Here's Lily (10 page)

“No,” Lily told her again.

“Good.” Kresha went happily back to trying to decipher her geography book.

Lily felt funny when she got back to her desk.
Kresha notices whether I'm happy or sad? I almost forget about her most of the time
. She watched the Croatian girl now as she sighed heavily and rubbed out something with her eraser. From where Lily sat, it looked as if she'd rubbed several holes in her paper already. Lily felt that I-haven't-done-my-homework pang again.

The only good thing that happened that day was that both Suzy and Zooey were absent. That wasn't such a good thing all by itself, but it meant that Lily and Reni were alone outside during break, and Lily could give her the invitations for the Girlz Only Group. She had neatly crossed out the place and time and written in the new information in the same script as it had been printed in before. Well, almost. Reni was impressed anyway. Lily was glad
somebody
was, and it made her feel a little better.

“I want this to be a surprise for Zooey and Suzy,” Lily said. “You can't tell them I'm in it.”

“They're going to wonder why you aren't going with us,” Reni said. “They barely breathe anymore unless you tell them to.”

“Nuh-uh,” Lily said. But she kind of liked that idea.

“I could tell them you couldn't go,” Reni said, “and I didn't want you to feel bad so I didn't even tell you.”

“That would be a lie.” Lily thought about her prayer last night and congratulated herself.

“I got it!” Reni's dimples went way deep. “I'll tell them you're going to meet us there. That's true!”

“Yeah! You just don't have to tell them
how
I'm going to meet you.”

“This is gonna be totally cool,” Reni said.

Lily was almost convinced that it was. She felt so much better, in fact, that when she practiced her pivots in the living room again that night, she ignored Art and Joe's imitations of her, the ones that made them look like bewildered ostriches. She even started to think that maybe getting Shad to the show wasn't a lost cause yet.

She still had a week to think of something.

Ten

M
om's team won their game that afternoon. They were going to State for sure. Everybody in the family was thrilled about it except Lily. Every evening that week, Mom had her team in special practices.

“I told you she works those chicks like dogs,” Art said on Tuesday. “Get out the whip. She'll be wanting to use it before the week's over.”

But Mom wasn't the only one cracking some kind of instrument of torture. The band teacher had the pep band in special rehearsals twice that week so they'd be ready to wow everybody at the tournament starting Thursday, just two days before the modeling show. Art might “
be
the pep band,” but he too had to go to practice.

That meant it was Lily, Dad, and Joe for supper most nights that week, and on Thursday, when the tournament finally started, Joe went to his friend Ryan's house to eat before the game because he said he was sick of Dad's cooking.

Lily was getting a little tired of macaroni and cheese from a box herself, but she was too loyal to Dad to bail out and go to Reni's. In fact, she decided she and Dad could come up with something better.

“You've always loved mac and cheese,” Dad said.

“That was when I was
young
,” Lily said. “My tastes have matured.”

“Oh.” Dad looked a little confused. “The only other thing I know how to make is bacon and eggs.”

“Yeah!” Lily said. “And I'll make some toast and set the table. I think we should have flowers for a centerpiece.”

So Dad poked around in the refrigerator and miraculously found all the ingredients while Lily dug into the back of the cabinet for some real dishes. During volley ball tournaments, Mom always used paper plates. She said it saved her sanity.

The bacon was curling and bubbling in the frying pan, the eggs were waiting patiently in a bowl to be scrambled, and the table looked like the cover of
Martha Stewart Living
, as far as Lily was concerned, when the phone rang. Dad answered it and began a too-long conversation.

“I'm going to have to look that up for you,” Lily heard Dad say as she refolded the napkins for the third time. “Can you hold on?”

He set the phone on the table and said to Lily, “Watch that bacon, would you? I have to go find . . . have you seen my glasses?”

He went off to his study, still muttering, and Lily finished fiddling with the napkins. Then she gave the eggs a stir in their bowl. The bacon didn't look all brown and hard yet the way Dad liked it, so she just poked at it a little with a fork.

The bread was already toasted and buttered and keeping warm in the oven, and she'd put five kinds of jelly on the table. There was nothing else to do but perch on the stool and think about the show—and Shad Shifferdecker.

Lily still hadn't come up with a way to get him there, and the show was going to be
so good
. Just the night before, at their dress rehearsal, Kathleen had privately announced that Lily would start the show—that she would be the first one out on the runway!

“You'll get the audience's attention,” she'd said. “They'll know right away that this isn't a kiddie show. This is professional, the real thing.”

It was just one more reason why Shad had to be there. She was so anxious to have him in that audience, she'd even asked him that afternoon at school, “Shad, do you really go to the mall and hang out every Saturday?”

He'd looked at her for a second with his mouth kind of half hanging open. “Yeah,” he finally answered. “Why do you want to know?”

“Just curious.” That was only half true, but she couldn't get herself to say, “Just
desperate
!”

“Mostly we hang around the food court till they kick us out. Then we go to the video game place till they kick us outta there. Then we try to sneak into Abercrombie, but if they catch a kid in there without parents, they, like, hold you and call the security guard or something.”

“Did that ever happen to you?” Lily asked.

“Nah,” Shad said. “I'm too good for 'em. I, like, ‘blend in.' ” He got a sly look on his face. “You'd never make it with that hair. They'd spot you like that.” He snapped his fingers right under Lily's nose.

She hadn't known where to go from there, so she'd just looked at him.

“There you go again, givin' me that creepy look,” Shad said. “You freak me out.”

Lily took in a deep breath to sigh now, but she stopped in mid-sniff. Something didn't smell like it was supposed to.

She glanced at the stove, and she could feel her eyes popping. The frying pan was smoking like a chimney. One look told her that the bacon was dry and hard
now
.

She grabbed for a pot holder and started to lift the pan off the burner. But there were flames starting to lick at the grease in the bottom.

“Dad!” Lily yelled. “The bacon's burning!”

There was no answer from the study, and the flame tongues were lashing up higher. Heart racing, Lily dove for the sink and snatched up the first thing her hand hit—the empty iced tea pitcher. Still screaming for her father, she filled up the pitcher and made another dive for the stove.

By now the flames were reaching up for the hood over the stove top. Lily held on to the pitcher with both hands and flung its contents into the pan.

Suddenly all she saw was a flash of gold as the fire rushed at her like a genie coming out of a bottle. Something bit, hard and hot, at her face, and she dropped the pitcher and started to fling her hands at her cheeks. Hands caught her from behind and pulled her back.

“Don't touch it!” Dad cried.

“I didn't touch it!”

But Dad wasn't talking about the blazing frying pan. He was talking about Lily's face. He brought both of his palms against her cheeks and slapped at them until Lily was screaming. Then he put something wet and cold over her whole face.

“Hold that there!” he shouted.

He
had
to shout. There was so much noise in the kitchen now—the fire crackling and the bacon grease popping like gunshots and the smoke detector screaming— that Lily could barely hear her own thoughts.

But then she did hear a shriek that made her tear the wet towel from her face in terror. Dad clutched one hand under his opposite armpit while he beat back the flames with a wet towel held in the other. Through the smoke Lily could see his face twisted like a Halloween mask.

“Can you get the fire extinguisher?” Dad shouted to her.

Lily dropped her own wet towel and yanked the extinguisher off the wall. She held it out to Dad, but he shook his head. “You'll have to do it!” he shouted.

He was coughing now, and so was Lily. In fact, she wasn't sure she could even breathe anymore. Hacking from her throat and squinting her eyes, she managed to push the right button. Foam leaped from the little hose and tried to smother the flames, but they fought back stubbornly.

“Come on!” Dad cried. “Let's get outside!”

Lily was still squirting as Dad hooked his arm around her elbow and hauled her out the back door. It was only when they'd stumbled down the back steps and he let go of her that Lily saw that his hands were white and charred-looking.

“Daddy, you're burned!”

“I know, sweetheart. Come on. Let's get to a phone!”

But someone obviously already had, for just then there was a high-pitched wail from down the street, and the early-evening dark was shot through with red lights. Crooking his arm through Lily's again, Dad pulled her to the front yard.

“Daddy, you're hurt bad!” Lily cried. “You can't even use your hands!”

“It's all right. I'm fine!”

When they got to the front yard, however, and ran straight into the front of a big man in an even bigger black coat, it turned out Dad wasn't fine at all.

“Ambulance is on its way!” the man shouted over the din of sirens and shouting and water-shooting. “Lie down out here, out of the smoke!”

Two other men in heavy coats ushered Lily and her father across the street to a spot on the sidewalk where someone else had already spread blankets. They made Dad lie on one, and Lily squatted down beside him. But one of the men took Lily gently by the shoulder and pushed her onto the other.

“My dad is hurt!” Lily cried.

“So are you, hon,” said the fireman. “I can hear the ambulance coming. They'll take good care of both of you. Just lie still now.”

“I'm not hurt!” Lily wailed. “It's my dad who's hurt!”

But when two ambulances had screamed to a halt and a woman in a blue shirt leaned over her, Lily saw the look in her eyes, and she knew she was wrong. She
was
hurt. Why else would Miss Blue Shirt be barking out orders to someone behind her and taking Lily's pulse and telling her everything was going to be all right when her eyes were sparking out that it most definitely wasn't?

“What hospital do you want to go to, sir?” someone asked.

“Baptist Medical Center,” someone said in a frail voice.

Why isn't Dad answering?
Lily thought.
What happened?

“Daddy?” she called out. Her own voice sounded whistle-shrill.

“I'm right here, Lilliputian,” said that same weak voice.

“What's your name, sweetie?” asked Miss Blue Shirt.

“Lilianna. What about my dad?”

“Your dad's going to the hospital, and so are you. My name's Patti, and I'll be taking care of you.”

“I want to go with my dad.”

“He's going to need a lot of room in his ambulance, Lilianna. You and I will have our own private ride. How's that?”

“Is he all right?”

“I'm all right, Lilliputian. You just do what they say. I'll see you there.”

Lily lifted her head to watch them lift Dad onto a gurney, but Patti put something over her nose and gently pushed Lily's head back.

“You'll get one of those too,” Patti said. “Why don't you just relax and let me do all the work?”

Lily didn't have much choice. Once she was bundled up and put on a gurney and slid into the back of the ambulance like a casserole going into the oven, there wasn't much she could do—except pray. And that she did, very, very hard.

At first when they got to the hospital, a whole team of people crowded around Lily's gurney as they rolled it into a room with curtains all around. But once Patti had shouted a bunch of numbers at them and several team members inspected her face and asked her if she knew where she was and what her name was, things calmed down. Lily thought crazily that she must have given them the right answers. She wasn't sure how, because her head was spinning.

“You have a couple of burns, Lilianna, okay?” explained a doctor with almost no hair. “We're going to give you something to help you relax, and then we're going to take care of those burns. You'll be fine, okay?”

“What about my dad?”

“I'll send somebody to check on Dad, okay?”

Then she felt a sting in her arm, and before too long her eyes got heavy. Her lips were heavy too when she said to the doctor, “Did you know you end every sentence with
okay
?” After that, she went off into a sleep with no dreams at all.

When Lily woke up, she knew her face was on fire again before she even opened her eyes. She flailed at the blanket and tried to sit up, but a sure, familiar arm stopped her.

“Whoa, girl,” Mom said. “You're about to hit the sidewalk running.”

“They're burning again, Mom!” she said.

“What is, Lil?”

“My cheeks!”

There was the smallest of pauses before Mom said, “They're not burning anymore. I know it hurts, but the fire's out.”

Mom finally came into focus, and Lily realized she was still in that room with the curtains, except the team of doctors and nurses had left, and there was only Mom. She was in her Cedar Hills High volleyball team sweatshirt, and her face looked as gray as the shirt did.