Feeding the Fire

by Amy Waeschle

  Stef charged at his dad, and she was free.

  Jessie rolled off the bed, tugging her pants back into place, her eyes uncomprehending the scene before her. Stef and his dad crashed to the floor, with Stef landing on top of him and his dad’s head knocking down with a thud. The gun lay across the room. Stef’s fist slammed down, landing with a sickening smack somewhere on his dad’s face. He raised his fist again but his dad blocked it, and then they were rolling and scrapping.

  “Run, Jessie!” Stef called out.

  Jessie heard a roar from outside the room and realized the only thing that could make that noise. “Fire!” she called out, now feeling the rising heat. Bright orange light was glowing into the room from the hallway. Then, she smelled the smoke.

  Where had the fire come from? Had Stef set it? If so, how, with a timer? Had this been his plan all along? Or had he snuck away while his dad had her against the bed, knowing it was the one thing that would get him to stop?

  “We have to get out of here!” she cried.

  Stef and his dad were still rolling, grunting, kicking. His dad slammed Stef’s head to the floor, making a sickening crunch.

  “Stef!” Jessie shrieked.

  Stef rammed his head into his dad’s chin, knocking him back. Stef pounced, pushing his dad back, and slammed another punch at his face. Jessie saw his dad’s head thrown back. Stef hit him again. This time, Jessie saw blood spew from his face.

  Waves of heat filled the room, searing her face. Her eyes began to burn from the smoke.

  Something crashed outside in the hallway, making her scream.

  Stef stood from the still figure of his dad and raced to her side.

  “Are you okay?” he called out over the inferno.

  Jessie nodded. I am now.

  “I’m sorry!” he said through his cracked, bleeding lips. His swollen, beaten face looked desperate.

  “Let’s go!” she yelled over the sound of the hungry flames.

  Stef grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the exit. Jessie took one last glance at Stef’s dad on the floor.

  They stepped into the hallway. But what Jessie saw didn’t seem real. Orange flames danced up the walls of the fake wood paneling to the ceiling, where blackened fingers of fire inched towards them. Thick black smoke billowed into the hallway and the carpet was smoking. Crackling and snapping, the fire sounded like boulders rolling down a mountain.

  “We have to get to my room!” Stef shouted, tugging the neck of his sweatshirt over his mouth.

  Jessie did the same and let him lead her through the burning heat and acrid smoke to his room. The doorway was a ring of yellow-orange fire, blazes leaping up to the ceiling tiles. They dashed through, the smoke obscuring everything. Eyes closed, she hurried forward, away from the fire until she felt the far wall hit her hands. She squinted at Stef who was sliding his window open. The room was so hot now, sweat dripped down her face.

  A gust of fire breathed into Stef’s room from the hallway, and she saw bright tongues of flames leaping up from the carpet, racing to fill the room. The fire spread to the ceiling, filling the room with a giant gust of smoke. Her whole body was sweating, and her eyes hurt so bad she could only squint.

  Stef punched out the screen. “Here!” he said, clasping his hands to make a step for her.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’m right behind you!” he managed through a fit of coughing. Something else crashed outside his room.

  Jessie stepped into his hands and pushed off. She folded her body over the windowsill then pulled one leg out and rolled forward the rest of the way, landing on her side in the grass. Coughing, she tried to get up but only managed to get to her knees, her throat so tight that sucking in the dewy night air took all of her energy. Another crash from inside the house made her turn and she quickly scrambled away in terror. Every window of the trailer was lit by a bright yellow glow, and a plume of smoke expanded upward into the trees.

  A spasm of coughing rippled through her chest. She wiped her face which was drenched in sweat.

  “Stef!” she cried, but it came out like a croak. Where was he? She had to get help. She tried to stand but everything hurt. The inferno blazed before her, sending a tower of black smoke and red-hot particles into the night. It sucked the oxygen from the trees and the grass—she could hear it roaring, as if the fire was some kind of greedy, horrible monster inhaling everything into its giant mouth.

  “Stef!” she cried again.

  Finally, she found her feet and ran.

  Chapter 34

  Zach

  Zach saw the fire from a block away and stomped on the accelerator while dialing 911. By the time he skidded to a stop in front of the trailer, there was no time to waste. The trailer would be fully involved in minutes. Was someone still inside the trailer? He had already completed a three-second assessment of the driveway: no vehicle in the driveway and no toys, bikes, skateboards on the lawn.

  Those were positive signs, but they didn’t clear the possibility that someone was trapped.

  Like Jessie and the boy.

  He stepped from the truck, the thunder of the blaze filling his ears. He grabbed the fire extinguisher from behind his seat. From inside the house, he heard glass shattering. Feeling his teeth grind in his mouth, he raced to the front door, but a figure half-running, half-limping came around the corner, stopping him in his tracks.

  “Jessie!” he cried. He ran to her and took her in his arms, the relief that she was alive flooding into him so fast that he felt the forest spin around him. “Are you hurt?” he yelled over the inferno, using its light to inspect her face and body for signs of injury.

  “Stef’s still inside!” she cried, her eyes desperate.

  “Where?” Zach asked.

  “His room,” she said. “It’s—”

  “I know where it is,” he said as Jessie suffered a fit of coughing. “Stay here.”

  He laid her in the grass a safe distance away and turned to go, noticing the shadows of a half-dozen spectators gathered on the other side of the street.

  “Zach!” Jessie croaked. “His dad’s in there too,” she added as he looked back.

  Zach ripped off his coat, using it like a mask against his face and raced to the front door, scooping up the fire extinguisher on his way and releasing the pin. With a hard kick, the door popped open. Smoke billowed out. Zach didn’t give himself a moment to assess the risks. He already knew that the chances of him not coming out alive were high, but that he was going anyway.

  He tucked his face into his coat and entered, spraying the chemicals at the flames with his other hand, staying low. His burning eyes began to water, an instant later snot from his nose dripped over his upper lip. The heat from the carpet burned his feet as he moved swiftly down the hall. His skin was sweating from the intensity, and he could feel a searing pain chewing on his ears and the top of his head. Zach sprayed the doorway of the first bedroom and stepped inside. He dropped to his knees, hoping to find better air. One wall was on fire, the material crackling and hissing. He crawled forward, blind, sweeping the hot carpet with his hands, hoping to run into the boy. The window was open, and smoke flooded out of it. Instantly, he knew how Jessie had gotten out, and where Stef must be. He hurried forward, coughing into his shirt, spraying at the flames that were leaping to life all around him.

  Then, he bumped into something solid. He found the boy’s shoulders and shook them. “Hey!” he shouted. The boy didn’t respond. Zach slid two fingers against the boy’s carotid artery and felt the soft tap of his pulse. So he was alive.

  The smoke had thickened. He had already assessed the chances of getting Stef and himself out the window vs. the front door. The front door was faster, but he would have to go through the flames to get there. And his extinguisher was almost empty.

  He felt for a handful of clothing behind Stef’s neck and found the collar of his coat. On his knees, he dragged Stef forward in one long pull, then stopped to breathe through h
is coat-mask, then dragged him again. They reached the doorway and Zach saw that the fire had consumed the ceiling. Flames danced up from the carpet. Zach blasted a jet of retardant into the hallway. The flames died back and Zach threw the extinguisher ahead, then dragged Stef forward. This is taking too long! he thought. This whole thing’s gonna go any minute.

  “Zach!” a voice called into the smoke.

  “Stay back!” Zach cried out, recognizing Mike’s voice.

  He heard the spray of a fire extinguisher from the direction of the doorway and dragged the boy forward, the carpet burning his hands and knees. Inside the living room, the smoke was so thick that he couldn’t see the flames, but he could hear them. Raging, hungry, like an animal devouring its prey. His eyes burned too much to keep them open, his face was coated in the snot running from his nose. He followed the sound of the fire extinguisher, dragging Stef’s body with him. At last he reached the front door and collapsed just outside the threshold.

  “I got him,” he heard Mike’s voice say.

  Then, through the raging sound of the flames devouring the roof did he hear the sirens.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Jessie

  Jessie woke to the sound of someone crying. Her hospital room was dark, and the figure sat close, holding her hand. Outside her door she could hear the steady swish of feet passing, distant beeping, and muffled conversations.

  “Jessie?” her mom’s stuffy voice said.

  “Mom,” Jessie said, her senses awakening. She blinked at the bare walls and starchy sheets. Everything felt sort of swimmy. The headache she’d had earlier was gone, replaced by a kind of soft emptiness.

  “You came back,” Jessie said, still feeling strange. Like waking from a dream, but not quite all the way.

  Her mom’s serious look brought it all together: she saw herself run to Zach when he came out of the house with Stef but someone had grabbed her, held her back as they loaded him and Stef in an ambulance and sped away. Snatches of the radio exchange blared as she was loaded into an ambulance of her own: Life Flight, Raab Park, CPR in progress. Her throat burned, making it hard to talk. “Is he going to be okay?” she’d asked the medic who was riding in the back with her. But he was too busy doing something to her arm to hear her raspy voice.

  “Oh, God, Jessie,” her mom said, her soft eyes connecting with hers.

  “Where’s Zach?” she asked.

  Her mom’s expression tightened. “He’s going to be okay,” she said, her grave expression breaking for an instant. She wiped a tear from her cheek.

  Jessie felt the sweet relief draw her back into the covers.

  “And Stef?”

  Her mom’s gaze dropped to the sheets for a moment, and Jessie saw a tear drop, staining the white fabric with a grey dot. Finally, she looked back at Jessie. “They tried, honey. But . . . I’m so sorry.”

  Jessie stared at the ceiling for a long moment, not comprehending. The sounds of the room assaulted her: the beeping machines, the vent moving cool air into the room, her mom’s sniffling. “But he was right behind me,” Jessie said, barely able to get out the words before her throat clamped shut.

  She could feel the sheets pulled tight over her body and the firmness of the narrow mattress beneath her. Breathing hurt and she realized that she was doing it faster. The tears flooded out then, hot on her already hot face.

  Her mom rubbed her hand.

  A high, airy howl escaped her lips. She glared at the ceiling, her chest tight with the sudden rush of anger. “No,” she said, the tears blurring her eyes. She remembered the fighting and the roar of the fire, Stef’s hands laced together to make her a step and his arms boosting her up.

  “Jessie?” her mom’s concerned voice said from somewhere far away.

  She blinked and her mom was there.

  A deep throbbing from her right leg spread into her knee and hip. She remembered the IV line going in and the medic cutting her jeans from her leg, and later, the sting of the shot before the stitches. A heaviness sunk into her.

  “You’ll be able to come home soon,” her mom said.

  Home, Jessie thought with longing.

  A short, round nurse dressed in pink scrubs walked in, bringing a gush of noise from the busy hallway. She approached the opposite side of the bed from her mom.

  “How are we doing?” she asked, checking the bag of IV fluid dripping into her arm.

  Jessie tried to find her voice but no sound came.

  “Are you having any pain?” the nurse asked, her plain, round face turning to Jessie.

  Jessie couldn’t stop the tears. What had happened to Stef? Why couldn’t they save him? “My leg hurts,” she said.

  “Twelve stitches and a dislocated patella will do that,” the nurse said in a cheerful voice. Jessie realized that she was making a joke, but couldn’t seem to react the right way.

  “Let’s see if we can get you something to make you feel better, okay?” The woman looked at Dana and their eyes exchanged some kind of understanding. “I’ll be right back.”

  After the nurse left, her mom pulled her chair a little closer. “Jessie, I . . . ” She paused, took a breath. “Something happened on my flight to Anchorage. I’ll tell you about it in a few days.” She took Jessie’s hand in hers and squeezed. More tears leaked from her mom’s eyes. “But it made me realize how wrong I’ve been. That I hadn’t been very good at paying attention . . . to a lot of things. But I had no idea that I would come home to find . . . ” She broke down again, and retightened her grip on Jessie’s hand. “I can’t believe that you . . . that Zach . . . ” She covered her eyes with her other hand and cried softly. “That I almost lost you both.”

  Jessie’s heart hung on the word “lost” as the sensation took hold. She would never again see Stef’s tiger eyes, or skate with him, or feel the reassuring grip of his hand.

  “Did his dad . . . ?” she asked, picturing the man’s lifeless form on the floor as the smoke curled into the room.

  Her mom seemed startled by her question. “They . . . couldn’t get to him in time,” she said.

  For some reason, this news made her start to cry again.

  The nurse barged in holding a small, rectangular tray.

  Jessie tried to stop crying but couldn’t. It was like someone had turned on a faucet. She remembered the feel of the man’s bare legs against hers and the way she had no escape. What would have happened if Stef hadn’t been there?

  She thought again about the fire and its cause. It had to be Stef, though how he had done it, she couldn’t fathom. Stef was smart enough to have designed something to go off at the right time. But had he intended it to go off while they were still in there or had his dad waking up thrown everything off?

  “This should fix you right up,” the nurse said, seemingly unruffled by her crying. She placed the tray on her side table, then uncapped a needle and injected the contents into the tube attached to her wrist. A cold sensation spread up her arm.

  “When will we be able to go home?” her mom asked.

  The nurse checked her watch. “Probably tomorrow,” she replied, capping the needle. “We’re still monitoring for swelling in her airway,” she said. “But if she continues to do well, she could get out of here sooner. I’ll find out and get back to you.” She tucked the syringe into a red plastic container on the wall then picked up the empty tray and left.

  Almost immediately, Jessie began to feel brighter, and the heaviness in her chest lifted. The pain in her leg faded too, and within minutes, shifted to the background.

  “Maybe I’ll let you rest,” her mom said, withdrawing from her hand.

  “No,” Jessie said. “Please stay.”

  Nobody had prepared her for what it would be like to see Zach in bed, his hands in bandages. His face was bright red, too, like a really bad sunburn. White bandages covered his ears, the right side his neck, and the top of his head. Everyone said he was lucky to have not severely burned his face, but it still looked bad.

  His
eyes lit up when she entered, but Jessie approached slowly. There were flowers on his side table and other gifts on the sitting area below the window that looked out over a gray-brown cityscape—teddy bears, cards that someone had opened, more flowers. Jessie felt bad for not bringing something.

  “Glad to see you up and around,” he said, grinning. The nurses had told her mom that he would need a skin graft for his right hand. He had a long road of recovery ahead of him, but he would heal.

  “What are you watching?” she asked, looking up at the TV mounted on the wall behind her to see a blur of people running on a green field.

  He shrugged. “Soccer. You can turn it off.”

  Jessie realized that he didn’t have good use of his fingers, and hurried to the remote. “Do you want me to?”

  “Please,” he said.

  Jessie wondered what else he needed help with. “How do you eat?” she asked, settling into a chair.

  He held up his left hand, which wasn’t bandaged quite as thickly. “These work pretty good. Though I’m still on mostly liquids.” He eyed the IV. “I did spoon up some applesauce earlier.” His cheerful state unsettled her. Shouldn’t he be furious?

  “What’s going to happen with the house?” she asked.

  Zach’s brows knitted in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  She eyed his right hand. “You wanted it closed up, right?”

  Zach nodded. “It’s close. Brody said he’ll finish it for me. Some of the guys are going to pitch in too.”

  Jessie looked at his blue eyes, so stark and clear against his beat-up face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean . . . ” Tears flooded up to her eyes and burned over her lids.

  “Have you talked to anyone about what happened yet?” he asked softly.

  “The police,” she said, remembering the cop coming to her hospital room and asking her questions while her mom held her hand. She tried to be helpful, but there was so much she didn’t know. Had Stef started the fire? When the cop had asked her to tell the story, from the beginning, it felt like such a long road. He let her talk, taking notes, but when she got to the part about his dad and Stef fighting, he started asking questions: Where were you when all this was happening? Did you try to run? She wanted to do a good job, but then had come up against what his dad had tried to do to her. She skipped over it, but the cop picked up right away on her pause, and that’s when he stopped. She was supposed to talk again, this time with a woman cop.