Just Pru

by Anne Pfeffer

  “The fire inspector. He wants to talk to you.” Ellen bit her lip, her face unreadable. She went on, speaking as if every word pained her. “They’ve been looking for you. Since you lived in one of the apartments most badly burned, you were an obvious person to speak with. But they didn’t know where you were.”

  Of course they couldn’t have called me, since I was phoneless. And unless someone told them I’d moved in with Ellen, they would have had no idea where to look for me.

  “I’ll talk to them.” It would be okay. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  And yet, think of Isobel in Unjust Passion. Think of Duncan, caged for a crime he didn’t commit. Injustices happened all the time. And I didn’t have Duncan’s strength. It felt like a giant hand had clamped itself around my chest, making it hard to breathe.

  “How did the fire inspector learn all this?”

  Ellen shifted uncomfortably and licked her lips. “Adam told him.”

  My mind reeled. How could he? As terrible as it had been, Adam knew what my parents had done wasn’t my fault. To retaliate against me for their behavior—I couldn’t believe he would do that.

  I would get blamed for setting this fire and be imprisoned for years. I’d lost Adam, and I would lose Ellen, the best friends I’d ever had.

  Two guys brushed by me, carrying a long board and forcing me to sidestep. I tried to speak calmly. “Just for the record, I set a potholder on fire, not a building.”

  Ellen tried to smile at me. “Good.”

  My lips were starting to tremble, and I knew I would cry in a minute. “So,” I said briskly, “am I supposed to call this guy? The inspector?”

  Again, Ellen looked uncomfortable. “He’s coming by the theater. In a few hours.”

  They were all in on it. Together on one side, with me on the other side. Just like in Greeks Do It Better, where the senior officers in Pi Gamma Xi conspired to vote poor Felicia out of their sorority. And only because she wore that last-season gown to the Winter Formal. Felicia had gotten her revenge by ousting the Xi president from power and stealing her boyfriend, but I doubted that would solve my problem.

  “Okay. I’ll go work with Blake.” We were already prepared, but I needed him right now. I needed him to be my friend. I turned and walked off, wishing Ellen would call out, Stop, Pru! I believe in you! But she didn’t.

  I found Blake sitting cross-legged on a pile of mats, his eyes closed. Pain and fear throbbed inside me. I wished I had my sleeping bag, so I could crawl inside it and hide. Ellen and the crew scurried to perfect last minute set and lighting changes, while many among the cast had gone to lunch.

  “Hey,” I said, dropping down next to him.

  “Hey.” He opened his eyes and regarded me coolly. Still that strange distance between us.

  “Were you meditating?”

  “No, just pretending to so people will leave me alone.”

  I pulled back, stung. “Sorry to bother you.” I started to get up, but he stopped me.

  “How was your date?” Blake loaded his voice with sarcasm, but I caught an underlay of something else. Like disappointment. Or jealousy.

  “Lousy.” The word flew out of me. The flood waters of pain and anger were building, and now, with one question from Blake, were about to break through the dam holding them back.

  “So that guy wasn’t so great after all?” Blake watched me intently.

  “No. I mean, yes, he was wonderful. But my parents told the police he had abducted me, and they came to his house, and he got pissed off and reported me for arson.” My voice wobbled and my eyes filled. I looked down at my hands.

  Blake studied me for a long moment. “Bummer,” he said finally, filling that single word with the whole weight of his reaction.

  “He had champagne and candles. He was going to woo me. But then the police came, and now the fire inspector’s coming….”

  Blake looked mildly confused, but he seemed to get that this was serious. He glanced around casually, as if to see who might be watching us, then got to his feet. “Come on.”

  We sneaked out the exit to the alley and sat on the top step, as usual. Maybe I would just stay here for the rest of the day. It was peaceful by the dumpsters. My stalkers would never find me.

  Blake pulled out a lighter and a lumpy, home-made looking cigarette.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t born yesterday. I had seen those cigarettes in Girls Gone Bad. “Is that marijuana?”

  He winked at me. “You want? You’ll feel better.”

  I was tempted. My life was already destroyed; I might as well become a stoner. After all, I’d always been a good girl, and look at what that had done for me.

  But then I thought of Ellen and everything we still had to do for opening night. “We have responsibilities, Blake.” Very deliberately, I met his eyes with mine.

  Slowly, he put the cigarette away. “Damn you, Prudence! You always make me behave myself.” His eyes were open and sincere, searching mine intently.

  “Sorry. I guess I’m not much fun.” Yet another of my many failings.

  He put his hands on either side of my head and touched his forehead to mine. “What I mean is, you make me step up,” he said lightly. “I like that about you.”

  An ache filled my chest and throat. “What a nice thing to say.” His face was close to mine, his eyes warm, a sexy shadow on his cheeks and chin.

  He gently let go of me and resumed his arms-around-his-knees slouch. “Now will you answer a question for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you want to be a latchkey kid?”

  Funny that he remembered that.“So I could go to school, like normal kids. My mother home-schooled me, and I hated it.”

  “Why?”

  “It was just me and my mother trapped in the house. And my parents have… well, they have a lot of weird ideas.”

  “Like thinking Alan abducted you?”

  “Adam. See, they didn’t think that. They just wanted to chase me down.”

  ”Chase you down?”

  “You know, capture me and take me home to live with them forever.”

  Blake did a comical double-take. “Your parents are really intense.”

  He had no idea. I tried to say something to lighten the mood, but the burning in my throat had become unbearable. Everything I’d held back these last five years and never told anyone except Dr. Abbot, now bubbled up to the surface. My pain and anger, having reached the top of the dam, spilled over.

  “I tried to kill myself.”

  I had never said those words aloud. They dropped into the silence like a rock into a pond, making a heavy plunk.

  Blake seemed to shrink a size, his shoulders contracting. Pain flashed through his eyes. An ancient garbage truck began to grind its way the length of the alley, noisily lifting up dumpsters then dropping them back to the ground. We waited as the truck made an unwieldy exit turn and wheezed away.

  I spoke first. “I took pills and cut the insides of my legs. My mom found me and called 911. It wasn’t pretty.”

  The corners of Blake’s mouth turned down. He spoke in a flat voice. “Why’d you do it?”

  “I had nothing to live for, and I didn’t believe I ever would.”

  “But now you know you were wrong.” Blank stated it as a flat assertion, not a question.

  “Actually, I don’t know that,” I said, thinking of last night. Lloyd and Phyllis were like an infection that wouldn’t go away.

  The door behind us opened. Ellen poked her head out. “One hour, you guys. Get to it.”

  “We’re ready,” I yelled over my shoulder.

  “Good.” The door closed behind her.

  “How did she know we were out here?” I asked.

  “Ellen sees all. She’s spooky.” Blake made a listless move for his script. “It’s weird. You tried to kill yourself because your parents are assholes. And my mother did kill herself.” His voice broke. “Because I’m an asshole.”

  “Oh Blake.” It was too
much. Too much sadness in the world.

  With a visible effort, he pulled himself together. “Fuck it. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “I don’t wanna talk about myself, either.”

  We sat quietly for a moment, listening to the occasional squeak of rats in the dumpster.

  “Carbon monoxide,” Blake blurted. So much for not talking about it. “That’s how Mom did it. A maid found her in the garage.”

  I gripped his hand. “Where were you?”

  Blake grimaced. “I was at ‘summer camp.’ That’s what they called it anyway. It’s where they sent kids no one could figure out what to do with.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Ten.”

  Horrified, I said, “You were a little kid!”

  “I was a little monster. Mom was unhappy, and I wasn’t worth living for.” His hands started to shake uncontrollably.

  This play must be tearing him to pieces. “Why did you take this role, Blake?”

  “It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I thought I could handle it.” He buried his face in his arms, which were wrapped around his bent knees.

  “You can handle it. You are.” I put my arms around him and squeezed as hard as I could. My heart was filling up with sadness for him, for the little boy who had lost his mother and blamed it on himself.

  What would it be like to desperately miss your mom or your dad and long to see them? Mine had been in my face since I was born, like the setting sun in your eyes, blinding you to anything else in the world that you might see or want, making it impossible to move forward. I hugged Blake even more tightly, my cheek against his hair.

  Overwhelmed by emotion, his scent, the intoxicating hardness of his back and shoulders, I didn’t see it coming.

  Blake took me in his arms and kissed me. All those years of wondering what it would be like to kiss a boy, and suddenly, without warning, it was happening.

  My first feeling was a flash of regret—I wish it were Adam. But what was the point of that? Adam hated me. Blake didn’t. And it was high time for this girl to get kissed.

  I kissed him back. I tried to focus on the feeling of his lips on mine, his tongue, the scratchy stubble of his cheeks.

  Blake’s kisses were like he was—demanding, full of heat and passion, all about him. I was pretty sure he would be classified as a good kisser. Yet it was strangely like watching him do a scene, standing back and taking in what a good job he was doing and congratulating myself for having inspired it.

  Our lips separated, our foreheads touching, his hands in my hair. His breath came fast and rough, and he was already moving in for more.

  I squirmed away and said the first thing that popped into my head. “One day you’ll be a huge star, and I’ll be able to say I got my first kiss from Blake Williams.”

  “First kiss?” His face was a comical mixture of lust and bafflement, followed by panic. “Please tell me you’re eighteen.”

  “I’m legal,” I answered shortly, sparing him the details about my advanced age. Disappointment filtered in. My first kiss could have been, had almost been, with Adam, feeling beautiful and tipsy and halfway in love, on a deck overlooking the ocean.

  But that didn’t happen. I was free to kiss anyone I wanted. In fact, I told myself, I probably should. Adam didn’t love me. He had turned me in. As far as he was concerned, I should be in prison, making airplane parts and dodging advances from women even larger than I was.

  I stood up abruptly. “We should go in.”

  “Pru.”His fingers closed around my wrist. “That was insensitive. I’m sorry.”

  I knew him too well. “Don’t give me Acting 101, Blake.” Besides, it didn’t matter. Blake hadn’t hurt my feelings. I’d already given my feelings to somebody else to hurt.

  He held onto my hand. “I like you, Pru.”

  I faced him square on. “You like what I do for you.”

  His voice dropped so low I could barely hear him. “I need you.”

  “No, you don’t.” I said. “It’s all there, Blake. Inside of you. Just let it out.”

  “Let what out?” His forehead wrinkled up in puzzlement.

  “Your best self. Your talent. Your passion. You’re a great actor, or could be if you weren’t so scared of your own feelings.” I pulled my hand away from him.

  “Let my best self out? How do I do that?”

  What the heck was I talking about? Did I even follow my own advice and let my own best self out? “My therapist told me once that, every single night, I should write down what I’d done during the day that I was proud of. It didn’t have to be anything big. But just things like I was nice to somebody or I worked hard on something.”

  “Every day?” Blake looked dubious.

  “It can be something small. There must be some little thing you did today that was admirable or nice.”

  Blake brightened. “I didn’t fuck Becca this morning, even though I could have!”

  “There you go!”

  “And I’m going to do the harness scene in a little while.”

  “See?” I found myself giggling. “You’re practically a saint!”

  He laughed, a genuine pleasure-filled laugh. “Only you, Prudence, could turn me into a saint.” Before my eyes he began to smolder, giving off heat and sex. “How could I not like you for that?” He leaned in to kiss me again.

  I stepped back, panicking and searching my memory for the rules on kissing. After you kissed a guy once, were you allowed to say, Sorry, there’s no more where that came from? I changed my mind, or I never had it made up to begin with? I’d never seen things play out on TV in exactly that way.

  I heard Dr. Abbot’s voice in my mind: There’s always someone who will try to take your power away from you. Don’t let them.

  Blake reached for me, confident that I was his.

  Like Becca.

  Like heck I was.

  I scrambled away from him. “Gotta go.” I opened the door.

  He closed the door.

  “Sorry, Blake. No more kissing!”

  “But you’re my muse. I can’t work without you.” The words hung in the air.

  “Let me by.”

  Sulkily, he stepped aside.

  I shot past him through the wings and practically right into the arms of Ellen, who stood beside a little man with a brown jacket and a brown mustache.

  “Miss Anderson? I’m Norman Fleisch. I’m investigating the fire that took place recently at your place of residence. Do you have a few moments?”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  From Pru’s Journal:

  I asked Ellen about the sentence painted on her ceiling— For whatever you have tamed, you are responsible. It’s from a book she read in French, but it’s available in English, too, so maybe I’ll read it. The author seems to know what he’s talking about.

  **

  Trying to pull myself together, I followed the little brown man to what Ellen called the Conference Room, a card table and chairs in the corner behind a cheap shoji screen.

  “Were you residing in Apartment 402 at the time of the fire?” he asked not entirely pleasantly. I wondered if he had the authority to clap handcuffs on me and drag me away.

  “Yes.”

  “We had quite a time finding you,” he said.

  “I didn’t know you needed me. If I had, I would have…” I almost said turned myself in, but at the last second changed it to, “…contacted you.”

  “Well, I have you now.”

  I shifted my weight around. This had to be the hardest chair in the universe.

  The little man pulled out a clipboard. His neatly trimmed nails formed a weird contrast with his pudgy fingers. “And how long had you lived there?”

  “Two months.”

  “And were you there the evening of the fire, when it started?”

  “Yes.” So far, no really tough questions.

  “Did you hear anything strange, any banging or moving about?”

  “Besides th
e fire alarm? No.”

  He pursed his lips, seemingly displeased. “Did you see anyone out in the hall soon before the alarm went off?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  There was a long silence, while he inspected me as if he hoped the truth might start to scroll across my forehead.

  I was telling the truth. Shouldn’t that protect me? Then why was I sweating so much? I probably looked guilty as sin.

  He leafed through his notes, going back and forth between the handwritten pages. “Did you call any of your neighbors when the alarm went off? You know, to check in on them, make sure they were alright?”

  “No.”

  His eyebrows questioned me. “What about the older couple next to you, the Potemkins?”

  “I didn’t know them.” Why did any of this matter?

  He stopped his leafing. “Not at all?”

  “I met them for the first time later that night, the night of the fire.”

  “Did you tell them you lived next door in 402?”

  I closed my eyes, trying to recall what I’d said. “I don’t think so.”

  I remembered how scared Mrs. Potemkin had been, standing there in her ruined dress, and poor confused Mr. Potemkin, with his sweater vest all buttoned up even in June.

  “So what do you think happened?” I asked him.

  He gave me a long, searching look. “The physical evidence is inconsistent with the testimony we’ve gotten. That’s why I needed to speak with you. Your testimony is helping to clear things up.”

  “Good.” What did that mean? Did he think I was lying? Did the physical evidence point to me? How could it, when I hadn’t done anything wrong?

  I forced myself to speak calmly. “Do you know where it started?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  My heart practically stopped beating. They had to think it started with me—why else would they be here talking to me? I waited for him to haul me off to jail.

  “Thank you. I’ll be getting back to you.”

  Back to me with an arrest warrant? I wanted to scream.

  “Wait! What’s going to happen next?”

  He gave me an enigmatic smile. “Like I said, I’ll be getting back to you.”