Feeding the Fire

by Amy Waeschle

  Cam finally looked at her. “I wouldn’t shibby about something like that.”

  Jessie karate-chopped the tall grass with her free hand, wondering how Stef had done it. They didn’t allow lighters at school. One time she’d almost been caught.

  Cam’s eyes narrowed. “How did he know about the dumpster?”

  That same rush of heat tickled her skin again. “I dunno.” They hadn’t seen anyone that night. Certainly not Stef.

  “Did you tell him?”

  “No!”

  The dry dandelions snapped against the tips of their shoes. “So are we on for Friday?” she asked.

  Cam’s shoulders raised and lowered in a deep sigh. “Yeah. But no fires this time,” he said. “I mean it.”

  “Okay,” Jessie huffed.

  Chapter 3

  Jessie

  Jessie rode shotgun in Zach’s truck, watching tall pines and open meadows pass in a blur. All morning, she had been thinking about Stef. Him standing up to Grady like that gave her a funny feeling. How did he know about the dumpster? If only Cam hadn’t heard, she thought. He’s already pissed enough.

  Zach turned down a gravel road and curved right, where an unfinished house and garage stood in a clearing. Thorny blackberry bushes crowded the edge of the thick woods bordering the property.

  To the right stood her treehouse, high in the boughs of a tall evergreen tree. Evan had helped her build it during a weekend visit before he disappeared. She wondered if he had already planned to leave them, which made the treehouse seem like some kind of fucked-up goodbye present.

  “When can we build a half-pipe?” Jessie asked. “Danny Foster’s dad put one in their garage.”

  Zach raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think the windows are a little more important?” He stopped the truck next to a small dumpster.

  Jessie got out of the truck and sidestepped it, remembering the night she and Cam had started the fire in the construction dumpster a few streets up from hers. On a camping trip a few summers ago, Jessie was “experimenting” with the many wonderful things that burn (tinfoil, marshmallows, driftwood) and was about to dump a handful of dry pine needles on the fire when Zach lunged for her. Later, Zach had told her a story about messing around with fire as a kid with his brother, Travis. He chose his words carefully, and though the story had been short, she read the warning loud and clear. “We were just kids being kids,” he said with a shrug. “But fire is dangerous.” His sharp eyes found hers over the burning flames. “Always ask yourself: who is in control?” He had never brought it up again, and anytime she asked about Travis, he had so little to say she eventually gave up.

  With the dumpster, she had just wanted to see what would happen, that’s all. Burning it hadn’t hurt anybody. And when Zach came home the next day, she got to relive it through his story of how his crew had the flames knocked down in minutes.

  Jessie chewed on a hangnail but stopped when she felt the sharp pinch of the skin ripping away.

  “You comin’?” Zach called. He had put on his tool belt and held several boxes of nails. Shiny slivers of the blue Hood Canal peeked through the trees behind him. Jessie caught up just in time to spot two deer grazing at the edge of the woods. The deer’s white-tufted ears twitched as they dipped their heads to the grass, their strong teeth ripping the blades.

  “We should get a salt lick,” she whispered.

  “Why?” Zach replied in a low voice. “Lure them right in to your mom’s garden?”

  Jessie tried to picture her mom sowing lettuce seeds, her face calm beneath a wide-brimmed hat. “Why didn’t she come today?” Jessie asked. The deer lifted their heads, startled by her sharp tone.

  The deer bounded into the forest. Zach’s lips tightened. “Maybe next time.”

  Jessie swallowed the sting. “Sure,” she said.

  The autumn heat warmed the top of her head as she and Zach tag-teamed installing the windows. The work was confusing at first, with all the taping, wrapping, and other prep work, so she was glad when they actually started hammering in the vinyl flanges. It took all her concentration—shattering a window with her hammer by accident was not an option. Jessie sunk a nail. Pom, pom, pom, dap.

  Her arms grew tired and sweat began to stick to her t-shirt but she didn’t take off her hoodie. There were a few boys in her class who had started looking at her funny. Not really looking at her, more like looking at her chest. She slammed a nail through the flange. What had Grady called her? Lassie. Her fingers gripped the hammer.

  Zach carried the next window—this one for the kitchen, his arm muscles bulging under the sleeve of his t-shirt. After leaning it below the hole, he stepped back and wiped his forehead, revealing the edge of his blue-black tattoo, another part of his past that remained a mystery to her. He walked to the cooler and cracked open a bottle of water.

  She watched him set the bottle down on the lid. “Why don’t you drink beer?”

  He moved his ladder to the next opening in the frame. “Never got around to it, I guess.”

  She had never seen him drink anything stronger than coffee. Other people drank—at restaurants, at dinner parties, at barbeques. Her brother Evan had too. The first time she saw him wasted she didn’t get it—was he sick? He was all sweaty and couldn’t walk. There was a kid in her class that had epilepsy. She thought it might be that—or something super-serious.

  “Did you used to be like Evan?” She used her next nail to draw stars in her palm.

  Zach climbed back up his ladder to tape the window edge on his side. “You mean an addict?”

  Jessie felt like a balloon ready to burst. She watched him for a response.

  Zach’s eyes connected with hers. “No.”

  “Then why don’t you drink?”

  Zach’s hands smoothed the window’s seam. “I just never wanted to.”

  Jessie twirled the nail like a drill into her palm. “Do you think he’s in trouble?” Fifty-five days since her mom had failed to reach him. What could have happened to him? Everyone said he’d relapsed but Jessie didn’t really know what that meant. He had seemed different after going to Timberline. He had an apartment, a job in Port Townsend that he liked. He smiled more, though in a quiet way.

  “I don’t know,” Zach replied.

  “Why did he tell mom all that stuff? What do you think he’s doing?”

  “Whatever he needs to,” Zach replied, hammering another line of nails.

  Jessie wondered how he’d had the balls to tell their mom to back off. One time she had heard a neighbor call Evan selfish, which at the time she didn’t understand. She was starting to.

  Zach’s steely eyes connected with hers. “I guess if you need to talk about this, I’m glad it’s with me and not your mom.”

  The nail bit through and a bead of blood appeared. Jessie dropped the nail and made a fist. What about the letters Evan had sent her from Timberline? About God looking after him now and his “path to freedom.” Evan had never talked like that with her before, and it was weird.

  Zach had resumed taping. “She’s . . . not strong right now.”

  “When will she get better?” Jessie swiped the tears from her cheeks.

  Zach’s jaw flexed like a shark’s gills. “I don’t know.”

  Jessie groaned but it sounded like the howl from some kind of animal. Why did everything feel so hard? When things got bad, she had wanted Evan to disappear, to take with him all the bad things he’d done: to her, to her mom, to Zach. Just go away, she used to fantasize before the guilt caught up with her. Go ruin someone else’s life. But now, his absence felt like a brewing storm. Everyone was bracing for it, holding their breath, knowing destruction was coming but unable to get out of its way.

  Zach picked up his hammer and sunk a nail, then another. “This is hard on me too.”

  “I know,” Jessie whispered, her voice cracking. “I just want things to be okay.” More than anything she wanted Zach to stay with them forever.

  “I do too,” he said.
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  Zach dropped his tool belt in the truck bed and they climbed into the cab.

  “What’s for dinner?” Jessie asked as he started the engine. Even though he had moved back in six months ago, sometimes he went camping to ride his bike or surf or sleep at the unfinished house. She’d seen his bedroll once, curled up in the future living room. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t always with them on his days off, and she couldn’t ask. That was the thing about Zach—he could pull you out of a raging river one-handed but if she asked him those kinds of questions he’d shrink into himself like a sea anemone that’d been poked with a stick.

  But she could ask about dinner. If he had a plan, that meant he was staying. And maybe if she kept asking, he’d keep staying.

  “Ribs and squigglies,” Zach replied, checking both ways before merging onto the highway.

  Jessie used to call quinoa “squigglies” because of the grain’s tiny curlicues. “I’m not six years old anymore, you know,” she said, though the answer satisfied her. “Did you get the twenty-first off?” she asked. The first thing she did when Miss Klein passed out the packet for Wax Museum was calculate Zach’s work schedule. It wasn’t that hard—twenty-four hours on followed by forty-eight hours off, with an extra “Kelly Day” off after six shifts which gave him a five-day break. She’d groaned when she realized that Zach was scheduled to work the night the entire eighth grade would be set up in the gym like a mock Wax Museum—costumes and all. Jessie was going to be Joan of Arc. She probably should have stayed home to work on the written part today but she never turned down a trip to the house.

  “Yep. I did a swap so it’s all set,” he replied. “Are you going to tie yourself to a stake and have a bonfire?” he added, giving her a wink.

  She scowled at him. “Of course not.”

  “Why her, anyways?”

  “She was a hero.” Jessie looked out the window. “She talked to God.”

  Zach raised an eyebrow. “What did God say?”

  “To fight like a man.”

  He paused, and Jessie saw him swallow. “Remind me again why they killed her?”

  Jessie rolled her window open a crack; Zach’s heater was starting to smell like burnt air. “Because they were afraid of her,” Jessie said.

  That night, before she went to bed, Jessie pulled Evan’s letter from its special place beneath her mattress.

  Dear Jess,

  I just got back from my last trek. We were in the Olympic Mountains. I saw the most amazing flower, Skye called it a Trillium. We had to cross a wild river that was up to my waist and cold. There were big rapids below. We were all linked together in a chain and when we were almost across the current was too strong and I got swept downstream. Garret reached in and grabbed me. There’s no way skinny little Garret could have done it alone. That’s why I know that God really is looking out for me now.

  It’s weird, right? Someone like me talking about God. But that moment did something to me. I got this clarity, this peacefulness. I can’t describe it. But I know now what I have to do to be free.

  Love,

  Evan

  Chapter 4

  Zach

  Zach woke up to the sound of pills rattling in a bottle. He jumped out of bed and found Dana in her bathroom filling a cup of water with shaking fingers. Her other hand gripped the pills.

  In a flash he had his arm around her. It startled her but she didn’t fight him. The cup bounced against the edge of the sink and the water spilled down his leg. “I’m here,” he said, stroking her hair. “I’m here.”

  Her whole body began to shake and the sobs amplified in the small space. “I keep dreaming that something’s happened to him.” Her frail voice broke.

  Zach wanted to soothe her but knew that words wouldn’t do it.

  “I can see him lying in an alley, and he’s cold,” Dana said.

  “You can’t think like that,” Zach said.

  “Every day when he doesn’t call . . . ” Dana’s eyes squeezed tight and she let out a silent wail. Zach caught her as her knees gave way.

  She gasped for air between the tears. He knew the wait was killing her, and that the hours adding up with no news made the pain bigger. But her craving to find him was turning into an obsession, one he understood less and less. Evan had been a difficult kid who turned into an alcoholic. She had done everything she could to help him. They all had. There was a good chance he would never come back.

  Dana still had the pills in her fist, the sharp points of her knuckles digging into his spine. “Let’s go outside,” he said. Sometimes looking at the stars helped ground her.

  “No!” She brought her fist around.

  “Come to bed,” he said, unable to keep the frustration from edging into his voice. He could hold her, rub her back, kiss her in all the places she loved.

  Her expression changed from that frantic animal glare to softness and pain but she shook her head and the animal eyes were back. “I can’t!” Her lips quivered again.

  “Didn’t you hear the doctor? It’s time to quit, Dana.” The anger took over. Just for tonight had been her excuse for weeks. Zach knew she’d get through this if she took better care of herself. The pills made it harder for her to wake up, made her forgetful. More than once she had forgotten conversations they’d had days before. What was next? Forgetting to turn off the stove?

  “You don’t know what it’s like!” she shouted.

  “You wanna play that card?” He knew he was losing control but he couldn’t let her do this to herself. To them. He had thought yesterday morning—her window open, the way she’d opened herself to his caresses—that maybe things were changing. God how he wanted that. To be surprised by her playfulness, to hear her laughter, to feel her reach for him in the dark. To pursue the dreams that were on hold.

  Yet here they were again.

  Zach could feel the burden of that ring waiting in his truck grow every day. It kept him awake at night, filled his thoughts while he worked on the house. Their house.

  He and Dana had been playing relationship yo-yo since their start years ago. Dana had broken it off the first time because of Evan, when the real trouble started. Then, Zach had broken it off because he needed a break from the drama—it was so hard to watch Dana’s relationship with Evan self-destruct—hard because Zach loved Evan too. Even harder because of what he had experienced with Travis.

  She said the pills kept her from jumping off a cliff. Jump, he wanted to say. I’ll catch you.

  “You’re right. Evan isn’t my kid,” Zach said. “But you don’t need those.” He touched her and she flinched. “Jesus,” he breathed. He spun away and stormed into the bedroom, jumped into his pants, cinched the buckle tight.

  “You’re strong!” she cried from the bathroom doorway. “I’m not, okay?”

  “You’re stronger than you think.” He pulled on his t-shirt and shoved his feet into his flip-flops. “Quit taking that garbage and you’ll find out just how strong.”

  “Don’t leave!” Her desperate whimper shredded his heart.

  Zach grimaced. They’d been here so many times. He thought finally she was starting to understand. Evan had told Dana that he needed to go away for a while, that he had some things to figure out. Dana had tried to give him space. But when Evan failed to return her calls, the remorse that she had let him go had been eating away at her. “Evan made a choice, Dana. Think about what he might be needing right now.”

  “What he needs?” Dana’s eyes flashed. “What about what I need? What about Jessie?”

  “What about Jesse?” he replied, frustration filling his veins with heat. “Have you talked to her lately? There’s a lot going on in that head of hers.”

  “See?” Dana cried. “See what he’s doing to her, to me? I’ve been there through it all, paid for it all, and what do I get?” She paused. “Dismissed.”

  “Have you ever stopped to think how hard it was for him to ask for that?”

  Dana released a sob. “Why are you taking
his side?”

  Zach grimaced. “I’m sorry you see it that way. Think of it as a mirror. So you can see what you’re doing to yourself.”

  “You aren’t perfect, you know.”

  Zach released the breath that was packed tight up into his chest. “You’re right,” he answered. “But at least I know better than to use that shit.”

  He grabbed his coat. “I can’t do this anymore, Dana.”

  “What do you mean?” her voice sounded thin, like a thread he could break.

  He sighed, gave her a long look. “Waiting.” He needed to get out of here before he said anymore.

  “Zach!” Dana called out as he spun away.

  He paused, one hand on her bedroom doorknob. “The new house will be closed up by December. If you can’t decide by then . . . ” Zach felt his molars clench as he tried to take a controlled breath. “I’m through.”

  Dana’s eyes searched his for the rest of what he needed to say. But instead of saying it out loud, Zach swung open the bedroom door and made long strides to the exit.

  The screen slammed behind him as his footsteps pounded down the porch steps. He jumped into his truck and started the engine. With a raging growl he tried to yank the wheel from the dash, and thought about a house with empty rooms and Dana’s pills tumbling inside their plastic bottle. He wrenched the gear into reverse and left the driveway, ignoring the pair of eyes from Jessie’s window watching him back away like a coward.

  Chapter 5

  Zach

  Zach returned to work after his forty-eight hours off with sore arms and sawdust still sticking to his hair. He spent most of the morning brooding while he and his partner Brody bounced from call to call, stopping for coffee when they could, or lingering at the ER so Brody could flirt with his favorite nurse.