Firegirl by Tony Abbott

house,” Jeff chirped into the phone.
    “So you’re home? Where’s the car?” I blurted out.
    “What? Tom? Hey, what’s up?”
    “The car,” I repeated, swallowing back a catch in my throat. “Where’s the car? The Cobra. You said you’d drive by at twelve o’clock. Your uncle was coming over, remember? Are you coming over now? It’s three. Where are you?”
    There was a muffled scratching on the other end of the phone. “Obviously, I’m here. Talking to you on the phone —”
    “Did your uncle come over today?”
    “What? Yeah, he was here.”
    “Well, did he have the stupid car?”
    “Oh, it’s stupid now? What’s your problem?”
    “Did he have it with him?”
    “No. He didn’t.”
    “So you lied,” I shot into the phone. “You said he could — he’d drive by and we’d go for a ride. Well, where are you —”
    “Lied?” he snapped. “What do you mean? That I didn’t come over on purpose or something?”
    “Why didn’t you call me?”
    “What are you, my girlfriend?”
    There was a pause. I could hear him starting to breathe hard. “So he didn’t bring the car today,” he said. “So what. My mother needed stuff moved. He brought his other car. I told you she needed to move stuff. She says we might have to move to a different house because my dad’s not paying —”
    “So why didn’t you call? You were talking about it all week. You told me like a hundred times that you’d come by with the stupid Cobra. You didn’t say anything about moving stuff. You said we could go see Jessica and pick her up —”
    “Jessica?” snapped Jeff.
    I froze. “I mean Courtney.”
    “What does Jessica have to do with this?”
    I felt my throat closing up again. It was getting out of control now. I should just hang up.
    “You told that girl about the car, didn’t you? And you’re calling me a liar?”
    I could hear voices raised in the background.
    “So what?” I said. “Yeah, I told her. I wanted her to see the car. I love Cobras. I was going to wave or something.”
    This is pathetic. It’s stupid. Stupid. It’s so out of control. Hang up. I hate it.
    “Wave to her?” Jeff said, his voice rising. “The car isn’t here today. This is so weird. Why do you even talk to her?”
    I didn’t have an answer. I tried to swallow. The voices were yelling now and Jeff was moving with the phone.
    “I’ll tell you something,” he said. “I’m glad when she’s not in school. It’s so gross sitting behind her. My uncle wouldn’t let her anywhere near his car, even if he had brought it.” He started to laugh now.
    “Shut up,” I said.
    There was the sound of a door slamming.
    “Yeah, shut up,” he said. “I knew there was something off about you. The Human Dork meets the Human Torch. You went over to her house and now you’re all about her. Freaking firegirl! Why would I take you to her house? I just want to run away, she’s so freaking ugly! There aren’t supposed to be people like that. Why does everything have to be so ugly — ugly, ugly, ugly —”
    I cursed at Jeff and slammed down the phone.
    I ran up to my room and stayed there for the rest of the day. My mother called me down for supper, but I pretended at first to have a headache. She came in later, but I was in bed with my eyes closed and pretended to be asleep.
    Both of my parents checked on me. They came quietly to the door two or three times. Once my father said, “Tom?” But I didn’t say anything. They left me alone after that.
    Waking up on Sunday, I was all achy and exhausted. As soon as I sat up, I remembered that I’d had a dream during the night. I felt nervous, and my stomach got all twisted in knots when I remembered it.
    In the dream, Jessica was in a black car. The car had fins all over it but was crunched up into a mess and was burning. You could see her pounding like crazy to get out … pounding on the windows and then falling down inside the car, out of sight. Everyone was rushing around, but