shaking the snow off some promising branches, we heard a loud boom
from the house. I turned and saw flames leap up inside the windows.
We dropped our wood and ran back down the hill. Lori was lurching
around the living room, her eyebrows and bangs all singed off and the
smell of burned hair in the air. She had used kerosene to try to get the
fire going better, and it had exploded, just like Dad had said it would.
Nothing in the house except Lori's hair had caught on fire, but the
explosion had blown back her coat and skirt, and the flames had
scorched her thighs. Brian went out and got some snow, and we packed it
on Lori's legs, which were dark pink. The next day she had blisters the
length of her thighs.
"Just remember," Mom said after examining the blisters. "what doesn't
kill you will make you stronger."
"If that was true, I'd be Hercules by now," Lori said.
Days later, when the blisters burst, the clear liquid inside ran down to her
feet. For weeks, the fronts of her legs were open sores, so sensitive that
she had trouble sleeping under blankets. But by then the temperature had
fallen again, and if she kicked off the blankets, she froze. One day that
winter, I went to a classmate's house to work on a school project. Carrie
Mae Blankenship's father was an administrator at the McDowell County
hospital, and her family lived in a solid brick house on McDowell Street.
The living room was decorated in shades of orange and brown, and the
plaid pattern of the curtains matched the couch upholstery. On the wall
was a framed photo of Carrie Mae's older sister in her high school
graduation gown. It was lit with its own tiny lamp, just like in a museum.
There was also a small plastic box on the wall near the living room door.
A row of tiny numbers ran along the top, under a lever. Carrie Mae's
father saw me studying the box while she was out of the room. "It's a
thermostat," he told me. "You move the lever to make the house warmer