Devil on My Heels by Joyce McDonald

Author:Joyce McDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307433299
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2009-04-16T04:00:00+00:00

I am out the door, heading for the school bus stop at the bottom of our dirt driveway before Delia or Dad even knows I’m gone. I keep my back turned to the house. If I look around, I’m sure I’ll see Delia standing on the front porch, spatula in hand, trying to get my attention. She hates it when I miss breakfast. Sure enough, her voice echoes down to me. But there is almost a quarter mile between us. I pretend I don’t hear her calling.

My eyes are practically swollen shut from crying half the night. I am wearing sunglasses. My plan is to wear them all day. I don’t talk to anybody on the bus that morning. Even though my sunglasses have set off a barrage of stupid jokes, like, “Who do you think you are, Audrey Hepburn?” “Maybe she thinks she’s incognito.” “Nah, she’s probably a spy for the Soviets.” Really dumb.

I ignore them. I ignore everybody.

I go late to homeroom so I don’t have to talk to Rayanne. She stares at me the whole time, trying to get my attention. But I don’t look her way. Mrs. Hatch asks me to please remove my glasses. I tell her I have special drops in my eyes that make them sensitive to light. She actually falls for this. I use the same excuse in Mr. Weaver’s geometry class, and again in Mrs. Myers’s history class. My plan is to skip lunch period so I don’t have to see Rayanne or Jinny or anyone else.

The news going around the halls this morning is about a fire in Buford Radcliff’s basement last night. It happened not long after he got home from sweeping floors at the movie theater. Everybody in town knows Buford’s got so much junk in his basement he’s barely got walking space. He even keeps piles of old newspapers dating back to before World War II down there. So I more or less dismiss the idea of somebody intentionally trying to find his way into Buford’s basement for the sole purpose of setting fire to it, seeing as how I can’t imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to do that. More than likely, Buford accidentally set it himself. Fortunately the fire department got there before the flames made it up the basement stairs. So Buford has still got his house, just not as many newspapers as he used to have.

Even though this fire, like all the others, was an accident, most of the kids are saying the pickers are behind it. A lot of their parents believe that too. They are scared out of their wits that there’s going to be some kind of uprising and everybody is going to get their roofs set on fire right over their heads some night while they’re sleeping. I can’t for the life of me figure out why some folks are so anxious to believe something so stupid.

Chase hasn’t been around all morning. He probably overslept, considering how late he was out last night.

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