Burning Up by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-81891-1
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2012-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

Papa picked her up. “Macey, darling, your parents will be very late in the city, catching up on work they missed from going to San Francisco, so you’ll stay over with us. Did you have a good day? How was school?”

“School was fine. Papa, rack your brains. Remember something about Mr. Sibley and the barn fire for me.”

“Are you still bogged down in 1959?” said Papa, laughing. “It’s your hair. Tell you what, we’ll get you a wig. Want to be a frosted bouffant blonde?”

Last night she’d asked Mom about 1959, and Mom had replied that she’d gotten her first Barbie that year.

If they thought talking about teased hair and Barbie dolls would make her forget Mr. Sibley and 1959, they had a crummy strategy. The more they slid away from her questions, the more she noticed.

Mrs. Loomis’s letter entered Macey’s soul again, and the taste of her cinnamon-icing sticky buns suddenly came into Macey’s mouth—a food memory to go along with her smoke memory.

At the intersection, they had to wait for about twenty cars to turn in front of them.

Every driver and every passenger was white.

The only colors the town came in were white and pink.

It was true in school.

It was true on Shell Road.

It was true in church.

It was true in town hall.

It was true. This was a pink-and-white town. And in 1959, it was not only pink and white, if it took burning down barns to do it, the town meant to stay that way.

And it had.

She looked at her grandfather and thought, Which neighbor did set that fire?

She killed the thought. It was too sick, too horrible. But she was tasting smoke again, and she said, “Papa, who were Mom’s other teachers? They’d have known Mr. Sibley. Are any of them still around?”

“I wouldn’t have known even in 1959,” said Papa. “Back then the wives handled school while the men earned the living. Ask your grandmother. Actually, don’t ask your grandmother; she gets snappish when you bring up that silly fire. Ah, here we are. And we’re having plain old lemon chicken with saffron rice.”

I have to find a person who would have known Mr. Sibley, she thought. Who would he have hung out with? What did people do in groups? In 1959? Did they … go bowling? Coach Little League? Go to church?

Church! She glanced at the car clock. Six minutes before five. The church office closed at five.

Papa pulled into his driveway and Macey yanked open the car door, dashed inside and grabbed the telephone. “Hi, it’s Macey Clare. I was just wondering, do you happen to know who was church secretary in 1959?”

Her grandfather came in behind her. She looked up at him. It was not her sweet chef in the kitchen Papa who looked back. It was the attorney he had once been, cold and hard. Macey dropped her eyes to the phone.

The current secretary muttered to herself for a while. “Hmmm. Well, there have been very few church secretaries. It seems to be the kind of thing people stay with.

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