Firestarter(8)

Please God, let her be all right, he thought. Don't let anyone mess with her, or scare her worse than she is already. Please and thank you, God Okay?

He closed his eyes again.

5

Little girl in red stretch pants and a green rayon blouse. Shoulder-length blond hair. Up too late, apparently by herself. She was in one of the few places where a little girl by herself could go unremarked after midnight. She passed people, but no one really saw her. If she had been crying, a security guard might have come over to ask her if she was lost, if she knew which airline her mommy and daddy were ticketed on, what their names were so they could be paged. But she wasn't crying, and she looked as if she knew where she was going.

She didn't exactly-but she had a pretty fair idea of what she was looking for. They needed money; that was what Daddy had said. The bad men were coming, and Daddy was hurt. When he got hurt like this, it got hard for him to think. He had to lie down and have as much quiet as he could. He had to sleep until the pain went away. And the bad men might be coming... the men from the Shop, the men who wanted to pick them apart and see what made them work-and to see if they could be used, made to do things.

She saw a paper shopping bag sticking out of the top of a trash basket and took it. A little way farther down the concourse she came to what she was looking for: a bank of pay phones.

Charlie stood looking at them, and she was afraid. She was afraid because Daddy had told her again and again that she shouldn't do it... since earliest childhood it had been the Bad Thing. She couldn't always control the Bad Thing. She might hurt herself, or someone else, or lots of people. The time

(oh mommy I'm sorry the hurt the bandages the screams she screamed i made my mommy scream and i never will again... never... because it is a Bad Thing) in the kitchen when she was little... but it hurt too much to think of that. It was a Bad Thing because when you let it go, it went... everywhere. And that was scary.

There were other things. The push, for instance; that's what Daddy called it, the push.

Only she could push a lot harder than Daddy, and she never got headaches afterward. But sometimes, afterward... there were fires.

The word for the Bad Thing clanged in her mind as she stood nervously looking at the telephone booths: pyrokinesis "Never mind that," Daddy had told her when they were still in Port City and thinking like fools that they were safe. "You're a firestarter, honey. Just one great big Zippo lighter." And then it had seemed funny, she had giggled, but now it didn't seem funny at all.

The other reason she wasn't supposed to push was because they might find out. The bad men from the Shop. "I don't know how much they know about you now," Daddy had told her, "but I don't want them to find out anymore. Your push isn't exactly like mine, honey. You can't make people... well, change their minds, can you?"

"No-ooo..." "But you can make things move. And if they ever began to see a pattern, and connect that pattern with you, we'd be in even worse trouble than we are now."

And it was stealing, and stealing was also a Bad Thing.

Never mind. Daddy's head was hurting him and they had to get to a quiet, warm place before it got too bad for him to think at all. Charlie moved forward.

There were about fifteen phonebooths in all, with circular sliding doors. When you were inside the booth, it was like being inside a great big Contac capsule with a phone inside it. Most of the booths were dark, Charlie saw as she drifted down past them. There was a fat lady in a pantsuit crammed into one of them, talking busily and smiling. And three booths from the end a young man in a service uniform was sitting on the little stool with the door open and his legs poking out. He was talking fast.

"Sally, look, I understand how you feel, but I can explain everything. Absolutely. I know... I know... but if you'll just let me-"He looked up, saw the little girl looking at him, and yanked his legs in and pulled the circular door closed, all in one motion, like a turtle pulling into its shell. Having a fight with his girlfriend, Charlie thought. Probably stood her up. I'd never let a guy stand me up.

Echoing loudspeaker. Rat of fear in the back of her mind, gnawing. All the faces were strange faces.

She felt lonely and very small, grief-sick over her mother even now. This was stealing, but what did it matter? They had stolen her mother's life.

She slipped into the phonebooth on the end, shopping bag crackling. She took the phone off the hook and pretended she was talking-hello, Grampa, yes, Daddy and I just got in, we're fine-and looked out through the glass to see if anyone was being nosy. No one was. The only person nearby was a black woman getting flight insurance from a machine, and her back was to Charlie.

Charlie looked at the pay phone and suddenly shoved it.

A little grunt of effort escaped her, and she bit down on her lower lip, liking the way it squeezed under her teeth. No, there was no pain involved. It felt good to shove things, and that was another thing that scared her. Suppose she got to like this dangerous thing?

She shoved the pay phone again, very lightly, and suddenly a tide of silver poured out of the coin return. She tried to get her bag under it, but by the time she did, most of the quarters and nickels and dimes had spewed onto the floor. She bent over and swept as much as she could into the bag, glancing again and again out the window.

With the change picked up, she went on to the next booth. The serviceman was still talking on the next phone up the line. He had opened the door again and was smoking.