Firegirl by Tony Abbott

hiding out from the police, and probably their furniture came from the dump, which is where all criminals get their furniture. You could prove it by calling the dump to ask if anything was missing.
    Remembering that, I nearly laughed, except that the air in the room seemed so heavy it probably would have sucked away any sound. Then Mr. Feeney started asking questions. General stuff, like about St. Catherine’s and my family and where I lived and stuff. Nothing very deep.
    There was a picture frame on the coffee table that was mostly turned away from me. I leaned in to try to see what it was and was shocked to find that it was a larger copy of the little one that had fallen out of Jessica’s pencil case: her sister and her father at the beach club. Except that this one wasn’t cut off on the side. I was suddenly all confused.
    I had expected to see Jessica in the picture. Instead, there was an older brown-haired woman standing there. She was smiling, too.
    A terrible idea had begun to grow in me, just like it had when I first saw the picture in school.
    “I saw this,” I said, moving the frame around so that we could both see it, “but not all of it.”
    Looking at the woman, I guessed it was Jessica’s mother. But if Jessica didn’t cut herself out of the photograph, where was she? I glanced around the room, but I didn’t see any other pictures. Well, of course not, stupid. Why would anyone want to torture her by having a picture of the way she used to look and never will again?
    “That was a few weeks before the accident,” he said.
    The accident. It was an accident. I nodded. “Sorry.”
    “Jessica likes it,” her father went on. “Well, I don’t know if she
likes
it, but she wants us to keep it around where we can all see it. I don’t think it helps anybody. Not me, for sure. And not Mrs. Feeney. Jessica wants to … I don’t know….” He sighed.
    “I’m sorry,” I said again. I knew I had to say something, but I didn’t know what. I looked closely at the girl. She really was beautiful and fun-looking, with that little smile on her lips.
    “It must have been really terrible,” I said. “I remember when my grandfather died. I was little, but I knew that everybody was upset because it was sort of sudden. I’m sorry, it must have been bad when she died.”
    “When she died,” Mr. Feeney repeated softly. His eyebrows wrinkled. “I thought you said it was your grandfather that died?”
    I looked at him. I started to feel sick again. “No, no. It
was
my grandfather. I meant when
she
died.” I motioned to the picture. My hand was trembling. “Her. Jessica’s sister?”
    “Jessica’s sister,” Mr. Feeney said, leaning over the table almost as if he was going to jump at me. I was shaking. “Jessica’s sister? Who do you think you’re looking at? She doesn’t have a sister. Where did you get the idea that she has a sister?”
    I kept staring at the picture, trying to get it. Words formed in my head, but they got all garbled on my tongue. “But she had it in school … and somebody asked her if it was her but she said …”
    “No, no, no, no,” he moaned, jerking back into the chair. “That is Jessica. That is Jessica.”
    My blood froze. Oh, god, no. It
is
her. The smile on that girl. I just stared at the picture and kept staring because I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t get it, and I didn’t want to see his face again. My stomach was twisting inside me. This girl is Jessica? Where is her face? Where did it go? Oh, no, no, no.
    “I’m sorry,” Mr. Feeney said, slumping again into his chair and letting out a huge breath. “Did Jessica play a trick on you?”
    My chest heaved suddenly, and my throat felt thick. I shook my head. That wasn’t it. That’s not what happened.
    “She’s done it before, I think. She’s done lots of strange things. I’m sorry she did that. Jessica has her ways of dealing with what happened I guess.”
    We were silent for a while. A part of me couldn’t