Below me was the empty sound of something large falling. Then a crash and crunch of the trailer; a cacophony of furniture, cardboard, metal, and glass slamming; a creak and groan before one final crash; then only the hush of the wind.
Buster’s truck reversed again.
“Help!” I couldn’t breathe. “Help, I can’t—” My hands weren’t made for holding on to things.
They had to see me. They had to know I hadn’t gone over the edge. I heard voices, but none of them came closer. My boots scraped the curving rock wall beneath me. My shoulders had already begun to protest. My arms drooped and my head dipped below the cliff edge.
Someone made a noise. Tires rumbled on dirt. Headlights began to move. Someone was yelling now, a woman, her voice carrying into the darkness.
“What have you done? I know all of you, I know all your faces and where you live, and when this gets reported—I can’t believe this—this—this inhumanity!” Her voice came closer.
My arm slipped slowly and steadily from its nestled spot, and the grass in my grip started coming up by the roots.
The night sky above was so clear.
Just let go,I thought. It’ll be easier if you let go.
You won’t have to do this anymore if you let go.
A face appeared above me. Dark eyes and blond hair. Artemis. Then Mads, Lorelei, and Hal, piling on top of one another to reach down for me. They hooked my arms and pulled. Artemis grabbed my belt to haul me up the rest of the way, then dropped beside me, panting, as soon as I was out of danger.
“I saw some of Buster’s guys heading this way, and I knew you were, too,” Mads said, quiet and breathless. “So I called Mrs. Wake. I didn’t think... I didn’t know it would be like this....”
“They ran once we got here,” Hal said, voice rough. “Even Buster, like he thought we wouldn’t know it was him.”
Lorelei shook like a leaf.
Headlights still shone in the clearing, but in a different arrangement. The shouts and hollers and growls of engines had faded, and from between headlights came the silhouette of a woman blazing toward us.
“Are you okay?” Greta kneeled in the dirt in her pristine white pants to rest a hand against the side of my face. “Are you in one piece?”
I wriggled out from her touch, turned away from them all, and crawled to the edge of the bluffs. Hands latched onto my belt and my coat, but I stopped before going over, just enough to peer down at the rocks and sand far below.
The trailer was a crushed can in the moonlight. It lay onits top, half on the shore and half in the water, glass sprinkled around it like glitter. Curtains fluttered from windows and both doors swung open. Seams had split in the walls.
Ringing filled my ears. Louder, louder, louder. It began to sound like screaming. Then like chanting, chanting to the fast, hard drum of my heartbeat, louder, until it was all I could hear, until it was a primal command that had lived inside me since Mom disappeared, stifled after losing my fingers, waiting for the moment it could return.
FIRE, FIRE, FIRE, FIRE
On aching arms and unsure legs, I pushed myself up and past Greta and Artemis, past Mads and Hal and Lorelei. I grabbed the axe from where it had fallen. There was nothing left in the clearing. A few scattered potted plants. Cinder blocks. The foundation where a house had once stood. I had firestarters after me, and Addamsville thoughtthiswould do me in?
“Zora!” Artemis yanked on my arm. “You almost fell off a cliff. You need to stop.”
“Let go of me.” With more than a little effort, I pushed her hand away. My hands shook. My legs ended in stumps.
Artemis grabbed at my sleeve again, then my hand. She held it so tight my bones ached. “Stop! Jesus, Zora. Where are you even going?”
“Let go of me!”
“No!”
“I’m going to set fires!” I rounded on her. We were almost the same height, but Artemis shrank back as I towered over her. “I’mdone! I’m done with all of this! I’m done with firestarters threatening my family and assholes pushing my house off afucking cliff.I’m done trying to help people who don’t care about me! I’m done trying to figure out why I’ll burn everything down myself, and then there’ll be nothing left for Buster, nothing for Forester, nothing for Ludwig, nothing foryou. Everything will be gone, and I’ll be gone, and I won’t have to deal with thisbullshitanymore!”
“Zora!”Artemis screamed. We stared at each other in silence, me trying to get my breath back, her cheeks puffed up, looking scared. When she spoke again it was very soft, but not comforting. “You’re not going to burn anything down,” she said. “You aren’t going to set any fires.”
“What did I just say?”
“Youaren’t. You love this town.”
