The fire in the Sierra foothills raged on. Firefighters were working around the clock, the TV told us, to contain the blaze and especially to save homes in Verdi and Mogul. We watched the planes swoop over the roof of our house and spew their red fire retardant on the mountains. We tasted the smoke with every bite of food we ate. We watched the flames each night against the hot August sky, creeping down toward the valley, being fought back, being whipped up again by the wind.

Secretly, I wished it would keep on burning, right here, for at least another week.

“I’m as bad as Cheyenne,” I told Norie on the phone about the third day. “But as long as they can’t go back home, Ethan’s family’ll stay here.”

“Which fits right into your plans,” she said with her usual dryness. “Don’t they have relatives some place?”

“They live back East,” I said.

“Too bad.”

Norie was always sarcastic, but something in her voice caught at me, like a rough fingernail.

“Didn’t you like Ethan?” I said. “ Didn’t you think he was — different?”

“You like that word different,” she said. “Yeah — I thought he was different. Maybe too different.”

“It’s not like he has a pierced tongue or something!”< br>

“Body piercing would be easier to put my finger on. I can’t exactly explain it.”

I felt like I had sagebrush in my socks — I was that kind of annoyed. “You haven’t spent the time with him that I have,” I said. “I’m learning a lot from him about spiritual stuff.”

“Huh,” Norie said. “I didn’t think you had that much to learn.”

I decided right then where the sagebrush-in-the-socks feeling was coming from. Norie was so smart, if she didn’t understand something, she thought it wasn’t worth understanding. That was it.< br>

And she didn’t understand — because she wasn’t there all those days and evenings with Ethan.

While everybody else was worrying about the fire, we were talking by the hour on my back deck about things like miracles and dream interpretation and the amazing events most people call coincidences.

While Dad took everybody else back to Hot August Nights to take their minds off the fire, we took walks out in the desert. We listened to what Ethan called the “voice of God in the wind” and saw what Ethan said was the spirit of healing in the smoky sunset and felt what Ethan just knew was a positive force drawing the two of us together.

And when everybody else had gone to bed each night, Ethan and I would sit on the floor up in the rec room with the Ouija board, asking it questions and letting our fingers float to the answers.< br>

It was all pretty much what I’d been longing for — not to mention the hand-holding as we picked our way through the sagebrush and the smiling at each other across the dinner table and the quick nervous hugs I gave him before I ran off to bed.

But in my image of Perfect Different Boy, I’d never dreamed the Ouija board in there. Somehow, despite how much I laughed when it told us we’d each have 12 children or how much I glowed when it said Ethan and I were kindred spirits, I still insisted that we wait until my dad had gone to bed before we brought it out.

But it’s just for fun, I told myself. And maybe God does speak to us in different ways than they tell us He does.< /I>

I decided it was okay if I thought of it that way.

Opinion Poll
The fourth day Ethan and his family were there, his father couldn’t stand sitting around any more. He had to get up as close to the fire as he could and see for himself what progress the firefighters were making. Ethan went with him, and, despite the fact that I had already decided it was “okay,” I took that opportunity to phone the Flagpole Girls and take a poll about the Ouija board.

I let Norie’s phone ring only three times before I hung up. Hey, I already knew what she thought, right?

Cheyenne squealed and said, “Cool! I want to do that!” I said I’d get back to her.

Brianna paused for so long I thought she’d dozed off. Then she said, “Mmmm-mmm, girl.”

“What?” I said. “What does that mean?”

“Seems to me if you got to ask, then you think there’s something wrong with it.”

“It’s just that some people do, so I just thought I’d make sure. If Ira brought out a Ouija board, would you use it with him?”< br>

“We’re not talkin’ about me, girl” she said. And that was all I could get out of Brianna.

Marissa and Shannon were much more reassuring. They’d just come from teaching Vacation Bible School at Shannon’s church, and they were making frozen lemonade in Shannon’s kitchen.

“Ouija boards,” Marissa said into the phone. “I’ve read about them. If you let the stuff sit in the water for a few minutes it’s easier to stir,” she added to Shannon, in the kitchen with her.

“Have you ever used one?” I said.

“No. Do you want me to crush some ice — it’s better on crushed ice.”

“Would you do it?” I said. “I mean, you don’t think I’m doing something terrible because I enjoy playing on it with Ethan, do you?”

“You can go ahead and stir it now.”

“Marissa, are you listening to me?”

“Yes!” she said. Her shy voice got soft. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was that important to you. Tobey, if you think it’s all right, then it’s all right. You’re the one we always come to for advice, remember?”

“You guys don’t think I’m evil, then, right?”

Marissa’s laugh puffed into the receiver. “She wants to know if we think she’s evil,” she said to Shannon.

There was some muffling around, and Shannon’s voice came on the line. “You never did anything evil in your life, Tobey,” she said. “You’re, like, my measuring stick for evil. Maybe we all ought to start using Ouija boards. Who knows?”

“I don’t know about that,” I said. But my spirits were bobbing again. I wanted more reassurance. “I am learning a lot from Ethan, though,” I said.

“Like what?” she said.

I could hear the spoon clinking in the lemonade pitcher in the background, and I could picture the two of them looking toward the phone the way they always looked at me, craving the right answers.

“A lot of stuff,” I said. “Like he knows all about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes — those were the visionaries who supposedly wrote them. That’s just some of it.”

“Wow,” Shannon said. “Are you going to teach us all this stuff, too?”

“Sure,” I said. “Sometime, you bring the lemonade, I’ll bring the info.”

After we hung up, I went to the kitchen and rummaged around in the refrigerator. We didn’t have any lemonade, so I settled for ice tea and drank it while I looked out the kitchen window at the smoke. That was about all you could see, just a thick gray cloud that covered everything that a week earlier had looked so clear. I couldn’t even see the mountains anymore.

Raging Fire . . . Raging Emotions
The front door slammed, and I jumped. Ethan’s father stormed through, not even stopping to look at me as he headed for the guest bedroom where his wife and the two little ones were napping. Ethan appeared in the doorway and just stood there. His always-blue eyes were like two blanks on his face.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

He shook his head.

“Is it the fire?” I said. I went over to him and took hold of his hand. His fingers were like Popsicles.

“It’s out of control up there,” he said. “All this time they’ve been telling us no houses are in danger — but we stood there and watched one burn. It just . . . burned.”

“Not yours!” I said.

He shook his head and pulled his hand through his mop of curls. “No, but ours could go any time. It is so weird to be thinking about losing everything I own. I don’t know what to do.”

For the first time, I saw Ethan flounder. His arms just hung at his sides, and his mouth crumpled into a terrible line.

“I know what to do,” I said. I squeezed his hand. “We have to pray. And I’ll get all the Girls to pray, too. We’ve seen miracles happen before when we’ve prayed.”

Ethan didn’t seem to hear me. He stared off through the window at the smoke and said, “I wish I had my Tarot cards here.”

“You have Tarot cards?” I said.

“I could do a spread — at least know what’s coming up so I can get ready for it.”

My fingers loosened around his. “How do Tarot cards tell you that?”

He looked as if he noticed me for the first time. “We haven’t even gotten into that whole thing, have we?” he said. He pulled my fingers back tightly into his hand. “That’s the only good thing about this fire. I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. Who knows? Maybe I have — you know, not in this life, but . . .”

I laughed. I don’t know why — it was the only thing I could think of to do to keep my Perfect Different Boy from sliding off into somebody I couldn’t be with anymore.

“What’s funny?” he said.

“All this stuff,” I said. “It’s kind of . . .”

“Evil?” he said. He lowered his voice and looked over his shoulder before he went on. “You believe in the Ouija board, don’t you?”

“Believe in it? I don’t . . .”

“It hasn’t hurt you, has it? Without it, would you have let yourself get to know me so fast, so intensely?”

“I guess not,” I said.

My spine was starting to crawl again. I suddenly wanted to talk about vintage cars or poodle skirts or something simple and normal.

“Can you just give me a hug?” Ethan said.

Searching For Truth
I looked up at him sharply. His face had changed from blank to full of things he didn’t want to feel.

“I’m scared, Tobey,” he said.

I threw my arms around his neck and held on to him. I could feel him wrapping his arms around my waist and trying really hard not to cry. I forgot about everything else. I just smelled the clean scent of Downy on his T-shirt and whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”

He shook his head against my hair and pulled away. “I have to find out . . .” he said. “I have to find out if it’s gonna be all right.”

He took the kitchen in two strides and headed for the stairs to the rec room. There was something so heavy about the way he walked, I was almost afraid to follow him. It was as if something else had taken over Ethan.

But I did go after him, and by the time I got there, he already had the Ouija board out of the box and was whispering to it.

It was my turn to glance warily over my shoulder.

“Uh—are you sure you want to do this now?” I said.< br>

“You don’t have to do it,” he said. “This is for me.”

His voice shook, and that scared me for him. I sank down to my knees and faced him nervously. “What are you asking it?” I said.

“If I should go back up there and try to save the house myself.”

“Are you nuts?” I said.

He didn’t answer me. I watched with my mouth open as he stared at the piece and moved it with a jerk to the YES.

“Come on, Ethan, this is crazy!” I said. “Asking how many kids we’re going to have is one thing, but this is — this is serious!”

“And I’m serious,” he said. His lips moved silently and once again the piece flew to the YES.

“What did you ask it that time?” I said.

The blue eyes came up to lock on mine. “I asked if you should come with me,” he said.

Read Part Three