The Quality of Mercy by Anne Schraff

Author:Anne Schraff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, JUV011010, JUV039000
Publisher: Saddleback Educational Publishing
Published: 2014-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

The screams of fire engine sirens ripped apart the silence of the night. Alonee’s eyes opened wide. She scrambled from her bed and ran to the window. There were no brushy canyons around here, so there was no need to worry about a Santa Ana wind whipping a fire near town and forcing an evacuation.

Alonee’s first thought was Tubman High School, but from the sound of the fire engines, they weren’t going in that direction. They seemed to be heading toward the nice apartment buildings over on Algonquin Avenue.

Alonee turned on her television set. The news wasn’t showing anything about a fire. The radio news was also broadcasting its usual fare of shrill political voices. Alonee thought the fire was not serious if nobody was talking about it in the media. Then her mother came quietly into her bedroom.

“Mattie Archer just called me, Alonee,” Mom said to her. “She says a car’s burning on the next street from them. It’s down by the apartments. Somebody set a parked car on fire, and when the flames reached the gas tank, it exploded. Nobody got hurt, though.”

“Oh wow!” Alonee cried, “That’s horrible. Does Sami’s mom know whose car it is?”

“Yeah,” Mom answered, “she says it’s the only Toyota Prius in the neighborhood. It’s driven by the science teacher at Tubman, Mr. Buckingham. You have him, don’t you, sweetie? He always parks his car out front, and that’s where they torched it.”

Alonee turned numb. She thought immediately of Eric Carney. She remembered the hatred in his eyes on Monday when he walked back from Mr. Buckingham’s desk, after the teacher told him his grades were probably too far gone for him to ever pass. Eric had run away. “He felt he had nothing to lose,” Alonee thought. “And it was all Mr. Buckingham’s fault.”

“Why would somebody do such a terrible thing to Mr. Buckingham’s car,” Mom wondered. “I thought you kids liked him. He seems so brilliant. He was always very cordial when we met him during open houses.”

“Yeah,” Alonee agreed, “he’s a good teacher, but he’s a tough grader. He flunks a lot of kids.”

“You mean to tell me there’s a student at Tubman so vicious that he’d torch a teacher’s car over a bad grade?” Mom groaned. “Lord in Heaven, what is this world coming to?”

“I’m glad nobody was hurt anyway,” Alonee noted.

“Thank the Lord for that, but the poor man must be distraught,” Mom declared. “Imagine having something like that happen! Being woke up in the middle of the night to find your car on fire.”

When Mom returned to her room, Alonee called Oliver. “Oliver, did you hear?” she asked him.

“Hear what?” he asked in a sleepy voice. “I’ve been asleep on the couch.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I woke you up, Oliver,” Alonee apologized. “I thought you heard the fire engines. Somebody burned up Mr. Buckingham’s Toyota. Sami Archer’s mom lives on the next street and her mom called my mom. Nobody was hurt, but the car is totally destroyed.”

Oliver did not answer right away.

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