(You) Set Me on Fire by Mariko Tamaki Read Free Book Online

the sound of Carly’s mouth popping open.
    There was an instant stillness in the room, broken only by the mouselike coffee-slurping of a guy in an orange sweater. Shar tilted her head, widened her eyes at me. Smiled.
    I froze, could feel my body seizing up, a sensation similar to what any kind of prey feels when encountered by a predator. A familiar sensation, not unlike what I felt stepping into every gym class I attended from grades nine to twelve.
    I remember looking at Shar, her face a mask of amusement. She was looking directly back at me, like someone getting ready to pass a note, or a secret.
    As someone who was distinctly unpopular and picked on in high school, I’ve often felt it should beeasier to interpret the things other people do and say more accurately, more often. There should be a system of language that lets us know not only what people mean but also the level of hostility implied. Imagine how lovely all our childhoods would be if we knew that sort of thing, if we knew the difference between a person being vicious and a person attempting to be friendly. Like the time Rahnuma Tang, from across the street, invited me to a birthday party that didn’t exist, luring me into her backyard so that I could get jumped by a bunch of her crappy friends who beat me with their skipping ropes, almost blinding me in the process. I know there are some people who see sound as colour, and I’ve always wondered if mean looks different than not mean. I bet it’s purple.
    “Um. Right,” I said, slowly crawling into my sentence the way you step into a shoe after you’ve just seen a cockroach on the floor, “totally horror.”
    Slurp. Sip.
    Shar’s smile spread across her face. She reached a finger into her blond hair and twisted herself a temporary band around her index finger. As she grinned, a warm glow of relief spread across my limbs.
    “And you?” Boris asked, leaning forward and pointing at Shar.
    “Oh,” she said, in a somewhat mocking singsong voice, not looking at him, “I’m Shar and I’ll watch anything as long as Julia Roberts isn’t in it.”
    After the meeting, as the group exchanged numbers and emails, I was sitting alone in my folding chair when Shar slipped over beside me. Up close, her black outfit revealed several shades of black: jet, ink, and coal and steel, fuzzy, and velvet all wrapped together. Her perfume curled through the air, snaking a faint trail of what smelled like hot pink orchids around my head.
    “Shar Sinclair,” she said.
    “Allison Lee,” I replied.
    “Sooooo, Allison,” she said, “you here to make a movie?”
    “Uh, no. You?”
    “Fuck no,” Shar hissed, turning to re-survey the crowd, which appeared to be engaged in a series of intense conversations (about film). “I just dropped in to check out a bunch of losers with delusions of fame.”
    “Oh. I guess, uh, fun. Sounds fun.”
    “Do you want to be famous, Allison?” things I needed to be doingicdd Shar tipped her head forward as though to pour the contents of her eyes into my soul.
    “What?”
    “Famous, Allison. FAMOUS. Big time. I’m asking if you want to be a STAR.”
    “No. I mean, no, I don’t think so.”
    “You should know.” She raised an eyebrow. It was strange to be the sudden focus of someone like Shar’s full attention. It was like being locked into something. Like, a laser beam. A big starship laser beam. “Most people know if they want to be famous. It’s a pretty basic thing to know.”
    “Well I’m not really all that basic, I mean … right now.”
    “You don’t say.”
    “I do say.”
    “Good answer, Allison. Very good answer. You heading back to dorm?”
    “Yeah, I just have to wait for Carly.”
    “Oh, right. CARLY.”
    On the walk back, wedged between me and Carly, Shar turned and asked her the fame question.
    “Doesn’t everyone want to be famous? I guess I want to be good famous. Maybe a little famous anyway,”Carly reflected. “But, like, um, productive famous.