It was Wednesday, HUMP DAY, official slut night at Dylan Hall.
Something that was definitely not part of the “let’s be healthy in second semester” St. Joseph’s campaign.
Basically, even though technically every day of the week held the possibility of going out and getting shit-faced, no matter what, everyone went out on Wednesday: engineering students headed for the local beer and pizza place, the yoga heads chugged energy drinks and went clubbing, jocks headed for sports bars, and even the social work students went out (mostly to movies). That night the main hall was an overwhelming Pixies mix of loud and soft as girls called up to people to come downstairs (“Bitch, if you do not get down here this instant we are fucking OUT OF HERE”), fought about restaurants (“Oh my GOD PLEASE no more PIZZA”) and bars (“Can we go someplace I can have WINE? Like, not just BEER?”), and fixed each other’s hair. Two girls adjusted their gloss using the reflection in their phones. Hope, bundled in a massive orange down coat, brushed past me on my way to the elevator.
“Hey. Uh.”
“Allison.”
“Right. Allison. Have a good night, eh?”
On the landing of the sixth floor a bunch of Shar’s floormates were all painted up and ready to go, anxiously bouncing around and talking about some guy some girl was going to fuck that night.
“Oh SUUUURE you’re going to get laid. Right. My ASS.”
“Shut up, Ashley!”
“I’m just going to get wasted and make out with some random guy.”
“AGAIN! HAR HAR!”
Shar’s door was closed.
“Shar?” I tapped. “Shar?”
I could hear what sounded like a fan going on the other side of the door. I was pressed up listening hard when Shar appeared behind me.
“What?”
It had occurred to me in the elevator on my way up that I’d never really fought with Shar, mostly because I’d never said or done anything to contradict her.
Standing in the frame of the bathroom door, Shar frowned. Her split lip was scabbed over now, a brown lump against pink. In her giant Madonna T-shirt, she shifted her hip to one side. Waiting. back to dorm, c
“Um. I was just coming to see what you wanted to do tonight,” I said.
“I don’t feel like doing anything.”
“Oh. Okay well. I guess I was just. I mean, do you want to get a movie? We could. Um. I mean I could even go and grab food if. I don’t know if you ate. Um.”
Here’s something. You can talk and talk and talk and not get rid of silence.
“Or we could just sit and, I don’t know if you want to study.”
Sometimes silence sits on talk like a bully, squashing any power words might possibly have.
“Or we could go out? Or. You didn’t want to do anything so …”
Shar’s silence pushed on me the way a mattress pushes on you when you sleep. At some point she broke past me and into her room where she immediately flipped on her music and slammed the door shut.
I went upstairs to my room. More silence. I tried to think of things I n/a>
ELEVEN
It dragged him back to apologize awhoel’s you. Again.
By law, every dorm floor at St. Joseph’s must be equipped with a fire extinguisher. At Dylan they were in those glass cases on the wall by the elevator, next to the sign that insisted you not take the elevator in the case of a fire. Not even if you’re really tired.
Since spotting ours the first day, I’d often stopped to take a good long look. I thought of it less as pre-emptive and more as just a practical thing for a girl with my experience to know about. So. I knew how the latch opened. (The door was secured with a little plastic tag that was easy to rip.) Sometimes buildings house these things behind glass you’re supposed to break to get in, which I suppose is to make sure that it’s really a serious fire and not something you could snuff out with two wet fingers.
I’ve never had the opportunity to use a fire extinguisher myself. I am, apparently, the person who makes this kind of object necessary, but not the person who makes it useful.
Hope ended up using the fire extinguisher. She got off the elevator and immediately noticed the smell of smoke. She was about to bolt back down the stairs (bypassing the unrecommended elevator ride) when she noticed the fire extinguisher and decided it was worth at least checking to see if she could put out whatever was on fire.
The source of smoke and flame was Katy’s door, which was covered not only in sticky notes but also photos—of Katy, her boyfriend, her new nephew, and a bunch of other people—and a giant whiteboard for people to leave “positive messages” on. Katy was sort of the unofficial person to talk to about problems in our dorm. She had the number of the Head of Residence as one of her Fav Five. People were always tacking their problems to her door. Someone had also left a garbage bag at the foot of her door earlier that night; in it were a sweater and some pants that had been damaged in the often-psychotic twists of the eighth-floor washing machine. It nearly killed Katy when someone, somehow, set it on fire and the bag leaked plumes of smoke into her room and mine. Katy slept soundly with the help of her ambient noise machine, so she didn’t hear a thing until it was almost too late.
It was Hope I heard shouting “FIRE,” whose shouting was eventually joined by Katy’s screams and finally the screams of what sounded like two other girls. I remember smoke rushing into my lungs. I remember standing and suddenly feeling sick, sick like a dead pig must feel in the hot dark confines of a barbecue pit. I remember watching my hand grab the doorknob and being afraid it wouldn’t turn. When I flung the door open, smoke still hovered in the air. The hallway was covered in white. Katy’s knees cut long tracks through the mess of white foam as she crawled toward the stairwell in her long cotton nightgown, looking like Ophelia in her final days, mad hair and eyes, grey limbs. Hope dropped the extinguisher and hunched over her. Little bits of foam were stuck to Katy’s hair. She was whimpering.
“Katy! Katy, stop! It’s okay!”
The smoke ended up mostly affecting Katy’s room and mine. Katy was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation; the paramedics checked my vitals and then told me to take it easy and to come to the hospital if I had any symptoms, anything that seemed abnormal. One of them pointed at my scar and raised an eyebrow.
“Is THAT from a fire?”
“Not a big one,” I replied.
Carly arrived a couple minutes after the fire department had gone downstairs to check on why the fire alarm hadn’t gone off. She had to push her way through security.
“Um. WHAT THE FUCK?”
“Fucking FIRE!” Hope hollered over the shoulder of a security guard.
Seconds later, Carly stood next to me, peering into my room. It smelled like a bonfire.
“The alarm didn’t go off,” she said.
“No.”
“Shit. Are you okay? Holy shit. A fire!”
Not a fire, I wanted to say. Smoke.
Girls trickled in from Hump Night adventures. Freaked out. Checked their rooms to make sure everything was still there and nothing had combusted or been stolen by flames.
A person in charge of college residence stuff appeared about an hour later with a book of cab chits and forms for us to sign relating to damage assessment. Residents on the eleventh floor were told to gather what they’d need to relocate for the night while the police and fire departments did an investigation.
“Of course, the college will provide housing for the evening.”
“A hotel?” Hope asked hopefully.
“No.”
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to sit in the hallway and wait. Underneath my fingertips the hallway carpet fibres were sticky. Damp. Not good to sit on.
“Allison? Allison, where are you staying tonight?” Carly’s voice was careful.
“I’m fine,” I said, although of course I didn’t feel fine.
“Okay. Come on,” Carly coaxed, grabbing my elbow. “It’s late. Let me take you to my friend
Jay’s house. Okay? Just for the night. He’s got a huge apartment and you can sleep on his couch.”
One or two people reached out to give me what I supposed were meant to be consoling touches on the shoulder. My head hurt, a light buzz of a hurt that hovered over me like a tilted halo while Carly guided me out down the stairs, onto the street, and into a cab.
My coat, my hair, my skin smelled like ashtray. When I closed my eyes I saw the shadow of my doorknob lightly outlined in the dark of my room. Right before I opened my eyes I fell forward as I mentally grabbed for that thin silver shape.
I jerked myself upright. Saw Carly.
“Wow sweetie, you look like shit. Do you want water or something? Okay, just try to relax.”
I managed a quick “hello” to Jay before bolting past him and into the bathroom, where I immediately barfed my guts out. After that I lay on the floor listening to Carly in the hallway.
“Fire. Something something something something. Yeah, AGAIN.”
A couple of minutes later, a scratch at the door.
“Allison? Allison are you okay? Should we take you to the hospital? Allison? Can you just like kick the door with your foot or something to let us know you’re not passed out or in a coma?”
“I Bugs Bunny garbage pail. just OH’m okay.”
“Allison?”
“I’m OH KAY.”
The linoleum was cold and comforting. It was dirty, covered in a sea of grey lint balls and smelling slightly of mildew, but also cold and comforting.
An hour later I made it to the couch. Carly made me a mug of camomile tea. She tried to get me to change my clothes. I refused. I wanted to be still. I pushed myself into the corner of the scratchy couch that smelled like mothballs. Every thought in my brain felt like it was blocks away, huffing through the cold, heading my way but still too far to hear. I fell asleep to a rerun of some cop show about an angry cop.
My phone buzzed at three-thirty a.m. Shar.
Are you ok? Where are you?
I stared at the glowing text for a while. Imagining what a concerned Shar would sound like.
At someone’s house. Ok.
Seconds later.
Come here?
On the TV there was a commercial playing about an old person who was applying for life insurance. It occurred to me that it was strange for Shar to ask me, rather than tell me, to do something.
Although then I figured, Well, of course, she’d heard what happened.
Please.
It took me about five minutes to find my boots and coat, and then a piece of paper to leave a note for Carly saying I’d decided to go back to the dorm. I found the door and slipped out onto the street. The cold air felt good on my face, even if it was kind of insanely freezing. I dug out my mittens and covered my ears with my hands. I must have looked like someone walking away from an invisible shouting person, charging off in silent fury.
There was no one in the hallway, no one on the stairs. I slipped through the dorm like a burglar, touched Shar’s door softly with the pad of my index finger.
“Shar,” I whispered, suddenly worried that I’d hallucinated the call.
“Who is it?”
“Allison.”
The door opened. Shar’s face was wet, her features smudged and puffy, her hair pushed up on one side. She’d changed into a little black silk nightie that was crinkled and ripped a bit. It stuck to the skin of hene.
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?”
(You) Set Me on Fire Page 11