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We hug as she reaches us.
“What are we doing today?” she asks, her eyes dropping to the bag in Dean’s arms. Smooth, real smooth of her to invite herself over.
“Dean’s making magic burgers and I’m not allowed to help, but I do get to eat them.”
I’m one hundred percent sure this is the best plan I’ve ever had.
“Magic burgers? Like with drugs in them or something?” she asks, confused. Dean shifts the bags in his arms as he laughs.
“No Lucy, we’re leaving your diamonds in the sky. They’re just going to be fucking epic burgers. You have to pick a team though. Are you a shit chef or are you on team Chef-The-Shit?”
Meggy rolls her eyes and throws her hands up in the air, acting as if the question offended her.
“I’m team-sit-on-the-couch-and-eat-the-shit-chef.”
I fist bump her, glad to have her on my team. Us girls need to stick together. There’s a reason we’re back to being besties again.
My phone rings and I step away from the conversation Meggy’s having with Dean. My screen shows O’s name and I answer immediately. Before I can even say hello, I can hear his voice that’s shriller than normal, alarming me.
“Get home now. Take Dean with you, hurry!”
I pick up on the panic he’s in.“Why? What happened?” My stomach drops.
“Somebody set your lawn on fire. The fire department is on the way, and the police are coming too.”
What. The. Fuck. This isn’t happening, right?
Dean and Meggy see my reaction to the phone call, and I signal them to turn around and start walking. “We’re on our way,” I tell O through the phone. “Are you safe?”
“I’m fine, the whole street is out, looking at what’s happening. Just get over here, so I can see you and know you’re safe.”
I up my pace and start jogging home, my heart pounding.
“Home,” I say to Meggy and Dean with a knot in my stomach while the phone” is still stuck against my ear. “Lawn is on fire. Fire department is on the way.”
They don’t ask questions, but just run along with me. Dean keeps his large strides in so that he doesn’t run too far ahead of Meggy and me. If there’s ever a time I’m happy to be living in a small town, it’s now, because we’re only three streets away from my house and I’m panting like a maniac before we’re even halfway there. If this had been Berkeley and we would’ve had to run a few blocks, I wouldn’t have made it.
I can hear sirens coming from behind me and when I look over my shoulder I see two fire trucks passing by. They drive past us in a hurry, but don’t drive like with the high speed I somehow expect them to.
“Fire department is almost there,” I tell O between breaths on the phone that’s pressed to my ear.
“I can hear the sirens already,” he answers. It’s only a few seconds later that he says he can see them, and I hear the sirens through the speaker of my phone. It’s surreal that they’re real and that they’re for a fire at my home. It’s like I’m outside of my own body, looking down on myself, having lost all connection to the girl I really am. The mix of fear and anger is almost paralyzing, and while I see that I’m moving my body, it’s as if it’s someone else. This can’t be real, right? This isn’t happening? Just a bad dream. I’m trying to cling to every ounce of hope I can find, but I’m having a hard time finding any. It’s like this is happening to someone else, who just happens to be me. I don’t feel like myself in my own skin, as if it belongs to this stranger. The sounds I hear through the phone pull me out of my head, and I focus on that instead.
I can hear the firefighters telling everybody to stay back and secure the scene. O god, there’s a scene? My house is a scene? What if the house catches on fire and burns down? My parents’ home can’t burn down. They won’t have anywhere to live when they come back from Europe. As we finally reach the corner of my street, I’ve managed to work myself up into the beginnings of a nice anxiety attack which only gets worse when I see the fire on my front lawn. There’s an elephant sitting on my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. My tingling fingers are fidgeting as my vision becomes blurry. There’s a million thoughts racing through my head, trying to convince me that this whole mess with Celia will last forever and there’ll never be a safe moment in my life again. When I try to take a deep breath to calm myself down, I find that I can’t. It’s shallow breaths all the way through and I think I might be suffocating.
Spelled in flames, on the lawn, is the word ‘mine’. It’s huge. It’s terrifying and it’s like I’m breathing through a straw. The only good thing I could say about it, was that the fire hadn’t spread to the house. Yet. I’d bet that if the fire department wasn’t here, it wouldn’t be long before everything would be aflame. The firemen are rolling out the fire hoses and are ready to start spraying them down. I stare at them until O breaks my stare as he takes me into his arms in a tight embrace.
“What the fuck O? What the fuck is wrong with this chick? I get that she’s sick, but why is my fucking lawn on fire. Fuck! Why isn’t your lawn on fire? It’s you she wants!”
O pushes me back a little until we’re at an arms-length of each other. His brows are close together and his mouth in a tight line but he doesn’t give me an answer. I guess because he doesn’t have one. No-one does.
Parts of the fire start to get hosed down and I just stare in horror, my stomach churning with a mix of anger and fear. This isn’t my life; this is the stuff of nightmares that happens to somebody else. It’s what happens on TV, or in books, but not in real life and certainly not in mine.
“Tell me this will end soon,” I quietly ask O, desperate for this whole situation to be over.
He turns his head to me slowly and opens his mouth without answering, his eyes darting back to the fire again.
“I don’t know Mor,” is all he says.
