Firegirl by Tony Abbott Page A

my eyes were drawn to the girl.
    Her eyebrows were cocked at a slight angle, and her eyes were big and beautiful. Her lips were half-curved in a little, cute smile.
    “Who’s she?” I found myself asking at the same time a shiver went right up my back. For a split second it occurred to me that the picture might actually be of her.
    That girl might be Jessica.
    Idiot! How could I blurt out,
“Who’s she?”
    I began to feel really nervous again, but I tried to make it pass. It couldn’t be her. This girl was smaller, much smaller. With my hand trembling, I started to give it back.
    But Kayla stopped me, practically lunging at my hand and stopping it. “Oh, my gosh,” she whispered. “Is that her?”
    Her?
My stomach began to roll now, and I thought I was going to be sick all over the place. You idiot. Jessica’s right here!
    “Here,” I said, trying to hand it back again, but Kayla wouldn’t let go of my wrist. It was insane. This little girl was holding onto me. Mrs. Tracy was talking intently with Darlene and Dave now, and then began digging in the bookshelves under the window and didn’t notice what was going on. Samantha Embriano suddenly rose from her desk to look at the picture now. Rich Downing was sliding out of his seat, too.
    “Hey, that’s the guy that picks you up!” said Rich, pointing his finger at the man in the picture, hut at least talking to Jessica. “That’s your father isn’t it?”
    Jessica said nothing, so I said, “Maybe. Here.” I still tried to move my hand.
    “It’s my sister,” said Jessica quietly, reaching for the photo. “That’s my sister. Anne.”
    We were all quiet. Her sister? That was the first we’d heard about a sister. Not that we ever asked or anything.
    “Anne,” said Kayla. “Cool.”
    Samantha Embriano suddenly said something completely out of nowhere, but it was kind of good. “I used to play tennis. That’s a good racket she’s got there. You can tell from the
P
on the face of it —” She practically touched the photograph. “I know, because my tennis teacher has one like that.”
    “You have a tennis teacher?” Rich asked.
    “Since third grade,” she said.
    “Your sister’s really cute,” said Kayla, finally releasing my hand.
    Her sister. Anne. I don’t know what Jessica thought about all this. Since we were all bunched so close together it was impossible to look at her without seeming to stare into her face. Plus her head was down, so it was hard to figure out what she was thinking.
    But I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that she probably couldn’t believe any of this. I couldn’t believe it! All these words at once. It was more than anyone had spoken to her since she came to our class. So many words!
    And I knew why.
    We had all been waiting so long for things to be more normal again. It was what everybody felt when Jessica wasn’t in school for a day. Only this was a hundred times better. We didn’t have to pretend she didn’t exist. We suddenly found a regular thing about her — her sister.
    Her sister wasn’t burned. Anne was a normal girl. A really cute girl, in fact. And now that we saw this picture and we knew about her, we had found out another thing about Jessica … lots of things, in fact — normal things that we could think about and talk about. Tennis. The beach club. Summer vacation. Their father. About anything. It was as if someone had opened a window in a hot room and cool air was rushing in over us.
    Jessica hadn’t moved during all of this and said nothing, but I almost felt happy for her. Wouldn’t it be so much easier this way? We could show that we could be friends with Jessica, by being interested in her sister. This was it. We could almost be normal again.
    “Cool,” I said, reaching over to give the photo back.
    Suddenly it was Rich’s turn to be the idiot. He said something so incredibly simple, but right away everything I had just been thinking began to fall apart.
    “She looks like