“I hope you’re hungry,” Dad says.
“Starving,” I admit. He hands me a steaming cup of coffee, and I load it with cream and sugar until the color is blond and it tastes like dessert.
“Here’s my credit card for the tires.” He flips the bacon. “I’m going to miss you when you go to college, Bug. I couldn’t be prouder, you know that, right?”
He’s trying to make up for snapping at me about the tires last night, but I deserved it. I deserve worse, actually. What I don’t deserve is his pride, not anymore. I slink up to him and circle my arms around his waist, keeping a wary eye on the grease-popping bacon. “I’ll be home every holiday.”
He sighs, offers a smile. “You say that now.”
“I will. I’ve got to check on Matilda and the horses at least.”
“But not me?”
For a sheriff, my dad plays the victim well. “Yes, you too, if you promise to make me breakfast every day.” I nudge him playfully.
“Every day?” He nudges me back. “I’ll think about it.”
After breakfast, he heads to the station without a word about what he’s got planned today regarding the investigation. That’s okay—I have my own plans. Today I’m buying the monsters a set of untraceable prepaid phones.
I slouch off to my bedroom, kick dirty clothes out of my way, and grab the new shampoo I bought after the house cleaners threw away all the open containers. Dad got a decent-sized check from the insurance company to replace our smoke-damaged stuff, and what we didn’t spend went straight into my college fund.
I start the shower and step into the spray. It’s almost eighty degrees outside already and getting hotter. The winds have settled here but continue to whip the Gap Fire into an inferno at the national park. Animal rescuers have darted dozens of confused and starving wild animals and relocated them. One of the stories I read last night described an entire herd of bighorn sheep becoming trapped on a ridge. They perished of smoke inhalation before the fire reached them. A wildlife photographer with a telephoto lens took photos of the cremated sheep that made national news.
I drop my face into my hands and breathe as the water runs down the back of my neck. I adjust the knob, making it hotter and hotter until my skin is red and scalded and steam fills the bathroom. My shoulders quake, and a few tears leak from my eyes. “No!” I slap myself. “Stop it!”
I pour too much shampoo into my hand and wash my hair, condition it, then rinse the soap off my body. The bathroom fills with steam as I step out of the shower and wipe the mirror. My face is beet red. Good people do bad things, right? I’m not unique.
After my shower, I throw on fresh cutoffs and a tank top and keep busy, cleaning up the chipped blue breakfast dishes, starting the dishwasher, feeding the horses, and shoveling manure. When my chores are done, I snap a photo of the sizing information on my flat trailer tires and then drive to Bishop with the soft top removed. Matilda sits in the passenger seat, her big red ears flying behind her, and I blast the tunes.
The road unravels ahead of us, a series of forested bends as I coast down the mountain, heading south toward Bishop. It’s a beautiful stretch, normally: noble pines line the road, and ancient sequoias reach for the clouds. The first glimpse of the Mono County valley stretches ahead, and pine cones tumble in our wake. Green trees, blue skies, and mountain air—this landscape used to settle me, but not anymore.
Thousands of acres along this road burned that first day, and the pink-dyed fire retardant is still caked on the shoulders. Matilda whines at the scent of it. Maybe she remembers she almost died here.
I turn up the music and drive faster.
My errand in Bishop doesn’t take long, and soon I have two new tires loaded in the backseat of my Jeep.
Next, I throw on a baseball cap and sunglasses and stop at the Rite Aid. I’ve brought cash, and I use it to buy five prepaid cell phones. The hit to my savings hurts, but if these phones keep the monsters out of jail, they’re worth it. Back in my car, I take off the sunglasses, put them on Matilda, and snap a photo of her. “You’re a star, Mattie.”
She swipes the glasses off with her paw and shakes her head. Across the street is the Holiday Inn where I evacuated, and I think about Justin, the guy who gave Matilda and me a ride—he lives in Bishop. He asked me out, and I sort of brushed him off because of his age, but it’s daylight and I have my dog—I’m safe.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I text him: Hi, it’s Hannah. I’m in Bishop. The phone is quiet and Matilda yawns, showing all her teeth. I swallow, feeling suddenly stupid and young—he probably forgot about me. I start my car to go home.
Ping! A text from Justin: shit im on the road for work. How long you here?
Not long. I have to work at 4.
Damn. I’m off at 5. i want to see you Hannah.
I have no idea how to respond to that.
You live in gap mountain right? I could pick you up for dinner
My pulse flutters. A date at night—that’s not what I had in mind. I thought maybe lunch or a walk with Matilda. How do I get out of this? I have plans tonight, I lie.
Tomorrow then?
Shit. I need to unwind this. Can I get back to you?
A pause and then he writes, k. That’s it, just k. I feel his disappointment in that single letter and drop my phone onto the passenger seat. I glance at Matilda, who’s panting. “Want to go home?”
She barks. I take that as a yes, and we drive home. Matilda sits tall in the front passenger seat, tongue lolling, eyes squinted against the wind. My skin soaks up the sun, and hope flows through me. We have secret phones, Mo explained the photo to the investigators, her phone is destroyed—we’re going to be fine. We just have to stick together and keep our mouths shut.
The weak link is Violet. She can afford a lawyer, and she doesn’t have to live here full-time. She can go home. Confessing wouldn’t destroy her life as it would ours. I need to calm her and get her reconnected to Gap Mountain before she does something we’ll all regret. I snap my fingers. That’s it! Suddenly, I know what to do. It’s our last summer before college. It’s time the monsters had a little fun!
15
July 23
Gap Fire: 40% contained
Fatalities: 10
Time: 2:00 p.m.
When I got home from Bishop yesterday, I delivered the prepaid phones to the monsters and invited Mo and Violet on a trail ride. “Girls only,” I said, because lately I don’t enjoy Violet’s company if Drummer is within a hundred feet of us.
No one questioned the phones except Violet: “Burner phones? This feels criminal.” I had no friendly response for that, so I said nothing. “I’m not using it,” Violet said.
“Just keep it on you. We won’t use them unless we have to talk about the fire.”
She accepted it with a ferocious swipe of her hand and threw it into her purse.
* * *
—
Now it’s 2:00 p.m. the next day, and my friends are pulling into my driveway. I drop the textbook I’m reading, slide on my boots, and run outside. “Stay,” I command Matilda at the screen door. She cocks her head and whines at me.
There hasn’t been another press conference about the fire investigation yet as the detectives pursue their leads and wait for crime lab results. Luke’s pipe worries me the most, because his fingerprints are on file, but it’s possible the heat destroyed them. The beer bottle worries me less, because it might not be ours. Most kids in Gap Mountain drink Bud Light.
Violet and Mo arrive in separate cars, dressed to ride. Violet jumps out of her Trackhawk, beaming, her dimples dark and deep. “Hannah!” she hugs me tight, as if we haven’t started a wildfire and murdered ten people together. I squeeze her back. Yes, this is what we need, some normalcy.
Mo pops out of her Corolla, equally happy and relaxed. She’s stopped wearing h
er N95 mask outside, and her cheeks are flushed with healthy color. She and Violet glance at the paddocks, and their smiles deepen. It’s the horses, I realize. Riding is the best therapy, and we three desperately need therapy.
After I greet Mo, we enter the barn, chattering about college. Mo received her roommate assignment and connected with the girl already. “She seems nice,” Mo says.
I got my roommate’s name right before the fire and have totally forgotten about her since. Violet won’t have a roommate. She put a deposit on an off-campus private apartment near Stanford. “I don’t sleep well with others,” she explains.
You sleep just fine with Drummer, I think, but don’t say it out loud. Today is for equines, not boys. “Violet, you ride Pistol, I’ll ride Sunny, and Mo, you can ride Stella.”
We tack up the horses, fill our saddlebags with the sandwiches Mo brought, and mount up. “Hold the reins with one hand,” I remind Violet, since she’s used to riding English style.
“I know,” she mutters as she fusses with Stella’s mane, which is full of burrs.
God, I should have brushed the horses better. Violet’s are always immaculate. “I’ll go first,” I say. “Sunny needs to practice leading.”
As we walk onto the trail from my house, Sunny is on high alert. If a bear eats us, it’ll be his fault and he knows it. He lifts his tail high and blows hard out of his nostrils, warning all bears to stay away.
Violet giggles as she watches my colt spook at every shadow. “He’s such a scaredy-cat.”
I shrug. “He’s just young.” Eventually, Sunny stops prancing because he gets tired fast, like a toddler.
“This is so great,” Violet says, and I glance back to see her blissful expression. “I miss riding. We should be doing this every day—riding, swimming, watching movies, being lazy.”
Mo and I agree with her. Starting the fire and driving everyone indoors because of bad air quality has ruined our summer plans.
“Where are we going, Han?” Mo asks.
“The Blue Ridge trail is nice, and it didn’t burn in the fire. There’s a creek where the horses can drink and a view for miles from the top.”
We meander through the forest trails, and the horses relax in direct relation to the heat: the hotter it gets, the quieter they are. I inhale the scent of dry tree mulch and pine sap and feel myself unwind.
“Hey, guess who sings this?” Violet warbles a few verses of a song I’ve never heard before.
“I don’t know. Who?” asks Mo.
“Billie Eilish. It’s good, isn’t it? Kind of goes with these big old trees.” She gestures toward the spiraling evergreens.
We morph into more chat about college—what to bring to the dorms, what classes to take, how long we think it’ll take us to graduate. We pretend that the Gap Fire never happened.
Halfway to the ridge, a pine cone falls off a tree and shatters on the ground, sounding like a small explosion. Stella rears and bolts.
Mo leans forward and grabs the horn, screaming as her horse gallops past us, but that’s Stella’s cue to run faster.
“Sit up!” I cry.
“I want off!” she yells back.
“Turn her in a circle,” Violet calls.
Mo either can’t hear or she’s too panicked to listen, so I put my fingers to my mouth and whistle, like I do when I grain the horses, and it works. Stella loves grain, and she changes course and gallops to Sunny’s side and skids to a halt, nickering for food.
Mo slides out of the saddle, her legs trembling violently. “Oh my god,” she whispers, dropping to her knees. “I can’t breathe.”
“Her inhaler!” Violet shouts.
I jump off Sunny’s back, dig through Stella’s saddlebags, find the inhaler, and give it to Mo. She sucks on it, and slowly her breathing returns to normal. “This is why I don’t ride horses,” she wheezes.
Violet cocks her head. “Because you have asthma?”
“No, because they’re stupid! How can something so big be afraid of a pine cone?”
Violet and I fall over laughing. Mo is fine.
Since this is not a scenic place to rest, I gather the horses’ reins and hand Stella’s to Mo. She crosses her arms. “I’m not getting back on.”
“It’s my fault,” I say. “I haven’t exercised the horses enough since the fire, too smoky. We can walk to the creek if you want, it’s not far.” So we all walk our horses to the creek, and Violet sulks because she still wants to ride. When we arrive, the horses lick the wet rocks because the creek itself is almost dry and Mo passes out the food.
“We would starve without you,” I say as I accept my sandwich, a thick French roll stuffed with turkey, Havarti cheese, lettuce, tomato, and avocado.
“I know it.” Mo offers a small, forgiving smile, and we each choose a flat rock and sit down to eat. Enormous pine trees shade us, and ferns grow at their bases and along the creek bed. There’s some haze in the sky from the fire, but most of the smoke has blown into the Central Valley and beyond.
Mo swigs water from her bottle and wipes her lips. “We should see if there’s an Amtrak train that runs between our colleges, so we can visit.”
“We could just Uber,” Violet says. It gets quiet, because Mo and I can’t afford to Uber across this vast state. Violet has the decency to say no more about it. Instead she says brightly, “I brought henna!”
We spend the next two hours drawing henna tattoos on one another. We draw unicorns and rainbows and dragons, and then Mo draws a huge penis on Violet’s forearm. Violet draws a marijuana leaf on Mo’s, and then they both draw Krispy Kreme doughnuts on mine. I have no idea why I got doughnuts, but we laugh until our stomachs hurt.
Then Violet starts doing impressions of her favorite actors, and they are hilarious. She can reshape her face and change her voice and personality to match just about anybody. She sings well too, on key and without music. I forget how talented Violet is, because when I see her, she’s on vacation and her biggest concern is the color of her toenail polish. “You’re funny,” I tell her.
She lifts her brows. “A compliment from Han! I’m flattered.” She kisses me on the cheek, and I’m stunned. Do I not give compliments? I hadn’t noticed.
“Have you ever thought about coloring your hair?” Mo asks me. “Like adding a few highlights to bring out the blond?”
Violet claps her hands, her dimples deepening. “Yes, and you should let me do your makeup!” She leans forward, examining my face, which gives me a close-up view of hers. Violet’s makeup is flawlessly applied, and her hair is clean and styled, shining to the roots. I don’t know how she stays so perfect seemingly without an ounce of effort. I blow-dry and style my hair for school pictures and funerals and not much else—too much work!
Violet sucks in her cheeks and tilts my chin toward her. “You aren’t doing anything with what you’ve got, Han. Your bone structure is perfect; your eyes are huge. A few highlights in your hair, a new cut, some contouring and gloss, and mascara to bring out the green in your eyes, and you’d be really pretty.”
My cheeks burn. “Would be?”
Mo butts in. “She means you’re already pretty.”
“Yes, but you’re not trying.” Violet lifts a strand of my thin, flat hair.
I bat her away, thinking about Justin in Bishop. He seems to like me the way I am. “I’m good, thanks.”
After that, the conversation becomes awkward, so I give the order to move out, and we walk the horses to the top of Blue Ridge, which feels ass-backward to me, like pushing a bicycle instead of riding it. At the top, we catch our breath and take in the view that overlooks all of Gap Mountain, the valley, and Yosemite National Park.
“There it is,” Violet says, and we go silent.
Our wildfire continues to burn, miles and miles away. Gray smoke rises in the distance, and the hint of orang
e flames flicker in the park. My eyes trace the blackened path of destruction from Gap Lake, through our town, across the narrow waist of the valley, and into Yosemite. Millions upon millions of dollars have been lost, ten human lives are gone, thousands of protected acres have been incinerated, dozens of homes are destroyed, and one flock of wild bighorn sheep has been brutally cremated. The destruction quells any joy I felt today.
“That was my house,” Mo says, pointing toward the flattened Stony Ridge neighborhood, which appears as a scorched and desolate scab of land on the south side of town. The Army Corps and private contractors are hard at word, scraping foundations and piling tons of debris into long lines of dump trucks.
We’re silent for fifteen minutes, maybe longer. We can’t speak about what we did; we can only stare.
Suddenly, all three of our prepaid phones buzz at once, because we have a good signal up here, out of the tree line. Violet reads the text first and gasps. Then Mo reads it, and she slaps her hand over her mouth. With dread oozing through my veins, I read it last.
It’s from Drummer: the police arrested luke.
16
July 23
Gap Fire: 40% contained
Fatalities: 10
Time: 4:10 p.m.
I stare at my phone in disbelief. Why are the police at Luke’s? He wasn’t in the photo that investigators questioned Mo about. Is this about the fire or his probation? God, it has to be the fire. The fingerprint results must have come in and the police database matched them to Luke.
Next to me, Violet texts Drummer on the prepaid phone she swore she’d never use: omg!
Drummer adds, they have warrants for his dna and phone. they found TWO separate dna profiles on the beer bottle. the fingerprints on the matchbook are lukes.
Me: what about the pipe?
Drummer: I don’t know
Mo: let’s meet later
We pocket our phones, and Mo’s hands tremble. “One of those DNA profiles could be mine.”
“Or mine. I drank too,” says Violet. She looks at me, her eyes like two pools of dark liquid. “You said the fire would destroy the DNA.”
Lies Like Wildfire Page 11
