by Nancy Rue
The bread was already toasted and buttered and keeping warm in the oven, and she’d put five kinds of jelly on the table. There was nothing else to do but perch on the stool and think about the show—and Shad Shifferdecker.
Lily still hadn’t come up with a way to get him there, and the show was going to be so good. Just the night before, at their dress rehearsal, Kathleen had privately announced that Lily would start the show—that she would be the first one out on the runway!
“You’ll get the audience’s attention,” she’d said. “They’ll know right away that this isn’t a kiddie show. This is professional, the real thing.”
It was just one more reason why Shad had to be there. She was so anxious to have him in that audience, she’d even asked him that afternoon at school, “Shad, do you really go to the mall and hang out every Saturday?”
He’d looked at her for a second with his mouth kind of half hanging open. “Yeah,” he finally answered. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just curious.” That was only half true, but she couldn’t get herself to say, “Just desperate!”
“Mostly we hang around the food court till they kick us out. Then we go to the video game place till they kick us outta there. Then we try to sneak into Abercrombie, but if they catch a kid in there without parents, they, like, hold you and call the security guard or something.”
“Did that ever happen to you?” Lily asked.
“Nah,” Shad said. “I’m too good for ’em. I, like, ‘blend in.’ ” He got a sly look on his face. “You’d never make it with that hair. They’d spot you like that.” He snapped his fingers right under Lily’s nose.
She hadn’t known where to go from there, so she’d just looked at him.
“There you go again, givin’ me that creepy look,” Shad said. “You freak me out.”
Lily took in a deep breath to sigh now, but she stopped in mid-sniff. Something didn’t smell like it was supposed to.
She glanced at the stove, and she could feel her eyes popping. The frying pan was smoking like a chimney. One look told her that the bacon was dry and hard now.
She grabbed for a pot holder and started to lift the pan off the burner. But there were flames starting to lick at the grease in the bottom.
“Dad!” Lily yelled. “The bacon’s burning!”
There was no answer from the study, and the flame tongues were lashing up higher. Heart racing, Lily dove for the sink and snatched up the first thing her hand hit—the empty iced tea pitcher. Still screaming for her father, she filled up the pitcher and made another dive for the stove.
By now the flames were reaching up for the hood over the stove top. Lily held on to the pitcher with both hands and flung its contents into the pan.
Suddenly all she saw was a flash of gold as the fire rushed at her like a genie coming out of a bottle. Something bit, hard and hot, at her face, and she dropped the pitcher and started to fling her hands at her cheeks. Hands caught her from behind and pulled her back.
“Don’t touch it!” Dad cried.
“I didn’t touch it!”
But Dad wasn’t talking about the blazing frying pan. He was talking about Lily’s face. He brought both of his palms against her cheeks and slapped at them until Lily was screaming. Then he put something wet and cold over her whole face.
“Hold that there!” he shouted.
He had to shout. There was so much noise in the kitchen now—the fire crackling and the bacon grease popping like gunshots and the smoke detector screaming— that Lily could barely hear her own thoughts.
But then she did hear a shriek that made her tear the wet towel from her face in terror. Dad clutched one hand under his opposite armpit while he beat back the flames with a wet towel held in the other. Through the smoke Lily could see his face twisted like a Halloween mask.
“Can you get the fire extinguisher?” Dad shouted to her.
Lily dropped her own wet towel and yanked the extinguisher off the wall. She held it out to Dad, but he shook his head. “You’ll have to do it!” he shouted.
He was coughing now, and so was Lily. In fact, she wasn’t sure she could even breathe anymore. Hacking from her throat and squinting her eyes, she managed to push the right button. Foam leaped from the little hose and tried to smother the flames, but they fought back stubbornly.
“Come on!” Dad cried. “Let’s get outside!”
Lily was still squirting as Dad hooked his arm around her elbow and hauled her out the back door. It was only when they’d stumbled down the back steps and he let go of her that Lily saw that his hands were white and charred-looking.
“Daddy, you’re burned!”
“I know, sweetheart. Come on. Let’s get to a phone!”
But someone obviously already had, for just then there was a high-pitched wail from down the street, and the early-evening dark was shot through with red lights. Crooking his arm through Lily’s again, Dad pulled her to the front yard.
“Daddy, you’re hurt bad!” Lily cried. “You can’t even use your hands!”
“It’s all right. I’m fine!”
When they got to the front yard, however, and ran straight into the front of a big man in an even bigger black coat, it turned out Dad wasn’t fine at all.
“Ambulance is on its way!” the man shouted over the din of sirens and shouting and water-shooting. “Lie down out here, out of the smoke!”
Two other men in heavy coats ushered Lily and her father across the street to a spot on the sidewalk where someone else had already spread blankets. They made Dad lie on one, and Lily squatted down beside him. But one of the men took Lily gently by the shoulder and pushed her onto the other.
“My dad is hurt!” Lily cried.
“So are you, hon,” said the fireman. “I can hear the ambulance coming. They’ll take good care of both of you. Just lie still now.”
“I’m not hurt!” Lily wailed. “It’s my dad who’s hurt!”
But when two ambulances had screamed to a halt and a woman in a blue shirt leaned over her, Lily saw the look in her eyes, and she knew she was wrong. She was hurt. Why else would Miss Blue Shirt be barking out orders to someone behind her and taking Lily’s pulse and telling her everything was going to be all right when her eyes were sparking out that it most definitely wasn’t?
“What hospital do you want to go to, sir?” someone asked.
“Baptist Medical Center,” someone said in a frail voice.
Why isn’t Dad answering? Lily thought. What happened?
“Daddy?” she called out. Her own voice sounded whistle-shrill.
“I’m right here, Lilliputian,” said that same weak voice.
“What’s your name, sweetie?” asked Miss Blue Shirt.
“Lilianna. What about my dad?”
“Your dad’s going to the hospital, and so are you. My name’s Patti, and I’ll be taking care of you.”
“I want to go with my dad.”
“He’s going to need a lot of room in his ambulance, Lilianna. You and I will have our own private ride. How’s that?”
“Is he all right?”
“I’m all right, Lilliputian. You just do what they say. I’ll see you there.”
Lily lifted her head to watch them lift Dad onto a gurney, but Patti put something over her nose and gently pushed Lily’s head back.
“You’ll get one of those too,” Patti said. “Why don’t you just relax and let me do all the work?”
Lily didn’t have much choice. Once she was bundled up and put on a gurney and slid into the back of the ambulance like a casserole going into the oven, there wasn’t much she could do—except pray. And that she did, very, very hard.
At first when they got to the hospital, a whole team of people crowded around Lily’s gurney as they rolled it into a room with curtains all around. But once Patti had shouted a bunch of numbers at them and several team members inspected her face and asked her if she knew where she was and what her name was, things calmed down. Lily thou
ght crazily that she must have given them the right answers. She wasn’t sure how, because her head was spinning.
“You have a couple of burns, Lilianna, okay?” explained a doctor with almost no hair. “We’re going to give you something to help you relax, and then we’re going to take care of those burns. You’ll be fine, okay?”
“What about my dad?”
“I’ll send somebody to check on Dad, okay?”
Then she felt a sting in her arm, and before too long her eyes got heavy. Her lips were heavy too when she said to the doctor, “Did you know you end every sentence with okay?” After that, she went off into a sleep with no dreams at all.
When Lily woke up, she knew her face was on fire again before she even opened her eyes. She flailed at the blanket and tried to sit up, but a sure, familiar arm stopped her.
“Whoa, girl,” Mom said. “You’re about to hit the sidewalk running.”
“They’re burning again, Mom!” she said.
“What is, Lil?”
“My cheeks!”
There was the smallest of pauses before Mom said, “They’re not burning anymore. I know it hurts, but the fire’s out.”
Mom finally came into focus, and Lily realized she was still in that room with the curtains, except the team of doctors and nurses had left, and there was only Mom. She was in her Cedar Hills High volleyball team sweatshirt, and her face looked as gray as the shirt did.
“Do you remember what happened?” Mom said.
“Dad was cooking bacon, and the grease caught on fire, and I tried to put it out. Only then there was more fire, and Dad got burned.”
“And so did you,” Mom said. “Yours are only second degree though. I know it hurts, but you’re going to be fine.”
Lily put her hands up to her cheeks. All she could feel were bandages that felt two inches thick.
“I’m burned on my face?” she said.
“One on each side.” Mom forced a grin. “They match. Leave it to you to do it perfect—”
“What about Daddy? His hands were all burned, Mom!”
Her mother’s grin faded. “Your dad wasn’t as lucky as you were. He’s burned all the way up to his elbows on both arms—some second degree, some third.”
“What does that mean, all those degrees?” Lily’s heart was pounding, and the tears were already stinging in her eyes.
“It means he’s in a lot of pain, and he’s going to need some surgery and physical therapy. It’s going to be a long haul.”
A sob wrenched Lily’s face, and that hurt even more, and that made her want to cry even more.
“Ohhh, talk about salt in the wound, Lil,” Mom said. “Come on. Try not to cry. Let me get a Kleenex. There you go. Just breathe through it.”
“I can’t!” Lily said. She tried to shake her head, but that hurt too.
“Daddy’s going to be fine,” Mom said. “It’s going to take time, but he’ll pull through. We’ll all help him. We have to thank God it wasn’t worse.”
“It was my fault.”
“Don’t even go there, Lil. It was no one’s fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was mine for not just ordering you two a pizza. Who knew you were going to pick tonight to try gourmet cooking?” Mom laughed, but she reminded Lily of Suzy: her laughter was nervous, and it never reached her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said.
“There’s no need to be. It wasn’t your fault, and if you get yourself all upset, you’re only going to hurt more. Come on. Just breathe easy and I’ll pray.”
“God must hate me. I hardly ever pray anymore—”
“Lilianna.” Mom never used Lilianna unless she was really serious. “We’re not going to have that kind of talk. God loves you. Period. End of discussion. Now close your eyes. Let’s talk to Him.”
Lily did close her eyes, but all she could see were flames reaching out and grabbing her, grabbing Dad.
“Mom?” she whispered when the prayer was done. “Dad is gonna be all right, isn’t he?”
“Yes. The doctors have all assured me. They wouldn’t lie. I wouldn’t lie.”
Still, Lily cried. Even though the tears stung as they trailed down into her bandages, she cried. She cried for a long time while Mom kept her head bowed.
Eleven
The doctor with almost no hair let Lily go home from the hospital the next morning. While Mom was downstairs signing papers, a nurse came in carrying a helium-filled pink balloon and smiling like she didn’t have an off switch.
“You get to go home and be pampered all day, lucky lady.” She tied the balloon to the arm of Lily’s wheelchair.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to wait on me,” Lily said as she slid into the chair. “We don’t pamper at my house.”
“Lots of ice cream and DVDs,” the nurse continued, as if Lily hadn’t even answered. “You can be queen for a day.”
She wheeled Lily out into the hall, and Lily was about to say they didn’t do “queen” at the Robbins house when she caught sight of her reflection in the shining stainless steel elevator doors. A gasp escaped before she could stop it.
It was the first time she’d seen herself since the fire, and the sight sent a long shudder down her back.
A large bandage covered each side of her face. She knew that—she’d felt them with her hands last night— but she had no idea the rest of her face was bright red and that her forehead was swollen and threatening to tumble down over her eyebrows. She didn’t know her eyelids were as puffy as biscuits or that her eyes were the color of Cassie’s fingernail polish. She hadn’t realized she looked like a freak.
The elevator doors slid open and split the bandaged freak in two.
“So you just snuggle onto the couch when you get home,” the nurse was saying, “and drink everything you like to drink, the more liquids the better.”
But the only liquids Lily could think about right then were the tears spilling from her eyes.
She was glad that when Mom joined her at the front door of the hospital, she didn’t continue the nurse’s nonstop grinning. In fact, as she pulled the car away from the curb, she looked as glad to leave the nurse behind as Lily was.
“That woman was far too cheerful,” Mom said. “Nobody should be allowed to smile that much this early in the morning.”
“I might never smile again.”
“Are you hurting? They sent some pain medication home with us.”
“I’m a freak now! My forehead looks like it belongs on a baboon!”
“The swelling will go down,” Mom said. “You aren’t going to be Ape Woman for more than a day.”
“Mo-om!”
“Lil—come on. Don’t lose your sense of humor. Dad still has his, and he’s got a long way to go before he looks human again.”
Lily blinked back the newest onslaught of tears. “Are you coming back to get him after you drop me off?”
“Uh, no.” Mom stopped at a red light and tilted her head at Lily. Her brown doe-eyes looked suddenly sad. “He isn’t going to be home for at least a week,” she said. “He’s having surgery right now. I have to come back as soon as I get you settled. I’m sorry I didn’t make that clear, hon.”
As Mom cruised the car forward again, all Lily could do was stare straight ahead. The road disappeared in a blur of tears, and her already burning face flamed even hotter.
What’s wrong with me? she thought miserably. Here I am whining because my face is messed up, and my dad is having some awful operation! I’m a horrible person!
Lily had never felt shame like this before. It burned into parts of her that hadn’t been touched by the kitchen fire. She wanted to shake it out of her, run away, hide her whole horrible self under the mess in the backseat.
But she knew no matter what she did, she couldn’t get away from it. The shame burned inside her like a grease fire that couldn’t be put out.
“Now remember, he’s going to be all right,” Mom said. “They have to repair some damage and it’s going to be pai
nful for him, but he’ll be able to use his hands again just fine. He’ll be home, driving us all nuts looking for his glasses before you know it.”
Lily flung her face into her hands and burst into fresh tears. They stung her eyes and her face, and the sobs choked up her throat, but she couldn’t stop.
“God love you,” Mom said. “I know this is torture for you. You’ve got more feelings than Art and Joe and me all put together.”
That only made Lily cry harder. She thinks I’m all good and wonderful because I’m crying for Dad, Lily thought as more sobs broke out of her chest. But all I am is selfish and vain. She wrapped her arms around herself as her body started to shake. You were wrong, Mom, she wanted to cry out. God must hate me now.
She was crying so hard that she didn’t notice they weren’t headed home until they pulled into Reni’s driveway.
“I don’t want to see anybody, Mom,” Lily managed to say.
“You don’t have much choice,” Mom said. “I have to get back to the hospital. Mrs. Johnson will take good care of you.”
“I can take care of myself. Why can’t I just go home?”
“Nobody’s going home for several days,” Mom said. “The smell in there is enough to gag a maggot.”
“What smell?” Lily asked.
Mom gave her a teasing almost-grin. “You and your father tried to burn the house down, remember? Nobody’s going to live in there until the cleaning service gets the stench out.”
“We didn’t try to—”
“Would you lighten up, Lil? I’m teasing you. Everything is going to be fine. You kids should love it. Until the kitchen’s redone we’re going to have to eat out or order in every night.”
Lily was certain she’d never eat again even when, after Mom left, Reni’s mother offered her pancakes, waffles with strawberries and whipped cream—anything she wanted.
“I’m really not hungry,” Lily said. “Can I just go to Reni’s room and lie down?”
“Your mama says you have to keep fluids in you at all times.” Mrs. Johnson smiled and showed the same deep dimples Reni had. “So what’s your pleasure? Coke? Sprite? Lemonade?”
