The Edge of Falling

by Rebecca Serle

  Fire.

  And then the box explodes. It goes up like a bomb, catapulting us back, away from each other. There is no more time for thought. I cover my face with my hands.

  Astor shouts from the other side. There are pieces of cardboard everywhere, and they’re catching the carpet—a meteor shower of fire. I know what has done it. The nailpolish remover. I remember learning about it in some home safety course we had to take at school. The most flammable everyday substances. It was number two.

  I quickly scan my brain to see if I have any information stored there that might help me figure out where there is a fire extinguisher. But I come up empty. And the fire is moving faster than the answers.

  As the pieces of box catch the carpet, they ignite. They go from embers to full-on flames in no more than a moment. Astor and I are now on opposite sides of a wall of fire. Did he want this? Did he know that that one little lighter would make this big of an impact?

  It’s then that I jump to my feet.

  You think true moments of terror, real instants of adrenaline, only come a few times over the course of one’s lifetime. But this is the third this year. Life doesn’t deal everyone an even hand; it’s just not how it works. My brain knows the drill. It’s like my nervous system has shut down. It’s too overloaded. By what I’ve just confessed. By the reality of these flames that continue to lick higher.

  But something is different this time too. That panic that’s crowded me, that’s sat on my chest like a trash compressor and squeezed, is lessening. Even standing here in this split second, calling to Astor, I don’t feel afraid. I know something now that I didn’t before. I know that my life doesn’t have to be about what happened. What I failed to do.

  It can be about what I will.

  “This way!” I bellow to Astor. I wave my arms above my head and gesture for him to follow me. There is a slice of open air between the fire and doorway that he could slip through, but it’s closing quickly. He has to act now. The flames are growing, climbing higher and higher, like some crazed animal that has just been set free. They catch the curtains, transform them into smokestacks. They scramble like they’ve been waiting a long time to be released.

  But Astor doesn’t move. He’s frozen. And the look in his eyes is one I recognize immediately. It’s the same one that stared back at me in the mirror for almost a year. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to move. He hasn’t figured out how to save himself.

  “Astor, now!”

  Fire is loud. It wails and screeches and howls. It cracks things, breaks them into pieces. Drowns out noise. Voices.

  But I know he can hear me. I can tell by the way he isn’t trying to understand me. He’s just not moving.

  “Astor!” I scream it again.

  The flames lighten, for just a moment, like the exhale of the tide before a massive wave, and I know it’s over. It hits me like the moment I realized that was Hayley at the bottom of the pool. But this time there is no windfall of recognition. No moment of pause.

  When I finally managed to haul Kristen back up, when we were both safely on the other side of the railing, out of breath, heaving, hands on knees, I knew I would never try again. I was scared of myself after that, afraid of what I had done. I didn’t want to think about it or remember it. The flip side of human beings is terrifying. What we are capable of doing to each other, to ourselves, in any given moment. I didn’t know what was down deeper, what would have happened if Kristen hadn’t shown up. The endless question, the one I could never answer: Would I have jumped?

  But I’m not afraid anymore. And I know, looking at Astor, that he is. Death might have drawn us together, but it’s also what has broken us apart.

  And in that moment of fear (freezing), life sweeps in.

  “Astor!” I make one final attempt to call him, and then I just duck forward, toward him. I dart through the space of air by the wall, but it’s not big enough, and I feel the fire bite into my leg. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain and stick my arm out. I find Astor’s shirt underneath my fingertips and I pull. Hard. The adrenaline is back, my old friend, and it helps me get Astor underneath my grip. I turn back around, pushing him in front of me, through, but the space is no longer there. It’s closed, sealing us into the back part of Hayley’s room. Wall on one side, fire on the other. And it’s moving closer.

  The heat is unbearable. It’s thick and heavy. I shove Astor back against the wall, but there is no relief. The room is being sucked of oxygen. You can hear it being slurped up like soda, then swallowed until there is nothing left.

  I look at Astor. He’s fading. His eyes are slipping closed. He’s already succumbing.

  Something about seeing him pressed against the wall, eyes at half-mast, makes me shoot alert. I pull whatever last reserve of will I have. I’ve never been more determined to live.

  I glance over at the windows. The curtains are gone, so are the pink valances, but there are windows, to the side, that don’t have any drapery. Hayley insisted on keeping them clean so that it didn’t “make it look like a little girl’s room.”

  It was like she thought she wore a disguise most of the time. That when she went out in public she was secretly a middle aged woman. Not a ten-year-old with soft ringlets and baby rose cheeks.

  She didn’t want screens on the windows either. She liked to look outside and not have it interrupted by some kind of a grid, she said. It was a fight, but she won. My mom had the screens taken off. I remember that now. And these windows don’t slide up—they open out.

  I grab Astor’s hand and run over to the window closest to us. It gives easily, and I feel a rush of sweet, delicious air. Freedom.

  I push it out farther and haul Astor through. It’s an easy jump to the ground from here. Maybe fifteen feet, no more.

  I just need to get him out this window.

  “Out,” I say.

  He doesn’t move. He just shakes his head.

  “Astor, out!” I’m not sure if I’m talking. My voice is hoarse. Barren. Used up. But how many things could I be saying right now? He knows. He’s just not doing it.

  And then I realize it. As certain as I saw it behind that fire curtain. As certain as I was when I called Claire and told her the truth: He doesn’t want to be saved.

  He’s happy here, in this fire.

  But I won’t let someone else die on my watch. I can’t. Because for the first time since last January, I want to save myself. I need to. And that means saving him, too. I close my eyes and then I hoist Astor up by the back and catapult him through the window. I shouldn’t be able to lift and maneuver him, but that’s the power of compressed moments. They make you able do things that would never be possible in ordinary ones.

  Then I’m on the windowsill. I can feel the fire at my back. It could be on me, that’s how close it feels. I look down at the grass below, at Astor’s body on the ground, unmoving. This time I don’t hesitate.

  I jump.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The grass is so cool on my back that for a second I think maybe I died. This is what heaven would feel like after a fire—cool, wet grass. But then the throbbing in my leg starts in, and I hear Astor moan beside me, and I know I’m still here.

  I open my eyes.

  Our house is on fire.

  It’s almost as if it waited for me to leave the building,

  because in the last—what? Thirty seconds? Minute? —it has taken over. It races through the rooms like a conquering army taking what it has just won.

  My parents’ bedroom. The study. My old room. Kitchen. Living room.

  I always saw my memory as something to run from. It reminded me of things I didn’t want to remember. It kept the past in too sharp detail. It didn’t let time do its natural thing, didn’t let things yellow, rust, fade. But watching the flames envelop this house—Hayley’s grave—I know I’ve been wrong. Because the memories I’ve been calling up have been the final ones, but they’re not the only ones that are there.


  You remember the last moment. They way she looked at the bottom of that pool, what you could have done, what you didn’t say. The last fight you had. The fact that I didn’t help her inside with her suitcase. But a person, even a house, as it stands burning, is not a moment. It’s a lifetime. Hayley was a lifetime. I held her in my arms when she was born. I taught her how to ride a bike and catch fireflies in jars. We baked cookies together. She fell asleep on my chest. She wasn’t the girl I was annoyed at in the car on the way to the beach that day. She was my sister. She was everything.

  “Caggie!” “Caggie!” The same voices I heard from inside Hayley’s room minutes ago come through strong now. Close. Then Claire is there and Peter, too. I can barely see through the smoke, and they try to drag me away, to move me back. The air is thick, heavy and dense. I’m choking on it.

  It comes in and fills my lungs like water, and I wonder, briefly, if you can drown in dust.

  “Take her to the beach!” Peter shouts at Claire.

  Claire puts her arm around me and starts walking me away, down the path that leads from our house to the shore.

  “Astor,” I say, but it’s more of a cough than anything else.

  “It’s okay,” Claire says gently. “Peter.” I can feel her clutching me. Her voice is calm, but her body is tense. A ceiling beam falls a few meters from us, and she slings her arm over me. “Come on,” she says firmly.

  Instantly Astor and Peter disappear like a magician into his trick. Poof. Gone.

  Claire keeps tugging me farther away, toward the beach. She loops her arm under mine and hoists me up by the waist. My burned leg is searing, and I hazard a glance down. My skirt looks like it has melted against my legs, and I can see blood oozing into the plaid. I focus on Claire.

  “You’re okay,” she keeps saying.

  I can feel her pulling me tightly to her side. We’re off the trail, and the weeds bite at my legs like dogs. We push forward until we reach the sand. I sink my feet down into it. It’s cool and dry, and for a moment that’s all that matters.

  The sky is clear here, and I can see the cloud of smoke—it hovers what seems like just inches from us, like if I reached out I could grab a hold of it. Tug it closer or push it away. I turn my attention to Claire. She’s looking at me like she’s trying to figure out whether I’m really there. She keeps touching my arm, and when I turn to her, she throws both arms around me. “Jesus,” she says into my shoulder. She’s crying.

  “Hey,” I whisper. “I’m okay.” The words make me cough, and I feel Claire’s hand on my back.

  She hugs me tighter. Sniffs in. “Caggie,” she keeps saying.

  I lean my head on her shoulder, feel her long, lanky arms around me. I fold my weight into her.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispers fiercely.

  We break apart and she puts her hands on both of my cheeks. I can see the tears streaming down her face, making clear lines through the dust that’s settled there.

  “Claire Bear,” I say.

  She wipes the back of her hand across her face and cranes over me for just a moment. Her eyes are nervous, and then guilty as they look back at me. She’s worried about Peter.

  “He’ll be okay,” I say. My voice comes out clear. For a second I have an image of Peter running into the house, trying to save—what?—but I shake my head, force the thought to leave. He’s just helping Astor to safety. There isn’t anything left in the house to rescue.

  And that’s when I remember it. The phone in my pocket. “You came,” I say.

  Claire looks at me, her eyes big and round and wet. “We were already on our way,” she says. “Trevor called after he ran into you, and he said he was worried. Peter and I came to your house. He checked the flower pot on the stoop. I don’t know why, but he did. And he saw the key was gone.” She stops, coughs, then shakes her head. “I’m so sorry about that article. I know you were pissed at me, but I didn’t even know that woman was going to write a story. She was over interviewing my dad. I was just talking. I should have known better. I was just so worried about you. I—”

  “Stop,” I say. The article feels continents from here. Decades away. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” But I have to ask her something else, something that I hope she already knows.

  “I heard,” she says, before I can call up the question. Her eyes are steady, calm. She doesn’t even blink. “I listened the whole time.”

  I hold her gaze for a moment, and the last year passes between us. A million I’m sorrys and pleases and I could haves boiled down into just this—the truth.

  “Caggie,” she says, rushing forward, all at once. She’s talking so quickly it’s like her words are jostling one another, trying to get the front spot. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.

  I should have been more. I thought you were doing better, and—”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I say. “It had nothing to do with you.”

  She shakes her head. Fresh tears sprout. “I thought I could get you to move on.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder and pull her toward me.

  Even with the smoke and ash I can smell her perfume in the air—faint, light, but still holding on. “You did,” I say.

  I was wrong about lying. It’s not easy; it’s hard. It weighs on you—every single untruth. They build and grow, like weeds in a garden. They take over. They knot things down and snuff them out. Just one can ruin a field of flowers.

  “I love you,” she says fiercely. “I would have done anything to protect you. I’d—”

  But before she can finish, she gives a little yelp. Her arms slacken, and I see Peter. He’s coming down toward us, and he has Astor slung over his arm. At first glance it’s hard to tell whether Astor is dead or alive, he’s leaning so heavily on Peter. But then I see his head lob to the side and lift back, and I know he’s in there somewhere.

  Claire runs over to them. I limp behind. I hook Astor around the waist and set him down in the sand. Peter is breathing so hard he can’t talk, and Claire throws her arms around him. He holds her close, presses his nose into the crook of her neck.

  It should be strange, seeing my brother and my best friend like this, but nothing is strange anymore. Or everything is.

  Beside me Astor is rocking slowly, his head in his hands.

  I know it’s over. That his father is right: He needs help. I lean down and place a hand on his back, palm flat. He looks up at me, and in the instant our eyes lock, I know he knows too.

  You can’t share grief. In the end, when the building burns, you’re still left with your own pieces. Your own shattered picture frames. You have to pick up what is yours—choose to carry it, bury it, or say good-bye.

  “I’m sorry,” Astor says. Muffled. Dim. But I hear him. “Me too,” I say.

  Not one of us talks after that. We just sit and watch in

  silence. Even later, once the fire trucks arrive and there is nothing left but black beams, coals, and dirt, we don’t say anything. We don’t have to. We’re each busy deciding what we’ll take from there and what we’ll leave behind.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I’d like to say that Astor got help, that he came to me and apologized for what had happened, explained how he now understood the error of his ways. That he was learning to let go of his mother, move on to a clear future, and carry her brightest memory like a star in his pocket. But that didn’t happen.

  We called our parents after the fire died down, but they, too, were already on their way. They had been alerted by the security code in the house. The fire department called when they saw the first flames. My dad showed up with my mom. I guess he was around. Maybe he’d never left. He got to me first, pulled me into a hug so tight it lifted me off the ground.

  He started crying. My father. My buttoned-up, hedgefund father. I had never seen him cry before. He hadn’t even cried at Hayley’s funeral. But when they got there and he saw me, he started. He bent down next to me. He took me into his arms. “I’m so sorry,” he said. �
��I promise it will be better now. We’ll get your leg fixed up. We’ll take care of this. It’s all going to be okay.”

  He still cared. His concern over Astor was because he wanted me to be safe. I realized it was true: No matter what had happened, I had never stopped being his daughter.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him. And then it just came out. I couldn’t stop it. “I’m sorry I didn’t save her.”

  My dad held me close. I could feel his tears on my face. “Not your fault,” he said. I wasn’t sure he meant it until I pulled back and looked at him. I saw his face. It reminded me so much of mine. He didn’t even have to say what he did next: “It was mine.”

  We were all carrying her loss. We were all carrying the guilt of losing her. I knew, in that moment, my father’s arms around me, that Hayley would never come back—but I also knew, for the first time since she died, that I wasn’t alone. Not anymore. I was part of a family. My family.

  Astor moved immediately after the fire. It might have been to London; it might have been to Africa; it might have been to a facility upstate. I have no idea. His father told him he wasn’t allowed to see me again, and sure enough, the last time I ever saw him was behind the glass of his father’s town car pulling out of the station. I e-mailed, once, to ask him whether he was okay, but I never got a response.

  That’s real life. Things don’t always work out the way you think they will. They’re not so neat and tidy. But people come into your life with a purpose—I see that now. Claire likes to say that people cross your path for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Astor was a reason. Hayley, though? Hayley is a lifetime. I know now that to let go of her, I don’t have to forget her.

  “Are you almost done?” The voice snaps me back to the present moment.

  I shake my head. “Impatient much? You were the one who wanted me to write this article.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he says. “But I’d like to get out of here before sunup.”