Nothing Left to Burn

by Heather Ezell

  “She clearly likes you a lot.”

  “She’s my best friend,” I said. “Not to mention the fact that she’s head over heels for Quinn.”

  “Why are you so upset?” He slowed his pace.

  I circled to face him. “You’re making ridiculous assumptions.” And I couldn’t help it, I had to say it, because Fourth of July had been a disaster, and the party we had visited last week ended with him walking out of the house silently, rudely, so I had to say, “And I don’t understand why you can’t be nicer, why you act this way whenever we’re with my friends. You’re not nice—you act so different. You’re, I don’t know, rude—superior—silent.”

  Brooks’s left eye leaked, his lips slightly parted, and he stared at me like I’d wounded him, because I had, and I’d never insulted him before. We’d never argued.

  “I’m trying, Audie. I am,” he finally said. “And I said Hayden was nice, yeah? I know I’m no good, that I embarrass you, or whatever, but I’m trying. I thought you understood.”

  I dug the heel of my sneaker into the dirt. I didn’t know what I was supposed to understand.

  “You are good,” I said. “Of course you’re good.”

  “It’s hard for me. It’s hard for me to be around people.” He rubbed his neck. “I freak out, okay? I used to freak out real bad. So it’s easier if I’m quiet. If I’m alone. It still hurts.” He stepped forward. “Every minute reminds me of him.”

  Him. Cameron. The wind danced parched leaves onto the trail.

  “I only know how to be with you,” he said. “That’s my truth.”

  I nodded and wrapped my arms around him. He held me tight and I said, It’s okay, I said, I understand, because I did. I’ve always felt out of step, out of place. He kissed my forehead and there was a shake in his legs and I apologized, I said he didn’t have to say more than he wanted to say around my friends, It’s okay, I said.

  “You don’t know how much you mean to me,” Brooks said, lifting my chin.

  The oaks spun above. He was comfortable with me, with only me, and that alone made me dizzy. I was selfish: ecstatic over the fact that I was the only one to know him—really know him. I kissed his lips.

  “Hellooooo, lovey love birds!” Grace called from up ahead. Brooks stiffened. “We’ve run to the end and back, and dear goodness, wait until you guys see the glory of the waterless waterfall. It’s intense!”

  Quinn popped over Grace’s shoulder. “We can be mermaids, it’s so lush!” And she waved her arms, as if a bird were related to a mermaid, laughing. “Hurry your butts up!”

  Brooks and I continued our hike, hands held.

  “I’ll try to do better,” he said. “For you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  The four of us rested at the end of the trail—where, it turns out, there was no longer a waterfall but only a sun-bleached rockslide and a warm green pond. Quinn and Grace rested on the slope that led to the Saddleback Mountain trail, and Brooks and I sat farther below by the water. As he promised, Brooks was being social, likeable—utilizing his one topic: firefighting. He was erratic, overcompensating, his words clipped, loud then soft. I didn’t mind because this was him. My Brooks—self-conscious in the most surprising of ways, eager for approval.

  Brooks had spent the winter months researching the politics of firefighting, the infrastructures, the escalating fire seasons, the beetle issue in Colorado, and the impact of deer hunting laws in Yellowstone. He spoke with authority on this that afternoon, with shaking hands too, like a smoker antsy for his next fix.

  “How can something as small as a beetle have such impact?” Grace asked.

  “It’s bigger than the bug,” Quinn said, clout lined in her words, as if she thought Brooks should have mentioned this, but then she glanced to him. “Climate change—right?”

  Brooks nodded. “Exactly.”

  Even after two months, his passion still enthralled me. That he cared about something so intensely. I wanted that. I wanted his urgency to sink into me like osmosis. I forgot about the stiff drive to the trailhead, about his earlier grief. I sat back and listened as he entertained Grace and Quinn with his fervent anger toward the poor foundation of the very notion of firefighting, waxing on his belief that fires should be allowed to burn.

  “Why do it then?” Grace asked. “Why join if you think the system is so flawed?”

  “You can only instigate change from within.” Brooks peeled an orange, the fruit spraying out mist. “How can I attempt to change a system if I have no experience with it?”

  He handed me a wedge and I chewed, the citrus acid sharp on my teeth. I’d taken off my sneakers and socks and was soaking my feet in the warm green pool.

  “Always so deep,” I said.

  “It just needs to happen,” he was saying now. “It can’t not happen.”

  “Rain?” Quinn smiled.

  “Fire.” He looked at her as if she’d asked him the color of the sky. “It’s going to happen soon. I can feel it.”

  “Whoa there,” she said, tossing a pebble into the water. “No thank you.”

  Grace narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean feel it?”

  “We’re surrounded by matches just waiting to be struck,” Brooks said, waving his hands at the trail, at the dry hillside where Grace and Quinn were sprawled. “It’ll happen.”

  And it wasn’t that there weren’t any fires. Smoke consistently mucked the horizon—from the hills of Malibu, Temecula, Los Angeles, as far as Big Sur, even Yosemite. California was always burning, but nothing was large enough or close enough to our Orange County community to merit a first-year volunteer facing the heat.

  “You’re used to Seattle.” Grace laughed, waving a hand. “This dryness isn’t that abnormal.”

  “That’s so not true,” I said. “We had real winters as kids. Remember the rainstorms?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  “I do,” Quinn said, her eyes wistful, her hand now on Grace’s. “The storms were bliss. God, Grace, how damn good would it feel to run in the rain?”

  She whistled. “It’d definitely beat running in one-hundred-degree heat.”

  Brooks prodded at the pocket of his shorts, and I knew he was looking for his Zippo, something to clutch, but he’d left it in the Audi. “It’s only a matter of time,” he insisted.

  “Brooks,” I murmured.

  “It’s healthy!” His voice cracked. “Part of the ecosystem—”

  “I so do not need another Brooks science lesson.” I waved my face with my hand, overheated from the hike.

  “It’s more dangerous to soak your feet in sitting water,” he said, an edge in his throat.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to diffuse.

  Brooks lowered his voice, spoke only for me. “Come on.” He gestured to the dry rocks of the waterfall, the shallow pool, the mosquitoes and bees and other black flying things hovering. “I can’t save you from West Nile virus.”

  “I don’t need to be saved,” I said, yanking up my feet.

  “I know you don’t.” He kissed my ear. “But maybe I need to do some saving.”

  36

  1:22 P.M.

  Hayden is running down his driveway, asking me to wait.

  “Hey,” he calls. “Audrey, hold up!”

  He’s still in his basketball shorts and that faded green shirt, his eyes still water blue, his hair a mess. He holds a hand to his chest, and I understand. I feel it too. It’s growing more difficult to breathe. The smoke is thickening. With each minute, the fire grows.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  He’s baffled. That’s his question. You okay? I see it in his eyes that that was what he was going to ask me. “Yeah, yeah.” He shakes his head. “I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

  Every hair on my body is on end. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
>
  “Well, for starters, you were evacuated and ran into a fire—”

  “Do not fall prey to your sister’s dramatics.”

  “And you don’t look okay.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I feign a grin. “Need I remind you that looks can be deceiving?”

  “I heard you,” he says. “In the shower, I heard you crying.” My mouth goes dry. “And you’re about to drive to the hospital to see Maya. I know how—”

  “She passed out,” I say, too loudly. “It happens when you’re dancing sometimes.”

  Hayden looks at me. “Last night. You weren’t all right last night, Audrey. You can’t ask me to lie to Grace about that.”

  “I didn’t ask you to,” I say. “You can tell her the truth.”

  “And what’s that exactly?”

  “I drank too much and needed a ride home.” I hitch my backpack up my shoulder and turn to trudge down the driveway. If only it snowed in Orange County, it’d make a nice sledding slope. “That’s the truth.”

  Hayden walks with me. “Did Brooks try something?”

  “Nothing I didn’t agree to do.”

  “What about Friday?” His voice is high. “At lunch, what you said—did.”

  And I remember the pulse of Hayden’s lips on mine, his hands finding the curve of my waist. But he can’t say it. He can’t admit that we kissed. He still doesn’t know how to communicate, how to be angry. I am a terrible person because I’m grateful for this.

  He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Audrey, I’m—”

  “I’m sorry. I have to go.” I look at my phone. 1:31 P.M. I can’t do this right now. We’ve been standing in the smoke, and I can’t talk, right now I can’t talk about it. “Maya. The fire.”

  “What did Brooks do?”

  “You and Grace,” I say. “You guys are so convinced Brooks is this monster.” My heart hammers. “What if it’s me that’s the problem?”

  “I know you. I know it’s not you.”

  I start walking again. “Isn’t Friday enough proof?”

  A pause. “But that wasn’t only you,” he finally says. “Friday. It wasn’t just—” And it’s the first time he’s admitted it, that he was an active participant until he shoved me away. And now he says, “Let me come with you. I heard you ask Grace. I can drive you.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Hayden.”

  The hurt hits him quick. I see it. The way he stops. Steps back. The way his already-dying smile fades, and he can’t look at me. “I’m not asking to be your babysitter. Let me help you,” he says. “You’re not just my little sister’s friend.” He sighs. “After Friday—how can even you say that?”

  I can’t focus. Call me crazy, tell me I’m exaggerating more by the hour, but I swear—right then—the sky darkens to a charred red. I wonder what Brooks is doing right now. Grinning at the flames. Hacking fire lines. Sprinting away. Maybe he’s in Mexico drinking a piña colada. No, he hates the idea of Mexico and beach drinks. His face is probably streaked black with soot, his hair wet and sticking to his forehead. He’s working. He’s proving himself. Yay, Brooks.

  “Audrey,” Hayden says.

  “I need to get to Maya. And I can go alone. That’s all I know.” I unlock my truck and toss my backpack inside and ask, “Are we still on for tonight?”

  “You sure?”

  “Maybe we can do some dancing,” I say. “For the memory experiment.”

  He’s nodding, playing along. “If that’d be helpful.”

  I smile. “I think it’s maybe even necessary.”

  And he looks like he’s about to eliminate the space between us, but I step up into the truck. I close the door on him, start the engine, and roll down the window.

  “So, Sir Cumference, I’ll see you tonight?”

  “Tonight, my lady.”

  37

  Overdone

  It wasn’t long after Brooks met my parents that I met his dad.

  We’d just walked back inside after two hours out in the pebble garden. Two hours with a random kiss (or five), some conversation, but mostly silence, mostly being alone together. It was after nine. He poured me a glass of apple juice, poured himself a glass too. I liked these quiet moments best. He hugged me, his arms around my waist, and I looked past him to the living room fireplace, where four framed photos stood on the stone mantel. Every shot was from Brooks’s and Cameron’s childhood.

  A blond toddler and a chubby baby in his lap. A large-eyed woman holding both of their hands, surrounded by evergreens. Cameron displaying a hooked fish, mouth wide in a scream—he can’t be older than eight. Both boys on bikes on a trail; was this the day the dog swiped at Brooks’s eye and Cameron tried to scare it off with a stick?

  That night, Brooks kissing me, tasting like apples, I thought of him and his brother on bikes, chased by a dog, and I thought of their camping trips to the fiery quaking aspens. Cameron and Brooks trekking into the autumnal mountains to watch trees shake in the chilled wind. Cat slinked around my feet. The stories he’d told me. The images I’d created in my mind.

  And that August night in his kitchen, I pulled away from Brooks and asked, “Can I see the backpacking photos?”

  He squinted. “The what?”

  “The pictures from your camping trips with Cameron, the quaking aspens.”

  “I said I would show you those?”

  “So I could see your favorite tree,” I said, thinking of my Google search, how it wasn’t really the aspen I wanted to study. “Remember?”

  He laughed, but it was stuck in his breath. “We’re kissing, and you’re thinking about trees?”

  “You like trees.”

  He kissed my nose. “I like you more.”

  And then I asked, “Did he look like you?”

  Brooks stilled. “We’re kissing, and you’re thinking about my dead brother?”

  “It’s just—” I said. “Those pictures from when you both were young—” I nodded to the mantel. “They’re hard not to notice. I was only wondering if he looked like you when he was older.”

  He glanced back, as if he’d never seen those photos before. Then he turned to me, his face twisted into an expression I couldn’t read. “That’s not cool,” he said. “Did I look like him? It hurts—it’s not okay for you to ask questions like that.”

  My throat tightened. I kneeled on the kitchen floor and let Miss Cat lick my hand and hide between my knees. I could feel Brooks watching me.

  A minute passed, and I said, “I didn’t think—”

  “No,” he said. “You didn’t.”

  The wood floor needed sweeping. Had Brooks ever swept a floor before? I tried to focus on this then, housecleaning, because it didn’t seem fair that something Brooks talked about daily—Cameron—was off-limits for me to mention. The hurt in his voice didn’t make sense, my one question hitting him so hard, when all summer he’d been spewing monologues about Cameron.

  I stood tentatively. “I’m sorry.”

  Brooks sighed and pressed his hands against his eyes. “Hey,” he said. “It’s fine. It’s just hard. A sensitive subject, you get that, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course.”

  “I miss him so bad.”

  Before I could respond, kiss him, make it okay, the front door banged open down the hall. Brooks looked pained. “My dad,” he said.

  I’d expected his father to be intense, ready to rope in a multi-thousand-dollar settlement for dog attacks on the minute. But he was soft and tired, tall and heavy, with a mop of thick blond hair and a sloppy smile. His skin sagged along the jaw. He looked exhausted, overdone. In comparison to Brooks’s hyperactivity, his dad was lethargic. He walked into the kitchen with a shuffle, tugging at a navy blue necktie. He paused when he noticed me.

  “Dad, this is Audrey,” Brooks said. “Audrey”—he motione
d with his glass—“my dad.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Luis,” he said, a smile. “About time I met one of Brooks’s new friends.”

  I swallowed at the word. Friends.

  “Dad.” Brooks croaked. “Seriously?”

  “You’re a lone wolf. Nothing to be embarrassed about.” Luis turned to the fridge. “Any calls today?” He tossed packets of sliced cheese and meats onto the counter, opening a jar of Dijon mustard and untwisting a loaf of bread. “Or was the extent of your employment further patronage to the gym?”

  “Actually,” Brooks said. “I spent the morning at the station for a mandatory drill.” He gripped the counter’s edge. “Learned everything there is to know about ladders—climbing up them, climbing down them, putting them away. Also helped with some truck maintenance. Didn’t have time for the gym.”

  I shoved my hands in the front pockets of my jeans. “Partly my fault,” I said, feeling an urgency to contribute to the conversation. “I was needy today.”

  “Right, well.” His dad bit into his sandwich. “Your mother called.”

  “Okay.”

  “She asked why you haven’t returned her messages.”

  “Because she’s only calling out of obligation,” Brooks mumbled, and it struck me that he’d barely mentioned her, only once or twice, and always quickly and shoved aside. “And I’d rather not have my day ruined by her perpetual disappointment.”

  “That’s not fair,” Luis said. “Just call her back.”

  I pointed feebly at the fireplace. “You have some great photos.”

  Luis glanced at Brooks, because I’d totally again said the wrong thing, because the previous ten minutes had nagged at me like a scab. I had to keep picking at it. I wanted to scream: Those framed photos are agitating and fascinating and I’m curious, so be it.

  “Thank you,” Luis said. “Those were good days.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said.

  Luis studied me, glancing at Brooks fast. The kitchen was hot, as if the oven had been left on broil all day. My words had been simple, sincere. My pulse sputtered.