(You) Set Me on Fire (14 page)

TWELVE

Rumour and insight

You know you have a problem because society tells you that you have a problem (see Social Problems lecture notes).

Society, in my experience, equals an army of mean people (mostly girls aged five to twenty-one) who get off talking about your problems. First, behind your back. Eventually, to your face.

My problems, my past, have been the source of a lot of talk over the few years of my existence. Like, how everyone in grade ten talked about the fact that I was the only virgin in 10B homeroom (not that that’s a big PROBLEM if you think about it—it’s grade TEN).

The worst rumour about me I ever heard was also the most stupid.

About a month after she disowned me as a friend, word circulated that I’d taken advantage of Anne.
Taken advantage of
. Like, how unchivalrous. Like I stole her credit card or had a party at her house and drank all her booze.

I found out about the rumour from this girl in our spare, Leslie Vanderhausen, when she kicked me out of our study group. Because of Anne.

“Look,” she huffed, “FRANKLY, I don’t want to get involved in any of this but I WILL say that
taking advantage
of someone like Anne, who was really nice to you, is crappy.”

“Who said I
took advantage
of Anne?”

Of course, no one ever remembers who starts rumours, which makes them very much either like or unlike wars (depending on what history class you’re taking).

I did eventually “talk” to Anne about this. I texted her with:

WHEN EXCTLY DID I TAKE ADVNTG OF U?

And she responded with:

DON’T KNOW WHAT UR TALKING ABOUT. STOP.

I remember looking at my phone that day and thinking that if I were a support have a favourite colour from %;margin-left: 0em;ing character in a sitcom I’d kill myself over that text message.

Back at Dylan, after the fire, there were many rumours.

One was that the alarm hadn’t gone off because of terrorism. Apparently someone had heard a fireperson say something about terrorism.

As it turned out, rats had chewed through the fire alarm system’s wiring in the basement.

Which, of course, doesn’t necessarily rule out terrorism. I’m sure rats hate us.

And, you know, GROSS.

The other rumour was that this girl Jenna McKenna (real name) set the fire. Jenna lived on the first floor with a roommate who was making her nuts. Katy had promised to try and talk to the housing department about getting her a new room, but that wasn’t working out very well. Someone said they heard Jenna say she was going to blow up the building if she didn’t get a good night’s sleep (the roommate snored).

The other other rumour is I guess kind of obvious, given … Well it’s obvious now. Maybe it was obvious then too.

The other rumour was that Shar set the fire.

Lots and lots of people thought it was Shar.

Except.

Well.

Me.

Although I don’t know if I’d say I didn’t think Shar set the fire so much as, I guess, for a while I pretty much didn’t care.

The morning after the fire I woke up to the sound of hangers wind-chiming as Shar searched through her closet for a sweater. She’d slept on the floor on a pile of pillows and clothes.

“Good morning,” I whispered, my throat slightly sore.

“You snore,” Shar smirked.

Sun flooded the tiny room, made my skin look white against Shar’s red sheets, specimen-like. I closed my eyes for a second. Felt still. Calm.

“Allison! Wake up, let’s go. I’m starving.”

On the elevator ride Shar grabbed my hand, her touch sending a tiny quake down the steps of my spine. When the doors opened she hooked my pinky in hers and we walked down the hall to the front door where Hope was standing with a bunch of engineering students in matching black parkas.

“Hey! Hope.”

The engineers dissipated into the background. “Hey, Allison.” Hope threw a quick, uncertain glance at Shar, a fleeting eyeball like you’d give a deadly spider ten feet away.

“I just wanted to say,” I stammered, “uh, thank you. I didn’t say thank you. Last night. So.”

“Oh. Fuck. Any time. Um.” Another glance. “Are you okay?”

“Just like a tiny sore throat.”

There was a sharp tug on my pinky.

“Okay, well. Take care.” Hope waved.

Shar grinned. “Let’s get out of here.”

For the next few days Shar seemed to be in pretty decent spirits. The day after the fire we skipped school and spent the whole aft Bugs Bunny garbage pail.on0ernoon sneaking from movie theatre to movie theatre watching the beginnings and endings of whatever was playing. We went to the gym to watch the STEP IT UP class and eat doughnuts (leaving the half-empty box in the change room). We bought matching winter boots with silver buckles on them. Shar even started looking up overseas exchange programs with this idea that second year we could get the hell out of town and maybe go someplace far less lame. Maybe Turkey or China. Or France.

Then, less than a week after the fire, Shar got a call to come to security for an interview.

“About what?”

“What do you think?”

She sat in a room with security for an hour. Some puny guy with a pubic moustache and a pukey tie, she said. Shar said the guy was sweating the whole time.

Someone had sent security an email saying they believed Shar was the arsonist responsible for the fire at Dylan Hall. Security said the email was co-signed by two people who lived in Dylan. Shar said she spent the entire interview trying to see through the paper so she could read the names of the bitches who wrote the email.

“Bitches,” she spat.

“Could have been ANYONE.” I said. “You didn’t do it. So don’t worry about it.”

“Stop calling me paranoid.”

“I never said you were paranoid.”

The next day, at breakfast, we got into a fight because I said I wanted to go and grab a card for Hope. For saving my life.

The word “life” had an immediate impact on Shar. It
was as though I’d thrown it like a crumpled-up ball of paper that had hit her in the forehead. She tucked her chin into her chest and stabbed at her coffee with her spoon. “I don’t think your life was ever actually in any danger, Allison.”

“I guess. I wonder if Katy could have died though.”

Shar took a slow sip of her coffee, carefully placing her lips on the rim of her chipped red and white coffee cup. Then she said, “I thought it was all smoke.”

“Yeah but.” A tiny cloud in the sky turned the bright light that had been streaming in through the diner window into a soft, slightly gloomy glow. “It’s the smoke that gets you, right?”

I think that’s true. Although it seems like a bit of a weird thing to say when you consider how destructive fire is. How is it possible that something as mundane as smoke could be the real killer?

“Okay, Allison, but you were never in any danger of dying.” She didn’t say it like she normally would have; instead, she was leaning forward with a serious look in her dark eyes. Confrontational.

She seemed … upset. Or not upset. Withdrawn. Like a person sitting deep within themselves or retreating there, leaving their face empty like a sandbox after recess.

“Look. Let’s forget it, okay? Let’s talk about something else.”

When breakfast was over Shar said she was tired and wanted to go back to her room to nap. I walked her back to dorm, and then, because I couldn’t think of what else to do, headed to class.

Introduction to Women Critical Thinking, c’s Studies. Jefferson Building. A class composed entirely of women, except for, of course, Jonathon, who apparently no longer wore a top hat. I grabbed a chair at the back of the classroom and noticed that everyone had a typed and stapled stack of papers with them.

At the front of the class the professor sat next to a big box she’d labelled “ESSAYS” with a red marker.

Essays? Scrambling through the recycling bin that was my brain, I scanned every memory I had for that phrase. Essay. Essay? I had a vague recollection of a couple stapled sheets of paper sitting under the stack of unopened course packs.

Shit.

The lecture that day was about this woman who said that we needed to stop depending on people in ivory towers to tell us what to do and what to think. The professor (Professor Women’s Studies?) made this big show of wandering through the seats as she talked, bangles jangling as she touched people’s shoulders,
like a kid playing Duck, Duck, Goose, only really serious.

Who is telling us what to think, the professor wanted to know. “Thoughts? Someone? Who is telling us what to think?”

Is it me, I wanted to say, or are professors all really paranoid about what people are thinking and why?

Jonathon raised his hand. “Ah perchance could it be said, ah, that we are all soaking in the irony that you, uh Professor, are in a position to tell us what to think? Or at least have a heavy hand in moulding our thoughts when grading our fledgling papers?”

The class collectively turned to give Jonathon a disdainful glance. Fledgling papers?

What a weirdo.

“Well, yes,” Women’s Studies replied, raising her wrist so that her bracelets clanged together like wooden spoons in a drawer, “although I think we’d … I think I’d like to think our job is to guide you, not mould you. We want to make you think, not tell you what to think.”

“Of course.”

The debate raged on for another forty minutes before class finally let out and I slunk up to the front of the room.

“Excuse me? Um. Professor?”

Up close, I could see Professor Women’s Studies had red lipstick on. It matched her long red Women’s Studies scarf and red skirt and runny mascara that matched nothing.

“Yes?” she asked, rooting through a giant bag for something obviously very small and/or not in there.

“Um. I was in a fire?” More of a question than a statement. “I think we have a paper due today?”

Is there any way one cancels out the other?

Red lips spread out into a wide O. “At Dylan Hall! Yes, I heard about that. I’m sorry … what’s your name?”

“Allison. Allison Lee.”

“Are you asking for an extension on the paper that was due because of this recent fire?”

“Yes?”

“I think that’s perfectly reasonable. Although I will point out to you that in fairness the paper was assigned weeks ago.”

“Uh. Yeah. Okay well. Never m things I needed to be doingt ccky —”

“Oh don’t give up so fast.” Women’s Studies smiled.

“Just send me an email reminding me why you have an extension.”

Of course this meant that I’d still have to somehow write the paper. On what I had no idea. I didn’t even know who the ivory tower person guiding my thoughts was supposed to be, although I figured I could go home and Google it. Heading into the bustle of inter-class traffic, a multi-celled vibrating creature sporting a variety of smells and sounds, I put my head down and tried not to let my freak-out explode out the front of me.

A hand reached out and grabbed my shoulder.

“Hey!”

Jonathon.

“Hey,” I responded weakly.

Under the soft light of day that filtered through the hallway’s industrial window, Jonathon’s face looked like it was about to peel apart, possibly to reveal a smaller, smoother Jonathon underneath.

Jostled slightly by the crowd, he smiled nervously. “Are you all right? I heard there was a fire. And that you were in said fire.”

I concentrated on looking at the collar of his shirt. “It wasn’t my fire,” I said. “I mean, it didn’t really get ME.”

“Of course,” Jonathon chuckled, “what a concept. I’m fairly certain that no one has the market on fire.”

“Right.”

“I was just going to suggest,” he said, putting his hand out, palm up, “not to take up your time. Only that. I overheard. And. If you require any assistance with your paper I thought. I thought perchance I could be of some service.”

My phone buzzed. Three missed calls. One from a campus number. Two from Shar.

“Do you have any notes I could borrow?” I cut in.

Jonathon smiled, raised his hand in kind of a weird giddy wave. “Yes! Yes. Well yes of course you can imagine I have a veritable cornucopia of study aids.”

“On you?”

“Ah no. Unfortunately, ha ha, or fortunately, that privilege will require another meeting. I could bring them by your dorm if you like. You’re in Dylan Hall, correct?”

“Yeah. Sure. Um. Maybe you can leave them at the desk for me? Or.”

Jonathon looked kind of majorly disappointed. “Well, if you’re not in.”
The swarms of class commuters dissipated, leaving the hallway nearly deserted aside from Jonathon, me, and some kid who appeared to be passed out on one of the benches outside the lecture hall.

“Oh I’m just really busy and my room is all … Maybe you could bring them to my friend’s room because that’s where I’ll be until, you know, until my room is cleaned? Floor six room eight.”

“Of course I— That would be …”

“Okay great! Bye.” I didn’t even wait for him to finish. I dialed Shar as I headed down the hall, almost running.

“Get over here, Bugs Bunny garbage pail.on0” she snapped. “And bring some food.”

I ran into Carly on the stairs between the third and fourth floor at Dylan. As soon as she saw me she pulled me off to the side.

“Holy crap! Where have you been?! I’ve been calling you for DAYS. Are you okay?” A feather of blonde fell over one eye, leaving her other eye to do the majority of the work of the concerned stare.

“Yeah I’m just. You know. Eating.” I shook my paper bag of burgers and fries.

“Where are you staying?”

“Uh, with Shar, for now.”

“With Shar.”

“Yes.”

Carly bit her top lip. “Okay,” she sighed. “Will you maybe just text me to let me know how you’re doing?”

“Sure.”

Digging into her fries, Shar said someone had given her a dirty look when she went to take a shower. Not a dirty look, a suspicious look, she said. A fucked-up look.

“DON’T say it was my imagination, Allison.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

After burgers we rented
The Hours
, which is a movie lass="body-tex

THIRTEEN