ABOUT A WEEK INTO the new school year, I saw a wrecked car by the side of the road. My bus had to slow down to get around the police. And everybody was gawking out the windows. The car was burning, thick greasy smoke churning up from the motor. I guess the people were out and safe. So the police just stood there watching the car burn.
I may be weird in some ways. But like everyone else, I had to look. And I kept looking as long as I could, craning my neck to get a last glimpse of the black cloud and the crimson flames.
So what? You don't see a burning car every day. But it wasn't like a flying saucer had landed at the mall or Elvis came back from the dead on Sesame Street. So why should it make any difference?
Only because of what I was feeling when I saw it. I've read a lot about pyros and how they get off on fires. Most of the times it's loser guys who've got something twisted and rotten inside themselves. And fire is supposed to be an outlet for this messed-up part of them. I've read a ton about it. Psycho stuff, medical and police stuff. I even found a little booklet they gave out to junior high kids in the olden days. "Arson Is No Joke."
What you've got to understand is that I never, ever played with matches. I didn't even try smoking when the other girls were. I didn't start all four burners on the stove and stand there staring into the blue hissing flames. I didn't even like campfires and toasting marshmallows.
So when I talk about fire, it's not the standard pyro stuff.
In fact, sometimes I think I'm drawn to fire because it's the opposite of who and what I really am. Do I feel the pull, I used to wonder, because it's the thing I don't have? The thing I need to make me complete? I heard a guy on TV say that when people really fall in love it's two opposites fitting perfectly together, like the north and south ends of a magnet. They're totally different, but they need each other. Like night and day. Like burning sun and drenching rain to make green things grow.
So maybe that's why the fiery car really got to me. I wanted to know what the smoke smelled like and what the tongues of flame felt like, licking out of the wreck.
I told Relly about it the next day. "All the seats and plastic and dashboard burning: that's the dangerous part. The smoke is poison. Not the fire itself. That actually makes things pure. You know, like heating up a needle when you got to get a sliver out of your finger."
He nodded. "Totally," he said. "Or at the dentist's office, you know, they put the tools in the machine to sterilize them. Boiling water to kill all the germs."
"To make it pure, right?"
"Yeah. Fire and water. You need them both. Together."