Legacy by Molly Cochran Page B

invited?”
    “We make an exception on that day,” she said. “That was why Mr. Haversall wasn’t working then.”
    “So he’s . . . special, too.”
    Hattie nodded. “The Haversalls are among the twenty-seven families,” she said.
    Peter burst through the doors. “Where’s my tray?”
    “Right here,” Hattie said, and shooed us out.
    Amazingly, the whole dinner went smoothly, and everyone seemed to be in a good mood. The dance floor was packed and the bar was swarming with middle-aged revelers. By nine o’clock, everyone was finished eating. Peter was clearing coffee cups and dessert plates off the tables while I walked around with a pitcher refilling water glasses. Some children were already asleep, including Eric, who sprawled over his high chair like an amoeba.
    He was really too big for that chair, and he’d been fidgeting in it so long that his pantleg was all twisted around his kneeand his sneaker was dangling off his big toe. Also, I don’t want to be disgusting here, but I was pretty sure he’d wet his diaper too. I couldn’t do anything about that part, but I thought he’d be more comfortable if I rearranged him in the chair.
    Big mistake. As soon as I came near him, his foot shot out and slammed me in the stomach. I was carrying the pitcher at the time, so water sloshed all over me. I thought I heard a few people—probably kids from school—laughing about it, but mostly no one really paid much attention, at least until Eric started screaming and punching the air like he was trying to kill me.
    Then Peter appeared from out of nowhere, and shoved me halfway across the room. “Get away from him!” he bellowed.
    Everyone looked. Now the kids really were laughing. I could hear them, because no one else was saying anything. Even the band stopped playing except for the trumpet player, who went on for a few lame bars of “The Lonely Bull” by himself before giving up. My only thought was to get back into the kitchen so that I could grab my jacket and get the hell out of that place. Trying to muster the last shreds of my dignity, I pushed my dripping, flattened hair out of my eyes, said “excuse me” to the people standing around me, and hoped my rubber legs would remember how to walk.
    I don’t think they did. There was a thump that knocked the pitcher into my chest with unbelievable force, and then a fireball—yes, a
fireball
, that’s the only way to describe it—seemed to emanate from the pitcher onto the wall right beside Eric’s head, where it exploded in flames.
    “Fire!” someone shouted, and the whole place burst into pandemonium, with people screaming and crawling over oneanother to get to the exits as the flames spread with astonishing speed over the wall.
    I knew that it was too late for water, even if I’d had some in my pitcher. The only way this thing was going to be quelled was by suffocating it. As soon as that idea came into my head, I pictured a blanket of blue gelatin moving toward the fire, covering it, wetting it down. Then, once I had the picture, I pushed.
    Somewhere in a corner of my mind I could see Peter pulling Eric out of the high chair, but it was as if he were in a movie I was watching. I was completely with the blanket, smoothing it over the flames, hearing them sputter and sizzle as they succumbed in a haze of smoke.
    It was all over in a minute. The guests who a few moments ago were crazed with panic now just looked sheepish and drained the cocktail glasses they’d hung on to during the melee. A lot of them didn’t even seem to notice that anything had gone on at all. Hattie ran into the room and lifted Eric, who was kicking and screaming like a madman, out of his brother’s arms.
    “What happened here?” she demanded.
    Peter nodded toward the charred half-moon on the wall.
    “She started it,” a girl my age volunteered, pointing at me.
    “Go back where you belong!” Hattie snapped.
    The girl made a face and, with a flounce of her red hair, stomped