We made our way toward the round end of the water they call Waterplace Park. Brian put a few Red Hots in my hand, so I swallowed them, and they gave me a pleasant warming feeling. It sounds kind of dumb, doesn’t it? Walking through a huge crowd eating Red Hots. But I can’t explain it—it was the most mystical experience of my life. All the people there were united by the dark night and warm fires, and there was no history anymore, we were transported back to a time before electricity and cell phones.
I don’t want to quit writing because it’s hard enough to hold all this in my mind and try to organize it without taking a break, but my hand is cramping so bad and I have to get some sleep. And then study. More as soon as I can!
October 18
I had Jill tell the PE teacher I was sick so I could come and finish writing all this. She’s amazing, all she did, all the ways she covered for me so I could go to WaterFire with Brian. I’ll never be able to thank her. She knows how important it is to write it down, but I doubt Mr. Bacchus would understand. So of course I have to tie my safety sack around my own wrist when we separate like this, but it’s so annoying to write with my wrist clunking along the table that I’ve set the sack aside. It’s not too far away, don’t worry. I could slip it back on in case someone sticks their head in here for a random check. What do you think I am, some kind of troublemaker? Jill gets to keep her sack in her pocket when we separate. I can’t really blame them for trusting her more than me after my first day fiasco.
Jill is sitting next to me at meals now so Brian can sit directly across from me and he even held my hand at lunch today. Talk about loss of appetite. We’ve never really talked about all this because we haven’t been alone. How could we talk about it in front of other people?
Anyway, there we were, being all mystical, and after we finished the Red Hots, we went up the stairs that lead to the vantage point at Waterplace Park. I have no idea why no one else was there—well, maybe the crowd was thinning a little because WaterFire was almost over—but we had it to ourselves, that’s the important thing. We leaned on the railing and looked at the people milling around, and the vendors starting to pack up, and of course the luminous pyres. My face was pretty cold, but with my arms folded and thinking about the fires, it almost seemed like a summer night.
“I feel so free here,” I said.
“Me, too,” said Brian. “Out among people, no patch, no safety sack. And look! No one’s catching on fire. I think we have more control over ourselves than they tell us we do.”
He was so right, all I could do was nod. I was enjoying the music—something from Cabo Verde, I think, I’ll have to look it up—and thinking the moment could not possibly get any more perfect when the music changed and it came on. “The Prayer of St. Gregory.”
That’s the track I heard all those years ago when my parents first took me to WaterFire. Even then, long before I manifested as a pyro, I found it haunting. I found the name of the piece and the composer, Alan Hovhaness, in the program and then I told my mother I wanted the entire album of that music for my next present. I waited and waited, hoping it wouldn’t be reserved as a Christmas present, and tried to keep the music alive in my head even while I begged my parents to take me back to WaterFire before it stopped for the winter. It turned out the next time Mom felt like giving me a present was as a consolation for the first day of sex ed at school. But even such a sketchy association couldn’t ruin my enjoyment of the piece, and all the music on the disc. When I played it, it was even better than when I’d heard it over the speakers. I closed my eyes and I could see the sparking pyres and glittering water and all the people in their own trances.
From that disc, I learned all about fantasies and fugues. That Hovhaness guy can really fugue. I don’t think he’s dead. I’d like to meet him some time.
The piece begins slowly and gently, like a soft-focus sunrise, with a full string section coming in, testing the waters, supporting one another even as they start to form the hint of a melody. In the fourth bar, a totally unexpected trumpet starts in, and its singularity makes it sound like the melody, although it’s not a very certain one. It has nothing to do with what’s come before, and it’s plaintive, like someone telling you their sorrows in strictest confidence. The string section echoes the melody or supports it in a normal monophonic way, then there’s a hint of counterpoint, as if the horn and strings have some kind of disagreement, but it never jars the ear. The two coexist, not really in harmony, but with each in an independent fugue, taking turns, the strings with their unity and the horn with its solitude. The trumpet gets really mournful, almost like it’s ashamed of itself. Then, for two full, insistent minutes, sometimes lush, sometimes too high, the strings make their case without the trumpet in what seems like a traditional way. Cellos groan for support and the highest-pitched violas possible drive the point home. They’re beautiful, but it’s almost like they protest too much. When that’s about to resolve, the trumpet jumps back in as if to say, “No, that’s not it. It’s this way.” The strings hum softly below as the trumpet takes something that is dark and secret and describes it for all to hear. Finally, the piece resolves with all the instruments coming in with their strengths, but because it’s in a minor key, it’s not really a resolution. It’s more of an open-ended question.
I realized I was talking nonstop, saying all this about the music, and probably keeping Brian from hearing any of it.
This already seems like ages ago, but it’s only been two days. Looking into Brian’s eyes as he listened to me ramble on, I got this feeling I’m nostalgic for now, as if I felt it twenty years ago, before I was even born. Like it was the start of things, and you can never go back to the sweet start of anything, you just have to treasure the memory. Which is why I’m trying to write it all down.
Almost all the crowd was gone by then, and a lot of cars were coming out of the mall garage. We finally caught sight of the stoker as he came around the circle of pyres in his pontoon, but we weren’t going to see if he was a pyrokinetic like us, because as he went along, he was putting all the fires out using a giant snuffer.
“So,” Brian said, “it’s like the string section and the trumpet represent two different forces.”
“Well, their ideas are similar, not totally different. In the context of the piece, they may represent St. Gregory’s faith and his doubt.” That was my academic take on it. When I listen to it and let it touch my emotions, the strings sound like what everyone tells you to do, how to behave, and the trumpet has other ideas, and reaches toward freedom.
He smiled at me. Was I saying something amusing? He finally asked, “Which one wins?”
Suddenly, I’d had enough of reveling in Brian’s attention without full knowledge of what was going on. Because I really thought he liked Jill, and even though I’d rather he liked me, I was confused by the Jill-favoring signals and then all the trouble he’d gone to for me, not to mention the handholding. I think Brian was starting to say something about us needing to get back to the school, but I blurted it out. “Do you like me?”
I couldn’t tell if he was blushing in the dark, but he shifted his weight a lot. Finally, he said, “I like your hair. It only looks red in certain lights.” My hand went straight to my locks, which were waving a little in the wind. Up to that moment, I’d had no idea of the potential of my hair to be anything like red.
“And I like your smile,” he added.
That made me look right at his lips. I’ve studied him a lot, but this was the first time I noticed how pink they were. At least, I don’t think it was from the dye in the Red Hots. And don’t most guys have chapped lips because they don’t use gloss? At that moment, Brian did not have that problem. We faced each other and he took my hands in his. Was he going to kiss me? I think I was trembling, as hokey as that sounds. My breath was short and I thought I could feel him leaning closer. His flawless face was in perfect focus and I saw each of the little flecks in his brown eyes. My skin was all goosebumps and I felt like stepping out of th
e moment to ask whoever’s in charge to stop time right there.
Then, one of the pyres the stoker had already put out flared up with a great whooshing sound. Luckily, no boaters or gondoliers were still there when it happened, but I’m sure my face was as red as those candies we’d eaten.
“Was that you?” Brian asked.
I think my silence told him all he needed to know. God, it was so embarrassing to lose control like that right in the middle of the best thing that’s happened to me probably ever. But he was thinking about the fire, not who lit it.
“Let me try something,” he said. He held his finger out like he had before to relight the other pyre. He stared and stared at the flames I’d just created. I couldn’t imagine he was trying to increase the flames, so I was puzzled until, with a great snapping sound, sparks arced out of the pyre in a reversal of what he’d done before. The sparks zeroed in and disappeared at the tip of his finger.
“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” I said. “It looks like it hurts.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, showing me his fingertip, which had no trace of a burn or ash. “And it didn’t totally work,” he added modestly. I looked, and indeed, the fire was not put totally out. A single flame licked rhythmically at the embers. “But I wanted to prove to myself that I could put a fire out as well as make one. You know, I think I could really get the hang of both directions if I had some practice.”
I imagined some kind of controlled environment where we could go every day at the PMA and set fires and then try putting them out. It was an exciting prospect.
“Yeah, they should definitely let us hone our abilities. I had no idea it was even possible to put a fire out with our Talent. Why wouldn’t they want us to have that kind of control?”
My words hung in the air for a moment. Then Brian realized all the other fires were out and said (probably again), “We should get going. We don’t want them to miss us.”
It was probably a mile and half back from Waterplace Park to the meeting point on the docks, so we grabbed hands and sprinted. It’s not easy to go that fast in flip-flops. Smack, smack, smack. I do have blisters torturing the bottom of my feet now, but it was all worth it. There was no one left on the riverside walk, so it was fast going. We ducked through a deserted Johnson and Wales campus and in spite of our best efforts, we heard a couple of guys screaming obscenities in the DownCity area.
Amazingly, when we got to the dock, everyone was still there. It must have been quite a blaze Raúl started if it overcame all those layers of fireproofing. I hoped no one’s stuff got damaged in the fire or in the sprinklers. The fire truck was turning back into the station next door and the overnight teachers were doing roll call before letting the students back inside. Jill grabbed my hand and steadied me so it would seem like I had been there the whole time. In the streetlamps, I noticed I had flecks—smudges of ash—along my arms. Jill looked at me meaningfully, but all I could do was smile. I watched Brian with Raúl and wondered what kind of trouble they were going to get into for the way they got me to WaterFire. I told Raúl, “Domo aregato” and, to my surprise, he started doing the robot as if he got the reference. Eighties music comes out of me at these emotional times, no matter whether I think people know it or not.
Brian had set the newspapers far down the hallway so as not to ruin anyone’s homework or incriminate anyone in particular. Then, he’d sent Raúl to the opposite side of the building to pull the alarm in addition to the ones that were already starting to go off. It was just enough to confuse the issue, so the next day, the school had no choice but to declare it an accident. I’ve been meaning to ask Jill exactly how they managed to keep our absence for those two hours a secret, but so much has been going on, I haven’t had the chance.
I followed Brian up the stairs and he looked back at me, smiling with the most knowing look as we each turned our doorknobs. (The doors don’t lock—safety hazard, they say, but it makes it awfully convenient to do surprise checks, too.) I can’t help but wonder if he was going to kiss me. It’s my main preoccupation, morning to evening and all night long.
“Good night?” said Jill inside the room.
I sort of hummed and peeled off my sweats. I lay back on the pillow, turned my head into my hair, and inhaled. It smelled like wood smoke.
October 22
The whole trouble with journals like this is that when interesting things start happening, you have no time to write it all down. We had the science midterm and I’m pretty sure I passed because it was so easy. I hate to say it, but I agree with Melinda—the school’s curriculum leaves something to be desired.
When I finished writing about WaterFire the other day, I shook out the cramps in my hand and checked my phone. PE class wasn’t quite over yet, so I decided to do my own little surprise check on Melinda. I hadn’t seen her at a PE class more than once or twice the whole time we’ve been here and I wanted to know what she was really doing in secret. So, I strapped my safety sack back on my wrist and tiptoed into the hallway. I was expecting to find her fainted on her bed, her arm across her forehead and smelling salts nearby. I pressed my ear to her door and was puzzled to hear sounds of movement, and, more surprising, music that wasn’t the latest Top 40. Jill said that was all they listened to when she lived with them.
I cracked the door open and peeked through to see Melinda throwing her arms wildly around and repeating complicated footsteps. Even though she had the volume pretty low, I recognized the driving rhythm as the “Ritual Fire Dance” from de Falla’s El amor brujo. I couldn’t help myself, I was so surprised. I swung the door all the way open to get the full effect of the legwarmers and leotard, and said, “The ‘Ritual Fire Dance’? Psychological issues much?”
She stopped in utter shock. Her arms fell to her sides as if she had been standing there innocently for an hour. Her face was white. Then she came to her senses and pressed “Stop” on her iPod deck. With an anger I would never have imagined even from her, she said, “The school doesn’t have any arts programs, much less dance.”
It was a great point. I know I would be happier if there were a music class, a marching band, or even if they let us study song lyrics as poetry. Suddenly finding her interesting, I said, “So you’re putting together your own interpretive dance?”
But there wasn’t to be any mutual understanding between us, no common ground, even though I would happily have discussed ballets or how other music can be used in modern dance with anyone, even Melinda.
“Why aren’t you in PE?” she asked pointedly, like she was going to report me.
“But, Melinda,” I said.
“Get out!” she shrieked, so I bowed away and shut the door. She’s pretty convincing that way. So now I have a weird secret against her and she knows I skipped PE for no “good” reason. We’re in a really weird standoff now, kind of looking at each other, while before, we always looked the other way. I’m dying to tell Jill about that dance and I can’t imagine why Melinda would want to keep her dance dreams such a big secret, but now it’s turned into this thing where she’s entrusted me with something she doesn’t want anyone else to know. Well, more blackmailed than entrusted. So weird!
The other weird thing is about Jill. The day after WaterFire, we were studying, and I was telling her a strictly factual version of what happened with me and Brian (she agrees, he was probably going to kiss me) and finally I asked her what happened at the dock while we were gone.
“I was hanging out with Raúl,” she said. She noticed my expression, which must have been a little disgusted, in spite of what he did in order to help me and Brian—I’m so ungrateful sometimes!—and she overcompensated. “I had to stay with our regular group so less would seem out of the ordinary. It helped them not notice you two were gone.”
The sweet smile that flashed on her face was a dead giveaway. I realized that the new seating arrangement at meals meant she was across from Raúl now, and I must have been too distracted to notice any change in the way th
ey interacted.
“You like Raúl.”
“N . . . yeah. He’s really nice. We had such a great time last night.”
I just think Jill is too good for anyone. But, with Brian out of the picture because he’s mine (mine! Can you believe he chose me?), really, wouldn’t anyone have been better than a skinny-headed guy who always says the worst thing possible?
“Did he kiss you?” I asked, a little too high pitched.
“No, don’t worry, you and I are in the same place as far as that goes,” said Jill. “But give us a little more time alone . . .”
I knew what she meant. We need to find a way around this constant surveillance so we can have some proper time with our . . . boyfriends (?). But I still had to bury my face in the pillow to keep from groaning at the thought of anyone kissing Raúl.
And now I need to write about something that isn’t weird at all, unfortunately. In science today, Ms. Matheson took me to the side and whispered that she can’t make me the official Bunsen lighter. When I asked why, she said it was because the principal thinks my manifestation was too violent. I went back to my seat deflated. At least we weren’t using the burners for that class, so I didn’t have to endure someone else’s joy. I can’t say I’m surprised. Disappointed, yes. I mean, she believed in me—why can’t the rest of the authorities? I’m guessing she doesn’t believe in me now that she knows about my manifesting incident. But how much does she know? Would they give her details if she asked? How many details do they actually have? I wonder about the files they keep on us. If they were paper, they’d probably fill up a room for each of us. But of course they can’t be paper here.
My biggest grief right now is that I don’t know what I’m going to do for Thanksgiving break. I don’t think I’m welcome in Boston, where Mom is, and Grandma is having Uncle Jack over because I never told anyone what he tried to do. So is it worse to have to be around him, or to stay here, more or less on complete lockdown? Who even knows what I would have to eat while the rest of the students are gone?
Awash in Talent Page 9