Burn Baby Burn Read online

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Mr. MacInerney drives way too slow, which is weird for a man who spends his life running into burning buildings. It could be that being a fireman has made Kathleen’s dad a safety freak, but I think it’s really that he likes to show off his Impala. He calls it his baby, after all. It’s gold with a convertible roof and whitewall tires. The chrome is sometimes so shiny that Kathleen and I can put on lipstick in its reflection. If you ask us, though, its best feature is the backseat. It’s wide and springy, a nice option should the right guy ever happen along. Not that Mr. Mac needs to know — or that we’ve ever had the chance to test out our theory.

  Kathleen fidgets. She just got off work, and we’re running out of time before the matinee starts at the Prospect. She leans over the cream-colored seat and rests her chin near his ear. “Dad, step on it. Aren’t you supposed to be at the station by now? Hurry.”

  I see his blue eyes in the rearview mirror. They’re clear and smart, just like hers.

  “All in good time,” he says, smiling.

  That’s Mr. Mac. Calm, easy. You’d never guess that he’s a fireman. He’s skinny, with boyish red hair and a quiet voice, not exactly a testosterone specimen, if you know what I mean. Still, he’s tougher than he looks, which comes in handy. When the Chiclet gum factory in Sunnyside blew to smithereens in a chemical explosion last fall, Mr. Mac had to dodge chunks of concrete and melted gum that rained down on him as he saved workers whose skin had burned off. He smelled of cinnamon and ash for days.

  We’ve had a lot of fires in the city lately, actually — and not just because old ladies forgot their stoves. Arson fires are smoldering all over the place.

  He points at the theater when it finally comes into view up ahead. The line of people snakes all the way down the block. “Looks like you’ll have a wait.”

  “Ugh.” Kathleen rolls her eyes. “Drop us off here,” she says, pointing at the corner bus stop. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  She grabs my hand and pulls me out to the curb.

  Mr. Mac powers down his window before we get too far.

  “Be home by dark,” he tells us.

  Kathleen turns and gives him a look. “Oh, come on. We’re nearly eighteen.”

  “You’re seventeen, and you promised your mother. She worries.”

  “Yes. About everything. Don’t be crazy.”

  “By dark,” he says again, suddenly looking serious.

  I shift on my feet in the pause that follows. I know what the fuss is about, even though no one will say it. It’s that shooting that happened not too far from Kathleen’s job. Back in January, somebody shot and killed a secretary while she was kissing her fiancé in his car. Nobody knows who did it. Kathleen and I actually know the exact block in Forest Hills where it happened, since we go there all the time. Sometimes when I meet her after work, we hop off the train at Continental Avenue and walk around that neighborhood, fantasizing about life there. The Tudor houses are huge and sit back on wide lawns that don’t have a single kid playing on them. That’s nothing like where we live, of course. I live in an apartment, with Mima and my brother, Hector. The MacInerneys have a small yellow house around the corner from our building. It’s the one nearest the tracks. Their windows rattle like loose marbles every time the Port Washington train passes through.

  Anyway, I step in to save Kathleen.

  “We’ll be home right after the movie, Mr. Mac. Promise,” I say. “Now, be careful out there.”

  Mr. Mac smiles at me and shakes his head. I’ve been saying good-bye to him that way since I was in second grade. It always gets him.

  He kisses his fingertip and taps the figurine of St. Florian he keeps on his dashboard. “I have your word, then, Nora. Have fun.”

  He pulls out nice and slow, so everyone can see.

  “This is depressing,” Kathleen says, looking around at the line. It’s a mob of cuddling couples. The pair behind us is even making hamster noises as they kiss.

  “Relax. Didn’t we already agree that dating is a pain in the horns?”

  She makes a face, but she knows I’m right. One way or another, guys always complicate things for us. When she starting going out with a guy named Lou last year, she got so swept up by his weight-lifting pecs and green eyes that I practically became invisible. Turns out, he was cheating on her the whole time with a girl from the Mary Louis Academy. When it all went down, I was secretly relieved. It sucked to see her cry, but I’d been missing my best friend for a while.

  Besides, it’s not as if there aren’t lots of guys waiting to fill his spot. Kathleen has legs like one of those Nair commercial girls. Her boss at Macy’s took one look at her gams and begged her to model in the mall’s fashion show last year. She agreed — despite being “objectified”— because she got to keep the clothes. Me? I’m not that lucky. The only thing I model is pastrami when I’m working the slicer at Sal’s Deli.

  “Uh-oh,” Kathleen says, pulling me close. “Idiot alert.”

  I follow her gaze.

  Who’s coming toward us? My own ex, Angel — yet another poster child for crappy boyfriends everywhere. He’s holding hands with a curly-haired girl in a tight T-shirt.

  Why, God, why?

  “Hey, look. It’s Betty and Veronica!” Angel stops at our spot and grins. He’s always found it funny to compare us to the blonde and brunette in the Archie comics, since we’re always together. He likes to add that we have the same tits. This pretty much sums up his brains and reading powers.

  “No cutting, pal,” says a guy behind us.

  “Take it easy,” Angel says. “We’re all together. I was just parking the car, right, Nora?” He flashes a smile and steps closer to me.

  “Do I know you?” I ask.

  Kathleen gives him her frostiest glare. “He doesn’t look familiar at all.” She hates Angel almost more than I do, never forgiving him for what she calls “his inexcusably dickish ways.” Angel was my first experience with a guy, a fact that I try to forget daily. I blame it on the fact that he has the same puppy eyes as Freddie Prinze, may he rest in peace. But Angel is nothing like the character I fell in love with on Chico and the Man, all kindhearted and sexy. Nope. One minute we were kissing in Angel’s room, and a little while later he was driving me home, my shirt buttoned wrong and a wad of toilet paper in my underwear to catch the blood. I cried to Kathleen that whole night, worried about babies and all the scabby diseases Miss Sousa covered with great gore during Health and Hygiene. But mostly, I already knew in my gut that Angel had used me, an
d sure enough, he spread the word to anybody who would listen. I was easy.

  “Good-bye, Angel,” I say.

  His smile fades. “Dykes.”

  He slings his arm over his girl’s shoulder and moves toward the back of the line.

  “Smart and classy as always,” I say sweetly.

  I look up at the marquee and try to shake him off. We’ve got slim pickings: Carrie or Rocky. I already sat through Rocky twice with Hector when it first came out in November. (It was his birthday, and I felt bad.) Since then, he has sneaked in and seen it four more times. Now he can quote you every little scene in annoying detail. His favorite part is when they take razor blades to Rocky’s swollen eyelids.

  “Not Rocky again,” I say. “I beg you.”

  Kathleen frowns. “But that leaves Carrie.” Her voice sounds doomed.

  We haven’t been much for horror ever since we read that Stephen King book during freshman year. I spent months having nightmares about being burned to death in our school gym. Kathleen was no better. She hates anything about the occult. I think it’s all the church her parents make her attend.

  “Show?” the ticket guy asks through the window.

  “Adriana saw Carrie,” Kathleen warns me. “She told me the eyes on the statue of Jesus at St. Andrew’s glow just like the ones in the movie.”

  “She’s a nutcase,” I point out. Adriana Francesca wears black and believes she has been reincarnated from the sixteenth century. She is also, inexplicably, the smartest girl in our English class.

  “Come on!” somebody yells from the back of the line.

  I glare at the guy who said it and turn back to the ticket man. “Two for Carrie.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Kathleen says as we take our change from under the glass.

  “We’ll be fine,” I say.

  Well. I stand corrected.

  Kathleen’s screams were ice picks to my eardrums, especially when Carrie’s blue eyes got wide and she unleashed her telepathy.

  “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” Kathleen screamed as Carrie, dripping in pig’s blood, slammed the gym doors shut and set off electrocutions and fires.

  “I will never forgive you,” Kathleen says when we finally reach the lobby again. Her hands are still shaking; her face is pale.

  I put a finger in my ear and wiggle it. Her voice sounds muffled, the way it does after we’ve been to a concert. I don’t pay much mind to her threat, though. She said the same thing to me after we saw The Omen. The cameraman’s decapitation scene nearly did her in. She wore a rosary as a necklace and slept with her parents for a week.

  “Some prom, huh?” I say.

  “You girls piss yourselves?” Angel’s voice makes us turn. His date must be in the john because he’s outside the ladies’ room, waiting. “Christ, Kathleen, you were loud in there,” he says. “‘Oh, God! Oh, God!’” he mimics. “It was like you were getting banged.”

  What I wouldn’t give to unleash some telepathic powers myself right now. His private parts would be my first target.

  “Really?” I ask him. “I couldn’t really hear her over your prissy screams, Angel. Did Curly have to hold your hand? Or were you busy pawing her?”

  Just then, his date comes out, waving her hands to dry them. She gives me a cool look and pushes out her chest. She’ll learn soon enough, I guess.

  “Let’s go,” I say as I pull Kathleen away.

  Kathleen keeps glancing at her watch as we eat at Gloria Pizza next door. It’s only five thirty, but she’s antsy.

  “You realize that we haven’t had a home-by-dark curfew since the summers of junior high,” I say. “It’s like we’re twelve-year-olds instead of high-school seniors. You’re lucky I like you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s ridiculous,” she says. “I don’t know what the hell is up with them.”

  “The dead girl.”

  Kathleen gives me a look. “Please. This is New York. It’s not like she’s been the only person killed this winter.”

  I bite into my pizza. True enough. People are getting offed all over the city; I heard it’s the worst crime year on record already.

  “Maybe we should look on the bright side,” I tell her. “We could have truly psycho mothers like Carrie’s.”

  Kathleen looks stricken. “God, she was scary.” She shakes red-pepper flakes onto her slice of Sicilian. “What kind of mother tries to plunge a knife into your chest?”

  I chew on that for a second. There are other ways to kill your kid, a little bit every day. I think of the days Mima loses her cool. “Son unos demonios,” Mima says about me and Hector, just loud enough for us to hear. We’re devils. “There are little knives,” I say.

  “Huh?”

  “‘You look fat today. That tight dress makes you look like a cualquiera.’”

  She nods slowly and mimics Mrs. MacInerney’s voice perfectly. “‘Oh, sweetie, you broke out again . . . .’”

  “Exactly.” I yank on a long string of melted cheese until Kathleen breaks it with her finger. “And your mom is one of the nice ones.”

  We finish up as soon as we can, but by the time we step outside, the sky is deep purple, and the neon signs for the shops are bright. We hurry along, but my guess is that we’ll have fifteen minutes, tops, before it’s officially dark. Mrs. MacInerney will turn up their police scanner and start pacing. I hate that thing. It makes it an all-day crime show at their place: four channels, one for the firehouse where Kathleen’s dad works, and the other three for police stations nearby. No wonder they get worked up.

  “We’re going to miss it,” Kathleen says, pointing at the bus ahead. We run full speed, but just as we reach the stop, the doors snap shut and the driver pulls away.

  “Hey, wait!” I pound on the door, still jogging alongside. But in a great display of MTA customer service, he just plays deaf and keeps going.

  “Crap,” Kathleen says, waving off the cloud of diesel smoke left behind. We’re both out of breath. “Now I’m going to hear crime statistics all night.”

  “Let’s take the 28 instead,” I say, looking down the street. Another bus is idling at the corner, and the driver is still reading his newspaper by dome light. The 28’s route has a stop a little farther from home, but at least we won’t have to waste twenty minutes waiting. “We’ll get off by St. Andrew’s and walk.”

  The only other passengers with us are three Indian women wearing bright saris the color of spring flowers. They’re clustered near the driver, where they are looking unsure of where to get off. Kathleen and I have the backseat to ourselves.

  We pass Murray Hill Bowling Lanes, its gigantic bowling pin reflecting in the window. You’d never know it, but Small’s Adhesives, where Mima works, is directly under that place. Twenty women packing tape all day long, or at least as long as their boss, Mr. Small, will pay them. When I was little, I thought it was the best place to work. I loved the neon pin and how the bowling balls rumbled like thunder overhead.

  “We should have gone bowling instead of going to that dumb movie,” Kathleen says as the bus drives by. “How am I going to be able to sleep?”

  “You want a real nightmare? How about picking up athlete’s foot again from those shoes? No, gracias.”

  “You just hate to lose.”

  Not true. I hate everything about bowling. The dim lights of the alley, the nubby little pencils, the boozy men who check us out when we reach down for the ball. I don’t even keep the score straight: all those x’s and slashes for spares and strikes. Most of the time, I just draw smiley faces and give Kathleen all the points she wants.

  Personally, I can’t wait for summer, when there will be a lot more to do. High school will finally be behind us, hallelujah. And to kick things off, we can celebrate our eighteenth birthdays. Kathleen and I were born only one day apart, although people always think I look older than the twenty-four hours I have on her.

  The bell tower of St. Andrew’s finally comes into view as we round the bend. You can see its
relief sculpture of the crucifixion against the sky for blocks.

  “This is us.” I yank the signal cord. “Come on.”

  Kathleen is quiet as we hop out the back exit and start for home, but her eyes keep drifting upward the closer we get to the church. Suddenly she stops and reaches for my hand.

  “What?” I say.

  “His eyes . . .” she begins. Her face starts to twist into panic mode.

  “Stop it,” I tell her. “You’re imagining things.”

  “I am not,” she whispers. “I’ve been dragged to this church every Sunday my whole life. I know what the damn statue is supposed to look like.” She squeezes my hand tight. “Adriana was right. Jesus’s eyes are turning bloodred right now. Look.”

  I don’t wait for more.

  Suddenly we’re running like horses startled by a pistol. We race for the corner, round 158th Street, and head down the hill toward home. I haven’t moved this fast since elementary school, though, and I guess I’m out of practice. In no time, a stitch in my side stabs at me, and pizza sauce starts to rise from my stomach. I’m going to puke.

  “Wait,” I say, gasping.

  We bend over and strain for breath. When my heart finally slows enough for me to speak, I straighten.

  St. Andrew’s is far behind us, but no one is out, as far as I can tell. It’s completely dark now. In the daytime, this is a quiet stretch, lined on either side by a few old houses with tiny front yards. We’ll have to walk beneath the train trestle, after which comes the block of buildings where I live.

  I think sheepishly of Mima, who always tells me not to walk this way alone, especially not at night. A thousand times she’s warned me, and I always sneer at her dramatic lectures about this patch of weeds and broken glass, about the dark corners where a girl could be pushed, dragged off to the dead end, and then God Knows What. It has always seemed so stupid, so Mima.

  But now . . .

  I stare ahead at the gaping shadows we’ll have to walk through and wish we had just waited for the next bus. I think of the graffiti and the broken bottles in there, the smell of urine that sometimes chokes you when you walk by. Suddenly I think of the murder in Forest Hills.

  “We just need to get past the underpass. We’ll get close and run,” I whisper as Kathleen and I link arms.