Fire and Matches

Part 2

The match had been meant as a school project. My decrepit old teacher demanded that we test oxygen, or hydrogen. Test subject: Match. Goal: test if putting match in different areas around town. I only needed one more A+ and I could turn down tutoring from Wendy Bones. If you had met her, you would understand why I would not want tutoring from her.

I had started to bike, pedaling down the first street of my small town towards the clubhouse. Then, I tripped over a stick, falling off of the road and tumbling into the woods. As soon as I had stopped at a fallen tree branch and picked myself up, I smelled smoke. The burning smell brought me around a bend and through a clearing, seeing a large, tall mansion. It was on fire.

I had nervoulsy taken a look at the match. Still burning bright.

That was when the police officers had run across the forest and saw me, standing at the wrong place in the wrong time. And they chained me in handcuffs. And took me to the police office. After a visit to court, full of me shouting at that stuck-up judge. And the very next week, my parents sent me to Beckingham Reform School.

A school of arsonists and thieves and kid murderers. Where I had been pushed up against a wall and been threatened to be set on fire. Honestly. That school helped this many kid criminals: 00. Absolutely No kid psycopaths cured from the urge to kill the next person who walks in front of them.

~~~

I walked into my house, a small suburban cookie-cutter with an averagely-badly cut lawn and a pool that was cared for by Hispanic men who said that they couldn't fix it even after you pay them.

What surprised me was the sudden whining from upstairs. "Zachary?" I asked my father, promising myself that I would call my dad by his real name for the rest of his life. For sending me to a reform school.

"What's the whine all about?" I asked, annoyed. It was getting to be like white noise in my ear. "It's Bella, your sister," Zachary announced, as if I had received news that I had a sibling.

"What? Who's Bella?! Why didn't you tell me?" I questioned him angrily. Gosh, for the love of fudge, he forgot to mention that my estranged mother had had another member of my family.

I stormed upstairs, refusing to say hello to my mom, Sarah. And Bella. Cue the cringe.

My room, a cramped space that could barely fit a bed and a door leading to a bathroom, felt a little more welcoming than my family. I jumped on my bed and let my face settle in the pillows, and rolled around. Finally, no hard top-bunk that was made of metal and couldn't support a mattress. Comfort!

I unwrinkled the phone number from my pocket. Misty Jennington. I brushed my fingers against it, and closed my eyes. Matches. Burning. From the inside, and the mansion.