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Chapter 4
    T WENTY PEOPLE HEARD.
    They each told their friends.
    By lunch, the entire school had heard. Mr. Shevvington says Christina Romney’s been setting fire to things. You should have seen all the matches she had. But you know what those island girls are like. Remember when Anya tried to push Blake over the cliff into the tide? Oh, they tried to blame it all on the Shevvingtons’ son, but still … when things like this happen … you wonder.
    In the cafeteria Vicki and Gretch smirked. They told the story of the match pile again, making it bigger, more convincing, and scarier.
    “What were all your matches for?” Jonah asked her.
    “They weren’t mine. Mrs. Shevvington must have stuffed them in my purse.”
    “I told you,” said Jonah, in the voice people always use with that sentence. A nyah-nyah voice. “I told you something was going to happen, but did you listen to me? No. You ran off with Old Benj.”
    Several kids giggled, as if Old Benj were a well-known joke among them.
    “Honestly, Chrissie,” Jonah went on. “You want to be a wharf rat? Married at sixteen, have ten kids, make fishnets all winter, and get gray hair?”
    “I will not be a wharf rat,” said Christina fiercely. “And neither will Benj.” Her fists doubled up under the cafeteria table. Don’t get into a fight, she told herself. You don’t have to defend Benjamin Jaye. He can defend himself.
    “Then why are you hanging around him, all lovey-dovey like that?” demanded Jonah.
    “Lovey-dovey?” cried Christina. “Jonah, get a grip on yourself. He’s like my brother.”
    Jonah snorted. “ You get a grip on your self,” he said. “He’s going to quit school, he won’t be back for junior year. He’ll ask you to marry him, and you will.”
    “I’m fourteen!” shouted Christina, rounding off a few weeks.
    “So? Big deal. He’s sixteen. What’s two years? My father is eleven years older than my mother.” Jonah folded his arms across his chest as if he had just won an important argument.
    Mrs. Shevvington walked into the cafeteria. She never did that. She did not have a free period when the seventh grade had lunch. She looked around the cafeteria, her eyes roving inside her one-dimensional face, like movable eyes in an oil painting.
    Her eyes seemed to cut Christina out of the crowd like a sheep dog isolating one of his flock.
    The cafeteria was filled with sunlight and the laughter of others. Other people split Oreo cookies, one taking the filling and one the chocolate side. Other people handed around Doritos and brownies. Other people discussed with Jonah whether or not in the state of Maine you could get married as young as Chrissie and Benj were. But for Christina, participation ceased. Something is here, something has come, she thought. But what?
    Slow as low tide, Mrs. Shevvington drifted over to Christina. She touched Christina’s cheek. Her finger pad was mushy as a jellyfish dying on the rocks. “Christina,” said Mrs. Shevvington. Lovingly, for the benefit of her audience. To other people the Shevvingtons always seemed to be the good ones. “Mr. Shevvington is quite worried about you, dear. Do you want to discuss something with me?”
    I want to throw you off Breakneck Hill, thought Christina.
    But for once she was wise enough to stay silent.
    “Mr. Shevvington thinks you are smoking cigarettes. He thinks that’s why you carry a purse full of matches. But I am afraid it’s more serious than that, isn’t it, Christina?” Mrs. Shevvington nodded her head, like a guillotine in slow motion. “Because you don’t need a dozen books of matches for one cigarette, do you, Christina?”
    Across the cafeteria Vicki hissed, “Chrissie’s done something terrible! I bet she’s gone mad, the way island girls do!”
    Christina was usually alert during English class, but today she was anesthetized by what had happened to her. She could not seem to hear what was going on. Every time she looked up she snagged