I leave it there. Just in case.
Chapter Eleven
Zoe
One week left.
I count the days the way I used to count sirens from my bed. Seven days until I report to Station 24 on Greystone Road and become Firefighter Kimball of Engine Company 24, A-shift, under Captain Medina, and the door to Station 11 closes behind me, quiet and permanent and having nothing to do with locks.
Last day. Last chance to make an impression. I bring cookies and flowers this time because I’ve run out of ideas and because the bodega on the corner had sunflowers and Grandma Eloise always said you should bring flowers to places you love.
The station is different today. I can feel it before I see it. The bay doors are open but there’s a tension in the air, a readiness, the quiet of a crew between calls and waiting for the next one. I remember this from the academy. Controlled stillness. The body at rest while the mind stays lit.
Torres is inside. She comes out when she sees me, takes the Tupperware without a word, and looks at the sunflowers.
“Those for Cap?”
“Those are for the station.”
“Cap doesn’t do flowers.”
“Then they’re for the kitchen table.”
Torres almost smiles. She takes the flowers too. “Wait here.”
I wait. The folding chair is becoming mine in a way that probably isn’t healthy. I’ve sat in it multiple times now and I’ve memorized the angle of it, the wobble in the left front leg, the view it gives me of the bay and the engine and the street beyond. From this chair I can see the intersection where the sirens turn, and if I close my eyes I can hear the ghost of every engine that’s ever passed this spot.
Cap comes out. She’s got a cookie in her hand.
“Kimball.”
“Captain.”
“When do you report to Medina?”
“Monday.”
She nods. Takes a bite of the cookie. Doesn’t react to it, which is a reaction in itself because Grandma Eloise’s cookies demand a reaction and Cap is working very hard to have none.
“You’ve been here every week.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You washed the engine. You brought flowers. You’ve made my crew a series of baked goods that Torres has started referring to as ‘critical supplies.’”
“I just want a chance.”
“I know what you want.” Cap finishes the cookie. Wipes her hands on her pants, a gesture so human and unguarded that it startles me. “The answer is the same, Kimball. I don’t have a spot. I can’t create one. And even if I could, I don’t know you. I don’t know how you work. I don’t know what you’re like on a call or under pressure or at three in the morning when everyone’s tired and the tones drop. Cookies and enthusiasm are not qualifications.”
“Then let me show you. One shift. One ride-along. Let me prove—”
The tones drop.
The sound is instant and everywhere. A sharp electronic pulse that cuts through the air and changes every body in the station in a single second. I hear movement inside, fast, coordinated. Boots on concrete. Locker doors. The engine turning over, that deep rumble I’ve heard from my bedroom a thousand times, and now I’m ten feet from it and it fills my whole body.
Torres is in the driver’s seat. Hayes is behind her. Rivera, Walsh, two others I recognize. They move like water finding its course, no wasted motion, every person flowing to their position as if the positions were carved into them.
Cap is already gone. She was standing in front of me eating a cookie and now she’s climbing into the engine, headset on, and she doesn’t look at me. She doesn’t look at anything except the job.
