True Talents(3)

“I didn’t do it,” he said. “Honest, I didn’t do nuthin’.” He raised his hands in a display of innocence. A trickle of sweat ran down his forehead, past his right eye. It stopped, finally, at his pudgy cheek. Red hair, also damp, drooped in clumps from a wandering part that ran along the center of his scalp. It was the sort of face a ventriloquist would have loved. “I didn’t do it,” he repeated.

Yeah, right, I thought. And I’m Abe Lincoln. In the room, the guy with the fire extinguisher let fly with a stream of foamy spray, knocking out the blaze pretty quickly. He spun toward the crowd of kids and spouted out words I never would have expected. “Quick, what have we learned here?”

Nobody said anything. I sure didn’t.

“Come on,” the man said. “This is easy. What three things are required for a fire?”

“Heat, fuel …” a small kid at the back of the crowd said. I couldn’t believe the guy was turning this into a science lesson. He had to be a teacher, though he sure wasn’t dressed like one. He wore a T-shirt with PRINCETON on it in big orange letters hanging above a picture of a tiger. The shirt was tucked into a pair of jeans. The frayed jeans cuffs hung over scuffed shoes, the same way his ragged mustache hung over his upper lip.

“Right! Heat and fuel. That’s two. Come on, one more,” the man urged. He took a real deep breath.

“Oxygen,” someone else said.

“Exactly!” The guy held up the extinguisher. “So we smother the fire to deprive it of oxygen. We can also stop a fire by lowering the temperature or removing the fuel. Remember that.” He gave the desktop another short blast. Then he turned his attention to Torchie. I wondered if he was going to blast the kid with a stream of words the way he’d blasted the fire with a stream of foam, but he just sighed and said, “Philip, we need to work a bit harder on this problem of yours.” He tucked the extinguisher under his left arm and held his right hand out, palm up.

Torchie—I guess his real name was Philip—opened his mouth as if he was going to protest. Then he shrugged, reached into his pants pocket, and pulled out a disposable lighter. “I really didn’t do nuthin’,” he said as he dropped the lighter in the man’s hand. “Honest.”

What a loser.

The man didn’t say anything more to Torchie. He put the lighter in his own pocket, then turned back to the crowd and said, “Okay, guys, it’s all over. Nothing else to see. Move along.” He sounded like a city cop trying to get people away from an accident, but I sort of liked that.

“Well,” Principal Davis said, coming up behind me, “this works out rather nicely. Now that you’re together, allow me to introduce you to your roommate. Martin Anderson, meet Philip Grieg.”

My roommate? Oh crap. This had to be a joke.

Torchie looked at the principal and spewed out the double-negative denial yet again. “I didn’t do nuthin’.” His eyes shifted over toward me as if he hoped I could leap to his defense. Keep dreaming, fireboy.

“We’ll deal with that issue later, Philip. For now, why don’t you be a good lad and show Martin around the school. I have to get back to my office.”

With that, Principal Davis marched off, leaving me alone in the company of Philip or Torchie or whatever his flaming name was. I stared after the principal. That was it? Hi. Bye. Rip me from my home and shove me here. I had no choice except to turn back to my new roommate.

Now that it was just the two of us, I figured Torchie would find a different song. No such luck. “I really didn’t do it,” he said.

Sheesh—he needed a sign with that printed on it. Or one of those big pin-on buttons. Then he could just point whenever he wanted to claim he was innocent. I waited for him to change the subject. He wiped his face with his sleeve. It didn’t do much for his face, and it left a big wet blotch on his shirt.

“Didn’t do nuthin’,” he said.

“So I heard.” This was just great. They’d put me in a room with a kid who liked to start fires. Fantastic. If I’d known ahead of time, I’d at least have brought some marshmallows. We could have toasted them. Hot dogs would be nice, too. As it was, I hoped I didn’t end up getting toasted myself. Man, we’d be a great pair if that happened. Torchie and Toastie.

I glanced at the window to make sure it was big enough for me to squeeze through in an emergency. As far as I could see, there wasn’t a fire escape. At least there weren’t any bars. On the other hand, this was the third floor, so I hoped I’d never have to use the window as an exit.