The school psychologist leans in, asks if I’m angry.

I shrug. 

He asks if I like school.

I nod.

He asks if I like reading.

I nod.

He asks if I like to play sports.

My head tips forward, then returns to its socket. 

“Which ones?” he wants to know.

“Baseball and street hockey,” I say. “Sometimes football.”

“Tackle or touch?”    

When I say both, he asks what position I like in baseball, and when I say pitching, he asks why that might be, and after I say I like throwing, he says “hmmmm” and wants to know whether I throw the ball hard or soft.

“Hard,” I answer.

“Hmmmm,” he says again, this time with more emphasis, and leans back into the chair with the orange plastic cushion.  The chair creaks as he pushes his pen between his lips and looks at me as though I’m a bug that’s crept into his kitchen.  I sit still, wondering why he’s plucked me from class. 

Earlier this year, a similarly inclined man had pulled me from class to inquire about the blisters on my arm—blisters I hadn’t even noticed until he and the nurse pointed, and looked hard at my face for an answer.  “I don’t know,” I answered, mush-mouthed, only to realize halfway through the interview that the blisters must have come from sleeping near the radiator; my arm often flopped onto it while I slept, and sometimes burned.  I told them that we had old radiators, that we pushed our mattresses against them in winter.  They seemed only partly satisfied by the radiator burn explanation, but let me go.  So, sitting in front of the man in the creaky orange chair, I wonder whether perhaps I have another blister on my arm. 

One I haven’t noticed. 

The blisters really had come from the radiator, but even I recognized that there is the look of the liar about my face, a certain dip and tug in my eyes often mistaken for guilt. 

 “So you like to throw things, do you?”

I look around the tidy office for clues to the right answer, and, seeing none, decide simply to take his lead.

I nod.

“Is that why you kept slamming the door at Ms. McDonough’s last night—even after she expressly told you not to?” 

At the mention of “Ms. McDonough,” my mind catches up, and I finally understand.  I’m living with Kara McDonough and her children.  Ever since the fire at home, my family had been split up during renovations, and my sister Steph and I had been assigned to Kara’s place.

The school psychologist repeats his question, “Is that why you disobeyed Ms. McDonough?”

“I guess so.”

 I slept in Vicky’s room, where the night before, she and I had talked about boys and clothes and what made some kissing French and other kissing just plain kissing. 

I had closed the door, though Kara said not to.  Her ears must have caught the click of the door as soon as it shut, because two seconds later the door was re-opened, with her standing there, staring at us as if an apology was expected.

“God, can’t we have some privacy?” I’d said and sucked my teeth. 

Kara said she wanted the door open, and when I asked why, she answered that’s just how things were in her house and I’d better get used to following rules. 

Kara was strong, a social worker who spent her days looking into swollen faces and sad stories.  Unrelenting lines were painted onto her broad Irish face. 

Me, I had nothing but my mouth to back me up. 

My mouth, and the overwhelming desire to try Vicky’s blusher in private, to ask about what boys say when they’re trying to get up under her shirt, to listen to Blondie sing “Heart of Glass” while prancing around in high heels and pink satin shorts. 

So, once again I closed the door.

And Kara, strong-willed and quiet, opened it. 

I closed. 

She opened. 

Back and forth.  Over and over, until she grew tired of the game and left the door closed, so that I thought I’d won, only to find the door off its hinges when I woke. 

We had giggled this morning and Kara seemed only mildly annoyed, so I thought it was done, but clearly, I was wrong, because here I am now, sitting in front of a blunt-faced man, who seems to know all about Kara and the door, and is asking whether I like to throw a ball hard or soft.

Now that I know why I’m here, I explain. 

I admit to being angry that the fire had consumed my entire bedroom, including the new maple bunk-bed set my mother had just taken off lay-away.  I say I miss my family, my street, all my old things, and that’s why I am behaving badly.   

His eyes soften.

He nods his head. 

He believes. 

Though I’m lying.  Though, the fact is, I love Kara’s house, can’t get enough of the well-stocked fridge, the sparkling new microwave, the piles of clean towels. New clothes have replaced worn plaid pants and the Put the Lid on Rats t-shirt featuring a flesh-tailed rodent creeping his way into an open garbage can, the toothy critter a free decal given to city kids to enlist their support in Rochester’s anti-rat campaign.  I’d ironed the rat and his garbage can onto a white t-shirt and wore it till the rat was cracked and the cotton gray.  Gone now, it has been replaced by crisp whites and yellows, turtlenecks with Holly Hobbie and rainbow decals.  

My life has only improved at Kara’s.  After all, Steph is the only one I’ve ever needed, and she’s right here with me.  With the bright walls and balanced meals, Kara’s suburban neighborhood is like a TV commercial for laundry soap.  Still, the psychologist widens his eyes and is foolish enough to believe that I actually miss the way things used to be. He talks about separation from family and how hard it can be, and I nod and try to make myself look sad, but the only sadness I can conjure is my memory of Steph’s pile in the front yard. 

To stop the blaze, the firemen had hosed out our upstairs, and the pile of gifts that Steph had saved all summer to buy slid out from under her bed through a blown out window and landed with a slap on the front lawn. 

That she had a pile of gifts under her bed, waiting, in secret, to be given to her siblings on Christmas day.  That she had raked yard after yard, shoveled driveway after driveway to earn the money.  That all those presents had become flat wet piles, melting into the earth, more ashes than gifts, and that her proud face never once crumpled over such things, even as I howled over the loss of a double-belt—the one I’d bought at Larry’s Bootery after raking only two lawns—only these things make me sad.

     I think of my strong sister, of her kindness, and her losses.  And other than these things, I can think of nothing so bad about our house catching fire.

     But I squint my eyes and say I miss home anyway—because it explains the door, and because the man in front of me with the flat-lined smile is waiting for an answer. 

     I hang my head, and he leans forward in his creaky orange chair, forces what he must imagine to be a concerned look into his eyes, touches my shoulder, and lets me go.