Fire Maiden

by Terri Farley

  Darby was looking around, searching for Ann amid all the students gathered in the back of the classroom or between the rows of desks, when Miss Day bustled in.

  The teacher almost immediately decided to give in to a period of noisy conversation.

  Calling it a lesson in oral expression, Miss Day went around the room, asking students to describe their earthquake morning.

  A few students were more nervous about what would happen next than what had already happened. Some repeated their parents’ stories about earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis of the past that had begun just like this, while others argued over conflicting radio or TV reports about the quake’s magnitude.

  Monica Waipunalei, a girl Darby knew from P.E., said an earthen dam had broken above her house and filled the subdivision she lived in with slimy chocolate-colored water.

  Cheryl Hong, another girl from P.E., said her brother had gotten up early to work on his car and his arm had been broken when the car fell off the jack, pinning him there until two neighbors lifted it off him.

  Darby kept glancing at the clock, hoping Ann was safe. And she kept thinking about the guy in the gray sweatshirt. Haole girl’s givin’ you the stink eye, he’d said. But she hadn’t given him a dirty look. And did she qualify as a haole if she was one-quarter Hawaiian?

  Never mind, she told herself.

  Then, because her turn was coming and she didn’t know what to say, Darby listened uneasily to Morris, a guy who reveled in being the class clown as he confided that his pet mynah bird had screeched “Nevermore!” all night.

  Darby was rubbing superstitious chills from her arms when Morris added, “Of course, my mynah only knows three words, and nevermore is the only one we can understand.”

  As the class’s laughter subsided, Darby decided to tell about last night’s dog howls and Navigator’s bucking.

  “I don’t know that much about it, but I’ve heard animals can kind of predict earthquakes,” she finished.

  “You should ask Mr. Silva about that,” Miss Day told her.

  “I will,” Darby said, but she was glad three other students began arguing whether or not such a thing could be true, and if it was, should it be attributed to the animals’ instincts or physical sensitivity.

  Mr. Silva was her Ecology teacher. In his billowing white lab coat and shoulder-length, gray-streaked black hair, Mr. Silva looked like he should be teaching wizardry rather than science. He was one of Darby’s favorite teachers ever, but her stomach hurt when she imagined his reaction to her missing homework.

  Darby was picturing herself walking into Ecology to see ALL HOMEWORK DEADLINES EXTENDED BECAUSE OF EARTHQUAKE written on the board. That way Mr. Silva wouldn’t know she’d messed up.

  Just then, the bell to end class rang, and Ann Potter popped through the door.

  Ann was greeted with a spontaneous round of applause. Darby smiled. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Ann’s absence and was worried about her.

  Blushing so that her freckles stood out even more than usual, Ann patted her red hair as if she could subdue the curls into order, and then she bowed.

  Because Darby and Ann had their first three classes together, by the time they reached Ecology, Darby had managed to tell Ann about her adventure in setting Hoku free, then rounding her up, about Aunty Cathy’s accident, and about Megan’s crack-the-whip episode with Francie the fainting goat.

  But she hadn’t told Ann that she’d forgotten to interview Tutu. She just didn’t know how to say it, especially since Ann seemed a little, well, spacey as she talked about the strange pre-earthquake behavior of the Potters’ horses.

  “Soda, who’s never cribbed before, was eating wood like a termite. So, yeah…” Ann’s voice trailed off as if something worse had happened.

  Darby hated the idea of making a bad day worse for her friend. She found herself depending on her daydream that Mr. Silva would put off the assignment.

  “It was just a little teeny fire,” Ann explained as they walked toward Lehua High’s science wing, “from an electrical short, I think, so…”

  “A fire?” Darby yelped, and her reaction worked on Ann like a bucket of cold water.

  “Really, it was just a little flare-up. Moving the horses was a precaution. Of course we wanted to get all of them out of the barn, anyway, but they wouldn’t go!”

  “Not even Sugarfoot?” Darby asked. Although she hadn’t met Ann’s caramel-and-white pinto, she couldn’t believe he wouldn’t follow Ann out of a burning barn.

  “Nope,” Ann said.

  “I’ve heard of that before—”

  “Of horses being stupid? Yeah, me too.”

  The voice that interrupted belonged to Darby’s cousin Duxelles Borden—nicknamed Duckie by Darby.

  The big girl shortened her strides to walk next to Darby for a few steps and Darby wondered if she’d ever get used to Duckie’s appearance. A sheet of metal-bright blond hair fell to her shoulders. The hem of her denim skirt was about five feet off the ground and though her white blouse might have looked Victorian on some girls, the size of Duckie’s biceps made her look, well, not so demure.

  I’ll stick with my first impression, Darby thought as her cousin strode past. Duckie looks like a Viking.

  “Anyhow,” Darby said, shaking her head to dispel the image of her cousin, “I don’t get why horses do that.”

  She was stalling, making Ann linger outside the door of their Ecology class, because what if Mr. Silva hadn’t postponed the assignment? Ann didn’t seem to mind. In fact, despite the hot wind that whipped hair into their faces, Ann seemed no more eager to go inside than Darby.

  “My mom says it’s because the horses think they’re safe at home, but my dad sees it a little differently,” Ann said. “He says it’s a choice between ‘the devil you know and the devil you don’t know.’”

  Darby tried to puzzle that out.

  “I guess no matter how bad it is in the stall with a fire burning toward them, they still think it might be better than what’s on the other side of the door,” Ann explained.

  Darby looked at the classroom door. Ann had given her the perfect opening to admit what she’d done.

  “Speaking of…” But Darby couldn’t make the confession. “I mean, that’s not true for all horses, is it?”

  “Well, this is the first barn fire I’ve ever seen,” Ann admitted, as two girls, almost late for class, slipped past them, “but I think—no. You’ve got to remember that most of our horses are rescues. They’ve had bad experiences with people. But if the horse really trusted you—like Hoku does you—I think it would know you wouldn’t make it walk through fire!”

  Chapter 7

  “Pop quiz, pupils!” Mr. Silva was flapping around in his white lab coat when Darby and Ann came into class.

  The bell still echoed inside the classroom, but Mr. Silva was wasting no time.

  Darby stared at the blank board. How could Mr. Silva do this to her? And then his words registered.

  “Pop quiz?” Darby’s whisper joined a student chorus of horror.

  “The delayed start gave you two extra hours to study. Or sleep.” Mr. Silva pointed his index finger and swept it from one side of the classroom all the way to the other. “Judging by the fifty percent of you who didn’t turn in your online homework, and my nearly empty in-basket, I’d say it was the latter.”

  “It’s not bad enough we nearly died in an earthquake?” Ann moaned.

  “Miss Potter, feel free to elaborate on your near-death experience in the essay portion of the quiz,” Mr. Silva said. He paused a minute, looking from Ann to Darby and back to Ann, before handing her a stack of papers to pass back. “I must say I’m surprised at your lack of concern for your team project.”

  When the science teacher strode to the next row, the girls faced each other.

  Certain she’d turned gray with guilt, Darby blurted, “I can explain—”

  Ann said, “Here’s the thing—”

&nb
sp; Darby felt dizzy with blame, but Mr. Silva interrupted before she could finish her confession.

  “No talking during the quiz,” he commanded.

  Ann didn’t say another word. Just the same, while Darby worked on her quiz, she felt Ann’s lingering glare.

  The quiz on volcanoes included two extra-credit questions about the epicenter and Richter scale measurement of this morning’s earthquake. If the radio report and Megan’s friend Elane had been right, Darby was, too. And she could use those extra-credit points.

  Once she finished, Darby turned her quiz facedown, but she didn’t look at Ann. Instead, she used her fingertip to draw an invisible, endless spiral on her desktop.

  “All is not lost,” Mr. Silva said as he collected the quiz papers. “Given this morning’s extraordinary circumstances, those students who handed in their work on time will receive bonus points—”

  “Oh yeah!” someone cheered.

  “—and the rest of you will still be eligible for full credit if—listen, please! Don’t celebrate yet, because this next part is crucial. You will only be eligible for full credit if you turn in A-quality work.”

  Darby sprawled back in her desk and looked toward the ceiling with thanks. She couldn’t help noticing Ann had slumped forward at the same time.

  “Working toward that end, we’ll spend the rest of the class period discussing questions that might come up on your projects during spring break.”

  As Mr. Silva spoke, Darby tried to make her brain a thirsty sponge. She understood about searching out parallels between stories and science. She got the part about observation and field notes, too, but Megan had told her that the Two Sisters never did more than breathe out a few wisps of steam.

  “Mr. Silva?” Darby edged her hand up, barely even with her head. “What if our project is something we can’t observe?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something. That’s why it’s a vacation assignment. So you’ll have plenty of time.”

  Darby heard a few students grumble about Mr. Silva’s misunderstanding of the word vacation, but most already looked thoughtful.

  “Now take five minutes to sit quietly and make some notes. Then I’ll call on a few of you, at random, to see if you’re on the right track.”

  Darby whipped out a pen and paper. For a few seconds she stared at the light blue lines on the paper, waiting for something to materialize.

  She heard students whispering to each other about Kane and Kanaloa, but she didn’t know either of those names. Someone mentioned Maui the trickster, and a guy in the row next to her mentioned Mano. She thought that had something to do with sharks. She wrote down menehune, because she knew who they were, but she didn’t know if they could be linked with volcanoes.

  “Oh! Pele!” Darby didn’t know excitement had made her blurt the words aloud until Ann smiled and other students giggled.

  “Very good, Miss Carter,” her teacher said. “Pele would tie in nicely with your project on volcanoes.”

  Darby was looking down, blushing even though she was right, when she heard a mocking snort from the back of the room.

  “Shouldn’t go mocking Pele, you know. She’s one bad lady when she’s mad.”

  Darby recognized the voice, and she’d already turned to see the guy in the gray hooded sweatshirt when Mr. Silva said, “Tyson, I’m sure Miss Carter means to do no such thing….”

  “I don’t,” Darby insisted, but just as he had earlier, the guy sneered as if she was lying.

  “Since, unless I’m mistaken, she lives in Pele’s backyard,” Mr. Silva finished.

  Darby gave a quick nod, looked down to avoid a few curious looks, and scribbled down the names Pele and Pigman and the word fern, and hoped she’d said enough that Mr. Silva wouldn’t call on her.

  She had. Even better, the bell rang, and she could finally explain things to Ann.

  “I’m so sorry—” Darby began.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but—”

  “What?” Darby and Ann blurted the word together.

  The corridor was filled with students and noise, but Darby felt her thoughts click into place as if she were surrounded by silence.

  “You mean, you didn’t do the experiment?” Darby asked.

  “And you didn’t do the interview?” Ann gasped.

  “I thought we were such good students,” Darby said, giving Ann a gentle elbow in her ribs.

  “What a couple of slackers,” Ann said, and then they were both laughing and making excuses.

  “It was because Navigator was acting so weird, and then Jonah—”

  “I know,” Ann said. “And I was just going to sleep for a couple of hours and the next thing I knew I was getting tossed around like a frog in a blender….”

  “Yuck!” Darby shoved Ann down the hall and she was about to dart off toward the gym and P.E., one of only two classes she didn’t share with Ann, when something really unpleasant crossed her mind. “Hey, what’s up with that kid Tyson?”

  “Ty’s not so bad, but…” Ann’s red hair bounced as she shook her head.

  “But what?” Darby asked.

  “He’s a little bit of a bully. He thought he might scare you with that crack about Pele.”

  “He called me a haole, too,” Darby pointed out.

  “That’s not always bad,” Ann said. “It depends on how he said it. I remember at my first rodeo here, I heard someone say, ‘That haole girl barrel racer? She’s pretty good.’ And they were talking about me. Sometimes it’s just descriptive.”

  “Tyson didn’t say it in a good way, that’s for sure. Besides, I’m not—” Darby broke off, shrugging. She wasn’t comfortable talking about race. In Pacific Pinnacles, kids pretended to ignore ethnicity unless they were filling out some kind of form, or were racist.

  “Probably you’re a hapa-haole,” Ann said in a consoling voice.

  Half white, Darby defined the words for herself. That wasn’t right, either. And Tyson’s tone hadn’t been descriptive, but sarcastic.

  “See you in Algebra,” Darby said with a wave.

  Ann waved back and walked with a slight limp from her still-healing soccer injury in the direction of the office. Darby had veered toward the gym and was mulling over what Ann had said when Duckie appeared again, right in front of her.

  With her feet slightly apart and hands out level with her shoulders, Darby’s cousin blocked most of the hallway. She stood so close, Darby almost walked right into her. Now, looking up to see her cousin’s face, Darby had a pretty good idea of how Jack felt when he got to the top of the beanstalk and encountered a giant.

  “Hey!” Duckie said.

  Darby glanced over her shoulder. Duckie rarely sounded so friendly except to other swimmers and rich kids. But as long as she was here, Darby couldn’t resist asking, “Are you all okay, over at Sugar Sands Cove? Did any of the guests get hurt? What about the horses?” Darby’s mental picture of Stormbird, the cute foal she’d helped rescue, wiped out most of her worry over the luxurious resort run by her aunt Babe.

  “Things were kind of crazy, but we’ve got plenty of help.”

  “What about Stormbird?” Darby asked, even though Duckie gave an impatient roll of her eyes.

  “He stayed with all those white horses.”

  Safety was with the herd, Darby thought. As she thought of Hoku standing up for Tango, Luna looking up at Jonah but not going to him, and Lady Wong calling Hoku back to the horses, she knew it was true.

  Suddenly jittery to get back to the ranch and check on Hoku, Darby jumped when Duckie interrupted her thoughts.

  “I’m going to give you some advice.”

  “Okay,” Darby said carefully, though Duckie clearly wasn’t waiting for permission.

  “I saw Ty giving you some trouble.”

  “No big deal,” Darby said, though she enjoyed a brief fantasy in which her cousin pinched Tyson’s hood between two fingers and lifted him off the ground so that his legs pedaled in midair.

>   “It’s because he doesn’t know who you are,” Duckie said.

  “What do you mean?” Darby asked. “Of course he does. Mr. Silva calls me by name all the time.”

  Her cousin winced as if her stomach hurt. Then, in a tone indicating Darby wasn’t very smart, she enunciated, “You need to find a group. You’ve been here two weeks, and what are you?”

  “What am I?”

  “Like jock, nerd, surfer, drama llama, you know.” Duckie snapped her fingers right under Darby’s nose. “Your clique.”

  Clique?

  Darby could tell Duckie thought she was doing her a huge favor, so she tried to sound nice as she explained, “I usually just have one or two friends. Like Ann and Megan….”

  Should she add “and you”? Darby had no idea. As she fumbled for what to say next, Duckie made a sound of frustration.

  “You don’t get it. They’re in groups.” Frowning in concentration, Duckie bent her neck to one side until it made a cracking sound. Apparently satisfied, she went on. “They’re both jocks. Ann’s part of that artsy crowd, too.”

  Darby thought a minute. If Megan had been offering her these recommendations, she might have given them serious consideration. But it felt weird getting advice from Duckie.

  Still, since Duckie was pretty much a bully herself, she might know how Tyson thought. And Duckie hadn’t been at Lehua High long, either. Her advice could be sincere.

  “Is there a horse group?” Darby ventured.

  “Are you crazy?” Duckie demanded.

  Darby guessed that meant no.

  “You passed up being a jock,” Duckie said, “and don’t think I don’t appreciate it!” Duckie gave Darby an openhanded pat on the shoulder for not joining the swim team, because they both excelled in water sports, but Darby excelled just a little bit more. “I guess you could be a nerd,” Duckie said as she studied Darby. “You’re not even a freshman, so you can’t be on the newspaper or yearbook.”

  “Thanks,” Darby said. “I really appreciate—”

  Duckie loomed over her cousin as she added, “You don’t want to end up hanging out with those losers that smoke behind the bleachers. The Outsiders, they call themselves,” Duckie said in a mocking tone.