A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) (2 page)

 “What about your interests, what
are your hobbies?” Gran asks next, after taking a sip of her tea.

 I blush. “I don’t really have
many, life with Dad keeps me busy.”

 Gran nods shrewdly. “At times I
wonder how he became the man he is today.”

 “It’s not your fault. Sometimes
good parents get bad kids, just like bad parents can get good ones.”

 “Very true,” Gran replies.
“Anyhow, if you did have free time, which you will while you’re living with me,
what would you do with it?”

 I think a moment. “I suppose I
might learn how to play an instrument, and I’d probably read more. Dad didn’t
really like me reading, he said it irritated him. Oh and I’d definitely get a
dog. I’ve never had a pet.”

 “What instrument would you learn
to play?” she asks, a constant smile on her wrinkled face.

 “What are those ones that look
like giant violins?” I ask, feeling stupid for not knowing.

 “They’re called cellos, dear.”

 “Oh yeah, cellos. I’d like to
learn to play the cello. I like the sound it makes.”

 Gran laughs loudly. “It is a good
kind of sound, I agree with you Florence. You see, there’s a lot more for you
to tell about yourself than you thought.”

 “I guess there is.”

 “What about books, what do you
like to read?”

 “My favourite is
The Monk
by Matthew Lewis.” I answer.

 “That’s a spooky one isn’t it?”

 “Yes, I got it from my school
library back in the city.”

 “Well, we have a big library here
in Chesterport, so I’m sure that will please you.”

 I smile at Gran and ask, “Would
you mind if I went to my room now? I’d like to unpack and maybe have a rest. It
was a long drive here.”

 “Of course love. Your dad left
your luggage in the hallway. Your room is just up the stairs, the first door on
the left.”

 “Thank you, Gran.” I say,
swallowing my need to break down into tears. Nobody has ever been this kind to
me.

 Wow. My new room has a double bed
and two whole windows. In my dad’s all I had was a very small single bed, in a
little box of a room with the tiniest window you ever saw. All you could see
out of that window was more buildings. But here the windows are large with
plantation shutters, and they look out onto the forest just outside of
Chesterport. Gran’s home town is medium sized, it’s not exactly the most modern
of places but it does have a cinema and a Starbucks. I could get used to living
here, a normal life in a normal middle of the road, middle class town.

 I kneel down and breathe in the
fresh laundry scent of the bed sheets. There’s a small chest of drawers with a
reading lamp beside the bed and a wardrobe in the corner of the room. On the
far left wall there are two small shelves. Shelves! I’m actually going to have
shelves to put my books on.

 Before I had to keep them hidden
under my bed. Dad was the kind of man who didn’t like to see you were making an
effort to better yourself. He wanted you kept down and ignorant. He used to say
I was a “stupid bitch” whenever he found me reading, which isn’t a clever thing
to say to the person who knows where you hide your illegal shotgun. Not that
I’d ever had the nerve to use it. Of course, that doesn’t mean I didn’t like to
fantasise about doing it. A lot. I pick up the bag that I packed my books in
and up end it, pouring the twenty or so titles I own out onto the bed.

 Shamefully, I’ll admit that a lot
of my books are ones I stole or never returned to the library. But I rarely
have much money to buy things, so it was out of desperation rather than any
kind of deviancy. I’ve read
The Monk
three times already, that’s the
latest addition to my collection. These books were the only escape I got when
living with Dad. The life he dragged me through was so brutally real, a lot of
the time I pretended I wasn’t there.

 I try not to think about what my
father is, that way I can ignore the guilt. I feel guilty for the actions he
takes, and that just can’t be right. I know that even if he wasn’t doing what
he does there would always be some other low life to take his place.

 But still, I wish I could make
him a better person. I wish that I could somehow cleanse the dirty, slimy,
brown and grey aura that surrounds his body. But I can’t. I’m useless. What’s
the point of being able to see the very core of a person and not have any kind
of power to change it? I can’t change the fact that he’s left me here to return
to Tribane, a city hours away, to continue his life as a small time drug
dealer.

 I gather my books and stack them
onto my new shelves, and I try not to think of my dad. He more or less
indicated that I wouldn’t be seeing him again. Here’s to wishful thinking. I
don’t like to be selfish, but I do deserve a nice life, I have suffered enough.
If he wants to kill himself slowly with heroin, well, that just isn’t my
problem any longer.

 I repeat to myself,
You don’t
care. You don’t care. You don’t care. You do NOT care what he does with the
remnants of his fucked up existence.
But it’s difficult to stop caring.
Maybe I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome, where the captive begins to feel
for their captor. I cannot let it overwhelm me. I need to be emotionless when
it comes to my father.

 I sigh as I change into the grey
tracksuit pants and old white t-shirt that I wear to bed. It’s only
eight-thirty in the evening. Yet, I am going to do my best to sleep, perchance
to dream.

I had a nice weekend with Gran.
She baked cookies and fairy cakes and we sat out in the sun in her back garden
to eat them, and drink tea, and look through my book list for school. Some of
the books I already have from my school back home. Gran said she’d call her
care assistant Diana, who I haven’t met yet, to go into town and buy the ones
that I need. It’s a strange sensation having people give me help, but a good
one all the same.

 I did some exploring of the town
over the weekend, but there wasn’t too much to see other than some shops, a
church and various residential streets. So I spent most of my time getting to
know Gran better. I learned that she is actually seventy-two, and has lived all
her life in Chesterport. She retired four years ago from her job as a florist.
That was when her sight had started to get bad. She told me that she’s not
entirely blind, she can still see shapes and outlines.

 She gave me a silver locket with
some sort of dried flowery herbs inside as a welcoming gift. Her generosity
made me feel like crying again. After breakfast on Monday morning I make a
quick run up to my room to comb my hair and grab my school bag. I hope that all
goes well. Maybe I’ll be lucky and I might even make a new friend or two. I
only had one friend in my old school, her name was Casey and she wasn’t really
much of a friend at all.

 One day I caught her doing an
impression of my stammer to some other girls in my class. It’s horrible when
you discover that the person you thought was your friend really doesn’t care
about you at all. I should have known though, Casey’s aura always had a hint of
selfishness about it.

 When I arrive at the school there
are a couple of buses pulling into the car park with teenagers spilling out of
them. Some of the older students have cars of their own. There are grassy areas
on either side of the car park where students hang about, sitting on the grass
and socialising since the weather is sunny today. I like the sun. It energises
me. I like it in Gran’s because in my new room I can get up early and open the
shutters and let the light flood in and nourish me. My dad slept most of the
day you see, he’d never let me pull the curtains. Our apartment never knew the
sun.

 There seems to be a lot of
students at this school, if I had to guess I’d say there are about one and a
half to two thousand in all. This terrifies me. I go straight to the
secretary’s office to collect my timetable, where I find several women standing
around drinking cups of coffee and talking about their weekends. One of the
secretaries makes her way toward me and takes a seat at the service window.

 “How can I help you?” she asks.

 “I – I’m a n-new student.”

 She gives me a dirty look.
“Name?”

 “Florence V-v-vaine.”

 She gives me another dirty look.
Jesus. Some people just don’t get that my stammer isn’t my fault. They think
I’m either retarded or taking the piss. She opens a drawer and flicks through
several files, then whips out a sheet of white paper.

 “Here’s your schedule Florence,
and your locker number and code.” She hands them to me, and then says, with
complete insincerity because her aura tells me so, “Good luck with your first
day.”

 I walk out of the office and take
a look at my time table, first class is C.S.P.E? I have no clue what that is.
We didn’t have that subject in my last school. I hope it isn’t anything
difficult. My locker is number 356. I look on either side of me. The ones
lining the hall I’m walking through are in the two hundreds, so if I keep going
straight ahead I should eventually reach the three hundreds. The hall is loud
and packed with students. I want to find my locker before I go to my first
class because my bag is a dead weight.

 I continue my way down the long
hall, turn a corner, and finally I’ve reached the three hundreds. I take
another look at my time table. I’ve got three classes before the mid-morning
break, C.S.P.E, English, and then Mathematics. I open my locker and load all
the books I don’t need into it, trying to stack them as neatly as possible.

 As I close my locker I hear a
curious voice ask, “Who are you?”

 I turn and find a girl with short
dark red hair, what do you call that colour? Auburn? Yes, auburn hair, and
she’s got black eyes and freckles sprinkled over her cheeks and nose. She’s
looking at me expectantly.

 “I’m n-new.” I reply.

 She grins. “My name’s Caroline,
you can latch onto me for the day if you’d like. I don’t mind showing you the
ropes.”

 “Thanks, that’d be great.” I tell
her. “I’m Flo.”

 “You’re in fifth year right,
what’s your first class?”

 “I’ve got C.S.P.E first, but I
don’t know what that is.”

 “You’re in with me then. C.S.P.E
means Civic, Social and Political Education.” Caroline answers, her words are
mildly sarcastic.

 “Oh, I-I-I s-see.”

 She smiles. She must have noticed
my stammer, but is nice enough not to mention it. Caroline’s aura is a
shimmering yellow, that kind of colour normally indicates a sharp mind and an
interest in knowledge. I like her already. There’s also a hint of sadness nestled
deep within her, a long felt grief that won’t ever go away. I wonder what it
could mean. It makes me want to get to know her better so that I can discover
the source of her anguish.

 “Come on then,” she says, leading
the way down the hall.

 As we walk I tell her how I moved
here to live with my grandmother because my dad got a new job in Australia and
I didn’t want to move so far away. I know it’s a terrible lie, but I’d rather
not get into the fact that he’s a low life, abusive, drug dealing heroin addict
who couldn’t give a crap whether I lived or died.

 Inside of the classroom the rest
of the students are taking their seats and chatting with each other. The
teacher has already arrived and is writing something in chalk on the
blackboard. She looks about forty, has short pixie cut hair and is wearing a
beady green hippie dress and brown leather sandals. The desks in the classroom
are arranged into a circle, with the teacher’s larger desk at the head of the
circle. Cynically, I wonder if this is supposed to symbolise equality. I’m just
about to follow Caroline and take a seat beside her when the teacher turns
around and clocks me. She smiles widely.

 “Hey, are you the new girl I was
told about, Florence?”

 “Y-yes.” I answer, a bit
grudgingly. I’d been hoping to slip in undetected.

 “Wonderful!” she exclaims, the
rest of the students have gone quiet and taken their seats, watching the
exchange between myself and the teacher. “My name is Miss O’Brien, welcome,
please do introduce yourself to everybody before we begin.” She makes a hand
gesture for me to stand at the front of the room.

 Christ on a bike. I take a deep
breath and try to speak but the words won’t come out. My heart sinks. These are
the times when my stammer is at its worst. I don’t just mess up the words, I
can’t get them out at all. I breathe slowly, deeply, and try again, but
nothing. At this point the entire room is staring at me, probably wondering if
I’m some sort of defective. Another deep breath. Again, no words will come. And
another…

 Finally I manage to say, “H-hi,
m-m-my n-n-n...” Come on just say it. I get stuck on the word “name”. The
harder I try the worse it gets. I continue, “N-n-n...” I sigh and breathe.
Crinkle my forehead in frustration. My cheeks are blazing red. I look to Miss O’Brien,
realisation must have hit her that I’ve got a speech impediment because she
finishes for me.

 “Class, this is a new student,
her name is Florence Vaine. I hope you’ll all be very welcoming. Please take a
seat where ever you like Florence.”

 I nod and take a seat on the left
side of the circle beside Caroline, she smiles at me sympathetically. The rest
of the students are grinning and whispering and looking at me through
judgemental eyes. Tears and embarrassment catch in my throat. This is definitely
not the start I’d been hoping for.

 Miss O’Brien speaks again, “I’ve
printed out some notes for this class, but I left them in the office. I’ll be
back in two minutes, no talking please, read over last week’s homework until I
get back.”

 Caroline nudges me in the side
and whispers, “Are you okay?”

 I manage a quick nod, and then
begin meticulously fidgeting with the hem of my top.