“Annie? Are you OK?”
At least that’s what I thought she said. It was hard to tell, considering that her words sounded like they came from underneath a thick feather pillow.
I shook my head, hoping to clear it. All the motion did was make it pound harder.
“Annie?” This time it wasn’t Eve’s voice-it was lower and richer. I turned to find Jim kneeling on my other side. “What the hell-” He glanced up toward the stove, where Beyla was standing just outside the ring of soot around the cooking station where I was supposed to be working. She shrugged, and the simple gesture made it clear that she had no idea what had happened or what I’d done to cause the conflagration.
“I turned on the stove.” OK, so that much was obvious. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. My voice sounded like it came from far, far away, and I spoke a little louder. “All I did was turn on the stove.”
“I know. I saw it.” Jim offered me a hand and helped me to my feet. The room wobbled a little, and I guess I did, too. He put an arm around my shoulders.
“I swear,” he grumbled, the burr in his voice more pronounced than ever, “if that no good son of a bitch Lavoie isn’t taking care of the equipment the way he should be-” He remembered where he was and swallowed the rest of his words. “Are you all right?”
I was when he was holding me like this.
“I’m fine,” I told him and reminded myself not to get carried away. “My ears are just a little…” I shook my head again and the rushing noise inside them settled down a bit. “The stove…” I looked that way and cringed at the mess. “I blew it up.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Jim was being kind. He patted my shoulder. “I don’t want you to get discouraged.”
Now he was being delusional.
“I almost destroyed the entire school.”
“There’s no real damage.” He shooed everyone back to their places. When I tried to take a couple steps, he stood at my side just to be sure I made it. “As long as you’re all right…”
“I am.” I tried another couple steps. “Nothing broken,” I assured him. “Nothing burned. Nothing-” I glanced down at my capris, which were covered with black soot. “Almost nothing ruined.”
“Don’t you worry about that. What’s important is that you’re not hurt. All right,” he raised his voice so he could be heard above the hubbub. “Annie’s fine, and we’ll get the stove fixed. She and Beyla can work up front here with me tonight. Before any of the rest of you get started, I’m going to come around from station to station and test the stoves to make sure we don’t have any more surprises.”
I smiled at Eve to assure her that I was all right. Knees still shaking, I headed to the front of the room. It wasn’t until the last second that I realized I’d left my ingredients back at Beyla’s stove.
My grocery bag was crisp around the edges, but nothing inside sustained any damage. Rather than leave a trail of ash, I took out the ingredients one by one and piled them in my arms. I was all set to return to the front of the room when I dropped my collards. I stooped to retrieve the bundle of greens, and stopped cold.
There was a fragment of a piece of paper on the floor just in front of the stove. It was partially burned, which told me that it had been somewhere in the vicinity of the stove when it blew. The top line had gone up in flames but I could read the block letters of the second line well enough. And what I read didn’t exacly make me feel warm and fuzzy.
“You are next.”
Six
WAS THE NOTE MEANT FOR ME? DID IT REFER TO Drago’s death?
And if so, was it a warning?
It was the next night, but questions still swirled around my brain.
Fortunately, between that and the headache that felt like it was going to rip apart my skull, I didn’t have a chance to think about how the rest of the class had progressed after the explosion.
Perhaps I should say regressed.
My goat cheese bundles turned out soggy. My skewered veggies were limp. And the bacon pinwheels? Well, let’s just say they gave the termcrispy a whole new meaning.
Which I suppose in the great scheme of things was better than how crispy I would have been if the explosion hadn’t thrown me back and out of the blast range.
Just thinking about it all brought me back around to the note.
And that made my head hurt all over again.
I massaged my temples with the tips of my fingers while I listened to Jim get us started on night number three: Superb Salads and Dazzling Dressings.
“Freshness, that’s the key.” Jim stood at the front of the room, a bunch of romaine in one hand and an expression on his face that was almost transcendent. This guy loved to cook. I mean, he really loved it. Go figure.
“You always want your vegetables to be as fresh as possible,” Jim said. He rolled ther infresh, and the sound tickled its way up my spine. “They need to be nice and crispy.”
There was that word again.
I groaned.
“Are you all right?” At least Eve remembered to keep her voice down. Neither of us wanted to be caught talking in class again. “You look worried.”
“I’m fine,” I whispered back.
Eve didn’t look convinced. She shot a look across the room toward the stove where I’d nearly been fried the night before. It had been fixed, Jim assured us, and it was as clean as a whistle. Still, Beyla had refused to work there again, and I for one couldn’t blame her. The Incredible Hulk had taken her place, and Beyla and her cooking partner, John, were working one station closer to us. I made sure I kept my voice down so she couldn’t hear me.
“I’m just thinking,” I told Eve. “That’s all.”
She nodded. “I know just what you mean. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, too.”
I’d told Eve about the note, and I knew it had only cemented her theory about our mysterious classmate’s guilt.
Eve was 100 percent positive that it all came down to Beyla.
“I’m telling you, Annie, she looks as guilty as hell,” Eve said.
“She doesn’t.” I knew this for a fact, because I was looking right at Beyla, and Beyla was calmly going about her business as usual, unpacking her ingredients and setting up her cooking station.
But Eve wasn’t about to take logic into consideration.
OK, I admit it. Mentioning the note to Eve had been a major blunder. I knew it the moment I opened my mouth. But let’s face it, I had a good excuse. I’d been pretty upset. And worried. I’d been thrown for a loop (literally and figuratively), and so darned confused by the whole thing, I’d just naturally shared my discovery with Eve.
And Eve had just naturally blown the whole thing out of proportion.
Sure I found the note. Sure the stove went kablooey. But that didn’t mean that one thing was related to the other.
Did it?
In my ordered, logical mind, I liked to think it didn’t. Because I knew in my ordered, logical mind that if it did, I was still in danger.
Call me the queen of denial, but I had decided to believe that the note had nothing to do with me. That it wasn’t referring to Drago’s death. That the whole stove incident was nothing more than an unfortunate accident, and that I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The explosion was a desperate attempt by the culinary gods, that’s what it was. A not-so-subtle way for the powers that be to warn me to stay away from anything that even resembled cooking.
And the note?
It had simply fallen out of somebody’s purse or pocket.You are next in line at a doctor’s office.You are next because whoever “you” was had a birthday coming up.You are next for a haircut or a nail appointment or for a tire rotation down at the garage.
Delusional? Sure. But it beat thinking that Beyla was out to get me.