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had no time to appreciate their stares as he shoved Sharon and her pack of cheerleaders away from the old truck. Another tendril of gas was aflame and shooting toward its target.
    “Go! MOVE! NOW!”
    They shrieked indignantly but did as he commanded.
    “GET DOWN!”
    They hit the dirt and then the old truck and the float erupted in a fireball. The girls were terrified. The smoke billowed. Will turned and faced Sharon, still holding the lighter in his clenched hand.
    “They were. . . .”
    Will gestured to where the Goth punks had been, but his voice trailed off—of course the creeps were long gone. He wondered if the girls had even seen them in the first place. Will knew he looked like some insane petty arsonist. He wanted to explain that the scummy Goths were infected souls, servants, but he knew the girls would never believe him. No one ever did. All Sharon and the other cheerleaders saw was some lunatic kid. Great , thought Will, I’ve met two cute girls today and managed to alienate them both . It wouldn’t be the first time he’d saved the butts of kids who’d ostracized him. And it most likely wouldn’t be the last.
    What Will didn’t know was that secretly Sharon had been totally electrified by her brief physical contact with him. She thought his hair was the bomb, his eyes were rock and roll, and as he walked away from the scene, she checked out his butt and gave him a 10 on her cheek scale. But of course she couldn’t let on that she felt that
way. No, she had to make sure the New Kid thought she held him in callous disregard. So those were the signals she sent out.
    An hour later, after the Harrisburg fire department had completely doused the flaming float, Will sat across from Principal Steadman, who tapped a pencil tip on one of his crooked teeth and stared at Will with irritation.
    “We’re not getting off to a very good start, are we, William?”
    It was of course a rhetorical question but Will nonetheless gave his stock answer, the same answer he’d given over and over whenever he’d found himself in similar situations.
    “I made a mistake. I’ll try and do better.”
    “A MISTAKE? You call burning down a homecoming float a mistake ?” The veins in Steadman’s forehead looked like they were about to pop. He took several deep calming breaths, closing his eyes and touching his fingertips to do some Yoga thing, acting like Will wasn’t even in the room. Will wished he wasn’t. Steadman opened his eyes and forced a smile onto his lips.
    “Forgive my outburst. I’m working on that. It’s good, William. What you said was good. All is good. Admitting our mistakes, our . . . weaknesses, admitting who we really are is the first step to improving our lives.” Principal Steadman smiled. “I’m going to have to assume this was, as you say, an accident. I promised you a clean slate and that’s just what you’re going to get. So even though you have a history of this sort of thing, I’m going to let this slide and let you off with a warning this time. But please remember, if you cross the line again, the consequences could be . . . severe.”
    Will nodded, his nostrils flaring, not out of anger but because he smelled something coming off of Principal Steadman. Slowly Will lifted his head and met Steadman’s eyes. For a split second Steadman’s eyes darkened. Then he smiled and shook Will’s hand.
    “William, I’m a good judge of people. And I happen to think that even though you have a pretty damn dodgy past, I believe in my
heart that deep down you’re a good boy. I hope you don’t prove me wrong.”
    As Will left the office and made his way toward the bus loading area, kids stared at him and whispered to each other and pointed. There he goes, Torch Boy the fire freak. The New Kid. Will boarded the bus. His first day at his new school was finally over. But his adventure in Harrisburg was just beginning. The hail and the crows might have been a coincidence but the Goth punks were real.