by Sybil Nelson
“What are you doing?” my older brother Josh asked, staring at the dripping mess.
“I … I … um …” I didn’t know exactly how to explain why I was standing in the Crawfords’ kitchen covered in fire extinguisher foam. “Well, what are you doing?” I asked, turning the tables on him. “Yeah, what are you doing upstairs in the Crawfords’ house without a shirt on?” That was partly a dumb question. I mean, Josh took his shirt off at every available opportunity so he could show off his six-pack abs. Once, at the grocery store, one of the twins spilled their juice box in front of this cute cashier who looked a little like Miley Cyrus. Well, since Josh thought he was as cute as a Jonas brother, he decided he needed to impress her. So, he whipped off his shirt and started cleaning up the mess. As if he ever cleaned up after the twins at home.
Josh started stuttering while turning different shades of red. He ran his fingers through his dark brown hair and shifted from foot to foot.
“Josh, what’s taking so long? I’m thirsty,” his girlfriend called from the top of the stairwell.
“Oooh, I’m telling Dad!”
“Shut up, freak,” was his clever response.
“Freak? I’m not a freak. I’m a genie in a bottle. You gotta rub me the right way.” I started singing the Christina Aguilera song and gyrating in the kitchen, but I stopped abruptly when I almost slipped on the foam and water on the floor.
“That’s it. We’re leaving. If I don’t get to have any fun, neither do you.” Josh reached for a towel that sat on the kitchen counter. “Uh, Stef, I’ll call you later. I gotta take my sister home,” he yelled up the stairs. “You’re the bane of my existence. Clean yourself up,” he said to me, tossing the towel.
I flinched when it landed in my hands. I expected it burst into flames like the other one. But nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Did I just imagine the whole thing? Maybe it didn’t happen. Or maybe it did happen and the episode just passed. Neither scenario was comforting. I mean, if I imagined the whole thing that would mean I was some sort of crazy, hallucinating, psycho. But if I didn’t imagine it, that would mean Josh was right. I was a freak.
Chapter 3: Hot Flashes
“Priscilla gorilla. Priscilla gorilla,” the devil twins chanted while dancing around the living room in their matching blue jumpsuits. It was a stupid nickname since my skinny stature in no way resembled a gorilla. Even though it was pretty creative for five-year-olds, I really wasn’t in the mood for their antics after the day I’d had.
I wish I knew how to conjure up the fire so I could singe their little blond heads. I thought for a second, but when nothing happened, I just stormed off to my room. I ditched the towel and bathing suit, put on some normal clothing—a Wonder Woman t-shirt and jean shorts—and then called Tai. She was off at space camp, or math camp, or science camp, or whatever hole in the Earth they send really smart twelve-year-olds to, to make them really smarter.
Tai was my absolute best friend since “The Era of Unfortunate Hair” a.k.a. third grade. My mother had just gone back to work full-time so it was my dad’s first attempt at the stay-at-home thing. He tried his best but just could not control my thick, unruly head of red hair. And apparently no one told him that there was an unwritten rule about the maximum number of scrunchies someone can wear at once. He had put so many in my hair that it was like they were growing out of my head. I looked like a multi-colored octopus. It was awful.
Anyway, in walked Taiana Houston. Her hair was just as pitiful as mine. She looked like she had gotten beaten in the head by a big lopsided ball of black tumbleweed. For some reason a single solitary braid protruded out of one side, and what looked like half of a beaded necklace dangled out of the other side. She was a black girl adopted by an old white couple who had no idea what to do with her kinky hair. We took one look at each other and fell on our butts pointing and laughing. And after two months of scouring hair magazines and experimenting with different things, we finally got our hair under control.
“How was the party?” she asked excitedly before even saying hello. She knew I had been looking forward to it for two weeks.
“Awful, just awful,” I said, holding back tears. I flopped on my bed and twisted the phone cord around my fingers. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I wasn’t allowed to have a cell phone, I was forced to use one of those ancient home phones with the long curly cord attached to it.
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad, Priss. Just calm down and tell me about it.”
After a brief recap of the day, Tai, my supposed best friend in the world, started laughing.
“Oh, you are the worst friend ever! Why are you laughing at me?”
“Oh my God. Bad Salsa? In all the practice Spencer conversations we’ve had, I never remember bringing up condiments.” Tai continued to laugh. I imagined she was rolling around on the floor, clutching her stomach.
“You keep laughing at me and we are seriously going to have to rethink this friendship.”
“I’m sorry, Priss,” she said, trying to get control over herself. “Okay, I’m good. Just tell me, what in the world were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking. I was too afraid of spontaneous combustion. I mean, I think I’ve turned into the Human Torch!”
“The what?”
“The Human Torch. From the Fantastic Four. He can turn into fire.”
“I’m sure you’re exaggerating that part.”
“No, I’m not, Tai! You had to be there. I set a towel on fire!”
“Well, I’m sure there’s some physiological explanation. Your body heat probably rose from the embarrassment, causing a spike in your core temperature. And considering the fact that you’ve been in love with Spencer since the third grade, I’m sure your hormones were going crazy. And I bet you’re close to your time of the month.”
I turned my head and looked at the calendar on my wall. Snap. It was close to my time. Why did she always have to be right?
“I’m sure it felt like fire, but it was probably something a little less dramatic.”
“I’m not exaggerating. Flames, I tell you. Flames!” I threw my hands in the air for emphasis as if she could see me. “Something strange is going on.”
Tai was silent for a minute. I think I’d finally stumped my genius best friend. “Fire, huh? I’ll look into it. But until I find something, why don’t you ask your mom about it?”
“Sure. Right. Talk to my mom. I’ll just grow some wings, fly to Brazil, and interrupt one of her drug deals.” My mom worked for some big pharmaceutical company and traveled the world giving sales pitches. I usually just told people she was a drug dealer, though, because it sounded cooler and gave me some street cred. Well, in my head at least.
Why was Tai always trying to fix the unfixable relationship between my mother and me? Three years ago my mother didn’t show up for my tenth birthday party. That’s when I realized she thought her job was more important than her family. Since then we’d barely spoken. There was no way I was going to talk to that woman about something so personal and embarrassing. For now, I’d just consider my episode some sort of hot flash like women get in menopause. That would explain why it came and went. Flashes don’t last forever. Kind of like the flash of hope I had that Spencer Callahan could possibly be interested in me. Flashes come and go and … oh, snap, one was coming.
“Tai, it’s happening again!”
“Oh, oh, okay, uh … stand up and … and put the phone down and … and don’t touch anything until it passes.”
I jumped off the bed, dropped the phone, and stood with my hands and feet apart like I was about to get frisked by the police. It felt as though the heat started in my chest and radiated outward, landing in my hands. My fingertips pulsed, and there was smoke coming out of them! Just when I was about to scream because I was so freaking freaked out, a calm feeling came over me. I knew that if I just stayed still and didn’t touch anything, the heat would pass and everything would be fine.
But, of course, my life could
n’t be that simple. Just as my hands started turning an odd shade of red, there was a knock at the door, followed by, “Priss, it’s Dad.”
Chapter 4: Dubai, Brazil
“Priss, are you okay in there?” Dad asked when I didn’t respond immediately.
“Um, uh …” I stuttered, not thinking quickly enough to give a good answer.
Then he busted through the door like a cop in one of those Lifetime movies where the hero has to save the teenage daughter of his love interest from a coke-dealing pimp. I wasn’t too surprised, though. It wasn’t the first time he had knocked my door right off its hinges. Dad was always a little overprotective when it came to the safety of his children, especially me for some reason.
“What’s wrong? What’s going on?” His eyes were wild as he surveyed my room for some hidden danger.
“I’m fine, Daddy. I’m totally fine,” I said, rolling my eyes.
My dad pushed his glasses farther up his nose and adjusted his tie. Yes, my stay-at-home dad wore a tie in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. At six foot five and nearly three hundred pounds of solid muscle, he looked too darn scary if he wore anything less formal. I mean, with his bald head and mysterious tattoos, the man was a spandex leotard away from looking like the next WWE champion.
“What are you doing?” he asked, resting his eyes on me for the first time and noting my awkward stance.
Deciding the only way out of this was a “Prissy Fit,” as Josh so lovingly referred to them, I yelled, “Oh my God, Dad. You can’t just bust into a girl’s room unannounced! I’m a girl. I need privacy. What if I had been doing … girl stuff? You’re so embarrassing. I want to die. Just die.”
“Sorry, Priss. I thought you were in trouble,” he said, turning around to pick my door up off the floor. He could be so paranoid sometimes. He wouldn’t even let my school put my picture in the yearbook, saying he was afraid of child predators or something.“So, what kind of girl stuff do you call that move there?” he asked.
I looked up at my hands still reaching for the sky. My fingers had stopped pulsing and I felt the hot flash passing. Now I just had to figure out a way to answer Dad without making him totally spazz.
“Uh, it’s a new dance move,” I said, waving my hands in the air.
“Really?” he said, joining me in my made up dance to imaginary music.
I stopped moving and stared at him, holding in laughter. “You look ridiculous, Daddy.” I mean, he really did look crazy. Imagine a body-building secret service agent trying to get jiggy. That about sums it up.
“I look ridiculous? You started it.” He wrapped his arm around me and kissed the top of my head.
“What’s going on? What happened?” Tai said over the phone. I looked around for the phone and noticed that it had slipped under the bed. But I heard her so clearly, like she was right next to me. How could that be?
“Did you hear that?” I asked my Dad, thinking maybe he had added some new technology to the antique piece of trash I called a phone.
“What?” he replied completely confused.
Hmph. Guess not. Maybe I had super hearing as well. Oh, that would be awesome. It would come in handy for those sneak attacks from the devil twins.
“Nothing, never mind.” I sat down on the bed and crossed my legs Indian style.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You look … different to me.”
Oh, no. Could he tell I was somehow turning into a freak? Oh, how embarrassing.
“I guess you’re just growing up,” he said, shrugging off his concern. “We have a video chat with your mom in half an hour; then you can help me finish dinner. I’m making your favorite: spinach lasagna, broccoli casserole, and lemon meringue pie for dessert.” My dad rubbed his hands together, excited over his homemade dinner.
“Okay, Dad.”
“And don’t be late. It’s almost midnight in Dubai and your mom needs to get to sleep.”
“Dubai? What part of Brazil is that?” I asked, thinking Dubai really didn’t sound like a Portuguese word. But, hey, what did I know?
“Um, it’s … it’s, um, in the east part.” He looked uneasy. His blue eyes darted back and forth around the room. Was he hiding something from me?
My dad picked up the door, stepped through the gaping hole, and then leaned it against the doorframe to give me as much privacy as possible. I knew he’d probably reattach it after dinner. I wasn’t too worried about it. What I was worried about was the Dubai-Brazil thing. I mean, I wasn’t any kind of geography genius or anything, but I knew that Brazil was in South America. There was no way any part of Brazil could be like nine hours ahead of Pennsylvania. It didn’t make any sense. An image of a map popped in my brain. It was the map on the wall of my sixth grade teacher’s classroom. Why could I suddenly see every detail of it in my mind? There was no Dubai in Brazil. In fact, according to my suddenly perfect memory, Dubai was in the Middle East. Right smack dab in the middle of the Middle East. My heart sank. What was he hiding from me?
Suddenly, I remembered Tai was still on the phone.
“You there, Tai?” I asked after grabbing the phone and resting it between my ear and shoulder. I needed my hands free so I could dig out the globe stuffed under my bed. Maybe I was remembering wrong. I had to be sure. I had to know.
“Priss, Dubai is nowhere near Brazil,” she said immediately. She’d heard the entire conversation. “Your dad lied to you,” she added.
“Yeah, I know.”
Chapter 5: A Deal’s a Deal
I thought about confronting my dad about the whole Brazil-Dubai thing, but Mom totally covered for him during the video chat. She said she was in Brazil yesterday and had just flown to Dubai that morning. That explained it, right? Wrong. Dad didn’t say she went to Brazil and then Dubai. He specifically said Dubai was in Brazil. There was definitely something else going on.
Every Saturday afternoon we all gathered around the computer screen and talked with my long-distance mother so we could pretend like we were a family. I thought about taking Tai’s advice and asking her about hot flashes, but how could I do that in front of my three brothers and my dad? It just wasn’t going to happen. Besides, the Saturday chats never turned into anything productive. We usually just ended up fighting. It was annoying to have to interrupt my day for a woman who couldn’t care less about me.
“So, what’s going on in your life, Priscilla?” my mother asked after talking to Josh about football practice and to the twins about their new dolls—I mean, action figures.
“What do you care?”
“Priscilla, you watch your tone,” my dad barked.
“It’s okay, Greg. She just asked a question.” My mother took a deep breath and gathered her long red hair into a tight ponytail. “Despite what you might think, I really do care about what goes on in your life. Now, didn’t you have a pool party today? Why don’t you tell me how it went?”
“If you really care about what goes on in my life, how about being around more often than the seasons change? Why can’t you be a normal mother and go to PTA meetings and back-to-school shopping with your children?” My mother pushed her glasses farther up her nose. Nothing ever flustered her, not even my scathing sarcasm. Just once I’d love to see some emotion from her. But, no, she never lost her cool. Everyone left that to Dad.
“That’s it, Priss. I’ve had enough of you,” my father yelled. “Apologize right now then go to your room!”
“Sorry … Mother.” I hoped she put those two words together and got the true meaning of that sentence.
The next morning I woke up with a headache the size of Josh’s ego. My eyes hurt, my ears hurt, and my whole body tingled. It kinda felt like sharp little bugs were crawling around in my body and trying to escape through my skin. I decided I needed to soak in a hot bath.
When I got to the bathroom, Josh was just stepping out surrounded by swirling steam like he was coming out of a sauna or something. I bet he’d used up all the hot water … again. He was such a prima donna,
spending literally hours in the bathroom every day.
“Stupid meat head!” I yelled after I felt the frigid water. I let it run for a while and it wasn’t getting any warmer. Then I had an idea. I might as well put this fire thing to good use. I filled the tub, then tried to think hot thoughts. Nothing. Okay, what did I do the other two times it happened? Nothing. It just happened. Then I remembered something. Both times I had the hot flashes, I was thinking about Spencer Callahan and how much … whoa, that brought the heat. I stuck my hands in the water just long enough to get it nice and toasty.
This might not be so bad after all. But if I was going to use this fire thing to my advantage, I really had to learn how to control it. I had to figure out a way to bring the heat without thinking about Spencer.
