A chill skitters down my spine, and my hands move from my jacket to the front of my dress.At least I’m not naked this time.And there isn’t a boarding school full of witnesses.
I’m lying between parked cars, concealing me from the empty street. I wait for my coughing to ease and sit up, the high-pitched wail of a siren amplifying. Getting to my feet, I wrap my arms around my torso and scamper toward my house.
Police are diverting cars past a huge fire truck, while spectators watch firefighters spray water at the side of my house. The world around me slows as I take in the white smoke billowing from my smashed bedroom window, tainting the clear night sky. An ambulance pulls up somewhere behind me and the piercing siren cuts off, accentuating the pounding of my pulse in my ears.
I push through the crowd of people watching my house burn as if it’s some sort of sick entertainment.
“Mari! Thank heavens.” My elderly neighbor, Mrs Bensen, rushes toward me and her bony hands grasp my forearms. She’s lived in the house behind mine for as long as I can remember.
“What’s—happening?” I ask, my words a croaky plea that scratches against my throat.I must be dreaming.Any second I’ll wake up, safe on my sofa, and find this has all been a horrible nightmare.
“Fire’s almost out, I’d say,” she says. I tear my eyes away from her face, unable to stomach the pity in her glassy blue gaze. “Oh, Mari. They got here as quickly as they could. I only heard the alarm when the fire truck pulled up.”
I look past her to my family home, illuminated in red and blue from the fire truck’s lights. My safe place. I clamp my hand over my mouth. Everything I have is in that house.Everything.What if it’s all gone? What will I do? Where will I go?
No. No. No.I break away from Mrs Bensen and sprint toward my front door, blades of wet grass clinging to my feet.
My trembling hand is inches from the wooden banister of the porch when two arms clamp around my waist, and I’m hauled backward.
“Are you deaf? You can’t go in,” a firefighter yells, carrying me away from my house. He plonks me down with the other spectators and storms toward the fire truck, muttering under his breath.
Mrs Bensen wraps her arm around my shoulders, and we stand in silence while the firefighters work, their uniforms a bright, blurry haze cutting through the dark night.Within five minutes the smoke eases. Many of the workers congregate beside the truck. I leave Mrs Bensen and head toward them.
“When can I go back in?” I ask a burly firefighter with a thick mustache.
“Is this your place?” he asks in a Southern accent. His alert gaze moves from my bare feet to his colleagues trudging past, as if he’s looking for someone else to deal with me.
“Is there someone you can call? To come pick you up?”
Silas. I should call Silas.
“You don’t need me anymore.”
“Don’t you need me?” I push the words past the sob building in my throat. A subtle shake of his head is enough to tear my heart open.
“Not enough, Mariella.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Please just tell me when I can go back in,” I say, my lip trembling.
His face softens. “You can’t. Not until it’s been assessed structurally. You’ll need to stay somewhere else for a while.” He’s recording my personal details when there’s a crackle and a distorted voice blares through the two-way radio attached to his navy and yellow tunic. He tilts his head to reply and turns back to me with a leveling stare. “Stay here.” He storms away, leaving me on my front lawn.
Before long, the fire diminishes and the spectators disperse. I should leave too, but my limbs are numb, my mouth dry. I sit on the curb while firefighters trudge in and out of my home like some sort of sad open inspection.It can’t be that dangerous if they’re still going in, can it?
I stride back down the street and turn a corner, stopping at Mrs Bensen’s house. Her gate creaks open, my feet silenton the damp grass. I sneak down the side of her house toward the backyard. The fence between the two properties is broken from a storm last year, and I squeeze between it, the rough wood catching on my dress.
My backyard is empty of firefighters, and the overgrown grass brushes my calves as I dart toward the open back door. I pause briefly in the doorway and release a breath. The living room is hazy with smoke, but intact.Maybe it’s not that bad?I move past the undamaged sofa on light feet, my footsteps slowing in the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
Thick, dark smoke hangs in the air, and scorch marks creep along the walls like black claws summoning me. Rubbing my stinging eyes, I creep forward, water seeping from the hall runner beneath my feet.
I cover my mouth with my sleeve and halt outside my mother’s bedroom, the wooden door open for the first time in a decade. The once cream curtains are now spines of tattered fabric, floating in the icy breeze stealing through her broken window. My stomach coils at the memory of my mother peeking through a slit in those curtains, her wary gaze glued to the street outside. I can still see her weight shifting from foot to foot, her olive dress swishing at her calves.
I step into the room and drag my hand along the blackened brick wall, as if the contact might stop the room from swallowing me whole. The metal frame is scorched, the blue and cream floor rug sodden and black, the corners curling inward like the legs of a giant dead spider. A heavy feeling settles in my stomach as I frown at the square of flooring peeking out from beneath the rug. From the doorway, I study the subtle gap around its perimeter, demarcating it from the other long, wooden boards. I step into the roomand fold the rug over itself to expose the now prominent rectangle of wood and its gapped edge.
“What’d ya say?” someone shouts from the living area, probably a firefighter speaking through his two-way radio.
My head snaps back to the floor, and I shove my nails into the cracks and lift the wooden block. I reveal a hidden compartment the size of a large shoebox, much of its space taken up by a rusted metal box. I ease the box from its hiding place and pry off the lid.
Inside, a dozen or so books are stacked side by side, their spines crinkled with age. My mother’s journals. I pull one out and crack the spine. My mother’s tidy, slanted scrawl fills the page.Mari and I went to the park after work today, she’s getting so—
