Panic! at the Life
Something thwonked against Philycia’s head. She let out a groan and buried herself deeper under her covers.
Could I just once be awoken by my alarm clock? Not that she bothered to set one anymore; one of her sisters always managed to get her up, whether she wanted to be or not.
Today was a not day.
Lycia could still see her dream in her mind’s eye, still hear those laughs ringing in her ears. She clung to the memory, sad that it was only that: a memory. She stored it in the “Mom and Dad File” of her mind for later reviewing.
A sudden weight appeared on her back. “Fifi, wake up! Fifi, wake up!” Lizzy screamed joyfully, bouncing as up and down as she could manage with a the top bunk looming right above her.
“Fine,” she grumbled irritantly, rolling over and dumping her onto the floor.
Lizzy squealed as she hit, running out of the room crying, “Mommy, Fifi pushed me!”
Lycia knew better than to argue, or even to snap at her little half-sister she preferred Lycia, thank you very much. Lizzy had probably already turned on her little girl waterworks, making it seem worse than it really was (not that Step-Mama would care, or even pay attention), and Alec and Xav, though they hadn’t even been in the room, would back her up, because they felt that loyalty that triplets feel towards each other, even if they felt no such feeling for Lycia, their big sister and practically mother.
“Story of my life,” she mumbled to herself. “Everyone’s already got somebody else to love already.”
She went about her morning routine, thinking once again about how unfair her life was and how true her statement was. Even when she was really little, and her best friend was her father, her step-mom came first in his life. And when she was pregnant, and Lycia was so exciting about having a new best friend, even if she was just a baby and her half sister, what did Brooke do but pop out with her own tag-along, Breanne. The same thing happened with Charlotte and Nikole. Then Elisabeth, Alecxander, and Xavier made their own little trio and adopted their lonely (and only) baby sister Emma to make a quartet.
No one ever thought to invite Lycia.
She finished her own school preparations quickly, knowing Step-Mama would be too zonked out to remember she had children, let alone that they had needs, and oversaw her half-siblings as they got themselves prepared for school.
She stuck four pieces of bread in the toaster, pulling out the jam one of the neighbors gave them, slathering each piece as it burst out. Repeating this process once more, she popped one slice of toast into each of her half-siblings’ grubby little hands, breaking Emma’s in two before giving half to her and eating the other half herself. Then, after a brief final inspection of each child, she hustled the elder seven children out the door.
“Hold hands, watch for cars, cross carefully, and the school’s right across the road so I’ll watch until you get to the playground!”
“Um, Philycia,” interjected Charlie, “We gone to this school our whole lives.”
“Yeah, Lycia,” continued Nikki, “I think we know how to get there.”
“And how to cross the street safely,” chorused Brooke and Breanne, rolling their eyes in that annoyingly twinly-unison way.
Philycia watched nervously anyway, biting fingernails already gnawed down to the quick. After making sure each of them arrived safely, she scooped up Emma, her own bookbag, and Emma’s diaper bag and made for the neighbors, hardly stopping to say hello as she left her baby half-sister there and ran for school.
She burst through the door just as the bell for homeroom rang.
She scurried to her locker, threw her bag in, grabbed a couple books without looking at what they were, and ran back to her homeroom.
She started to head towards her own table at the front of the class (she preferred the tables of the first two rows to the desks of the back three rows), but then become conscious of the fact that the seat next to hers was empty.
She panicked for second, all kinds of terrible thoughts popping into her mind before she remembered just why the person she was expecting was absent, and the dread vanished. This sudden lack of alarm left her feeling lethargic and useless.
“Aggy,” she moaned, veering towards the back and plopped down at an empty desk behind one of her few acquaintances, “I’m bored.”
“That’s ‘cause it’s Thursday, Lycia, and Thursdays Ben’s gone, leaving you no one to take care of. And we all know that Ben needs taking care of,” Aggy rolled her eyes. “And I thought I told you to call me Agatha. In fact, I’ve told you to call me Agatha since the third grade.”
“And I haven’t complied yet, now have I, Aggy?” she teased, and went back to her own subject. “You should be a psychiatrist, the way you’re always analyzing people. I don’t
need people to take care of.”
“No, but you want them,” Aggy persisted absentmindedly. “And to be a psychiatrist, I would have to like people and their problems enough to sit there for hours and listen to them. I’d probably last thirty seconds before I started screaming, ‘
Noob, get yo blankity blank outta my office before I eat your spleen and sick the domokuns on you. Gawd, I’ve never met a person with so many problems!’ And they probably wouldn’t come to me anyway, because I’m all ugly and mean and say ‘your mom’ too much.”
“Plus I believe having your own self-esteem meter up to at least pi percent is a must,” Lycia replied sardonically.
“If you start reciting pi…”
“I won’t.”
“Yeah, right. I’m sure you–” the ringing of the bell interrupted Aggy’s sarcastic retort.
Looking through her books, Lycia noted that she hadn’t even grabbed books for her morning classes, let alone for first period.
The first three classes seemed to drag by that morning. Lycia tried to pay attention so that she could give Ben her notes, but it was difficult. Usually she was the most attentative of the class, but Thursdays she just couldn’t manage even a semblance of interest.
Which wasn’t so great, because that day they were doing labs in Chemistry.
Lycia loved Lab Days, one because it usually meant no homework, and two because it sometimes meant they could use the Bunsen burners.
Lycia was a bit of a pyro. If it had a flame, she was interested in it. She loved bonfires especially, drawing closer than any of the others to those mini infernos. Even Ben, who was the most carefree person she knew, refuse to get any nearer than necessary to roast a marshmallow on an extra long stick.
Today they were doing flame tests. First they would poke a thin stick into a powdered chemical, then they would hold it in the fire of the Bunsen burner and see what color the flames turned. Mr. Neverts went into the chemical room to look for the mystery chemical he wanted us to test and guess what it was.
Lycia dashed as quickly as she could without visibly running to a station at the lab tables in the back of the science room. She already had her apron and goggles on by the time the rest of her classmates had straggled back. On her left Melody set up her station, while on the right were Emily and Kenya, her non-Chem table partners. Across the table Aggy, David, and Darrien set up their own things.
Once her table was all protected, Lycia slashed her flint over the opening of her Bunsen burner with the ease of practice. Immediately a flame shot up. She smiled with pride. So far, she was the only one who could light the burner on the first try.
Seeing Melody was having trouble with the flint, Lycia turned to help her. Suddenly she heard a scream on her right. She whipped around.
Emily and Kenya’s quarter of the table was in flames!
Seeing that Kenya still had enough sense to back away, Lycia grabbed the frozen Emily by the arm and flung her away from the lab table. “It may be fire resistant, but you aren’t! Don’t waste time screaming, get away!”
Thinking that Lycia’s comment meant she was on fire, Emily began patting her self all over and screaming even more until Aggy came over and slapped a hand over her mouth.
A glance at Kenya told her that she hadn’t caught fire anymore than the panicking Emily had. An apprehensive inspection by Lycia assured her of this, and once her worry over the two frightened girls had lessened, Lycia caught a whiff of burning quite separate from the mess on the table.
“Philycia, don’t panic, but…” began Darrien nervously.
“What?” Lycia snapped, over anxious from all the nerves in the room.
“Don’t beat around the bush, Darre. Lycia, your hair’s on fire!” David cried.
Lycia automatically reached around to grab her ponytail. Pain shot through her hand. Bringing it back in front of her face, she saw raw bright red spots where the sparks in her hair had burned her.
Drops of water dripped down her neck and back. Someone, Kenya she saw when she turned her head quickly around to see the source of the wetness, had wet some paper towel and wrapped it around her ponytail, dousing the sparks.
Lycia sighed in relief, but that relief didn’t last long. One look at Melody’s face and she something was still wrong. All the color had drained out of the poor girl’s face, leaving it nearly ghost white for all it was tan from her 1/8 Indian ancestry and twice a year acquaintance with a tanning bed. Checking all around the room, Lycia could see no other disasters unfolding. The others were returning to their experiments, none the worse for wear.
Confused, she inquired, “Melody, what’s wrong? No one was hurt.”
She was silent for a few moments. Then she whispered, “Fire. Shooting fire. Just like at home.”
Realization hit Lycia like a bullet. A year ago Melody went down to Massachusetts to visit relatives for Thanksgiving. On the way home, about five hours from Oston, Darrien and his cousin called her.
Her house was on fire.
At first Melody hadn’t believed them. Then she heard the sirens. She’d had to spend the rest of those five hours wondering what she was coming home to. When they got there, the house was destroyed, completely eaten by flames.
Melody hadn’t been able to abide fire ever since. Lycia mentally smacked herself. How could she have forgotten? Bunsen burner fire was one thing –it was just a small controlled thing–, but this wild mini-inferno was another.
She wrapped an arm around Melody’s shoulders. She tried to reassure her, “It’s over now. Everything’s all right now. Here, if you want, you can just watch as I do the tests and use the results from there.”
“No, I’ll be fine,” she murmured quietly, sliding out of the comfort of Lycia’s arm. “You’re right. The fire’s gone now.”
The rest of the period was quiet enough. Lycia was jumpy the whole time, worried that another accident would occur. Mr. Neverts didn’t seem to notice anything different. Lycia thought this was ridiculously unobservant on his part, what with Emily and Kenya now sharing a burner, Darrien and David oohing and ahhing over Darrien’s smoldering half-piece of paper, Melody’s hand shaking so badly she kept dropping her sticks, and Lycia herself flinching at every sudden sound and movement.
One thing was for certain. Lycia was going to have a lot to tell Ben when she got back from Gifted and Talented!
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