“I never heard this part,” Dale interjected.
“Oh sure, dancing to the jukebox. Not acting like teacher and student, that’s for sure. I don’t spread rumors much, and I don’t even know if it’s true, but I heard later that his boy took a header down the stairs that night. His poor wife sat in the ER all night long alone. My sister was a nurse on duty, so that part I know for a fact. Shame, really.” Jane shook her head, a feigned kind of sadness, and Bridget fisted her fingers in the pocket of her dress, her nails slicing into her palms. Jane was trotting out a dusty old rumor, playing it off as some kind of truth. Bridget remembered now, she’d heard it before, years ago, but it was right after Holden got sick and Gabe was diagnosed and they’d all been consumed, stuck in their own whirlpool lives, and some days it was all Bridget could do to take a breath deep enough to fill her lungs and stave off the starry, wheezy feeling of grief. She’d never known what to make of the rumor, but you couldn’t forget the fact that it was at least two and a half years old and Jane had a lot of nerve, that’s all.
Across the room, Paula Hortense asked, “Do you smell smoke?”
From out in the hallway, a girl began to scream.
?????
By the time Bridget and the other teachers reached the hallway, a crowd of students had gathered. Bridget pushed her way through to where Lucia faced off against Riana Yardley. Riana, tall, stately, graceful, her black hair pulled tight against her scalp, her black eyes wide with terror, or maybe wonderment. Between them, a thin piece of loose-leaf, its edges browned and curling, a wisp of smoke spiraling to the ceiling. Lucia’s face was whiter than the paper. Bridget put a hand on Riana’s back, expecting warmth, but her skin, beneath the sheath of a netted Mt. Oanoke Raiders jersey, was cool to the touch. Bridget eyed the ceiling, the sprinklers, wondering if a the single curl of smoke would set them off.
“What happened here?” Bridget inserted herself, her hand slicing the air, her authority heavier than she actually felt.
“Crazy girl here accused me of planting a love note and then poof! The whole paper burst into flames. Like she’s Carrie from the movie, she’s gonna burn this place down.” Riana punched the air with a single pointed finger, red acrylic nails glittering in the sunbeam from the lone hallway window. The light filtered behind Lucia and her white hair looked orangey-red, backlit like a haloed angel. She looked on fire.
Bridget glanced at Lucia, who stood shocked, her mouth slack and pale. Bridget realized for the first time that Lucia was wearing no makeup: no black-ringed eyes, no sticky, spokey eyelashes, no red lips. Nothing, just waxy skin shining like a baby’s bottom.
“That’s impossible,” Paula said dumbly from behind Bridget.
“I know. But that’s what happened. She opened her locker and turned to me and started screaming at me, that I did this—whatever this is—and the girl was pissed off.” Riana jutted out her chin, her hips swiveling. Her friends had gathered behind her: Josh Tempest, Kelsey Minnow. Andrew Evans, rawboned and sleepy, tilting to one side, a sly smile on his lips. Taylor huddled on the outside, between them, her eyes darting from Lucia to Riana, her pale pink tongue lapping at her mouth like a nervous cat. “Then, bam, the whole paper exploded like it was a firework.”
“Lucia?” Bridget demanded, like this was one of Lucia’s tricks, one of her mean-streaked power plays. “You can’t have lighters in here.”
Lighters. Bridget had seen them as she walked to the parking lot after school: Kelsey and Riana, their bodies languid against the brick side of the athletic building before track practice, the smoke seeping from their lips as they whispered behind cupped hands. The Pall Mall box matching the royal blue of their track shorts, peeking out of the side of Kelsey’s black lace bra. Bridget always thought that was backward; they’d run track and then smoke cigarettes, literally grinding all their hard work into the track dirt with the toes of their Adidas. In Mt. Oanoke, aside from the baseball players, nobody really took any sport seriously. It was all just something to do until they got out.
Then Bridget thought of the flick, flick, flick of a lighter in class during her third period, when it was too much work to ferret out who the owner was because Bridget was too tired to do anything about it anyway.
Bridget imagined, could envision clear as day, the quick snap of a lighter under Lucia’s paper. A spontaneous decision, borne from fear and power hunger, and maybe just a touch of revenge for what she did to Nate. The alliances snapped into place, clicking like a lock’s tumblers: Riana and Kelsey and Josh and Andrew. Andrew, Nate’s little protégé, his lackey.
Dale sensed her hesitation and took one tenuous step forward, his arm outstretched ineffectually.
“I don’t smoke,” Lucia finally said, her voice soft, watching the last coil of smoke meander upward toward the ceiling, mesmerized.
“It’s just her. A spell or something,” Kelsey screeched, her voice high and itchy, scratching at something inside Bridget, but Lucia stayed rooted to the spot. Never looking up, her eyes fixated. Unblinking.
“Dude, that is fucked up.” Josh’s voice from the back, punctuated by a thick, mucid laugh.
“What spell?” Bridget asked, the back of her brain twitching with the answer. Something Nate had said. She’s being bullied. Bridget looked at all their faces; they were blank, shiny. “Lucia, who was the note from?”
She looked up into Bridget’s face, her eyes glassed over. “It didn’t say. Then it started burning.” She looked helpless, cheeks rouged with self-doubt.
A love note, though? Kids sent texts now, Facebook messages, Instagram and Twitter DMs. They had a hundred ways to reach each other, during and after school, and none of them involved a pencil and piece of paper.
“This place has been a nightmare ever since those goddamn birds,” Kelsey muttered, and elbowed Taylor for backup. Taylor smiled gamely, watched Lucia’s face. It never moved. Kelsey continued anyway, toeing the gray tile linoleum like it was dirt. “I bet you did that, too, right? How’d you kill all those little tiny black birds? Poison? Icicles through their brains like the papers say?”