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“Shut up!” she snapped, feeling tears grab at her throat.
“It was supposed to be a hay bale. I was just screwing with you,” said Ryan. “I didn’t realize the whole place would go up like that. When the cops found me in the woods, I had to say I was out running and saw who started it.” A wicked smile at Gabriel. “Too bad for you it happened in the middle of an arson spree.”
“You?” gasped Layne. “You . . . but Gabriel didn’t ”
“Really, I hadn’t planned on either of you being here, but it’s kind of poetic justice.” Ryan pulled a lighter out of his pocket.
Gabriel started forward. “It’s you. You’re the one starting the fires.”
“Nope. You are.” Ryan flicked the igniter.
And tossed it.
Layne didn’t see where it went. She was just aware of the blast of heat, the roar of flames, and the feeling of her shoulders hitting the brick wall of the library. Gabriel’s body trapped her there.
She couldn’t see anything but fire and smoke and the side of Gabriel’s face, all but pressed against hers.
“Lighter fluid,” he said. “He sprayed the whole area with lighter fluid.”
And the books were providing plenty of fuel. Layne coughed, her lungs trying to find oxygen through the smoke.
He pulled her down, against the ground, and suddenly it was easier to breathe.
“We have to move,” he said.
She nodded. “But can’t you” she coughed “can’t you do something?”
He pulled her along the wall, to the corner, then swore. All the stacks in this back part of the library were blazing. The school’s fire alarms were blaring now; one was right overhead.
He yelled over it. “I’m going to try to get us out of here.”
“No the fire. Like at the farm.” Another cough. “In those houses. You can do something to stop it, can’t you?”
“Not if you want to keep breathing.”
She coughed again, and he pushed her closer to the floor.
“What? I don’t ”
“Wrong twin.” His voice was grim. “I’m not Gabriel. I’m Nick.”
When the fire alarms went off, Gabriel’s pencil streaked across the paper. Students were suddenly flooding the hallways, laughing and roughhousing and carrying on, shouting over the alarms.
He looked at Ms. Anderson. “A drill?”
She was already slinging her purse over her shoulder, a grade book in her hands. “There wasn’t one scheduled, but they don’t always tell us.” She sounded exasperated. She took the test and put it on her desk, even though he’d only finished the third question. “Come on.”
He shouldered his backpack and headed for the hallway. His nerves were already shot, and the pulsing alarms weren’t helping.
But as soon as he hit the hallway, he felt it.
Come play.
He stopped short in the middle of the flow of students. They were all heading right, toward the stairs at the end of the hallway that would lead outside. The fire was somewhere to his left and that left a lot of school to search. He’d have to fight a sea of students to find the source.
He saw Ronald Coello, a guy he’d played soccer with, heading his way.
“Hey, Coello,” he called. “What’s going on?”
