Soul Fire

by Nancy Allan

“Well, I’m glad you made it this time. So, why don’t we pick it up where we left off that day at McD’s.”

  She nodded hesitantly and I worried she’d freeze up again, but she surprised me. “Exactly,” she began. “You offered to go the school.”

  “I did. We were each going to give it some thought and put together a plan.”

  She leaned forward eagerly. “Yes, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. Keep in mind that Ashla and her parents went to see Mr. Drake and Sue Latimer and got the brush off. As far as Drake was concerned, Ashla’s injuries were a result of simple accidents. He’s done nothing about any of this. I guess he thinks that denying it will cover their butts. I mean, we’ve not only got Ashla’s situation, but so many others. Look what happened to Delta. He can never go back to school after what he did for Ashla.”

  My interest peaked. “Oh? What did he do?” My words sounded a little harsh.

  “He took care of her when Mako dropped her with the rock. Of course Mako took that personally and now the Tarantulas have turned on Delta.”

  I shifted in my chair. “Why would Delta do that? He had to know what would happen.”

  “Everyone says he’s got it bad for Ashla.”

  I bristled. “But he’s a Tarantula. Not exactly Ashla’s type.”

  “Delta's not what he appears to others. He’s just a super smart, super cool dude who knows how to look after himself . . .and Ashla too, it seems. He was right there, helping her when she went down.”

  I tried to keep the tone of my voice even. “Really,” I said. My voice held an audible edge. I hoped Celeste didn’t notice. “So, how does Ashla feel about this super cool dude? She like him?” Why was this choking me up?

  Celeste half smiled. “They’re pretty close, that’s for sure, and Delta’s quite protective of her.”

  “Humph.”

  Celeste was frowning. Her nose wrinkled and then I saw a sparkle in her eyes. She said: “Anyway, back to Drake. We’ve got an uphill battle, Justin.”

  I had to put all thought of Delta aside and shift gears back to the problem at hand or we wouldn’t get anywhere. “What did Drake say about the other stuff that was happening to Ashla—the name-calling, pushing, taunts, nasty tweets and websites? They were going after Ashla pretty hard. Add it all together and the picture’s pretty clear.”

  “You know Drake,” she replied. “We might have more luck with Sue Latimer. From what Ashla told me, Sue looked kind of choked over Drake’s position. Anyway, that's it for me. Your turn.”

  I picked up my pen and doodled thoughtfully on a scrap of paper. “I wasn’t so much thinking of me going to the school at this point. I'm considering something else. Up until my accident, my mom was on the PTO, you know, the Parent Group. She never worked outside our home, so she gave her time to various health organizations, the hospital, local charities, and our school.” I didn’t mention that I’d have to find a way to get Mom off the booze first. She wasn’t too bad in the morning, but by late afternoon, she was tanked. Hopefully, my plan would motivate her to stop drinking. “I was thinking of laying this whole issue on her and see what she can do with the PTO. They’re a powerful group. They might even get Drake’s head out of his…er, the ground.” I saved myself at the last second, remembering Celeste was a pastor’s daughter.

  Celeste liked the idea. “You’re right! Great idea. My mom used to belong to the PTO as well. She quit a couple of years ago because she got tired of all the fund raising. But come to think of it, a little fund-raising right now could be just what’s needed. I know Mount Olympic is financially strapped. A few of the other schools have a dedicated Sheriff’s deputy on site, but our district has no money for that. I’ve heard that having a deputy dedicated to a school has been the single biggest deterrent, not only in stopping the violence, but as a hindrance to upcoming gangs like the Tarantulas.”

  I nodded. “Good suggestion. I’ll ask my mother to look into that and to follow up on the fund raising for it.I reached for a piece of paper and scribbled a note for myself. "I’ve been thinking that parents out on the school grounds before and after class would help as well. It’s always been open season outside.” Bones repositioned himself and ended up wrapped around my left foot. I reached down and gave him a pat as I spoke, “I'm working on something I can do personally, but I need to do more with it before I throw it out there.”

  Celeste nodded, and as we each mulled all this over, her eyes traveled around the hex-shaped room and up to the domed glass roof. “Wow. This is quite the room. Quite the house. Makes ours look pretty simple.”

  “Simple sounds good,” I said, thinking of all the yelling that has gone on in ours lately.

  She dropped her eyes back down and considered me. “There’s one more thing I want to talk to you about.”

  I caught her drift. “Ashla.”

  “Yes,” she replied softly. “You know that we’re like sisters, so when she’s in pain, I’m in pain. Ashla’s a really good person, Justin. She’s always thinking of others and helping those who have less than her. She cares . . .really cares about people. What I’m getting at is, she has beaten herself up on a daily basis for the skiing accident. She really worries about you and cares deeply for you. She wanted to make up for the accident by helping you. She would do anything to help you get better.” Celeste looked at me curiously, like a nurse taking my temperature to see how things were going. “I’m hoping you might find it in your heart to forgive her for the ‘how’ of what she did. Maybe just look at what it took for her to actually go to the pool with everything that was happening to her. I mean, she was there right after she got out of the hospital, concussion and all, against doctors orders. She never missed a session even with all the horrors going on at school. She even went the day after we were attacked. I don’t know how she did any of that.”

  I stopped doodling and dropped the pencil. “I know.” I had already gone over all of this in my mind again and again. Ashla was one of a kind. It wasn’t just her unusual beauty that got to me, it was the person she was that I was now falling for. It had been a strange experience combining the Ashla of my dreams with the kind, good-hearted, lovely Janine. My thoughts returned to this dude, Delta and realized that I could lose her. That was troubling.

  Celeste waited and when she saw that I wasn’t going to say more, she stood. “Well, we’ve made some good plans.”

  I struggled to my feet and grabbed the cane. No more crutches. Things were looking up. Bones finally stood up, yawned, stretched, and eyed Celeste. “This is my buddy, Bones,” I said, introducing my faithful companion.

  She called him over and whoosh, instant friendship. I said, “Let’s touch base again. Say, a week today. I’ll have a talk with my mom about all this and work out the other part of my plan.”

  “Sounds good,” Celeste replied, as we walked toward the front door, Bones almost tripping her twice in his eagerness to scoff another pat or two from her.

  When she was gone, I made my way down to the kitchen. Mom jumped when she saw me, picked up her glass of orange juice, and walked briskly over to the sink. I knew she was using orange juice to camouflage the vodka. She had changed dramatically in the past months. Her hair hung limply around her shoulders. She wore no makeup and her skin was parched and pale. She looked haggard. I felt a twang of worry.

  “Lovely girl.” She said it slowly so she wouldn’t slur her words.

  Reaching into the fridge for the orange juice, I poured myself a glass. “I’ll have mine plain,” I said pointedly.

  She looked away, her hand shaking.

  “Mom,” I said. “I want to talk to you about something important. I need your help. Will you sit with me for a few minutes?” Her face actually lit up. She tipped her drink into the sink, placed the glass on the sideboard, and then sat across from me, listening intently as I described everything about Ashla to her. We talked for over an hour and for the first time in months, I saw a sense of purpose in her eyes. And compassion.

  She said
, “Poor girl. I had no idea. But there’s just one problem with all this, Son.” Her words were clear now. “If your dad finds out what I’m doing, he’ll freak right out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  As I drove up the long, winding drive toward the imposing three story stone house, I was reminded of how Mole’s family and their wealth had affected my friend’s life. As the only child of an older couple, he was raised by a long line of live-in nannies. His parents owned a second home in France and spent a good deal of time there, leaving Mole at home with a caretaker.

  Mole and I had been friends since first grade, attending the same schools, hanging out together, and just doing the non-hockey stuff that my teammates found boring. Last year, after months of misery at Mount Olympic, being called Creep and Bug Eyes, getting pushed around, and being targeted for nasty pranks, his parents pulled him out and put him in private school. It seemed to suit him better, although he had not made any friends at the new school. As usual, I was the only one.

  The two of us were opposites. I loved sports, bright open spaces, my dog, my buddies, and having a girl in my life, even though there wasn’t one at the moment. Mole, on the other hand, found sports distasteful, loved dark places such as his computer room, disliked animals, and had seemingly no need of friends, with the exception of cyber friends. He had never had a girlfriend and if he desired one, there was no sign of it. It was true, he was kind of nerdy and played the computer like a maestro. He whipped up new websites, made utube videos, pirated movies and music, blogged, chatted tweeted and generally lived most of his life in cyberspace, with the exception of the time the two of us spent hanging out.

  By-passing the front door, I limped around to the back corner of the house to my friend’s private entrance, waving to the cameras as I passed by just in case he was watching. He had installed them so no one—not even me, could arrive unannounced, although most of the time he was so engrossed in whatever he was doing on the computer that me missed my arrival. The door was unlocked, so I walked in without knocking. My sneakers made no sound on the hardwood floor. I guess he didn’t hear me enter the dark, musty computer room. His back was to me. In front of him, on his vast, electronic laden desk stood a thirty-inch screen that flickered, sending lights flashing across the black room. Mole was bent over the keyboard typing furiously, totally absorbed, and unaware of my presence. I was halfway across the room when an image hit the big monitor. I stopped cold.

  Ashla’s face blazed across the screen. But there was something wrong with it. It appeared distorted, smeared, elongated, and twisted. Her hands were stretched and her delicate fingers were twice too long. I was stunned. What was this? What was Mole doing? I leaned closer, bending over him as he typed: Let’s do her!

  I reeled backward as if I’d been slugged. “Holy crap!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

  Mole whirled around, took me in, and hit a key. The screen went black. “Hey! I thought you said you were an hour away.”

  I pointed to the monitor. “What was that?” I demanded, fury threatening to overtake me.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Nothing? Nothing! That was Ashla up there. And what were you typing? Why were you on that site?”

  And then it hit me. What I had just seen on Mole’s computer screen was what Celeste had described so painfully. “That was one of those disgusting websites!” Reaching past him, I hit a key on the keyboard and the screen flashed back to life, Asha’s face, stretched and discolored, stared back at me.

  “Hey Man,” Mole’s hand slid beneath the desk and the computer died. That single move seated the final piece of the puzzle into place. Mole. Master of webpage design. It was him. There was no other conclusion to draw.

  My longtime friend had put up that vicious, destructive site, fed it, nurtured it with poisonous remarks, and solicited the same from others like him. “You!” I shouted, pointing at him accusingly. I turned away from him and reached for the overhead light, flipping it on. “How could you do a thing like that!”

  Mole stood up. “Hey, Man. What’s the deal? She’s a total loser. Look what she did to you. That chick ruined your life, Man.”

  I stepped backward, away from him. My cane clattered to the floor. As I glared at him, a cold look twisted his long, bony face. He pushed dark-rimmed glasses off his beaky nose and moistened his thick lips. “Just playing, Man,” he said flatly.

  I was seeing a part of Mole that I had ignored for years. The telltale signs had always been there. Like the time in third grade, when we were walking home from school . . . a small boy was pedaling toward us on his tricycle. As the child passed us on the sidewalk, Mole put his foot on the front wheel, sending the little guy and his bike into the ditch. “What did you do that for?” I had asked Mole as I climbed down to help the boy. Mole had replied, “What? The kid rode off the sidewalk. Not my fault.”

  I thought back over other incidences like that and realized I had been duping myself. Mole was a bully, plain and simple. I had chosen not to see it. I was so pissed with myself and with him that I could barely speak. “You don’t know Ashla. You haven’t got a clue. You’re so filled with malevolence that you can’t see what’s in front of you.”

  “Hey, I don’t get this. I mean after what she did, I would have thought you’d want to jump in, not—“

  “Take that website down!” My voice had taken on a dangerous edge. “Take it down right now!”

  He half turned to the computer. “I don’t get this…”

  I pushed into his space. “Do it!”

  He shrugged and sat down. When the screen came back up, he brought up a work page, typed for a couple of minutes and said, “It’s gone.”

  I watched him. “Now, kill the rest of them.” I realized that if he had built one horrible site, he had likely created the others. We stared at each other. His dark eyes looked like pinpoints. “What makes you think—“

  “Do it.”

  Mole tapped his index finger on the desktop. “And if I don’t?”

  “Don’t test me, Mole. I’ve known you a long time. Kept your secrets . . . like a good friend. But I’m thinking our friendship’s done. Those nasty little secrets might just make themselves known.”

  He snarled, “You promised never to say anything.”

  “And I won’t. Unless I have to.”

  Ashla

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Girls’ night out. The four of us agreed that it was time to do something fun for a change and decided on dinner and a movie. I needed to escape, to get away from myself for a while. My brain never left me alone. Sometimes, I teetered on the edge and came close to losing it. When I found myself reading hideous remarks on those evil websites, I had to force myself to stop. They were causing me to all but self-destruct. It was definitely time for a breakaway.

  Celeste, Tara, Brenna, and I each had a favorite restaurant, so to keep things fair, each of us wrote the name of that restaurant on a strip of paper and dropped it into a bag. I shook it and we picked a number to see who would draw. Brenna got it. “Carrabba’s,” she announced flapping the strip of paper and looking at Tara. “It’s your pick, Tara. You won!”

  Tara grinned. “Oh yum. Let’s go.”

  Once there, we settled ourselves at a window booth, spent considerable time pouring over the menu, and once we had ordered, Celeste told us about her visit to Justin’s. “Wow, what a house,” she swooned, describing everything, including the conservatory where she and Justin had discussed their ideas. She shared them with us.

  “A dedicated deputy at our school and parents patrolling the grounds are really good ideas,” Tara commented. “Why didn’t we think of that? There’s just one problem.”

  “What?” I wondered aloud.

  “We don’t go to Mount Olympic anymore.” She looked at me. “And you don’t go to school at all.”

  Brenna sipped her iced tea. “Maybe if those ideas work, it would be safe for us to go back. I miss my other friends.”

  “Me
too,” Tara agreed.

  I knew it would never be safe for me to return, but I kept my thoughts to myself, not wanting to sour the mood.

  Our food came and we dug in. Tara was sitting by the window and seemed to be watching something outside. "Strangest thing," she said, “an older Ford pickup has driven by at least three times. Looks like Mako’s truck.”

  Celeste added, “I’ve seen him around a number of times in the last week.

  “Me too,” Brenna added. “Creepy.”

  “Everything about him is creepy,” Tara said between bites.

  “And scary,” I added. We finished our meals and ordered desserts, savoring every decadent bite. Then we were off to the new multiplex theatre, not far away. The first Tuesday of every month, they dedicated one of the fourteen theatres to the classics. Tonight was Love Story, number nine out of the top one hundred best all time classic love stories. For once, we all agreed that was the film we all wanted to see and hurried inside to get good seats.

  Afterward, full of the movie, we walked to Celeste’s Cavalier. The evening breeze whispered through our hair and caressed our bare arms as we crossed the parking lot. I climbed in the front passenger seat. Tara and Brenna took the back seat. For a while, we had forgotten our troubles and the anxious sector of my brain went on snooze. It felt good. On the drive home, we discussed the show, our favorite scenes, lines, and moments.

  Celeste opted for the shortcut and leaving the city lights behind, we descended into the dark river valley. Knowing we would be home in less than fifteen minutes, we bounced along the narrow rutted road, The rear view mirror on my side lit up. I squinted, as the headlights loomed ever larger. “There’s a car catching up to us. He’s going way too fast. Watch him, Celeste,” I warned nervously. Its headlights soon lit the interior of the car and I saw Celeste’s eyes shifted nervously between the rear view mirror and the road in front of us. She slowed and edged the car over toward the gravel shoulder. It was a moonless night in the valley. I couldn’t see a thing out the windows, but I figured we were near the narrow section of the road where it squeezed between a high bank on one side and the mud slope down to Black River on the other. I gripped the door panel, my entire body tense.