Free Edinburgh by Alexander Chee Page B

lighter fluid onto his thumb. He closes it and running it along his jeans, lights the lighter and then his thumb. A blue candle of his hand in the dark. He holds the thumb against the trash in the can next to us and the cartons and paper in there catch. If a cop comes, he says, we can pretend we’re vagrants. He walks over to the side of the house. Wait here, he says. I need to go get my sister.
    The fire gets larger. A peaceful warmth, some light for this dark corner, a bit of bitter smoke. I take a cigarette out and light it. For no reason I can account for, I am calm, searching myself for panic and not finding it. The cold is like a hand at my back, pushing me forward toward this burning can. I see Elizabeth’s car, and go over to sit on the hood, where I wait until Peter comes out, his sister and another girl with him. They are helping Elizabeth walk but it looks actually like she’s floating, carrying them with her as she flies. Wait, she says, and turns her head to the side, and dull amber vomit chokes out of her in a spurt. Steam rises where it hits the ground. Her head looks like its bleeding, but closer I see it’s actually an A for anarchy, painted there, shiny. Like it was done in lipstick. Fuck, she says. Oh, fuck me. She drops, cross-legged, onto the ground beside her vomit.
    Peter fishes through his coat and comes up with his pack. He holds a cigarette out to his sister. Here, he says.
    Thanks, she says. He lights it for her.
    She looks into the trash fire and starts laughing.
    Oh, fucking A, she says. A camp-out.
    Peter taps on the shoulder of the other girl, a broad-shouldered swimmer I recognize now from meets. She swims for Falmouth, Butterfly. Her hair is cut short, almost like mine and Peter’s. She leans in and says, Yeah. I’ll drive. Peter hoists his sister up and loads her into the backseat, and I climb into the shot-gun seat.
    Hang on, he says, as the girl settles behind the wheel. He runs back to the trash fire and for a second, I think he’s going to put it out, but instead he kicks it against the side of the building, where it falls over the snowy ground. He picks up a stone and hucks it through the window.
FIRE
, he yells after the broken glass, and he hoofs it to the car, tossing himself into my lap. The door shuts with a bang, the flames splash the other trash cans, which start to roar, and the girl beside us is cursing, quietly, flooring the pedal as the wheels grind and then catch. Soon we are on the road out to Cape Elizabeth.
    Peter says, Fee. Look back. Is she passed out?
    I peek back to see her staring, wide-eyed, her hands crossed in front of her, laid across the seat. One hand cradles nothing, and then on the floor, I see the cigarette, which I pluck and hand to Peter. She dropped this, I say. He raises his eyebrow and then pushes down the car-lighter. As he relights her cigarette, the orange ring lights his face. He inhales hugely and smoke pours out of his nostrils.
    Why’d you do that, the girl driving us asks.
    It’s one way to make sure she can’t go back, he says, and he laughs. I fucking hate those pricks, he says, and finally leans into me, and I do not move for the rest of the ride.
    Â 
    I get home late. My mother waits, a single light in the kitchen, reading a book she puts down the moment I walk through the door.
    Is it rebellion, my mother asks, my hand between her hands as she rubs off the polish with a cloth, the acetone on it making me dizzy. I sit on the shut toilet seat. I want to scratch my neck.
    Just tell me you aren’t sniffing it, she says, and I say, Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.
    Oh great. Honey, listen. Please remember that people at school are worried about you and that this reflects on me. It’ll be hard for you to be friendly with the boys on the swim team if you do stuff like this.
    Good, I say. They’re ridiculous and I hate them.
    She lets my hands go and pats my hair. That word. Will this shampoo