Little Fires Everywhere(24)

At that moment Lexie’s car pulled into the driveway and Lexie came in, bookbag slung over one shoulder, smelling of cigarette smoke and ck one. “Thank God, there it is,” she said, plucking her wallet off the edge of the counter. Lexie, Mrs. Richardson liked to say, would leave her head at home if it weren’t attached. “Having fun on your vacation day?” she said to Izzy, and Mia saw a light in Izzy switch off.

“Thanks for the sandwich,” she said, and slid down from her stool and went upstairs.

“Jesus,” Lexie said, rolling her eyes. “I will never understand that girl.” She looked at Mia, waiting for a sympathetic nod, but it didn’t come. “Drive carefully” was all Mia said, and Lexie bounced out, wallet in hand, and in a moment her Explorer revved outside.

Izzy had the heart of a radical, but she had the experience of a fourteen-year-old living in the suburban Midwest. Which was to say: she cast about for ideas for exacting revenge—egged windows, flaming bags of dog shit—and chose the best thing in her limited repertoire.

Three afternoons later, Pearl and Moody were in the living room watching Ricki Lake when they saw Izzy stride calmly down the hallway, a six-pack of toilet paper under each arm. They exchanged a single, hasty glance and then, without discussion, chased after her.

“You are a freaking idiot,” Moody said, when they had intercepted Izzy in the foyer and safely barricaded her in the kitchen. Over the years he had saved Izzy from her own stupidity—as he thought of it—a number of times, but this, for him, was a new record. “TP-ing her house?”

“It’s a bitch to clean up,” Izzy said. “It’ll piss her off. And she deserves to be pissed off.”

“And she’ll know it was you. The girl she just suspended.” Moody kicked the toilet paper under the table. “If you don’t get caught in the act. Which you probably would have.”

Izzy scowled. “You have a better idea?”

“You can’t just target Mrs. Peters,” Mia said. All three children looked up in astonishment. They had forgotten, for a moment, that Mia was there, yet there she was, chopping a pepper for dinner and sounding like no parent they’d ever encountered. Pearl flushed and shot a glance at her mother. What was she thinking, butting in like this, let alone butting into this conversation, of all things? What Mia was thinking about, however, was her own teenage years, memories she’d packed away long ago for safekeeping but now unfolded and dusted clean.

“Someone I knew once glued the lock on the history teacher’s door,” she said. “He’d been late and she’d given him detention and he missed playing in a big football game. The next day he squirted a whole tube of Krazy Glue into the lock. They had to break down the door.” A faraway smile crept over her mouth. “But he only did hers, so they knew it was him right away. He got grounded for a month.”

“Mom.” Pearl’s entire face was aflame. “Thanks. We’ve got this.” Hastily, she nudged Izzy and Moody out of the kitchen and out of Mia’s earshot. Now they would think her mother was a total nutcase, she thought, unable to even look at them. Had she glanced at their faces, though, she would have seen not derision but admiration. From the gleam in Mia’s eye both Moody and Izzy could see she was far savvier—and far more interesting—than they’d imagined. It was their first clue, they would realize later, that there was another side to her.

All evening Izzy turned over Mia’s story, her question from before: What are you going to do about it? In those words she heard a permission to do what she’d always been told not to: to take matters into her own hands, to make trouble. By this point, Izzy’s anger had ballooned to cover not only Mrs. Peters but the principal who’d hired her, the vice principal who had handed out the suspension, every teacher—every adult—who’d ever cudgeled a student with arbitrary, unearned power. The next day, she cornered Moody and Pearl and outlined her plan.

“It’s going to piss her off,” said Izzy. “It’s going to piss everyone off.”

“You’re going to get in trouble,” Moody protested, but Izzy shook her head.

“I’m doing this,” she said. “I’m only going to get in trouble if you don’t help me.”




A toothpick, inserted into a standard keyhole and snapped off flush, is a marvelous thing. It causes no damage to the lock, yet it prevents the key from entering, so the door cannot be opened. It is not easily removed without a pair of needle-nosed tweezers, which are often not handy and take some time to procure. The more impatient the key wielder, the more firmly and insistently the key is jammed into the keyhole, the more tenaciously the toothpick will cling to the innards of the lock, and the longer it will take to extract it even with the right equipment. A reasonably adept teenager, working quickly, can insert a toothpick into a lock, snap it off, and walk away in approximately three seconds. Three teenagers, working in unison, can therefore immobilize an entire high school containing one hundred and twenty-six doors in less than ten minutes, quickly enough to avoid notice and settle into their usual spots in the hallway to watch what ensues.

By the time the first teachers noticed their doors were jammed, it was already 7:27. By 7:40, when most of the teachers arrived at their classrooms and found themselves stymied, Mr. Wrigley, the custodian, was upstairs in the science wing attempting to pry the first sliver of toothpick out of the chemistry lab’s lock with the tip of his penknife. By 7:45, when Mr. Wrigley returned to his office in search of his toolbox and the tweezers inside it, he found a large crowd of teachers clustered in his doorway, clamoring about the jammed locks. In the confusion someone dislodged the doorstop that had been holding Mr. Wrigley’s door open and let it slam shut, and Mr. Wrigley finally discovered the toothpick that Izzy herself had carefully placed in his keyhole much earlier, when he had stepped out for a mug of coffee.