Winter Sky Read Free Page A

he said, “it’s tough to get anything like this to eat.”
    He’d told Siria once, “You belong to the firehouse. We’ve known you since you were two months old, wailing louder than our sirens.”
    And Izzy had nodded. “She was a gorgeous baby, even with her mouth open like a canyon.”
    They thought they knew everything about her, but they didn’t know about her fire chasing.
    They sat at the table munching, everyone talking quietly because Jesse was dozing in the dormitory just beyond the kitchen, working his twenty-four hours on.
    Danny and Izzy were talking about arson. Siria knew about arson: fires set deliberately, people hurt, firemen burned.
    She leaned over her plate. The smoke at the shed—maybe that wasn’t her imagination. Suppose …
    Don’t suppose
, she told herself.
    But what if someone had started that fire? It wasn’t like the one they’d put out last night, caused by leaking chemicals.
    But arson!
    Don’t let arson ever hurt Pop
.
    Or Izzy
.
    Or any of them
.

CHAPTER 4
    That night, Pop sat in the front room, gluing a tiny piece of canvas to his model ship’s mast.
    Siria leaned over him, resting her hands on his shoulders. “Great sail.”
    “I’m naming this one
My Star
.”
    “Ha. Not another
Siria
? We must have forty ships named
Siria
.” She glanced at the shelves under the window. Yes, at least forty, lined up, crowded in, all beautiful.
    Pop reached back to put his hand over hers. “You’re my star.”
    “I know it.” She kissed the top of his head and stopped in the living room for one of his huge books. The cover showed flames shooting up, spelling out the word
arson
. Her mouth went dry at the word.
    She slid into bed and began to read. The first pagesaid that every fire had to be investigated. How had it started? She knew that from listening to Pop and Izzy.
    Somewhere in the middle she read about kids and fires. A little kid who played with matches, not meaning to set a fire, wasn’t an arsonist. It had to be deliberate: someone who really meant to do it. Sometimes arsonists even stayed to watch.
    Siria couldn’t stop thinking about the shed and who might have been inside. She shouldn’t have left so quickly. One more moment and …
    Go back. Go back now
.
    Too bad she was in her pajamas.
    She looked over her shoulder. The light was out in the front room; Pop must be reading in bed.
    Take care of Pop, Siria
.
    Mom would have done it.
    Her jeans, her puffy jacket, and Mimi’s knitted mittens and wool hat were all thrown on in a minute. She closed her bedroom door, then took baby steps through the living room.
    Ten more tiptoed steps; then she opened the door an inch at a time, closed it silently behind her, and punched the elevator button for one.
    Almo, the super, slept on the leather couch in the lobby that had worn itself into his shape. His shoes were off and his socks were full of holes. Mimi would say, “Not a very good image for the building.”
    Siria rushed past him, then rode her bike through the slush on the avenue. A dusty moon shone overhead, along with a sprinkling of stars. A food truck idled in front of Trencher’s, and cars drove by, almost as if it were daytime.
    Piece of cake
.
    She left her bike against a pole and clumped through the snow toward the shed, hardly breathing, putting each foot down as quietly as she could.
    She reached the shed wall and felt the splintery wood against her fingertips. Inside, everything was still, but it was too dark to really see. She waited four minutes, maybe five. There was only one way to be sure. She had to open the door. She had to go inside.
    Another minute.
    She took a few steps around to the front. Listened. Ready to run, she put her hand on the door and pushed it open. She jumped back.
    The moon lit the inside: an old quilt on the floor in the corner, food on a plate. In the center, a few pieces of half-burned wood and rolls of newspapers only half charred.
    Someone had set a fire there.
    Her heart began