Chapter 8

Ron peered at the instruction sheet.

"This should be interesting," he said, "We have to put some sulphur and zinc into this brass dish and heat it over the Bunsen burner. No sweat."

I made a grab for the sheet, but Ron whisked it out of my reach. He put it on the seat and planted himself on it.

"Trust me, lab partner," he said, "this'll be great."

He was showing more white than usual around the eyes. Ron was usually annoying, but he was stepping it up to a new level today.

"What have you been smoking?" I asked. He just grinned at me and began piling yellow and grey powder on the brass dish. I noticed that the other students were weighing out the amounts. Their piles were microscopic compared to Ron's. Mr. Hall was drinking coffee at his desk and reading the sports section.

"You put me onto it, Petunia," he said, "petunias. I'm growing my own. Dry 'em and smoke 'em. It's even better than weed and it isn't illegal."

I just stared at him. I couldn't believe that he was into petunias. It was a little creepy, actually. While Ron was extolling his new drug of choice he was mixing the powders and sending dust flying all over the desk.

"Now we need heat." Ron picked up the sparker and lit the Bunsen burner. Mr. Hall glanced up just as the blue flame reached the brass dish. His eyes went wide and he stood up so fast that he sent his chair falling backwards. His feet tangled in the legs of the chair and he went crashing to the floor. The students who were nearest him jumped and one burned his hand on the blue flame from the burner. His partner screamed as blood spurted from the teacher's mouth.

That was when the first set of fireworks went off. Sparks flew up from the brass dish two desks over from Ron and mine.

"Cool," John Wayne said and turned the heat up on his burner. His dish sent up its own towers of burning sparks. Then other dishes around the room fired off as students either watched the display or gathered around the unconscious figure of Mr. Hall and carried on like it was still Civic class and debate was what we needed.

"We should move him."

"You never move people."

"Things are exploding."

"They're supposed to be exploding. This is chemistry class."

I looked at the pile of chemicals in the dish. Ron had the heat up full and was looking disappointed. I headed toward the desk and the fire extinguisher.

I think John Wayne was so used to tripping me by now that it was a reflex reaction. Petunia walks by, the foot goes out. I went down almost as hard as Mr. Hall. My head bounced off the floor. I rolled on my back trying to choke back the scream that was trying to travel from my wrist out of my mouth. Now half the students were laughing and half were screaming and about half were doing both. There seemed to be a lot more students than just a few seconds ago.

That was the moment that the mixture in Ron's dish went up. Sparks flew up and kept going. They bounced off the ceiling and started landing on students. Now all the students were screaming. Even John Wayne, whose shirt was quickly vanishing in flames. He tore his clothes off and ran out of the room. Other students followed; either beating the fires in their clothes out or leaving the clothes behind. Ron's hair had caught fire and he tried to put it out with Mr. Hall's coffee, then he left too.

The fountain of burning sparks continued and I could feel where they landed on my legs and burned my skin. I knew my clothes were burning too. Fortunately I had the strength and presence of mind to push myself under the nearest desk. I was safe from the falling sparks, but now they had lit all the paper in the room on fire and it was getting smoky.

I managed a three legged crawl to Mr. Hall. He was moaning faintly and still drooling blood. I heard the fire bell as I tried to drag him out of the inferno. Let's face it, a weakling little runt like me wasn't going to drag a better than full grown male teacher out of the room.

I had to try.

Inevitably I failed. The firefighters piled through the door and one carried me while two others dragged Mr. Hall out of the room. The senior's hall was full of smoke, but it didn't take long for us to get clear of most of the smoke. I was coughing too much to pay much attention to anything, but there were two things that became abundantly clear as we left the school and the stretcher was rolled up for my rescuer to put me down on.

The first was that everyone was there and watching me. We'd had fire drills before, but this was the first real fire and I was the first person to be rescued from that fire.

The second thing was that the fire had claimed just about all my clothes. In that split second after the firefighter placed me on that stretcher and before the paramedics covered me with a cool, while sheet I might as well have been stark naked.

Did I mention that everyone was watching?