A Girl Burst into Flames

No one noticed. It happened all the time: in the middle of math class, during study hall, or on the walk home from school. Once, it even happened in the showers, after gym class, while she was clutching a bar of soap to her chest and averting her eyes. Other girls asked her: "How is that even possible? Why isn't the water putting out the flames?" And she just shook her head and told them it was hormonal. Her doctor said the fire was a projection, a visual manifestation of internal reactions to stimuli. "You'll have to be careful," the doctor warned her, "not to get too aroused in front of other people," and because her doctor was a woman and chose her words with great care, the girl understood aroused to mean more than just the obvious. This fire would betray her, every rush of lust emerging, every extreme of anger exploding like fireworks under her skin; she would burn so publicly, she would never be able to hide it from her peers. And so she learned to control it and began setting herself on fire randomly (at assemblies, in the bleachers, during exams or the Pledge of Allegiance) just to throw off their scent, to remain in some ways unknown. Better to be a total freak, she thought, than a freak clearly in love with Madame P., the French teacher, during whose class the girl first burst into flames. She remembered it was an ordinary day (a Monday, to be exact); Madame P. had scheduled an exam for that morning, so the girl was sitting at a desk at the back of the class, allowing her half-finished test to taunt her with acute and circumflex accent marks, when a dull heat began radiating from her palms. She felt sweaty—so sweaty, in fact, that she thought she might be having a panic attack. First her hands flushed, then her cheeks, then her chest. Orange flames spat out of her ears, and her fingertips burned up like match heads, emitting light blue flames that tapered at the ends, mimicking the luminous sheen of glow-inthe-dark nail polish. She lifted them up to the light and wondered: what will Madame think? For that was what had been going through her mind before she burst into flames—what would Madame think when she graded the exams and realized the girl had forgotten the French word for pan? Of course, she knew it now, had made a concerted effort since to control her grades, her tongue, the way the fire licked her skirt whenever Madame crossed the room; but at the time her condition was still brand new and people were afraid. A boy beside her shouted, "Whoa!" and scrambled away, toward the front of the class. Her classmates formed a wide ring, as if around a bonfire. Madame pressed her way through. Let her hand hover over the girl's burning arm, too afraid to touch down for fear of being burned by the flames. Est-ce que ça fait mal? Madame asked. The girl nodded, not because it was really painful but because she very much wanted Madame to reach through the flames and touch her warm, bare flesh where the fire turned it translucent; she hadn't realized until then just how much she wanted it. How far she would go to get Madame's attention. Please dip your hand into my chest, she wanted to plead. Please rub your thumb over my eyelids and slide your fingers under my chin. I promise it won't hurt.