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Suddenly, I felt the sensation of falling. There was a great heat below me, and flames shooting up around my periphery. Ellen shot out a hand toward me, but then she disappeared out of sight. I had just enough time to realize that the floor was collapsing beneath me before my back slammed into something.
My vision flashed white for a moment, then everything came into view. I had fallen to the fourth floor. Unlike the dim room above, everything was bright with flames here. Orange and white, they licked up the walls everywhere I looked, like the tentacles of an angry fire god that was trying to consume everything in sight.
Got to move.
I tried to push up, which is when I realized my leg was pinned underneath something heavy. A stainless steel stove from the floor above. I sat up and pushed against it, but there was wood and brick piled all around it. The stove wouldn’t budge.
Everyone was screaming in my radio, a chaotic cacophony of demands and pleas. I mustered all my strength to push against the stove, but it was no use. Instead, I reached up to my chest and manually activated my PASS device. It began chirping at an ear-piercing volume. That would help my teammates find me.
And in a flash of insight, I realized: They won’t get here in time. I’m going to die.
The heat was oppressive now, cooking me inside my suit. Sweat poured down my back. There was a flare of fire, and I rested on my back and covered my face with an arm against the heat. Already, I could feel myself growing sluggish, my breath more labored from the pain in my leg. I didn’t know whether I was losing blood, but I could feel my eyelids getting heavy.
I closed my eyes, my thoughts only of Alyssa Ford. As I drifted off, my life played out against my eyelids.
33
Jack
2009
“Okay, here it comes,” I said to my brother. “Are you sure you can handle it?”
“Just throw it already!” Eric said, crouched down like a catcher.
I kicked my leg up like Scott Kazmir and fired a fastball to my brother. I missed my spot by a foot, and he had to dart to his left to catch it.
“Nice one,” my buddy teased. “If Eric hadn’t caught that, it would’ve gone through my mom’s flowers!”
“I wish we had a radar gun,” I said. “That one was at least ninety!”
“In your dreams,” Eric replied. “Ninety is how hard the pros throw.”
“So?” I replied.
“So, you’re only eleven years old. I bet you’re not even hitting sixty.”
“You don’t know!” I shot back at him. “Give me the ball.”
Eric rolled his eyes and tossed the ball back to me.
Before I could make my next pitch, I noticed two girls riding bikes up the road. They pulled up to the yard where we were playing. One of them immediately drew my attention. She had curly blonde hair and big, innocent eyes.
A lot of my friends still thought girls were gross, but I knew better. Girls could be pretty cool, as long as they weren’t annoying. This girl looked cool.
“Hello!” the blonde girl said, immediately walking up to me. “I’m Alyssa, and this is my sister, Brandi.”
Why did my stomach feel funny when she smiled at me? I wanted her to like me. I wasn’t sure how to talk to girls, but me and my brothers liked to tease each other. That was our way of making friends.
“Hello rhymes with yellow,” I said, “which is the color of pee.”
My buddies laughed, but the blonde girl did not. That was weird. Maybe she didn’t get the joke.
“You root for the Braves?” my brother asked.
“Duh! They’re the best,” the second girl said. I barely glanced at her; I couldn’t take my eyes off the blonde. Alyssa. She’s pretty. I had never thought of any girls in my class that way before, but Alyssa was definitely pretty.
“The Braves stink,” my brother said. “Everyone here roots for the Rays. They went to the World Series.”
