I’m thinking about backfires and Montana when I hear Dad come home. He’s on the phone, I’m guessing with the police chief. “I’m glad you had him under surveillance. But if Bob didn’t set that fire tonight, who did?”
In the morning, the smell of coffee wakes me. There are voices in the kitchen. Could Mom be back? No, the voice that isn’t Dad’s belongs to a man.
Who would drop by so early in the morning? Maybe the police chief.
It’s 8:30, and I’ve got my first weeding job at nine. I throw on some clothes, make a quick bathroom stop and head to the kitchen.
Someone’s in my chair. I step back when I see who it is. What is Terry doing here?
Dad and Terry must be having an intense conversation, because neither of them notices I’m standing three feet away. Dad’s rubbing his temples.
“Look, Mayor Westcott,” Terry says, “it wasn’t easy for me to come here this morning, but I knew I had to. He’s your kid.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Terry gets up from my chair when he sees me. “I’d better get going,” he says, without looking at me. He turns back to my dad. “So you’re okay to write that letter of recommendation for me, Mr. Mayor? I’m sure it’d help a lot. I’d do anything to get a job with the Montreal Fire Department.”
“I’d be glad to write that letter, Terry.” Only Dad doesn’t sound too glad. He doesn’t bother getting up to let Terry out. He just takes a long sip of coffee. His eyes look tired. “It looks like we have ourselves a problem, Franklin. A big problem.”
My first thought is that Dad is finally going to talk to me about Mom’s new living arrangements.
But that isn’t it at all.
“Terry says he saw you at the fire last night and he reminded me that you were also at the grass fire at the old golf course. In fact”—Dad is clutching his coffee mug so tight, his knuckles are white—“he says you never miss a fire. What do you have to say for yourself, Franklin?”
It’s as if my heart is beating in my throat. “I didn’t start that fire last night, Dad.”
Dad puts down his mug. “How do I know you’re not lying, Franklin?”
“You don’t.”
I take a piece of bread out of the bag and pop it in the toaster. I hope Dad can’t see I’m shaking.
Then, without even saying where he’s going, Dad walks out of the kitchen and leaves the house. Could he be moving out too?
I hear the garage door open and the sounds of Dad poking around inside.
“Franklin!” Dad shouts so loud, I’m sure the whole street can hear him. “Where the hell is that canister I use for gasoline?”
Shoot! I must’ve left the canister at the golf course. What do I tell Dad? I don’t want to lie, but I can’t tell the truth either. So I do the only thing I can think of—I slip out the front door and take off on my skateboard.
I don’t plan to go to Tracy’s. I just end up there. Tracy’s mom is outside, watering the lawn. She has the same hair color as Tracy.
“Are you a friend of Tracy’s?” she asks when I skateboard up.
I shake her hand because I know adults like it when you do that. “Yeah, we’re friends. From Sunday school. I’m Franklin.”
“Lovely to meet you. Tracy told us all about you. She said you walked her home last night. Thanks for doing that, Franklin. You sound like a real gentleman.”
Tracy must hear us, because she pops her head out of an upstairs window and says, “Don’t you have gardens to weed?”
“Yeah. But I need to talk to you. If you don’t mind.”
“How ’bout if I meet you at your first garden—in about fifteen minutes?”
I agree and give Tracy directions.
I’m weeding when she shows up. This late in the summer, there aren’t too many dandelions left. I’m mostly tearing out hunks of crabgrass. Tracy wants to help.
“So what’d you want to talk to me about?” she asks as she pulls up a handful of crabgrass.
I don’t look at her when I answer. “My dad thinks I started that fire last night. He thinks I started all the fires.”
Tracy puts her hand on my shoulder. “Did you?”
“I sometimes start fires,” I tell her. “But I’m not the pyro.” It’s the closest I’ve come to telling anyone the truth. It feels better than I expected. “I’d never light a fire that might hurt someone.”
“There’s always a chance someone might get hurt.” Tracy’s voice is stern.
I put down my trowel and look at Tracy. She’s right. Someone might get hurt. I know how it works for me. Every fire has to be bigger than the last one. What if it’s the same for the pyro? “I need to catch the pyro,” I tell her.
“How’re you going to do that?”
“I need to think like a pyro.”
Tracy cracks a smile. “That shouldn’t be hard for you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Dad comes by at lunch. He brings me apple juice and a tuna sandwich. I don’t tell him there’s too much mayo in the tuna.
“I looked on your laptop, Franklin.”
He doesn’t seem to feel too guilty about it. “You spend an awful lot of time reading about fires. I spoke to your mom. We want you to see someone so you can talk about your feelings.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“You have to, Franklin. Like it or not.”
I spend the afternoon weeding and thinking. If Bob didn’t light last night’s fire, and I didn’t light it, who did? And why would someone light a fire that could hurt people?
That’s when the lightbulb goes off.
Terry.
Didn’t he say he’d do anything to work for the Montreal Fire Department?
When I get home, I call Tracy and ask her to meet me at 9:00 PM.
Terry lives in a brick house on Wolseley Avenue. A bumper sticker on a garage window reads Firefighters can take the heat.
The garage is locked. “Too bad!” I whisper. “I wanted to see what Terry’s got in there.”
“Maybe I can help,” Tracy says, grinning as she pulls out a bobby pin from behind one ear.
“You know how to pick locks?”
“Picking locks is chapter four in the Ukulele for Beginners handbook,” Tracy says.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Right,” says Tracy. “We’ve got an old garage too. Mom lost the key, so we use a bobby pin instead. Here, let me show you.”
Tracy is about to insert her bobby pin in the lock when we hear a vehicle pull up. I grab Tracy, and we duck behind some bushes.
We try to not even breathe as Terry pulls in. He gets out of his truck to unlock the garage door. Then he turns on a light. From our hiding spot, we can see the inside of the garage. There’s shelving along the walls. The shelving on the far wall holds three large cans of gasoline, lined up like soldiers.
Terry looks around to make sure no one’s watching. Then he grabs two cans of gasoline and stashes them in the back of the truck. After that, he goes into his house.
I gesture for Tracy to follow me. I can tell she understands what we’re going to do next.
I keep an eye on Terry’s front door as I help Tracy into the back of the truck. Then I hop up too. There are plenty of blankets to hide under. We get as far away as possible from the cans of gas.
“I don’t get it,” Tracy whispers. “Why would a firefighter start fires?”
“If he’s a big enough hero, he’ll have a better chance of getting hired by the city.”
“That’s sick.”
There’s no telling how long Terry will be inside. I’m cramping up, and the blanket feels scratchy. There is one benefit to this. I’m so close to Tracy, I can hear her breathe.
Neither of us says anything for a bit, then Tracy breaks the silence. “Why do you start fires, Franklin?”
“It helps when I’m”—I stop to find the right word—“anxious.”
“You’re going to have to stop.”
“I know
.”
We hear Terry slam his front door shut. He whistles as he gets into the truck and starts the engine.
I try to make out where we’re going from the way the truck swerves.
Are we on Westminster Avenue?
When I peek out from under the blanket, I see we’re right in front of James’s place. Correction. James and Mom’s place.
Why would Terry start a fire here?
Oh no! I think as the answer comes to me. Terry must have figured out how I feel about James and Mom. He’s going to start a fire at their apartment and pin it on me. No wonder he’s whistling.
Tracy and I huddle close. I think we’re both wondering what Terry will do if he finds us. But he doesn’t. He grabs a can of gasoline.
I don’t have to peek out from under the blanket to know what he’s doing now. He’s dousing the ground with gasoline.
“Let’s go!” I tell Tracy. We scramble to the ground, trying not to make too much noise. We stay behind the truck so that if Terry looks around, he won’t see us.
If we peer out from behind the truck, we can see him. Tracy takes out her cell phone to call 9-1-1. Her hands are shaking.
Terry is on James’s balcony. I know because of the tomato plants. Things are moving so quickly now that it’s hard for me to keep track. Tracy is talking to the 9-1-1 operator. Terry starts the fire. It catches quickly, thanks to the gasoline. At first, it’s a glowing ball, and then the ball gets bigger and more orange. Fiery puddles form on the balcony floor.
Mom’s not in the apartment. At least, I don’t see her car in the parking lot. Maybe she’s gone to buy groceries.
Terry will need to flee the scene. I watch as he stops to look at the fire. I know what he’s thinking, because I’ve thought it too. That’s my fire. I made it.
It’s only a step down to the lawn that borders the apartment. Terry will be back behind the wheel in a minute or so. I know what will happen after that too. In about fifteen minutes, he’ll turn up in his volunteer firefighter’s uniform, ready to play the hero.
Terry turns to step down to the lawn, and his eyes land on me. First, he looks surprised. Then he starts to laugh. “Hey, squirt!” he calls to me. “You’re making this too easy! Imagine that! Here you are, setting fire to your mom’s boyfriend’s place!”
Terry is laughing so hard, he has to wipe his eyes. That’s when he loses his balance. He bangs his head on the edge of the balcony. A tomato plant topples at the same time Terry does.
“Oh my god,” Tracy says, “his foot!”
Terry’s foot is caught in the railing. The weird thing is, he’s not trying to get it loose.
“I think he knocked himself out,” Tracy says. “The fire truck better get here soon. We need an ambulance too.”
Tracy is back on her phone when I start running toward the balcony. “Franklin!” she calls out after me. “Don’t!”
Terry tried to frame me. Even so, I can’t stand there and watch the fire get to him. The flames are awfully close to him now. “Terry!” I scream. I think I can reach his foot from here. “Wake up!” I shout. But he’s still out cold. Maybe he’s inhaled too much smoke.
The smoke is making me cough now too. First, I need to get his foot out from between the railings. It’s not easy, but I manage.
Where’s the fire truck? I’m waiting for the sound of the siren, but I don’t hear it.
There’s someone else nearby. It’s too smoky for me to see who it is. But I need to get up on the balcony to reach Terry. I cover my mouth and hoist myself up with my other hand. I can hear the other person getting up on the balcony too. “We need to get him out of here,” I manage to say.
I grab Terry’s feet. “You take his head,” I say.
“I’ll try.”
“Tracy?”
For a girl with stage fright, Tracy is amazing. I hear her panting and coughing. Or is that me panting and coughing? Or is it Terry? I’m afraid I’m going to pass out too.
Yet somehow, Tracy and I manage to drag Terry out of danger just as the fire engine comes flying down the street.
The last thing I hear before I do pass out is my father’s voice. “What the heck is going on here?”
Chapter Sixteen
Who knew I’d have a talent for stage lighting?
Jeff says there’s lots of work on movie sets for lighting technicians. The really good techies sometimes even get to be lighting directors in Hollywood.
Right now, I’ve got the spotlight on Tracy’s hands. She’s strumming the ukulele. Her voice sounds good. Confident.
I’m pretty sure Tracy has her stage-fright thing beat.
I’m working on my fire-starting thing.
Dr. Ford, the psychologist Dad and Mom forced me to see, isn’t a bad guy. For one thing, he’s really interested in fires and how they work. I asked him if he ever set fires when he was a kid. He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either, which makes me think maybe he did. Only I guess it wouldn’t be very professional if he told me so.
Jeff is home for Christmas. He’s sitting in the third row, next to Mom and James. Dad is in the front row, of course. Where else would the mayor sit? He says I helped him win the election.
Terry is in jail. Dr. Ford and I talk about him sometimes. I know that if I don’t get the fire starting under control, I could end up there too.
Even after everything Terry did or tried to do to me, I still hope he gets help while he’s in prison. Dr. Ford thinks it’s a good sign that I feel that way. He says it shows that I’m developing empathy, which is another way of saying that I’ve got a heart.
No matter how old I get to be, I know I’ll always be amazed by fire. Dr. Ford says that’s okay too.
“Fire is elemental,” he said in our session last week. “Perhaps that’s why it captures the human imagination.”
That reminded me of something Dad used to say when I was a little kid, watching him start a fire in our fireplace-“Fire creates, but it destroys too.”
This summer, a lot of stuff got destroyed, but other stuff—good stuff, hopeful stuff—got created.
Acknowledgments
A big thank you to all the young people I’ve met during school visits who have shared their stories about playing with fire.
Special thanks to Dr. Kenneth R. Fineman, a California psychologist who treats young firestarters, and who made time to answer my questions.
Many thanks also to my friends at the Kahnawake Fire Brigade. Firefighter John Rice gave me a great tour of the station and introduced me to the world of firefighting. Assistant Fire Chief Bryan Deer and firefighter Cheryl Montour patiently answered further questions.
Thanks to the wonderful team at Orca Book Publishers, especially Melanie Jeffs for her fine editor’s eye and ear.
Thanks, too, to my friend Viva Singer, for letting me talk out another story. So did my husband Michael Shenker and my daughter Alicia Melamed. I love you both too much.
Monique Polak has written numerous novels for youth. Many of them are, like Pyro, set in the Montreal area, where she lives and teaches English and Humanities at Marianopolis College. Monique also works as a freelance journalist.
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