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Authors: Jacquelyn Mitchard
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had clasped in her hand slipped to the floor. When a nurse picked it up later, she could barely make out the scrawled words: Merry, Merry, Merry.
HEROES AND VILLAINS
By the end of their first week back at school, Mallory was sick and tired of everyone treating them like little china dolls. It was January, and still no snow, only bleak sleet and mud.
Everybody was so bored that all they could talk about was the fire.
And when they talked about the fire, Mally felt like an idiot.
Mally’s temper matched the weather.
Her voice was no longer hoarse. She still felt dizzy when she ran and had to stop over and over. Both girls had chest X-rays and a frightening examination of their lungs called a broncho-scope that showed, remarkably, nothing much. Despite all that they might have inhaled—from soot to charred fibers. Mallory possibly because she lay facedown, Merry because she held the coat over her face—their lungs seemed relatively fine and would soon be normal.
Despite the physical healing, Mally somehow didn’t feel whole . . . or like herself. If she could not undo the past and will the fire never to have happened, she wished at least that people would stop talking about it.
There was the big burst of attention just afterward.
“Don’t you hate this?” Mallory asked Merry one night. Someone from Canada called to ask if they’d be on the radio, and before Merry could stop her, Mally told the woman, “We’re not allowed.”
“No, actually, I think it’s great,” Merry said. “Why shouldn’t we get credit? We, like, almost died. We saved the kids.”
“You’re supposed to save your brother and your cousins, duh,” Mally said. “If we were, like, pioneers, our parents would have already forgotten this. Kids our age pulled their brothers and sisters out of burning tents and junk all the time.”
“Well, we’re not like pioneers.” Merry was sleeping with an eye mask these days, in case someone wanted to take her picture in the morning.
“I just want it to end.”
“I just want it to last forever,” Merry insisted. “My whole season is ruined. I might as well have some fun.” Her picture was being zipped around the county by every kid with a cell phone in Ridgeline. The knowledge of her real, if fleeting, fame was a cozy little cushion of contentment inside her.
Mallory wished she could be invisible.
For starters, in the newspaper photo taken just after they left the hospital, Mally thought that her face, although barely swollen anymore, looked like a ripe plum. She was annoyed every time she had to thank someone for giving her a copy of the picture—as if she might have missed it! She had enough to fill two photo albums!
The headline read, TWINS SAVE SIBS IN BIRTHDAY BLAZE. Pictured with them were the editor of the Ridgeline Reporter , Fred Elliott, as well as the mayor, Joan Karls, and Wendell von Pelling, the fire chief. Chief von Pelling looked sheepish, as well he might. The first two calls about a fire were thought to be hoaxes because they obviously came from teenagers, with laughter and the sounds of loud music in the background. The department responded, but there was grumbling. When Grandpa Brynn called, he gave the dispatcher a piece of his mind along with a description of the disaster and reminded her that his son was a lawyer and might sue the department.
The officials presented each of the twins with Public Service medals and five-hundred-dollar scholarships from the state Police and Fire Association.
Much sweeter were the little notes from Hannah and Heather and Alex. Hannah’s began, “We love Twin . . .” (Their cousins, like most of their teachers, couldn’t tell Mallory and Meredith apart, and called them, separately and collectively, “Twin.”) Aunt Kate was ridiculously moved by Meredith’s gutsy effort to save the baby books. She bought her a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Scrips-and-Scraps—which Merry intended to use entirely for commemorating her
HEROES AND VILLAINS
By the end of their first week back at school, Mallory was sick and tired of everyone treating them like little china dolls. It was January, and still no snow, only bleak sleet and mud.
Everybody was so bored that all they could talk about was the fire.
And when they talked about the fire, Mally felt like an idiot.
Mally’s temper matched the weather.
Her voice was no longer hoarse. She still felt dizzy when she ran and had to stop over and over. Both girls had chest X-rays and a frightening examination of their lungs called a broncho-scope that showed, remarkably, nothing much. Despite all that they might have inhaled—from soot to charred fibers. Mallory possibly because she lay facedown, Merry because she held the coat over her face—their lungs seemed relatively fine and would soon be normal.
Despite the physical healing, Mally somehow didn’t feel whole . . . or like herself. If she could not undo the past and will the fire never to have happened, she wished at least that people would stop talking about it.
There was the big burst of attention just afterward.
“Don’t you hate this?” Mallory asked Merry one night. Someone from Canada called to ask if they’d be on the radio, and before Merry could stop her, Mally told the woman, “We’re not allowed.”
“No, actually, I think it’s great,” Merry said. “Why shouldn’t we get credit? We, like, almost died. We saved the kids.”
“You’re supposed to save your brother and your cousins, duh,” Mally said. “If we were, like, pioneers, our parents would have already forgotten this. Kids our age pulled their brothers and sisters out of burning tents and junk all the time.”
“Well, we’re not like pioneers.” Merry was sleeping with an eye mask these days, in case someone wanted to take her picture in the morning.
“I just want it to end.”
“I just want it to last forever,” Merry insisted. “My whole season is ruined. I might as well have some fun.” Her picture was being zipped around the county by every kid with a cell phone in Ridgeline. The knowledge of her real, if fleeting, fame was a cozy little cushion of contentment inside her.
Mallory wished she could be invisible.
For starters, in the newspaper photo taken just after they left the hospital, Mally thought that her face, although barely swollen anymore, looked like a ripe plum. She was annoyed every time she had to thank someone for giving her a copy of the picture—as if she might have missed it! She had enough to fill two photo albums!
The headline read, TWINS SAVE SIBS IN BIRTHDAY BLAZE. Pictured with them were the editor of the Ridgeline Reporter , Fred Elliott, as well as the mayor, Joan Karls, and Wendell von Pelling, the fire chief. Chief von Pelling looked sheepish, as well he might. The first two calls about a fire were thought to be hoaxes because they obviously came from teenagers, with laughter and the sounds of loud music in the background. The department responded, but there was grumbling. When Grandpa Brynn called, he gave the dispatcher a piece of his mind along with a description of the disaster and reminded her that his son was a lawyer and might sue the department.
The officials presented each of the twins with Public Service medals and five-hundred-dollar scholarships from the state Police and Fire Association.
Much sweeter were the little notes from Hannah and Heather and Alex. Hannah’s began, “We love Twin . . .” (Their cousins, like most of their teachers, couldn’t tell Mallory and Meredith apart, and called them, separately and collectively, “Twin.”) Aunt Kate was ridiculously moved by Meredith’s gutsy effort to save the baby books. She bought her a hundred-dollar gift certificate to Scrips-and-Scraps—which Merry intended to use entirely for commemorating her
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