Page 5 of Bluebell Tides

Sophie was quiet, tears filling her eyes. She couldn’t believe how weak she’d been.

Over the next half hour, the three cops explained that there would be financial and legal consequences for her and all her friends. There was CCTV footage of the cars that had come to drop her off. They would find all of her friends easily. She didn’t even have to hand over their names. Sophie didn’t know what to say. She wanted to point the blame at them. She wanted to tell them it wasn’t her fault. But the cops were right. She should have done more.

Now, the damage was done.

That night, the doctor came to assess her wounds and tell her that she was cleared to go the following morning. Sophie knew she needed to arrange pickup, but the last thing she wanted was to see Ethan again. Using the app on her phone, she arranged for a very, very expensive taxi to pick her up at ten in the morning. She prayed she’d have enough money for her May rent, then thanked her lucky stars that she’d survived to May at all.

She slept fitfully, her mind inundated with fiery nightmares that she couldn’t escape from. When she woke up the following morning, her mother called her, as though she could sense she needed help. “Good morning, honey!” she said. It was only three in the morning on the East Coast, which meant that her mother had been awake and thinking of her for hours. It probably meant she couldn’t sleep. “I’ve been watching the progress of that fire. It looks really bad. So many acres of woods, lost.”

Sophie’s stomach curdled with dread. “That’s terrible,” she croaked.

“I can’t believe you were there. Are they saying some campers caused it? Did you see them at all?” Celia asked.

Sophie closed her eyes tightly. “We heard them,” she said. “They were loud. Listening to music. Causing chaos.”

“I hate it,” Celia breathed.

Sophie hated herself far more than Celia could hate those campers. She knew.

“But you’re back on campus?” Celia asked.

“Yeah. Ethan and I are having a chill day in,” Sophie said. “It’s raining like crazy. I wish we could send it to the fire.”

“So glad you’re safe, honey,” Celia said. “I’d love to order you guys some delivery tonight. I can put money in your account and…”

“No. That’s all right,” Sophie said flatly. “We already have a plan for dinner.”

“Okay. Another time, then. Love you.”

At ten in the morning, Sophie left the hospital, her bandages clean and her head bowed forward. The taxi waited for her, its driver wearing a stern expression. Sophie slipped into the back seat, feeling as though she were being picked up from the principal’s office by an angry parent. They drove in silence, with the radio off, all the way back to East Oregon State. Sophie wondered if, somehow, he knew she’d been involved in the fire. But right before they reached her college town, she spotted the text messages pinging into his phone, which he kept strapped above the radio so that he could watch the map. The texts read: I don’t think this is working, and maybe I’ll move out for a few days.

Clearly, his mind was on something and someone else.

Sophie reached her apartment a little after one in the afternoon. Her three roommates, Tasha, Holly, and Lynne, were on the sofa, eating snacks and watching the news. On the screen, the fire raged across Oregon and threatened Washington. Sophie thought she was going to throw up. Tasha turned, her jaw ajar, and said, “Oh my gosh, Sophie!”

The three of them jumped up from the sofa to tend to Sophie. At their tenderness, Sophie couldn’t stop crying. Her shoulders shook. Lynne got to work, making soup. Tasha went out to buy wine, cookies, chocolate, and chips. Holly sat with Sophie on the sofa, turning off the television so that Sophie wouldn’t have to see it. Their eyes told Sophie that they knew something about her trip, if not everything. What had they been told?

Soon, Holly explained that she’d run into Ethan at a bar last night. “He was with those idiots, Freddy and Cedric, and they were so drunk. Like they couldn’t even talk. I knew they were supposed to be with you, so I asked where you were, and Ethan looked all bug-eyed and weird. He was like, “We didn’t do it. It wasn’t us. I swear.” I knew they were talking about the fire. I mean, it was too much of a coincidence, and word was spreading all over campus that it was probably East Oregon students who’d done it. I couldn’t believe you were there.”

Sophie’s stomach ached with hunger. She couldn’t bring herself to ask her friends why they hadn’t tried to call her or immediately tried to find her at the hospital. At least they were helping now. At least they were here, pouring soup into a bowl, opening bags of snacks, and asking her what would make her feel better.

“I told them not to make the fire,” Sophie said. “And now…”

“We know,” Tasha said, because they knew what kind of person Sophie was. The problem, of course, was that the cops didn’t know that. The state of Oregon didn’t know that.

Sophie spent another horrendous and restless night in bed, unable to toss and turn because of the burns. She didn’t want to cause an infection. She didn’t want to make this nightmare worse. She wondered if Ethan was sleeping soundly in that king-sized bed of his. Maybe he was already able to truly tell himself that he hadn’t done what he’d done.

The following morning, Sophie awoke at ten thirty to three emails from her beloved professors. In them, they detailed what they’d heard: that Sophie was at least partially responsible for the fire that raged across the forests and mountains. Each of them requested a private meeting with Sophie to discuss what had happened and whether they would feel comfortable having Sophie in the graduate program any longer. Sophie got up, went to the bathroom, and immediately vomited everything left in her stomach from last night. She was suddenly and horrifically unfit for the life she’d built for herself. She wondered if this was punishment for falling in love with the wrong guy. More than that: she wondered if this was punishment for being herself—insufficient, the wrong person to join the world of environmental science academia. Maybe she was never right for it.

She imagined telling her mother what was happening and immediately wanted to curl up in a ball.

Again, Celia called to check in. “I can’t believe this fire,” she said.

Sophie squeezed her eyes shut and willed her mother to talk about anything else.

“It’s a slow time at the Eco-Lodge,” Celia continued, sounding distracted. “A woman’s here. Ruth. You know, there’s something secretive about her. I’m starting to think she’s not telling me something.”

Sophie prayed that her mother wouldn’t catch on that she, too, was lying. “I’m sure she just wants to get away from her real life,” she said of Ruth.