by Abbie Lyons
“You got it,” said the White Girl Rastafarian. “Anything else?” she asked. I sighed and looked at the cooler. No Gatorade, but there was some activated charcoal coconut water concoction that probably had an equivalent amount of electrolytes. “Yeah,” I said. “Two of those. You take debit?”
It wasn't until she was ringing me up that I remembered again that I was technically only buying for one, but I had already handed over my card, which God only knows how little was left on, so it was really too late. “Your California Dreamin’ will be up in a minute,” she said, totally deadpan. She didn't even have the dignity to be embarrassed about how stupid the place she was working was.
I wandered up and down the aisles, waiting, as I heard slicing and sizzling sounds in the kitchen, smelling a distinct bacon-y smell that made my mouth water but my stomach turn. At least the place had good music. Bonnie Raitt was coming in over the speakers, a bit scratchy, singing about how she is an old woman named after her mother, and wants an angel to fly from Montgomery.
You and me both, sister.
I must have blanked for a second, because the next thing I knew, Dreadlocked White Girl was calling my name and waving a foil wrapped sandwich in my direction. As I approached the counter to take it, she gave me a weirdly pitying look.
“I was like you and your friend once,” she said. “Really strung out on the stuff, but I managed to get clean. And you can do it too. I know you can.”
“What the fuck?” I said. My brain was genuinely tied in a knot by what she was saying. Who was my friend? I don't have any friends. But then I remembered the junkie outside on the sidewalk with the jokesy sign. Oh God, I look so terrible that she thinks I’m a drug addict. If that wasn't a totally reasonable conclusion to have drawn, I would have felt insulted.
“I’m part of this group,” she said. “Meets once a month at a church downtown. I know, I know, but it’s not all weird and preachy—”
She tried to slide me a brochure.
“Yeah, thanks,” I muttered. “Sounds cool.”
I left the brochure.
I burst back out into the sweltering day with the first genuine emotion I felt all day, anger, burning in my stomach. She was trying to be helpful, I guess, but I felt judged. Not because she thought I was a junkie, but because she would treat a junkie with such condescension. As I stomped out, the wannabe life coach on the sidewalk beneath me was humming another song, some corny 80s tune I half-recognized.
“So how about that life advice?” he asked, cocking his head at me. I squinted, sweeping my hair to one side, and cocked my head back.
“You know what? Shoot. Whatcha got?” I handed him the bottle of coconut water, and on second thought, a ten-dollar bill. Hell, and a twenty, too. I didn't need it. Money felt fake. And if they could buy him a shower that was at least worth whatever I would’ve wasted it on.
His eyes widened, and he took the money and drink with a crusty hand. “You serious, kid? How do you know I won't just spend it on smack?”
“I don't,” I said simply. “But that's not for me to judge. Do whatever you want with it. Just give me my life coaching.” I actually cracked a smile. “Tell me what I should do with my life.”
“Right on, right on,” he said. Nodding slowly, he tucked the bills into the inside of his flak jacket and studied me. “In my professional opinion, you should...” He blinked. “Man, you gotta be nice to yourself.”
That was it? I laughed. Get what you pay for, I guess.
“I’m serious, kid!” he rasped. “Don’t be laughin’ at my professional opinion.”
“I'm not nice to anyone,” I said.
“You were just nice to me,” he countered, spreading his arms wide.
“No I wasn’t,” I countered back. “I genuinely wanted life advice.” That wasn't even a lie. “And you were selling for a pretty good rate, considering this is San Francisco. I'm just a client, exchanging money for a service.”
The junkie narrowed his eyes. “Kid, I'm updating my advice for you. You need to be less harsh on everyone.” He drew out all three syllables of the word.
I was ready for this session to be over.
“Here. Why don't you just take this?” I held out the foil wrapped package. I really wasn't hungry anymore, and it wasn't as if this guy had eaten more recently than I had, judging by how skinny he looked. He took the sandwich, but gave me a skeptical look.
“Why did you buy two?” he asked. “I don't see no boyfriend with you.”
I glanced over my shoulder. And then felt stupid. Because why was I doing a double take? I knew I didn't have a boyfriend.
Also, I hadn’t bought two. What was he talking about?
I looked down at my hands, and then down at his hands, and, sure enough, we each were holding a sandwich.
A chill ran down my spine, despite the heat of the day. Was I really going nuts? Was this it? Quinn finally loses all her marbles.
“I gotta go,” I told the guy. “Thanks for the life coaching.”
The guy didn't answer, just unwrapped and started eating like he hadn't seen a sandwich in years. In between the sounds of his going to town on the California Dreamin’—or one of the California Dreamins—I could make out the song he was singing when I walked up to him in the first place.
Just call me angel of the morning, angel—
I picked up my pace. The chill hadn't gone away from my skin and the sandwich felt like a rock in my hands. My stomach was twisting and my skin was coated with goosebumps.
Something really spooky was going on, and I wasn't sure if it was in my own head or real. I wasn't sure if I wanted it to be real. But I was sure I didn’t want it to be in my own head.
My sandals slapped against the hot sidewalk as I rounded the corner, almost skidding into a bunch of techbros with Ray-bans and matching smartwatches.
“Watch where you're going, bitch!” one of them said. I didn't even have the energy to flip him off. Something was telling me I had to get back home. Had to get out of the sunlight and brightness of the outside world and just dive back into the cave I never should have left.
I could hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing and my footsteps. The city had been reduced to a rushing roar around me. I was just a few blocks away, then a few steps. An arm's length. I looked up.
Our building had never been anything special, just another one of a thousand mega condoplexes thrown up to house all of the young tech people who didn't look twice at a six-month security deposit. But it sure as hell stood out now.
It was on fire.
Chapter Three
“Holy shit!” I screamed.
I dropped the sandwich like a hot coal and ran for the door. Sprinting, panting, the glassy panels and metal handle looming just in front of me.
I seized it immediately, and was just about to throw myself through the door when two massive arms wrapped around me and pulled me back.
“Get off me!” I yelled. “I need to get in there.”
“Miss, the building’s on fire.”
I turned around to face a firefighter, his face blackened with soot and his helmet askew, sweat dripping from the rim. He was still restraining me. He looked down at my palms, puzzled. I did too, and I realized that they weren't burned.
“You did grab the handle, didn't you?” he said.
I didn't have time for this. I need to get in there. My stuff is in there.
“You can’t go in, miss. It's not safe, even in the least,” he said, almost incredulous at how I could be so stupid. “It's structurally unsound. It’s—"
As if in response to his warning, a crashing boom exploded outward into the street as some hidden gas pipe or pocket of air ignited and pushed out all the glass panels of the second and third floor. I flung my hands above my head as crystal shards skittered down around us. The fireman, who was old enough to be my father and surprisingly paunchy for someone whose job involved athletic leaps into buildings to save people, tried to cover me with his own arms,
but by the time he did, the shower was over.
“Your belongings can be replaced,” he said, as though reciting from a script. “Nothing you have up there is worth your life.”
My ears rang nauseously. “You don't understand,” I told him. “You just...you don't understand.”
None of my stuff was worth my life. But Scott’s stuff was.
Scott was always a fantasy dork. Not me—not even remotely—but Scott was obsessed. Board games, video games, collectibles, posters. You’d think it would make him a social pariah, but he had more friends than I did (which was zero). They got together once a week to play D&D, push their little figurines around on a board.
And all that stuff was still inside.
For a split second, the firefighter turned away from me, a radio crackling in the distance that he needed to respond to, and I took the opening.
I tugged my way out of his grasp and dashed for the door a second time, grabbing the handle and flinging it open before anyone could stop me.
“Miss!” he screamed after me. “Miss, you can't!”
But another thundering crash followed, and soon I was in the hallway of my building. Something blazing and smoking, blocking my way out and the only way up. I’d have to take the stairs.
I dashed forward, the smoke instantly stinging my eyes and burning in my mouth.
It was fucking stupid and I knew that. But I had nothing to lose. I literally had nothing to lose. I'd lost everything, everything that mattered, and I wasn’t going to lose any more.
I flung an arm over my mouth, as if that was enough to cover it from smoke, and headed for the stairs. The building was completely charmless in the common spaces, slick and modern looking, with no décor, which now seemed to be a slight advantage as there wasn’t too much that was flammable out in the open. I shouldered my way past the heavy metal door and into the staircase. Up one flight of stairs, then two. We were on the third floor. And by the time I got there, my muscles were straining. An acid taste in my mouth. My eyes crying the bitter stupid tears of someone who didn't care about living and wanted to die in as much pain as possible.
No. I'm not going to die.
I barreled through the door into our hallway. The smoke there was acrid, black, impenetrable, and I had to forge forward by feeling only. Something broken ripped against my bare legs, and my hair swirled around me, catching soot as my eyes continued to stream. But somehow, I managed to get to the end of the hallway. It was blisteringly hot, sweltering. Every pore on my body felt like it was liquefying. But I had a strange sense of calm. The certainty that I needed to get in there. And if I died doing it, well...that didn't seem like a tragedy.
I couldn't save Scott. But I could save something.
And suddenly I knew exactly what I had to save.
Scott and his geek buddies got me to play D&D once. Not having anything better to do, I said sure. I’d figured it would be like Risk or Stratego, a game with lots of complex rules about diplomacy and statecraft and Model UN dorks getting their kicks, but in fact, it turned out to be more like a combination of Lord of the Rings and improv comedy: you had to embody a character and navigate the world as them, announcing all your actions to the rest of the group and rolling dice to see if you had enough power to pull it off.
“Here.” Scott had placed something into my hand. “She’s you.”
I’d held the thing up to my face: a tiny model of a woman, with my same blonde hair and slightly upturned nose, but dressed in a flowing cape with huge shoulder pads, a blue tunic, brown boots, and wielding a broadsword.
“She looks like me,” I said, staring. “Like, creepily like me.”
“Yeah, did my best.” Scott shrugged. “I know I’m a shitty artist, but—“
I looked closer at the hair and face of my tiny warrior girl. “Holy shit, you painted this?”
Scott grinned, looking suddenly much more like the eight-year-old who pushed me into the swimming hole than the 24-year-old millionaire computer genius. “Yah. What did you think I was doing in my bedroom with the door closed every night?”
I raised an eyebrow. Scott gave me a little chuck on the shoulder.
“All right, all right,” he said. “Don’t be gross. She’s a paladin, by the way. A holy warrior. So you can deal some DPS, but you also have healing powers. Her name’s Meladryne Dawnbringer.”
I looked up from Meladryne’s tiny, determined face, ready to make a quip about the ridiculous name, but Scott was staring at me, eyebrows up and eyes wide, and the words died in my throat.
I’d never forget that look. He had worked hard on this, I remember being able to see it on his face. Because he’d been right, he never was the artistic type. And in that moment, he’d been just a big brother wanting his kid sister to play with him.
“She’s perfect,” I’d said, and I’d meant it.
“Augh!”
I slammed my body forward through the graying air. Thankfully, my dumb ass had not locked the door when I had gone out, because the security was tight at the front entrance of the building, so it was easy enough to get back into our place with a push. Again, the door didn't feel heavy or hot, even though the air around it did. When I breathed in, I could taste the smoke, but I wasn't choking.
Must be the adrenaline. I didn't have time to wonder why I could still breathe. I was on a mission. Focus, Quinn.
I stumbled forward into our living room—or living area, since it was all one open concept dwelling, and fell to my knees, where the smoke was thinner near the floor. I scrambled forward like a baby on my hands and knees, tossing my hair out of my face and almost retching from the taste of the air, even though I still wasn't gasping yet.
On the coffee table was my whiskey bottle, my phone—now a melted piece of plastic and glass—and a stack of papers, mostly boring printouts, probate papers, bills from the funeral home. Stuff I wasn't going to look at for the next thousand years if I had the choice.
I pushed them all away in a giant flutter of paper.
Where is it? Where is that goddamn figurine?
Receipts, envelopes, condolence cards, nothing. Another earsplitting boom sounded from somewhere above. If this entire building collapsed on me there was no way I would survive. I was such an idiot.
No, you’re not, Quinn.
For some reason, the advice of my life coach came back to me. I needed to be nicer to myself.
At this point, no one else would.
You’re not an idiot. You’re not.
I hated talking to myself like that, even in the quiet of my own mind, but when I opened my eyes, I finally saw it. On the lower level of the coffee table, next to a velvet bag full of many-sided dice, my tiny warrior lady.
I clutched for her with a hand that was, to my horror, grimy and the color of a lump of coal, and seized her tiny plastic body in my fingers.
I’m here, Meladryne.
It was a ridiculous thing to think. The heat was like a physical weight around me now. But the panic that I should have felt, that kick of adrenaline that would send me into overdrive and maybe give me a heart attack, never came. I felt weirdly cold clutching that figurine.
It was like drowning. I almost drowned once: Scott and I had been at our grandmother’s for the summer and gone out to a swimming hole, I'd insisted I was big enough to get in there by myself to swim the backstroke, which I had just learned, and Scott was good natured enough to let me. But my little arms and legs weren't as strong as I thought, and I didn't account for the fact that once I paddled my way out to the center of the swimming hole, I'd still have to go back. The thrashing feeling of the murky water around me, the indignity of knowing that I would die for such a stupid reason, the pressure, the pressure, the weight—it was all exactly the same.
Except instead of being seven years old and in a Lisa Frank bathing suit, I was eighteen and in the middle of a fireball in a city where no one cared whether I lived or died.
“Kid!”
A voice barked at me. I flutte
red my eyes open, jolted out of my reverie.
“Who's there?” I said, or tried to say. I couldn't even tell if my voice was coming out in any audible fashion.
I couldn't actually believe it. It was the crazy junkie from outside the deli. My life coach. But then again, why wouldn't he be here? Nothing made sense at this point, and even though I didn't feel any heat or burning on my body, I was surely inhaling tons of carcinogens and screwing up my brain function. This might be a hallucination.
“Kid!” he yelled again. I scrambled away, crawling like a crab. He was crouching near me, holding his hand out, and even though it was smoky in the room, I could tell that he looked somehow...cleaner? It didn't make a ton of sense, but again, nothing did.
Yeah, this is a hallucination. Maybe this is what happens right before you die.
Well, so be it. I scrambled further and crawled for the door, but my life coach was right behind me. It was like he was flying. He landed right in front of the door, blocking my way out.
“What are you doing?” I cried, the taste of the smoke like licking a charcoal briquette. “I need to...I need to get out.”
“Come with me, kid,” he said. He held out a hand.
Come with you where? I wondered. “I'm not going anywhere with you,” I said.
He pushed his hand further into the smoggy air between us. “Just trust me. You need to come with me.”
The panic that I'd been keeping at bay for so long was flooding into my body. My skin felt electric. My heart was pounding in triple time as if an instinct was telling me, if you're going to survive, you have to get away from this guy.
“No!” I cried. I scrambled away toward the only other exit I could figure out in the room: the window.
We were on the third floor and had a disgustingly gorgeous view out our huge picture window. Probably part of the reason that rent was so fucking expensive: so that we could look at all the things that weren't actually inside the several-thousand-dollar apartment. We barely ever opened it, usually having climate control on and not wanting to get in fresh air. But now there was nothing more that I wanted than fresh air.
