Falling for the Fireman

by Allie Pleiter

  “Nicky gave someone a black eye?” Jeannie was yanking her pants on so fiercely now it was a wonder they didn’t come up to her chin. The Nicky she raised did not haul off and sock people. “I’ll call Mark from the car on the way over.”

  “And…I’m sorry to say this, Jeannie, really I am, but I’ve had to suspend both boys for two days. It’s board policy and blows were thrown on both sides so I don’t have any choice. And in all honestly, I think they need to cool down and take their mistakes seriously. If Chad Owens hadn’t been here to pull those two off each other, I’m not sure how far things would have gone.”

  Suspended! Nicky! Jeannie was doing the last button on the first shirt she could find. “Chad?”

  “The fight broke out during an assembly on fire safety. We have one every year after we do the fire drill. It’s the reason I didn’t call you right away—I wanted to see if given the circumstances there was any way we could make an exception.” She let out another sigh. “My hands are tied. Truly, I never expected something like this from Nicholas.”

  “Neither did I. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Mrs. Hunnington, I’m so sorry for all this.” Jeannie hung up the phone with her heart stuck in her throat. Yes, Nicky had been grumpy since the fire drill, but from what she heard from other moms, grumpy was standard operating mode for thirteen-year-old boys.

  I’ve failed him, she thought as she shoved her feet into a pair of tennis shoes. Her worst fears had been realized: she hadn’t moved fast enough. She looked around the depressing little bedroom, with its mismatched collection of borrowed furniture and its old curtains, knowing Nicky’s room was even gloomier despite the four posters she’d hung. All this temporary housing, the coming holidays in this sterile apartment with all their old decorations lost—it was too much for someone of Nicky’s age.

  She could muster all her optimism of a better future soon but things right now weren’t good. Not for Nicky. Not even for her. Abby was right—she’d merely plastered a smile over their misery. He’s only thirteen, Lord, Jeannie pleaded toward Heaven and she fumbled with the car ignition. You’ve asked so much of him already. We need to be in our new home, replanting his life instead of living out of boxes. I need that as much as he does. You have to know this. You have to want this for us, don’t You?

  Jeannie had beaten down two bursts of tearful frustration by the time she reached the school parking lot. Henry’s words came flooding into her memory, the calm way he’d taken charge during Nicky’s first fever as an infant. “Be the parent, be the one who knows it’ll all be okay,” Henry had always said. As if “okay” were as simple as declaring “it’ll all be okay.” Somehow, Henry always managed it. During the chicken pox, strep throat, that time Nicky broke his thumb into such a gruesome shape Jeannie almost fainted looking at it, Henry held steady and made it all okay.

  Now she had to hold steady. She had to walk into that school knowing things would work out, certain of Nicky’s future despite this bump—this big bump—in the road. Jeannie had to walk into Mrs. Hunnington’s office as a parent who knew her son’s true nature. She had to be the one making sure everyone knew Nicky wasn’t sliding down some slippery slope to juvenile delinquency.

  “He’s not,” Jeannie repeated into the rearview mirror until she could say it confidently. “He’s not a bad kid. He’s just made one bad choice.” She’d read that phrase in one of the two dozen parenting books that used to sit in her living room. Before the books—and everything else—had burned. Don’t go there. “Stop,” she commanded the Jeannie in the rearview mirror. “Be the parent. Be Mom in Control.”

  Oh, God, You’re going to have to help me because I don’t feel one bit of Mom in Control.

  Jeannie took in a deep breath, repeating the single word that had pulled her through the worst of life after the fire. Grace. Grace. “My grace is sufficient for you,” scripture said. Nicky needed grace. Grace would pull them from this tangle. He’d made an error—a serious error—but grace would lead him home. He’d lost control, which was exactly why she couldn’t. She steeled herself as Nicky’s Protector and Agent of Grace and walked toward the school’s big, red doors.

  Red, Lord? Was that really necessary?

  Chapter Nine

  Nicky looked worse than she felt. He was slumped sideways on an olive vinyl couch in the nurse’s office, a stuffed backpack on the floor beside him. He banged his foot against a gray metal side table as if bored. His royal blue shirt—one of only two to survive the fire—now sported a torn sleeve and an unsettling blood stain on the neck. A good-size bruise bloomed on his jawbone, just below the bloody ice-stuffed towel he currently held to his mouth.

  Mrs. Hunnington was right, this had been no mere scuffle. Jeannie swallowed the impulse to rush up and assess his considerable wounds and now-ruined shirt. The surge of anger and embarrassment she felt helped keep such a gush of sympathy in check.

  She stood there, wordless, waiting far too long for Nicky to look up at her with narrowed, unreadable eyes. Anger, pain, guilt and confusion all vied in his gaze. It was times like these where Jeannie felt Henry’s absence stab her in the chest like a physical knife.

  She set her handbag down with forced calm. “You want to tell me what this is all about?”

  “How about I fill you in?” Chad Owens’ voice came from the doorway behind her.

  “How about I hear from my son first?” she shot back, suddenly annoyed. Somewhere between the apartment and school, Chad had become part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Something in the presentation must have set the two boys off. Where was the care Chad promised to take on these subjects? Why was she the only person who remembered this boy had just lost everything he had to a fire?

  Chad stepped farther into the room but kept his hand on the doorknob. “He needs to keep icing that lip, and I really think I ought to talk to you first.” He tone was nearly a command, and to back it up he pushed open the door and gestured out into the hallway.

  Chad Owens had a lot of nerve. Nicky, of course, took that cue to look as if he’d feel infinitely better if she left the room. Torn, she darted her gaze back and forth between the two glaring males and settled for a look she hoped broadcast “I’m not done with you yet” loud and clear to Nicky before following Chad out into the hallway.

  “It’s not his fault,” Chad said the minute the door clicked behind him. “You need to know that. The other kid, Scott Collins, laid into Nick about his nervousness during the fire drill. Let’s just say Scott wasn’t exactly kind. I’m not defending Nick’s punch, but I can’t say I wouldn’t have thrown one myself under the circumstances.”

  Now she knew why Mrs. Hunnington hadn’t mentioned the other boy involved over the phone—it would have sent her into a panic. Scott Collins was huge and mean. One of those massive eighth-graders who looked like he’d be shaving tomorrow and wiped sixth-graders off the bottom of his sneakers each night.

  “Nicky punched him?” Only something really mean would get that big a rise out of Nicky. “What did Scott say?”

  Chad shook his head. “Nothing I care to repeat and nothing you’d want to hear. According to the nearest teacher, the words ‘pyro’ and ‘fire-freak’ were used. Along with a lot of other choice words that earn you an instant detention.”

  Jeannie leaned against the wall. The cold ceramic tile matched the chill down her spine. They had to be talking about some other boy, not her son. Even on his worst days, this didn’t sound like Nicky. “Nicky cussed?”

  Chad wiped his hands down his face, while a bell rang down some distant noisy hallway. “No,” he said, clearly upset, “Scott did all the cussing.” She’d jumped to the wrong conclusion; he did feel some responsibility in the situation. “He shoved Nick, and Nick fell into the corner of the gym riser.”

  So it was the gym riser that took out Nicky’s tooth. That shouldn’t have made it any better, but it did, somehow. Less malicious, more accidental.

  “Nick told Scott to back off,” Chad went on
. “Not nicely, I’m afraid, and with a couple of shoves of his own. Obviously, Scott didn’t. All this was going on while I was taking a fire extinguisher out of a box for a demonstration. Then the fire alarm went off because one of Scott’s buddies pulled it, and well, things escalated from there.”

  It sounded like a mob scene, with her son as the target. Control went out the window. “They pulled a fire alarm on a fight over a fire alarm? They ganged up on him like that?”

  Chad put his hands out, trying to calm her down. “Hang on, we don’t know any of that for sure. A lot went wrong all at once. I just thought you ought to know Nick was definitely provoked. Still, a punch is a punch, and hits were thrown on all sides. I expect it’ll take a few days to sort out.”

  “A few days of suspension,” Jeannie shot back, feeling entirely too cornered.

  “Zero tolerance is exactly that.” When she gave him a look, he added, “And ‘provoked’ is not the same as ‘innocent.’”

  “I know that.” Jeannie failed to keep the edge out of her voice. She pushed off the wall, her pacing steps echoing off the rows of metal lockers.

  “And Jeannie, you should know…”

  “Just a minute, Mr. Collins.” Mrs. Hunnington was stepping outside her office a few feet away. She closed the door behind her and walked over to Chad and Jeannie. Her expression grew a black hole in Jeannie’s stomach. “You were able to reach Dr. Billings?”

  “Yes. Nicky has an appointment in fifteen minutes.” Jeannie checked the watch she’d managed to put on before leaving the house. “Mrs. Hunnington, how did this happen?”

  “I’m working on that, but Jeannie…” Chad’s expression darkened even more, and the look that passed between him and the principal told Jeannie that for the third time this morning, things were about to go from bad to worse.

  Mrs. Hunnington took off her glasses and put a terribly serious hand on Jeannie’s shoulder. “Jeannie, I’m sorry to have to tell you that we found two lighters in Nicholas’s locker. And a half-empty box of matches.”

  Chad stared at Jeannie as she walked down the building with one arm clamped around Nick. She looked like someone shot a cannon through her chest when Mrs. Hunnington told her about the matches. As if every ounce of sunlight left her eyes in the same second. Had her emotions always displayed so transparently in her eyes, or had he just become attuned to them? He turned to the principal, his own niggling suspicion reflected in the woman’s concerned eyes. She’d stopped just short of saying what he was already thinking; Nicky was likely setting fires. “He’s in more trouble than we thought.”

  She sighed. “I’m worried Jeannie can’t see it, or won’t see it. It’d be far too easy to shift all the blame to Scott here.”

  Chad could almost be proud of Nick for standing up to the brute. “There’s more than enough to go around. Scott is nearly twice Nick’s size and the mouth on that kid shocks me. He egged Nick on because he’s a bully.”

  “I have as much empathy for the underdog as any parent, but Chad, even you can see the fighting was only the symptom here, not the problem.” The principal put her glasses back on and gave out a weary sigh.

  “I know, I know. Nick Nelworth is a slow-boiling pot of something—guilt, anger, resentment, all of the above. That punch was just the steam escaping for the first time.” And maybe not the first time—half the matches were gone. Chad nodded toward the door where Jeannie and Nick had left. “Really, who could fault the kid? He’s all of thirteen and grappling with everything life has thrown at him. Of course he’d come up short.”

  She planted her hands on her hips, every inch the schoolmaster. “As much as it hurts me, yes, I can blame him. It can’t be tolerated. He needs help.”

  Chad’s heart seemed to lurch out the door behind the boy, aching with the certainty Nick needed help but unsure how to convince Jeannie to get it for him. “The county does have a program, but I don’t know that we need to go that far yet.”

  “Why? A fire survivors program might do him a world of good.”

  “It’s a fire starters program.”

  “Then I’d say the ball’s in your court, Chad. I’ll have Mrs. Corning give you whatever information she can, but we don’t actually know Nick is starting fires. I’ll need you to help with that assessment. You can bring anyone from the county in on it you’d like, or you can handle it locally. Agreed?”

  “Jeannie would never go for it. She’d think it labeling Nick as troubled, and she wouldn’t be entirely wrong.” Yet, how could Nick not be troubled? It seemed such an enormous problem. He was a full-grown man and knew how powerless he felt against an onslaught of tragedy. How could anyone teach a thirteen-year-old boy to handle it?

  “It’s not fair.” He said it to Mrs. Hunnington, but in reality, Chad realized he was yelling at God. God? Now? After leaving his faith in the dust for all the years since Laurie’s death, it seemed an unlikely time to try and restart the conversation. Over the years, he’d found a way to spit out all God had “done” to assail him, to reject the thought of God still being in control and resign himself to his sorry lot. That tactic no longer worked. Watching Jeannie’s eyes and sensing the turmoil in Nick, Chad found he simply could no longer swallow the thought that the God who professed to love had allowed this to happen to Nick. Why, why would God put a boy through something so painful, allow such deep scars in someone so young?

  “I’ll take it from here.” The pressing, inescapable truth was that Chad had seen this coming, but had brushed it off as the school counselor’s job. It wasn’t. It was his. The school counselor probably skimmed two dry textbook chapters on some post-traumatic studies. Chad had actually lived through a fire and its emotional aftermath. He’d recognized the scars on Nick, but talked himself out of getting involved, convinced himself he was making assumptions, and look what happened. Nick was most likely setting fires—or at the very least, thinking about setting fires. Chad had to step in before the boy did something more dangerous. He could no longer take the chance that Jeannie would be blinded by her insistence that things were okay.

  As he left the school and drove by the yellow Jeep that sat outside Dr. Billings’s office, Chad couldn’t stop himself from parking his truck. He needed to apologize, to make sure Jeannie wasn’t alone.

  He walked into the office to find Jeannie perched alone on the edge of the waiting room couch, eyes shut, hands gripping a rolled-up magazine as if it were a life raft. Her mint-green shirt now bore a smudge of reddish-brown blood. She didn’t even hear him come in. Why hadn’t she called anyone to come help her through this? “Jeannie?”

  Her eyes flew open. The fear and worry he saw so easily now—had they always been there? When had he lost the one-dimensional, too-sunny impression he’d once had of her? He saw now how she fought for her joy, tooth and nail. Clung to it the way she currently vise-gripped that magazine.

  Her eyelashes were wet. He wasn’t sure if the closed eyes he saw a moment ago meant she’d been praying, or simply trying not to cry. Either thought—or both—dissolved whatever resistance he still had left, and Chad walked over to put a hand on her shoulder. He felt useless at her anguish, knew he’d probably end up hurting her more, but couldn’t possibly leave her alone.

  A teardrop plopped down on the magazine cover. Even in the firehouse, she’d never succumbed to tears. It killed him to see it now. “Fights? Lighters and matches?” she nearly whispered, wiping her cheek with the back of one hand. He fished into his coat pocket and pulled out a tissue, a poor alternative to the crazy part of him that wanted to reach out and wipe that tear away.

  “He’s been through a lot.” Chad groped around for the right thing to say. “He’s just bumping around in all of it, trying to find his way out. He’s just got…too much going on inside.” He tried to think of something Laurie’s mother would say, reaching back into his catalogue of Helen’s endless attempts to comfort him. “He’s a good kid, you know that. Everyone knows that.”

  She blew her nose, a tiny littl
e sound he found ridiculously endearing. “Scott Collins doesn’t know that.”

  “If I were a less honorable man, I’d tell you how much I’d like to take Scott Collins out back behind the firehouse and teach him a lesson about kicking someone when they’re down.”

  “You and I both know that’s not the answer here.”

  That was true, but Chad’s urge to seek revenge for Nick’s beating wasn’t interested in listening to reason. Life had beaten enough out of Nick—nobody got to add to that wound.

  Mark Billings poked his head through the sliding half window that looked out into the waiting room. “He’s going to be fine, Jeannie. Another twenty minutes or so. The swelling’s already gone down considerably. Oh, good, you’re not alone,” he said, nodding at Chad. “In another minute I was going to have the hygienist call Abby, you looked so bad.” The window slid shut and Billings disappeared.

  There was no way he could bring up any kind of program now. She was already sinking fast and she still had to get through this appointment and the drive home. “Look,” Chad began even though he felt completely wrong at this, “it was a dumb choice, but maybe there’s some good in the fact that Nick felt strong enough to stand up to the likes of Scott Collins. He didn’t play victim here. The impulse was right, just the wrong methods.” Maybe, if he could just start her off on her usual find-the-silver-lining plan, she’d recover enough strength to get through this part.

  Jeannie looked up at him, so he ventured into trickier territory. “The fight’s just anger getting out of control. It’s the matches we really need to be worried about.”

  Bad move. She wasn’t ready to hear that, and it showed all over her face. “What was he doing with matches in his locker? Matches, Chad. What’s going on inside his head?”

  It was as if she’d never said his name before. Which was idiocy—they’d lived in the same town for years, served on two town committees, had dozens of conversations. Yet the plea in her voice cut loose something in his chest that felt like both calm and panic at the same time. Something that gave him the disastrous urge to pull her to his chest and let her sob buckets into his shirt.