Inside were silver hoop earrings, like little rings.
Maggie held hers in the palm of her hand and touched them with her index finger. “Thank you,” she said.
“We don’t have pierced ears,” Debbie said sullenly.
“Not yet you don’t.”
The two girls were very still. Finally Debbie said, “They’ll kill us.”
Helen smiled. “Maggie, if I pierce your ears, what will happen?” she said, in exactly the tone of voice she had used to ask Maggie what she would be doing twenty years from now.
“My mother will yell at me.”
“And then?”
“I’ll probably get punished. Maybe I won’t be able to go to the club for a week.”
“It’s almost September. The club will close on Labor Day. So what else can happen?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
“So you’ll get yelled at, maybe punished. But then you’ll have pierced ears and new earrings.”
Maggie smiled and looked down at the hoops. “Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Only for a minute,” said Helen.
“I’ll do it,” said Maggie, and Debbie looked at her, her eyes wide. “Oh, this is unbelievable,” she said harshly. “Maggie Scanlan, who’s afraid to do anything wrong?”
“What’s with you?” Helen said.
“Forget it,” said Debbie. “I know you think she’s great, but she’s a big chicken. She won’t do anything that will get her in trouble. Bridget says she’s nun material.”
Helen looked thoughtful. “There’s trouble, and then there’s trouble,” she said. She turned and started upstairs, and Maggie and then Debbie followed her. Helen pulled them into the bathroom. There was a needle threaded with white cotton and a bottle of alcohol on the edge of the sink. “Stay away from Bridget Hearn,” Helen said as she rubbed Maggie’s lobes with alcohol. “She’s a jerk.” Maggie had smiled, and as the needle went in she did not make a sound. But as they went downstairs, their earlobes tingling, their hair carefully combed forward, Debbie had turned to her and said, “I dare you to come out tonight.”
Now, from her window, Maggie watched the guard’s car pull away, the pale beige glowing in the half light from the houses. The lightning leapt again, brighter this time, and there was the dim timpani of thunder far away. The lightning flashed and then remained, and as she narrowed her eyes she could see fire pluming from the roof of the house where she and Debbie had once taken up residence. Even at that distance she could see that this one, the eighth one, would be the one that would count, and she understood Debbie’s valedictory remark. I won’t go, she told herself. I won’t go. Afterward, she wondered whether she had gone because of Debbie’s dare, because she was worried about her friend, or because she was just as hypnotized by trouble as the rest of them.
She could smell the blaze as soon as she left the house, sharp and bitter, a chemical edge to the natural musk of smoke, a perversion of the autumn smell she’d loved all her life and would never be able to bear again. Trotting among the houses, she began to glimpse the fire, throwing the edges of the building into sharp relief. The house looked much as usual, except that in each of its windows there was a glimpse of waving, gaudy orange, like tattered curtains blowing. The lightning throbbed again, and after the thunder she heard a scream. She went in the front door and saw flames filling the back of the house, turning the walls to nothing, and she saw Richard and Debbie leaping about, laughing. Then Debbie gave a little scream again as the fire moved forward with a roar. “We did it,” she cried, her voice shrill. “We finally did it!”
Maggie could see that in minutes the entire building would be alight, and perhaps the ones next to it, too. On the floor there was an empty bottle of Four Roses, its cap filled with cigarette butts, and Maggie wondered for a moment why they’d chosen that to feed the flames. Then she looked at Debbie, who was leaping up and down as though she was on a pogo stick, her hair corkscrewing into little curls in the heat, and realized she was drunk. Her blouse was unbuttoned almost to the waist, and a big bruise purpled her neck just where it met her collarbone. Maggie felt herself flush. She looked over at Richard, and he gave her a slow, sleepy smile and ran his tongue along his lips. He stumbled over and put his mouth against her earlobe, touching his lips to