by Coop Kirby
“Eh, not quite. I told some angel to screw off and let me take care of my son because no one else was going to, and there's enough of that crap in the world. My heart monitor blipped back on. Next thing I remember is seeing Ford’s face for the first time."
I actually might want to be Franny when I grow up. "You're a badass."
Franny cups my hands in hers, our ringed fingers tinkling together like fairy bells. “You'll always be Ford's everything. He knows what a badass girl is worth.”
“He believes in destiny." This comes out like an accusation, which it kind of is.
Franny relaxes back onto the bench, winding her hair between her fingers. “You don't?"
"Nope. I'm good enough at reading palms and cards to say with a fair degree of certainty that in the end? Luck of the draw." I shrug my shoulders, unsure how this will land. Not everybody likes to hear the truth from a teen fortune-teller. Especially a teen fortune-teller who nearly killed their kid in an accident involving fire.
She falls into silent thought. As much as I want to remain nested with Franny forever, basking in her wisdom, I am dying to see #22. She catches me staring at the main house. "Shall we see if Ford and Brick have wrapped up their heart-to-heart?”
"Not sure Brick's got one of those," I quip, following her across the gravel driveway.
“I’ve had my doubts these past eighteen years. I’ve known Brick so long and so well he should be like a son to me. He's not." Sinking down on a porch swing, Franny's eyes suddenly turn tired. "Head on inside and see Ford. You've got something on your mind and I’ve distracted you long enough."
On impulse, I squeeze Franny with a gratitude that’s foreign but which I could get used to.
“You’re welcome, Blaze,” she kisses my cheek and I step inside.
There, in every nook and cranny, is the exact home I fantasized growing-up in. Soup simmering on a potbelly stove. Mismatched and well-loved quilts, overstuffed pillows and thick, soft rugs. Stained-glass windows, backlit by the moon.
Where Ford took his first steps.
Where he and Franny celebrate birthdays and Christmases.
Where #22 is nowhere to be found.
Ford had made it as far as the next orchard before running out of steam, almost exactly where Franny predicted he might be, prone and groaning on a bed of leaves beneath an apple tree bearing a plaque that indicates it’s the oldest heirloom varietal still alive and growing in Louisiana. I hunker down, and settle against the trunk next to him. So very relieved. “How dumb are you?” I chide, caressing his cheek, pressing my lips to his hands.
"You're here? But I was coming to find you.” The boy is beyond out of it. My heart crumples with guilt for how much he’s suffered because of me, then drops with an almost audible thud because I can’t promise it won’t happen again with worse results.
"Franny had a hunch you headed through the orchard." My fingers flit across the hair on the back of his neck.
"You met Franny?" The weight of this information sinks in. "And?"
"Your mom doesn't suck. At all. How did you fail to mention Franny's a legit goddess?"
Bliss dawns across his rugged features - score another point for destiny in Ford's book. "Okay, so what we're not going to do is keep talking about my mom." Bringing his lips to my nose, Ford kisses a path upward to my eyelashes and across my forehead and something clicks in me, the missing ingredient in the chemistry bubbling between us that I’ve acted on when he has not.
#22's not just playing hard to get.
He is hard to get.
His kiss finds my lips.
“Gotcha,” I murmur.
So Not Okay
FORD
Dawn streaks through the sky, pink and glowing, marking the fourth sleep since I laid eyes on Blaze and the second time I wake with her in my arms. Above us the breezy leaves flutter in a soothing kaleidoscope, their gentle scent a reminder that I belong to this place. I don't want to wake Blaze, but the pain screaming through my senses leaves me no choice.
"Babe?" I tug on her earlobe gently.
Eyes closed, with a smirk playing at corners of her smile, she protests. "We don't have to go."
"Except we do." Even the fresh stubble on my jaw aches, and that’s just for starters. The havoc wreaked on my body in the past forty-eight hours is not trivial.
"Pretty sure we don't." I yelp sharply in response to her shifting body weight, and her stubborn tone evaporates. "I'm taking you back to camp for Poet to check you out.”
"Pretty sure Cannon put a price on my head, is the thing," I say.
"Oh definitely he did." Blaze sweeps her hair back, dividing it into quick braids. "I love how you make me laugh, it's maybe my second most favorite quality about you."
"The first being?" I utterly fail to get up on my own, the muscles I’ve taken for granted all my life now refusing to cooperate in the slightest.
“This.” Her palm presses against my chest, where my heart pounds in rhythmic response.
Blaze supports my left side, her small frame counter-balanced against the tree trunk and with a stubborn shove I’m standing and we both shut up. By now, she’s sure-footed in her navigation toward the train tracks, as if the dirt paths of Louisiana, Missouri have taken root within her of their own accord. Like she belongs here, too. Even so, it's so slow-going through the orchard. Her quick intakes of breath with each step tell me Blaze might be worse off than she’s letting on, she's just not whining about it. We limp ahead, sweat stinging my eyes and I lose focus.
"Let's take a break," I pant, nostrils suddenly inflamed.
"Ford,” Blaze whispers, using my name for the first time ever.
"Just a sec, babe." My brain pleads with my body in a losing battle of logic over injury.
"Ford!" Blaze screams, snapping my attention to spirals of smoke swirling ahead - above the Wild Big Top camp.
Blaze beats me to the flames threatening to engulf every tent and train car of the last American circus. Released to escape on their own, the big cats roam freely, roaring warnings into the crisp morning air. Everyone's doing a job except us, stranded outside the fire's perimeter where we watch the controlled chaos with powerless frustration. Cannon stands astride the pump wagon, commanding an all-hands brigade that skirts the camp, fresh buckets of water sloshing from one hand to the next. I throw my left arm up in a fist, signaling that we’re here and safe, ready to help. The steely-eyed ringmaster meets my eye without a trace of malice just as a blast of heat throws us back ten feet back, knocking the wind out of me and breaking at least one of my ribs.
Incredibly, Blaze remains on her feet and looks back to meet my gaze, her expression strangely serene. She can't wait on me. I'm now basically useless, a thing I’ve never been. I’m the guy to count on, who’s good in a pinch. No longer. "Go!" I shout.
“See you on the other side, #22." She throws me a wink I catch like a kiss. All things inside me shatter when Blaze dives into the burning, angry wall which swallows her whole.
Behind me, a familiar two hundred pounds latches under my shoulders and drags me away from the camp toward the Midway, where a lime green emergency beacon sends out a rotating flash. With a thud, I land on the ground. Staring at a boot belonging to Brick, and a gallon can of kerosene stolen from Franny's blacksmith lodge after he knocked me out cold. Bastard. There’s nothing natural about this disaster.
Brick’s face appears over mine, eyes bloodshot with apology, not excuse. My brother from another mother wordlessly asks me for trust I have no choice but to give, because about a yard away lays a hose, resting like a beached anaconda in a haze of dust. Smoke swirls inside my lungs, trapping my helpless holler in a coughing fit that keeps me crumpled in the dirt. So, I rely on the shorthand we used as kids, now finely honed to something close to ESP on the basketball court.
Clocking the jerk of my chin, Brick nods and takes the hand-off from his captain, moving deftly toward the hose. Without hesitation, he shatters the glass case protecting the val
ve. With bloody hands, Brick wrests the massive wheel loose. Cannon shouts over the din, instructing Brick though I can't make out the words. Then he's gone, lugging the lifeline I can't carry myself, into the mayhem of his own making.
If Blaze dies, I will end him, I think before lapsing into semi-consciousness. Impossible to know how much time passes before Poet stumbles to my side and collapses, heaving and sputtering. An explosion cuts off her smoke-ravaged voice, I only hear: "- sure you're okay."
Filling in the blanks, it strikes me as oddly hysterical Blaze is worried about me. I'll take any sign my girl’s safe, even if she's dispatched her best friend to look out for me in the midst of saving the damn day. I am officially the hometown hero of Louisiana, Missouri no more.
Poet looks around, and asks, "Where's our sweet girl?"
I'm confused. And chilled to the bone. I shake my head violently in alarm. Poet's attention is no longer on me, but on a vertical beam losing its precarious perch above us. Teetering and tottering like a see-saw of doom, wooden embers fall in thick flakes that Poet shields me from by catching the burning bits in her tattooed hands without flinching.
"I want to move you, but I don't want to hurt you." So much I don’t understand right now, and how Poet’s able to handle fire without being burned isn’t the least of it. "Oh what the hell." She shoves me with a burst of adrenaline and miraculously we roll a few inches shy of where the beam lands in a fiery burst of sparks. "OMG are you okay? Please be okay."
"I am so not okay,” I croak.
Poet checks my vitals with a steady hand, keeping her voice level. "That's why your buddy with the hose sent me. Nice of him to show up with that, by the way. Super cute, too."
Wow. My asshat best friend actually came through in the clutch. I make a mental note to forbid Brick to so much as glance in Poet's direction, if we all survive this. When we all survive this, I correct myself. Because I’ve decided we are all getting through this alive.
"Blaze!” Poet starts to shed her cool, leaving my side and calling her best friend's name like time's up on their game of hide-and-seek. I’ve managed to struggle to my knees by the time Poet circles back, now at a run. "Where the hell is she, Ford? Where is Blaze?”
Where. To. Begin.
How I Walk Away
BLAZE
I’m not going to speak on what it’s like for other people after they willingly plunge into a wall of fire, but it’s not quite what I expect. My blistered skin doesn't bubble, though the flames lick my body. In fact nothing moves at all. Not me, not the fire, not heaven, not earth. Everything is still as glass. As if nothing came before I took the leap. As if nothing waits for me on the other side.
I'm suspended and safe until, like an uncorked and unhinged genie, my mother appears. "Gigi.”
Why I envisioned her larger than life, I don’t know. I’m easily a head taller than she. In point of fact the woman before me I barely recognize, though I’ve been called her spitting my image since I could walk and talk - usually by Cannon when he’s outraged. Of the many questions held in my heart for so long, that I’ve been dying to ask Gigi, just one springs to my lips and it’s new to me: "How do I make it stop?”
No sooner have the words escaped my lips, than I feel the answer stirring in my soul. An undeniable truth locked inside my DNA to which I’ve always held the key. There is no stopping the fire flowing freely from generation to generation, from mother to daughter, as both blessing and curse. Perhaps this is why Gigi laughs, like I’ve wasted a wish upon a desire that’s impossible to grant.
"You don't want to stop it, Blaze. Not really. Neither did I." Gigi drifts around me, her ethereal tongue clucking. "You're dancing with the flame now. But you're not good yet."
"Well I'm still alive, let's not overlook that." I don't give a damn what my mother thinks, if Gigi deems me worthy of her legacy or not. I refuse to repeat her selfish sacrifices.
“Yes, daughter. You are alive, and in love. Of course that’s what this is about. A boy." Gigi offers no comforting counsel, which is fine. I have no life lessons to learn from her, only the will to banish her back to whatever hellish afterlife she sprang from.
Cannon's words echo in my mind, filling me with purpose. "It's one thing to choose this risk, this danger for you. It's another for someone else to die or worse, to suffer, for that choice. I can think of nothing less great than following in your footsteps, Gigi.” A declaration rolls from a place in me I don't recognize, a place of fresh intention. “Also? You're wrong. The flame can be controlled, you chose not to."
"Spoken like Cannon's offspring, who you are not," she taunts, twisting and turning around me until I feel like I’ll suffocate from her evil energy. How dare she? My father did what she was too cowardly to face: he raised me to be better than my parents.
"Control is knowing you have none, Mom." I turn my back on her, close my eyes, and say a prayer to no one in particular. I beg for forgiveness. I ask for permission. I cry. My tears become a deluge, forcing my eyes closed, streaming down my face and body, pooling at my feet and rushing in tiny rivers toward the flames surrounding me, extinguishing the threat to all I love.
When I open my eyes again the golden fleck inside my irises, present since birth, is gone. So is Gigi's ghost. And the fire.
"Move away from the fire line, clear the brigades!" Cannon's arms wave like an air traffic controller holding disaster at bay, and a torrent of water is unleashed from the nozzle of the mainline hose. Shouldered by Brick, the water arcs in a semi-circle. Steam hisses and spits as the last of the flames are driven down, giving rise to a cloud of vapor when the powerful pressure halts. My father’s baritone rings out the all-clear. His body sags with the effort of ignoring the destruction of our world. Most of the Wild Big Top is gone - the charred remains of pens, stables, props, and costumes are all on the verge of collapse.
Sitting squarely on my ass, where I landed in the center of camp after dismissing Gigi’s apparition, I shout: “Cannon!”
He hears, then sees me. The storm clears from my father's face, and he throws me a thumbs-up. I roll my eyes, and mimic him. Where the last American circus goes next from here is far from clear. What I know now though, is I will go with him into that great unknown and help rebuild what’s been lost. Because, that is my duty and privilege as his daughter.
First responders arrive, tending to the wounded and evacuating the rest of the Wild Big Top as a precaution. Franny hops out of a sheriff's cruiser, scanning the crowd for Ford - same as me. But he's not here. Neither is Poet. My throat closes, choking back panic. Brick sinks to his knees, the mainline hose slack in his lap and his face wearing an admission I will never pardon. He raises his hands up, then folds his arms behind his head. Waiting for judgement I’m eager to deliver, a punishment I’ll happily mete out. The fury flares within me, my fist to recoils, I am ready to strike. A hand printed with a butterfly closes over mine. Poet relaxes my arm, and I surrender gratefully to her embrace as she leads me away from Brick, from Franny, from the sheriff's heated discussion of her missing kerosene, her missing son.
Poet whispers, "Watch this." Out of earshot, Brick confesses and surrenders. When the cuffs go on, Cannon intercedes. The pressure of Poet's hand holds me back, keeps me steady. “Brick brought the mainline hose. Carried the damn thing on his own for close to a quarter-mile."
“But, where was Ford? Where is Ford?" I don’t recognize the hysteria in my voice, or the involuntary shaking of my limbs. Franny breaks into a sprint, following alongside a stretcher as it’s hastily loaded into a waiting ambulance. On it, Ford is unconscious, unmoving. She scrambles inside with the EMTs before the doors slam shut, the tires gain traction, and it speeds away - leaving me behind with a fresh mountain of grief, already crushing me. I honestly can't tell if the sound I hear is the siren, or my scream.
The Ride Back
POET
Behind the wheel of Ford’s pick-up, I sing along with Camila Cabello as I bounce along Rollercoaster Road on my weekly pi
lgrimage to Pike County Jail. My voice is pitchy, and too loud. I almost feel Blaze next to me, cranking up the volume until it rattles the windows and we’re both screeching out of tune. I think of that sweet girl every day. I wear her portrait, inked on the inside of my left ankle inside a circle of flames, so I don’t miss her too hard.
She and her guy rolled out of Louisiana, Missouri with what was left of the Wild Big Top a few months back. After all her talk of wanting to run away from the damn circus, wouldn’t you know she was the first soul onboard the train when it pulled out of town. All it took was Cannon agreeing to take Ford with them after he healed up in the hospital. “We’ll be back in a jiffy,” my best friend promised. We keep up on Instagram, DM’ing each other when she’s got signal.
Franny and I said goodbye to the last American circus with tears in our eyes and laughter in our hearts, then set about creating a new daily rhythm of making art and healing wounds on her farm. I vowed to look after Ford’s mom, but honestly it’s the other way around. I’ll never get enough of the dappled orchards or freshly baked bread, here my soul finally feels free.
Once a week I make the drive to visit Brick alone. And, I’ll be there to pick him up when he’s done his time. Lots of folks would have left the scene of their crime without looking back. Brick didn’t. He saved all of us and that matters, to me. Blaze doesn’t get it and I don’t need her to. Testifying at his trial brought me peace, gave him grace.
No one understands the power and the promise of a second chance, not like me.
Literally, I’ve had a million of them.
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