The Fireproof Girl

by Loretta Lost

  I have been ripping doors open and searching for clothes, wrinkled beds, showers with droplets of water on the doors, or any sign of life. There is nothing. The house is spotless. It hasn’t been lived in for years, but it seems like it has been regularly maintained by a groundskeeper.

  “Cole!” I scream out again, and my throat is hoarse. My voice breaks as it echoes in the empty house. “Cole!”

  Stumbling forward tiredly, I use both hands to hold onto the banister to keep myself standing. I lean forward, and my hair tumbles over my shoulder, hanging limply over the stairs.

  It looks like this house has eighteen foot ceilings on the main floor. I learned to estimate that sort of thing after working with Cole on many houses. I briefly wonder if I would die if I just let myself fall from this height. I briefly regret that I didn’t go through with it at the gravesite. I was forced to live another day, and try, and be heartbroken all over again. I was forced to be heartbroken even worse, because I found that letter, and saw a glimpse of the life we could have had. The life we should have had.

  I have to give up. I have to admit it.

  The earthquake was a lie.

  I am staring blankly, tiredly at the gunshot wound in the front door when my phone rings. I already know who it is, and I don’t really want to answer. But my body moves anyway, in the rehearsed rhythm of a grown ass adult, who does things she needs to do, even when she doesn’t know why she should do anything at all.

  The caller ID says that it’s the hotel, meaning that it’s Zack. As I expected. He’s called a few times while I was driving, to check up on me, and I answered once to reassure him that I was fine. I decline the call, unwilling to show anyone how destroyed I am right now. But as I place the phone back in my bag, my hand brushes the letter. I pull it out, and stare at the last few sentences again. Nothing can keep us apart for too long. Not hell or high water, meteor showers, the rapture, or the goddamned apocalypse. You can look for me at the end of the earth, if it ever comes to that. I’ll always be there, waiting for you.

  “What does that mean?” I ask out loud as I tuck the letter back into my purse. “If this isn’t the end of the earth, where is? Where are you, Cole? I’m so tired. Did I mess up? Am I in the right place? Do you want me to keep looking for you forever? I’m not that strong. It hurts.”

  Pulling out my GPS app, I look at my location on the map. I place my thumb and forefinger on the screen to spin the map, and zoom out a little, dragging the map around to survey the property. I see patches of green, patches of rock, and a little… water.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I pull my fingers apart to zoom in.

  “Come hell or high water,” I say suddenly. “High water from hell. A geyser.”

  The pieces of the letter fall from my fingers like leaves, and I shrug my shoulder to let my purse fall to the floor and set me free. I virtually run down the stairs, only stumbling once or twice, as I stare hard at my phone. Once I am outside, I begin running in the direction of the water. How far is it? There is no road. It’s hard to estimate. I don’t think I can take the Bugatti, because it is too low to the ground and will definitely get stuck in some embarrassing situation. Sports cars are like high heels. Pretty, but often impractical. Thank god I am not wearing my high heels as I race down a rocky path, using my phone to navigate.

  Am I making this up again? Is it really all in my head? Am I really just missing a few screws?

  “Where the earth boils,” I murmur to myself. “Where giants used to make soup, and left their recipe for little boys when they’re sick. The place that reminds him most of his mother.”

  I am surprised to see that my location marker is actually moving on the map. Somehow, these imperfect pieces of technology called legs do actually work to cover some distance, even in a short amount of time. My body is tired, and my form is sloppy as I push forward, but at least I’m wearing running shoes. My feet are still sore from walking all the fuck over L.A. yesterday, but I don’t care. Pain can eat me.

  I’m a woman on a mission. And I’ll give anything, and suffer anything, as long as he can be alive.

  The sun is rising high into the sky, and it’s starting to go from very hot to excruciating. I ignore the heat and press on, although I need to slow from a run to a jog as my body starts to cramp up. The heat is unbearable, and it makes me want to peel all my clothes off, but I know that I’m going to need the protection from the sun as midday approaches. It could be worse. I could be walking through fire to find him. If he’s actually dead, I still might end up doing that.

  When I am about a quarter of the way to the water on the map, I lose my footing on some uneven ground and trip and fall flat on my face. I groan and push myself up, ignoring the fact that the palms of my hands are skinned raw, and there is a new bruise on my face. I pick up my phone to reorient myself, but the screen is smashed and the signal has been lost. “No,” I say, tapping the screen violently. “Not now, please.” A shard of glass from the smashed screen slides into my finger, and I wince.

  Now, I’m alone in the middle of nowhere, hours from humanity, and my phone is messed up. You would think the CIA would provide a durable fucking phone case to take along on my secret mission. I scream and kick the nearest tree, and immediately regret doing so as I clutch my ankle and moan.

  So, I have two options. Do the safe thing and head back to my car, or keep wandering in the direction of the water, and possibly find nothing, and be too tired and injured to get back to the house and car. My body is already moving in the direction of the water, so it turns out that I never really had a choice to make.

  I continue walking for what feels like hours, until my whole body feels like lead. My knees are buckling under me with every step, and I am thirsty, hungry, and half asleep. I never knew that you could fall asleep while walking, but apparently, it is possible. At least it’s a lot safer than falling asleep in a Bugatti while driving 150 miles an hour. (Of course, I slowed down a little once I realized my eyes were closing. I only really tried driving so fast to use the excitement to keep them open.) When I stumble on a path that runs along a steep cliff with many, many rocks at the bottom, I rethink my previous thought about sleep walking.

  Unless my bra has airbags I don’t know about, sleeping while walking is definitely more dangerous than sleeping while driving.

  I giggle at this imagery, and keep walking, if it can even be called walking anymore. I am half delirious, half mad, entirely miserable, thirsty, sore, and a small percentage hopeful.

  But hope will only take you so far.

  Eventually, I need to sit down. If it can even be called sitting down. At some point, I try to take steps, and my legs just won’t work. My muscles feel like jelly. My boss was right about me needing some field experience. You can’t just go from a desk job on the East Coast to being a mountaineer on the West Coast, overnight. True story.

  I don’t know how far I am from the water. I still have no signal. The sun is directly overhead, and I am baking like a potato out here. My brain has turned to mash, and my arms are crispy, golden brown French fries. If only my legs were that crispy, I might be able to stand and walk, but I think they have turned into noodles.

  “Come on, legs,” I tell them, in a weak effort at a pep talk. “Don’t be noodles. Be French fries. We can do this. We can keep moving while getting cooked alive. Getting baked isn’t so bad. Well, not that kind of baked. Although that would be nice right now. For medical reasons.”

  I push my skinned palm down on the ground to lift my body up, and I force my legs to stand. They shakily propel me forward for a brief expanse of time, while my eyes drift closed, and I see all kinds of pretty colors around me. I see Cole’s buildings emerging from the mountain landscape, and this seems odd. I know all these buildings so well. And there’s the hospital he died in.

  There are people walking around these buildings, and I try to call out to them. Maybe they can help me. Am I thirsty enough to need a hospital? I am a little embar
rassed to go to a hospital and ask for water. Maybe just a vending machine. But I left my purse back at the house, so I don’t have any money. How will I manage to get water?

  As I approach the hospital, I see that the people standing around are Zack, Professor Brown, and Benjamin. I turn around, and start walking in the opposite direction, deciding that I will find another vending machine. Maybe in a skyscraper, or a shopping mall, or a church in New Jersey. But I see a cemetery, and Annabelle is standing there. Fake Annabelle—Brittany.

  “Hey!” I shout at her, and my throat is dry. I should probably ask her for water, but all of a sudden, I can only think about semen. “Why’d you ask for Cole’s sperm? You can’t kill a guy and also want his sperm at the same time. That doesn’t make sense. Unless you’re a spider.”

  Then my eyes widen as she begins to get taller, and slowly transforms into a very large black widow spider. This is very confusing to me, and somewhat frightening. I want to ask the spider if there is a vending machine nearby, but I am already backing up slowly. I begin walking briskly in another direction. Was Professor Brown cruel to me because his daughter was messed up? Or was she messed up because he was cruel to her? As soon as I find a vending machine, I’ll go back and ask the spider some serious questions.

  But I trip and fall again, this time into something soft. All the tombstones and the buildings disappear. Dammit.

  I hate hallucinations. I hate deserts. I hate Nevada, and New Jersey.

  I have no idea if I lay here for a second, a minute, or an hour, but my head is throbbing. My eyes beg to stay closed, but my fingers curiously extend and test the softness.

  Grass.

  And where there’s grass, there’s water.

  I roll my body over, and immediately cry out in pain as the sun stabs into my tired eyes. My arms lift defensively, but the damage has already been done, and I am temporarily blinded. “Solar flare,” I mutter with frustration as I drag my tired body off the ground, remembering the effective attack from Cole’s favorite anime. It was always used at the most opportune and unexpected moments, and it always hurt like a bitch.

  Rubbing my eyes angrily, I continue moving forward, until I pause. It occurs to me that I have no idea which direction I came from. I have been stumbling around and sleepwalking and… there was a hospital…

  I blink and look around, surveying the landscape. There are big glowing dots in my vision, everywhere I look, precisely the shape of the murderous sun, who likes to kick a girl when she’s down. I am wishing that the buildings would come back, even if they were hallucinations, when I am startled to see one up ahead.

  My eyes squint and falter. I don’t recognize the building. All of the previous ones were structures that I had helped Cole design. This one must have come from my imagination.

  It’s a gingerbread house, covered in candy.

  Okay, it’s really not, but I wish it were, because if you’re hallucinating architecture, it might as well be edible. It might as well be colorful and tasty.

  I drag myself forward, moving as gracefully as someone auditioning to be an extra on The Walking Dead. I take deep breaths, because when you don’t have water or food or coffee or sleep, air conditioning, or logic, you might as well appreciate having oxygen.

  My eyes are finally beginning to focus better, and I see that the house is very small, but very beautifully designed. The roof is covered in solar panels that extend upward. It looks like the house… is also a car. I squint to make sure I’m not imagining things.

  A house on wheels? Who’s ever heard of anything like that! It’s preposterous.

  But also kind of cool. I wonder if Cole ever built a house on wheels. Or a house with wings. Or a house on the water. Or a house underground. Or a house shaped like a toilet. Or a house that is also a shoe, that a woman lives in, with her eight kids.

  Wow, these are really good ideas. I’m so smart when I’m drunk.

  But I haven’t had anything to drink. If there is something to drink in that house on wheels, I could potentially get even smarter. That’s mind blowing. Can you imagine if there’s some gingerbread? I’ll be the new Albert Einstein. I just need some gingerbread and beer. I don’t even like beer. But I think it goes well with ginger.

  Maybe I’ll just go to sleep now.

  Sitting down on the grass abruptly, I am grateful for the softness under my bottom. It’s like a blanket from Mother Earth. I’ve never known any other kind. Of mother, that is. I’ve known other blankets. My body slumps to the side, and I smile as my cheek hits the cool grass. Even in all this heat, the grass is cool to the touch. It’s like a soothing caress.

  The moon is still just barely visible on the horizon, a faint wisp of a faded cosmic object, dwarfed and overshadowed by the sunlight. If the sun weren’t here, she’d take care of me. But she can’t do much about the brutal way he’s beating down on me now. She has to look away. He’s too strong.

  I stare at the moon until she’s no longer visible, and as she disappears, I see something else.

  A spray of water into the air.

  At first I think I’m imagining it, so I just close my eyes and let myself drift to sleep for a few seconds. But then I feel a sprinkle of water on my cheeks. My eyelids jerk open, and I lift my head off the grass.

  Come hell or high water. It’s the geyser at the end of the earth.

  And there’s a mobile home here—yes, that’s a thing that’s been invented. I remember now. A state of the art, newfangled mobile home like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s a beautiful, sleek, silver bullet-style house that looks like it’s from the future. From the year 2047, at least. There’s only one person on this planet who could have designed such a beautiful piece of art that appears to be highly functional as well. Only one person—and I happen to be married to him.

  And if he’s inside that mobile home, there’s a chance that he could live to see 2047. With me.

  Because this world is all so breathtakingly beautiful that I can’t bear to lose it. And there simply is no world for me, without him.

  I don’t bother trying to stand, because I’ve failed that too many times in the past few hours. I simply crawl forward, putting my raw palms in the grass to drag my upper body forward. Crawling is awesome. It’s a great backup plan for when other things fail. When I am a few feet away from the house, I push myself back and sit on my knees. I stare at the house, praying that it isn’t another hallucination, and won’t just disappear if I try to touch it.

  I’ve come too far, and tried too hard, to lose any more hope.

  It would crush me.

  I want to reach out and ring the doorbell or something, but I don’t even know if it has a doorbell. What are doorbells like in 2047? And what if no one answers? What if the wrong person answers? Did Cole build a time machine? Is this how he time traveled to give me that letter, and make it look old, but it really wasn’t old? What if someone else built the time machine, and Cole isn’t here at all? He’s not a physicist. Oh god, what if there’s a physicist in there? I put my head in my hands, and try to keep myself from crying, but there are no tears anyway. I am too dehydrated.

  I guess I could just knock.

  Staring at the door, I decide that I’m going to knock. But I can’t seem to force myself to move.

  “Knock, knock,” I whisper. Nothing happens. I slam my fists into the ground, crying without tears. “Knock, knock!” I shout again, hysterically. “Knock, knock, knock!”

  I stare at the door for several seconds, and I have almost given up when the handle turns. I shut my eyes. I can’t look. What if it’s not him? What if it’s a physicist?

  I take a quick peek. Oh my god. I saw a leg. It was wearing pants. I think it was his leg.

  I think those were his pants.

  I don’t want to look up. I don’t want to see his beautiful, ugly face, and muscles, and his hair blowing in the wind like a hero from a storybook in a trailer park in outer space. I can’t take it.

  All I can do is sit h
ere with my head in my hands and cry.

  “Scarlett?” says a man’s voice. It washes over me, tender and warm.

  It also cuts me to the bone.

  I shake my head in refusal; no. I adamantly refuse the torrent of emotions that threatens to drown me. But in another instant, his arms are around me, and he is kneeling in the grass before me, and I am sobbing like a child against his chest.

  “Oh, honey,” he whispers, holding me so tightly that it hurts. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

  “Why,” I whisper, my words coming out in short gasps between sobs. “Why would you do this to me? Why would you do this to me?”

  “Scar,” he says in amazement, cupping my face in his hands. “I didn’t think you cared anymore.”

  I rip his hands off my face, and I hit him. I hit him hard, with all the strength I have remaining. I don’t care if it kills me, I would happily die beating the shit out of him for this. And at least I’d die close to him.

  “Hey! Ouch, ow, ow, ow. Scar, take it easy. I was really shot, you know.” He easily grabs my wrists and restrains me, tackling me to the ground and straddling my body like when we were children.

  “I hate you,” I tell him, turning my face to the side so he can’t see my emotions. “I hate you so much for doing this to me. How could you? You made me think you were gone.”

  He releases my wrists and lets his head fall forward so that his nose and lips rest against my cheek. It is only then that I notice a wetness on his face, and realize that he is also crying. “I never thought you’d find me.”

  Reaching up, my hand tentatively searches for his shoulder. I am scared to make contact, lest he disappear, having been an illusion all this time. But when my shaking fingers touch his shoulders, he is hard flesh and blood and bone. I sink my fingers into his shirt and skin, and grip him tightly, for dear life. I can’t stop crying. “Cole, you didn’t have to be so goddamned convincing. I tried to die.”