Firegirl by Tony Abbott Page A

believe that I was talking to her father; the burned girl’s father.
    “I’m sorry she did that,” he said again.
    “So … how did it happen?” I said finally, surprised at the way the question just came out.
    He made a short gesture with his hand, as if it was so long ago that there was no point in telling it all again. He seemed to go inside himself, but then he started rambling around and around for a while as if he didn’t want to go over the old story and didn’t want to say all the words again, but couldn’t stop himself. From what he did say, I sort of pieced together an answer.
    Sometime when Jessica was in the sixth grade, she and her mother had gone to a place called World of Dance or Dance World to pick up tickets for a recital Jessica was in. She loved dancing as much as she loved tennis and biking.
    While Jessica was waiting out front in the car — which Mr. Feeney said was still running — some old man had a kind of attack while driving down the street in his truck. He was going too fast and smashed into the back of the car Jessica was in, ramming it really hard into the car parked in front of it.
    Gasoline burst from the gas tank and went everywhere inside the car. Everything caught fire and so did Jessica. Because of the flames and the heat and the truck jammed against it, it was a while before anyone could get her out. Her mother came rushing out of the dance place, but she couldn’t get anywhere near the car. No one could. By the time the fire rescue trucks arrived, most of Jessica’s body was burned.
    I couldn’t stop myself from crying while Mr. Feeney was saying all this, amazed at what he was telling me. Finally, he stopped, shrugged his shoulders again, and settled back into the chair.
    Wiping my face and trying to keep my voice low so that she wouldn’t hear what we were saying, I asked him, “Will it get any better?”
    The expression on his face showed how many times people had asked him that. He smiled stiffly and said, “A little. Over time. Not right away.”
    But how long would it be? Will I see her as she looked before? Could the doctors make her look like the picture again? Were they even trying for that? Could they do it? Could they find her face under all that?
    “We try not to think about how long it might be,” he said. “It’s hard. Every time a doctor says something your mind goes on, you know? You want it so bad. It’ll be … it’s a long road. She’ll never look the way — like that again. But that’s only part of it. Her lungs were badly damaged. The circulation in her legs. But I couldn’t imagine going on without her around. We love Jessica. More now than ever before. We’re glad she’s alive. That’s pretty much it.”
    And that was it.
    Mr. Feeney rose from the chair as if he were balancing a big sack of something heavy on his shoulders. He wobbled for a couple of seconds then made his way back to the kitchen. He started cleaning again.
    To my horror, I heard someone rushing back up from the bottom of the stairs. Jessica had been listening. Oh my God.
    I left, going past her father and out to the side step just as a minivan was pulling into the driveway. A woman got out, holding a bag of groceries. She had brown hair that was pushed back behind her ears. This was the mother Jessica hated.
    I stopped in front of the garage door next to the back step. I wondered what she would sound like. She was there, after all, two years ago, when the thing happened to Jessica. She’d left the car running. Did that make a difference?
    “Hi,” I said. “I’m Tom….”
    But she must not have seen or heard me, because she didn’t say anything. She went around the back of the car, opened the rear door, and pulled out another bag of groceries. She was thin and about as tall as my mom, but seemed small somehow and shorter because she was bent over the bags she was balancing. She went past quickly and in the side door, which Mr. Feeney opened for her, but I didn’t