her hand to my hair, petting me. “Don’t worry, babe. It’s an unbreakable date.”

I nod and give her a hug, hoping against hope that I’ve got enough battery life in me to last till then.

“I’ll miss you,” I say. “And not just because of the …
you know
.”

“I know,” Elise says.

“You’ll miss our doughnuts most, right?” I tease.

“And the soda, and chips, and pretzels too.”

I pat my belly. “I’m going to be on one of those Hollywood lettuce-only diets now. I’m sure they watch every calorie that goes into your body.”

“I bet they have calorie monitors implanted under your skin.”

“Barbara, we have a code nine on the girl from Wonder. She just consumed a Snickers.”

Elise laughs and elbows me. “Dummy, you’re going to break
your lettuce-only diet for a Snickers? Get something good like an ice-cream sundae.”

I salute her. “Now, this is the real reason I’ll miss you. That kind of sage advice.”

“You know it.”

Then we open our car doors, and Kyle is waiting for his girl. He wraps her in his arms and lays a kiss on her right in front of me, like he always has, like he always will. She’s lucky. She can go to college, she can control her future, she can be near Kyle, since he’s stationed here.

“Kyle,” I say, turning to him. His sister, Mindy, is Jana’s best friend. “Look out for my sister, okay?”

“Sure, of course,” he says, his innate sense of duty kicking in, even though he doesn’t know details.

“Let me know if she seems, I don’t know, strange. Or stranger than usual.”

Elise steps in. “We will. Promise.”

I see a pair of headlights coming toward me. The car they belong to pulls into the next parking spot, and the driver cuts the engine. Shortstop joins us, and the four of us sit on the hood of Elise’s hatchback, drinking sodas and eating chips and chatting about Wonder, and baseball, and fire, and that
epic twin
I made. Then Elise and Kyle make themselves scarce, and Shortstop sits on the curb with me.

“Thanks for inviting me,” he says.

“No problem. I figured you needed a good head rub.” I offer myself again.

He smiles and takes me up on it, rubbing my hair with the
palm of his hand. Then the rubbing becomes less playful, more flirty. “I’m glad you texted me,” he says in a low voice.

I don’t say
me too
. I don’t say I’m glad he showed up. I don’t say anything. Because there is nothing to say. Instead, I grab the neck of his T-shirt and pull him against me, fumbling toward closeness, lurching into a connection. I wrap my arms around his back and kiss him hard and hungry. He responds instantly, a bruising and frenzied kiss, even though I don’t know his name and probably never will. And maybe, because of that, because this is my last night in my hometown, because I am a fraud and a fake and I haven’t any real luck to pass on, or maybe just because I’m tired of being the only one without someone, I pretend. I pretend he’s the boyfriend I’ve never had, the love I’m leaving behind. And with that, I imagine I’m telling him with my lips that crush against his that I’ve longed to escape into him. I try to tell him with my hands tangled up in his hair that every day I’m afraid, and that’s the reason I can’t love him, because I don’t know how to love. I try to tell him with the way I press my body against his that I can’t fall in love, that I’m defective and my heart is scarred and ugly, and it’s better off like this.

They’re all better off without me.

Later that night, I take Jana pool hopping.

“Last time,” Jana whispers, tapping my arm. We tiptoe across the crunchy grass in the yard.

“It’ll be the best time,” I tell her.

The Markins live several blocks away on a much nicer street. But their fence is easily scalable, and we’re already over it.

I open the screen door that lets us into their pool area—screened in as nearly all Florida pools are, unlocked as theirs often is. I pull off my T-shirt and shorts, stripping down to a bathing suit, and Jana does the same.

“Now, what did I teach you?” I ask.

“Silence is golden when you’re pool hopping,” she says with a sly smile; then she dives in and swims the length to the shallow end. I meet her there, walking down the steps into the pool.

“Not. Very. Quiet.”

She raises her eyebrows and shrugs playfully. “What can I say? The water brings it out in me.”

“You’re trouble,” I say, then I splash her.

“Hey! Who’s being noisy now?” She splashes back.

“The whole neighborhood can hear us now. You know what that means?”

“It means I need to dunk you,” she says, and then drops a palm on the top of my head and pushes me under. I pop back up a few feet away.

She’s smiling, droplets glistening on her face. She is in her element. Playing in the water.

“Race me,” I say, and we take off underwater, dolphin-like bullets shooting along the length of the pool.

It is no contest. She reaches the deep end well before me.

“Tie,” I declare when I rise up.

“You wish.”

“Do over?”

“I’ll even give you a three-stroke head start,” she says, and I love how much fun she has in the water.

“Deal,” I say, taking off.

But once more, as I expected, as I wanted, she beats me.

“I’m going to miss this,” I tell her, shrugging off the teasing and the joking.

“Me too.”

“I want the water to always be fun for you.”

“Yeah. Same here.”

“I’ll be back soon. I promise. You know that, right?”

“I do know that. I’ll be waiting.”

We swim more, and Jana shows me her forward somersaults, and how she can swim along the bottom, and do handstands too, and then in the middle of the night, we finally get out of the water.

The next day I leave Florida.

Some guy in front of me wears basketball shorts, black high-tops, and a T-shirt the size of a tent. It billows when a truck screeches by. The guy talks loudly into his phone. Everyone talks loudly into their phones. He stops at Eleventh Avenue, glances down the street, tosses his fast-food bag on the sidewalk, and walks across—no,
struts
—hitting the other side just as the traffic comes rocketing down.

I pick up the greasy white bag, crumple it up, and wing it on top of an overflowing garbage can on the corner, because litter sucks.

I cross another block and head to Chelsea Piers, which used to be some sort of sports recreation center, with bowling and golf and even an ice rink a few years back. But now it’s been bought by the Leagues to train all its New York performers.

My first show is in three weeks, and I’m not even remotely ready. I’ve been the worst kind of awful since I arrived, like I’m an awkward, gangly freshman in a school full of cool kids.
Some of them aren’t too fond of me either, including Mariska. She’s the first in her family to make it to the Leagues, and she followed all the rules and worked her way up. I thought we’d be friends. Or at least, cordial teammates. But instead, I’m the girl who got a free pass out of training camp, thanks to a twin I can’t replicate properly, and so no one likes me much, and I texted Elise last night to tell her.

I text her again: I still suck.

She writes back: No you don’t. Keep practicing! You can do it!

I’m a block away from Chelsea Piers when I see him.

For the first time.

The beautiful boy from the photos.

My heart stops, and some primal instinct tells me to run so he never knows I’ve admired his face. But I don’t run. I stare.

At Mariska’s boy. The one she poses with, arm draped over his shoulder, like she owns him. He’s flesh and body now, walking toward me, and he’s more beautiful in person, even from a distance. Mariska’s with him, and she keeps reaching for his hand. He keeps taking his hand away. Why won’t her boyfriend let her hold his hand?

I duck into the doorway of a hardware store that makes keys. I flatten myself against the concrete wall, but then lean out so I can see them. Strange. She’s turned the other way, heading back to Chelsea Piers, and he’s no longer with her. But as I scan the block, I see an arm beneath a sidewalk grate, pulling the grate back in place. On that arm is a dark-blue shirt.

Then the grate is in place, and the boy is … underneath the sidewalk?

I shake my head, as if I’m seeing things. Maybe this is what happens when you make fire twins—madness.

I start walking again but slow down as I reach the grate he disappeared into. I peer through the slats, looking for a well-dressed boy. I see nothing but darkness, and when I crouch down and try to listen, all I hear is a hollow sound.

I leave and tell myself he must have stepped into a nearby store or coffee shop. When I yank open the heavy blue doors to Chelsea Piers, I head straight for the locker room, where I drop my bag inside my locker.

“You better start showing up early.”

I turn my head to Mariska. “Yeah?”

She nods, stares intensely at me with her dark eyes. “You need to work harder here. They expect you to pull off those tricks,” she says, but her words don’t feel like friendly encouragement. More like admonishment.

“Okay,” I say, because I don’t know if she’s giving me useful advice or not.

A black-haired girl shakes her head at me. Claudia. She’s a water artist and Mariska’s best friend. “Everyone wants to see your twin,” Claudia adds. “Did you leave it back home in Florida?”

I look away, a red tint creeping into my cheeks.

“Well?”

“I’m working on it,” I mutter.

Mariska stomps over to me, parks her hands on her hips. “Work
harder
,” she says, spitting out the last word. “That’s how we’re all here. Because we work our butts off.” She tries to poke
me in the chest, but I pivot away. She yanks her hand back before she can touch me. “You do the same.”

“Got it. Message received.”

“Or don’t,” Mariska adds, shifting to an offhand tone. “Because I can handle the big tricks without your help.”

I don’t fashion a comeback or a sharp retort, because my mouth is dry and I feel so incredibly stupid. I would mock me too. Because my twin is nowhere to be seen. During every practice I’ve been asked to show my special ability. I’ve tried to picture my dad, I’ve tried to draw on all those vast reserves of rage inside me, but the distance must be muting my anger and my talent.

Because I’ve managed no carbon copy. All I’ve produced is an arm here, a leg there, half a face. Sometimes a shadowy shimmer of a body that lasts for two seconds.

I leave the locker room and head out to the fields for fire practice. The fire coach is a guy named Mattheus. He shakes his head at me when I make a smoky shadow. I can’t get this right. I can’t even get close to this trick here in New York. Maybe it was just a Florida thing. I spend the afternoon working on other skills, practicing the timing of our team routines that I’m just learning, the nuances of the fire sprays, the circles of flames, the way we’re expected to make them skitter through the night sky with our wires. Mariska watches me the whole time, a smug, satisfied look on her face. I feel so dumb with her eyes on me, like I don’t know where my feet are or how to work my hands.