Page 11 of Heat Advisory

I knew what she meant without saying it. I could get injured, or maybe college baseball was the furthest my career would go.

“If I can’t do the major leagues, then Dad wants me to go to college and get a degree in something useful, like business,” I told her.

She stared at me for a few moments, and I wasn’t sure if she was going to say something or if I should ask her the same questions.

“Okay, but what do you want to do?” she asked finally. “Not what your dad hopes you will do, but what you want to do if professional baseball isn’t in the cards for you.”

I hadn’t realized I’d said it that exact way until she mentioned it. I knew what my backup option was, but since my dad had kind of shot it down and told me to go to business school, I hadn’t thought much more about it. But Cora felt like a safe space I could give that to.

“Firefighter. I’d like to be a firefighter and help people out.” I may have said it simply, but my heart was racing, waiting for her to give me her thoughts, like I needed her approval.

“That’s awesome!” Her face was filled with a huge, genuine smile, and it made me feel good seeing her excitement over it. “You’d be really good at that.”

“Thanks.” I felt a little uncomfortable at her praise since my own parents hadn’t seemed nearly as excited.

“Oh, I know!” She clapped her hands and then reached down into her backpack for another book. “Let’s review the section on wildfires and wind, cause that will be on the test.”

“How do you know it will be on the test?” I asked since she wasn’t in my class.

“It was on the study guide you gave me.”

Ahh. That made sense.

“You didn’t look at it?”

“Not yet,” I said, putting my right hand on the back of my neck and rubbing it to cover my slight embarrassment.

We spent the next twenty minutes going over the study guide, and I really felt like it helped. She was really good at tutoring, or maybe I just found it easier to pay attention to her as opposed to my teacher.

“Have you ever heard of a fire rainbow?”

“No, but it sounds cool.”

“Okay, well, despite the name, it’s neither a rainbow, nor is it related to fire in any way.”

I laughed. “Then why is it named that?”

“Probably for the same reason a jellyfish is neither a fish, nor is it made of jelly. People just like to come up with catchy names that sound cool.”

I paused, taking in what she had just said, and laughed again. I hadn’t realized she was so funny.

“The real name is circumhorizontal arc, and it’s a type of sun halo, but from a distance it can sometimes look like fire with the nearby clouds looking like smoke.”

“How do you know so much?” I asked her, finding myself wanting to learn more about her than about schoolwork.

“I’m fascinated by the weather,” she said, flipping through the pages of her book in search of something. “My foster sister, Iris, and I love learning about it and teaching each other cool facts. The weather is always doing something crazy somewhere in the world at any given time.”

She finally looked up at me, and I could see the thrill in her eyes as she spoke. “There could be flooding in Japan, tornadoes in the U.S., a hurricane in Mexico, wildfires in Australia, or a blizzard in Europe.”

“Is that what you want to be when you graduate? A weather person?”

“The term is meteorologist,” she corrected me, but with a smile on her face, so I knew she was only teasing. “Iris definitely wants to be one, but I don’t know. I love weather, but I also love geology, biology, and astronomy, so I’m not sure yet.”

She was usually rather quiet, so it was interesting to see her so talkative and animated about something other than hair, makeup, and boys, like she talked about with my sister.

“I definitely want to be a scientist of some kind. I just don’t know exactly what yet.”

My inner thoughts immediately went to picturing her wearing a white lab coat and nothing else.