A Thousand Fires

by Shannon Price

  Fuck fuck fuck. If they recognize Matt, they might very well kill him. So I say the exact opposite of what happened.

  “He just came up and grabbed me!” I scream, real tears springing from my eyes because I don’t just know what’s going to happen next, I can feel it. “Holy shit, holy fucking shit.”

  I stagger back, the victim, as Red lands the first blow. If these are Ty’s best men, they’ll know what a truce between the Boars and Stags means. They may not protect me like Jax would, but they’ll do enough.

  Jax. I pull out my Stag phone and, with trembling fingers, push the alert button. The Boars take turns hitting Matthew as he staggers up from the ground. Blood, black as ink in the low light, litters the ground. I step between them, raising my hands. “That’s enough! Let’s go, let’s just fucking go. Please.”

  Red spits and kicks Matthew hard in the ribs one last time. The sound of Matthew’s wet coughs—spit, blood, who knows—rings in my ears worse than TJ saying “fucking bastard” as we leave.

  The three surround me as we hustle back toward the rendezvous point. I text Jax:

  Some guy tried to grab at me. I’m ok. With Boars heading back to rendezvous.

  I hit send, but moments later a horn honks, and I spin. He got my alert. Jax practically launches himself out of the van door before Jaws pulls over, and he puts his arms around me so hard it nearly knocks me over.

  “Where?” he says, voice ragged.

  “A few streets back. I’m okay, I’m okay.”

  “I’ll fucking kill them.”

  “The Boars got him,” I reply. Jax loosens his grip, and I nod at the trio of them. “Thank you.” Please, for the love of God, none of you mention I was alone.

  “The Stags owe you guys one,” Jax says. “I’ll tell Ty, whatever you need.”

  “No problem,” Trey replies, his glee evident.

  “You have my word. You three good on your own?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” He puts his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get the others.”

  I nod, and when we climb into the van I purposely take the farthest seat. Once we start moving, I pull out Matthew’s phone and lower the brightness. He literally just got beaten on the street, what the fuck can I say? Stalling, I switch the Location setting back to off. After that, there’s nothing else to keep me texting. Time is dwindling, so I just text what I thought in that one, impossible moment:

  I’m sorry. If they recognized you, they would have killed you. Please say something.

  I pause, breath tight in my throat when I see he’s typing. Then:

  Did you set me up?

  Five words. Five words with the weight of worlds swallowed up inside of them, crashing into me. How could he think that? Does he really think I’ve changed so much? The Matthew I grew up with, the one who loved me, would never think that.

  No. It just happened. I’m sorry, I type again, then shove the phone in my pocket just in time for us to come to a stop back at the rendezvous point as the van door slides open once more.

  Micah sees me first, and climbs in next to me. “What happened?”

  “Some guy jumped out of this alleyway,” I say. “I’m fine, the Boars fought him off.”

  “What?” Kate says, and she immediately begs me for the details. I keep it simple and short, then switch gears.

  “You guys do okay?”

  Mako lifts off his cap and scratches under his hair. “Boars were pretty chill, though one of them did say they have never done shit like this before.” He pauses, reading Jax’s reaction from the front seat. “Direct quote.”

  Jax is quiet, only moving as the van bounces as we get onto the freeway. “We’ll see what the city thinks in the morning. Tonight let’s just get home.”

  Fine by me, I think, and I curl into a ball in the backseat. Blotting my eyes with my sweatshirt, I pray that when I get home I’ll have a text from Matthew saying he understands, that he’s okay.

  We’re nearly home when I remember I switched the phone to vibrate and never switched it back. Which means Matthew is silent as the distant stars, and I find myself repeating the same thought that circled the day my brother died: What have I done?

  17

  The next morning, I wake up, stumble up to the bathroom, and vomit.

  In my dream, Leo and Matthew held hands on a mountaintop dusted with perfect, pure white snow. Leo looked at me like I’d hurt him. Matthew’s face was bruised and bloodied.

  Spitting the last bit of acid from my throat, I flush one more time for good measure and go to the kitchen. No one else is up yet. After swirling a cold glass of water around my mouth and teeth, I shuffle into the living room and switch on the TV, keeping the volume low.

  Our flyers are the morning’s big story. The news anchor switches over to a reporter on the street, a handful of the flyers in her grip.

  “Police are investigating the pamphlets, which seem to have appeared overnight,” the woman says. “We’ve reached out to a few of the companies mentioned here, but so far we’ve not received comment. We’ve also spoken to a few commuters here who, apart from being a little confused, are certainly talking about this morning’s developments.”

  The report cuts away to a reel of people being interviewed. “You certainly can’t ignore it,” a guy says, chuckling for the camera. The reporter asks if he read the flyers. “I read part of it, yeah. I mean, I guess I knew this kind of thing was going on but it’s pretty shocking to see it laid out in front of you.”

  The report ends, and I feel a little better after watching it. At least last night wasn’t all for nothing—even if it meant Matthew getting so hurt in the process.

  “Enough,” I say to myself, and I head back downstairs. Finding my clothes from last night, I toss them into the washing machine. I top off the load with a few more things and start the cycle. I’ll erase the night, best I can.

  There’s a knock from above my head.

  “Valerie?” Micah comes down the stairs. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you throwing up earlier?”

  I cringe. “You heard?”

  “I was up and just messing around on my phone.” He stares at me for a long while. “It’s not for everybody.”

  “What?”

  “This life. You can tell me if you’re not okay. I won’t tell Jax.” I give him a disbelieving look, and he puts both his hands up in front of him. “I won’t.”

  I sit down on my bed and start to bunch and unbunch the corner of my bedspread. How many weeks has it been since I joined the Wars? And how much have I seen since then? How much have I had to learn? Matthew’s not the person I thought he was—and now he’s mad at me for getting him hurt. I’m a marked criminal to everyone on Twitter. My poor parents are without their only child, and despite what I told Mom, I’d bet anything they’re still thinking it’s all their fault.

  “It’s just…” I start. “It’s just a lot to take in. I barely know my own name at this point.”

  Micah walks over and takes my hand. “Come on. Let’s get you some air.”

  “I’m not supposed to leave,” I say. “I’m the idiot who got arrested and doxxed, remember?”

  “I’ll tell him we’re going to the range or something. Put shoes on. I’ll be right back.”

  Whatever Micah says to Jax, it works.

  Micah drives west and onto the Great Highway. The Pacific stretches across the horizon in all of its gray and blue majesty. Fog banks swirled by the wind drift through the sky. Between the cypress trees, natives of the Outer Sunset are getting up and going to breakfast, or reading the paper in their tiny, pastel homes.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as we pass the Murphy Windmill, one of two working windmills in Golden Gate Park.

  “You’ll see,” says Micah.

  We drive up a short ridge, past the rough waves of Ocean Beach and the historical Cliff House. We round a curve in the coastline, and it hits me.

  I smile at
Micah. “Lands End?”

  He nods.

  Lands End is exactly what it sounds like: where the top of the peninsula meets the water. Whitecaps dot the crashing green-blue water below us. Up ahead, hidden around the bluff, is the Golden Gate Bridge. Down below are the Sutro Baths.

  The baths are a San Francisco landmark, albeit not one of her flashier attractions. Back in the 1900s, the area was home to a number of bathhouses owned by the Sutro family. Today, there’s just ruins, but they’re neat in their own way.

  The moment Micah puts the car in park, I fling open the door and breathe in a full lungful of clean ocean air. “I haven’t been here in years.”

  We take our time inching down a steep trail toward the sheltered cove. Below us, the old stones of the bathhouses stretch from either end of the cove like half-finished LEGOs.

  Micah leaps up onto the nearest stone monument. We walk and trace the rectangular lines of the former bathhouse. I hold my hands out for balance—if you fall, you fall into an algae-ridden pool of seawater—but Micah walks as casually as ever.

  Next, we go to the cave to the right of the ruins. It’s pitch-black and nothing more than dirt and stone. But then … the sound.

  A wave rushes into the caverns below us. All at once, the roar of the water swallows the tunnel. It feels too fake, too perfect, like the sound effects at a theme park. Only it’s real. I close my eyes.

  It’s intoxicating and terrifying all at once. I could die in this sound. Die and be reborn.

  The wave-thunder repeats itself again and again, crashing into me, and if I didn’t know that Micah was waiting for me back outside, I’d have stayed there all day.

  “Did you want to check it out?” I ask, indicating back to the cave as we wander back up the rocky path. “It’s pretty cool.”

  “Nah, I don’t like small places,” he replies, shaking his head. “Never have.”

  We walk across to a bluff beneath a grove of trees. Micah plops down near one with a clear view of the sea. He pats the ground next to him, and I sit, huddling close so that the warmth of his body meets mine.

  “So how are you, really?” he asks.

  I shift my shoes in the dirt. “Not fine.”

  “Tell me.”

  I tug at my sweatshirt as if pulling the hood higher will help anything. “Joining the Wars was nothing like I thought it’d be,” I say. “I’m glad I did, but … there’s just a lot to adjust to.”

  “Like?”

  I pick the obvious one. “Like being doxxed. Or being away from my family.” And having my heart broken at the same time. “Was it like this when you joined? Does it ever get easier?”

  “Kinda. But it’s also not great that it does.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But … it’s so much to take in.” I wipe the back of my sleeve against my snotty nose. Micah offers me his sleeve, too, and I laugh meekly.

  “To answer your first question,” Micah says, “I was a mess when I first joined.”

  “Did you know Brianna?” I ask. “She was with you then, right?”

  “She was my cousin. That’s how Jax knew her.”

  Wait, what? “I didn’t know that.”

  “Jax doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “No idea,” he says. “I haven’t heard from her in years. But I haven’t really heard from anyone in my family since then.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, really,” he says. He takes a stick and draws swirling patterns in the sandy soil. “Having the other Stags around helps. And there’s Jax’s mom, who cares … in her own way, at least. When the Stags got started, she gave us all the money we needed, which was the craziest part to get used to. We got the houses. Got the car. A bunch of guys we’d known in school were our first recruits. The way we had it, the Stags were supposed to be different than the other groups.” He scratches at the back of his head. “I guess it’s not really turning out that way.”

  “Well, it kinda is, right? I saw on the news that people are talking about our flyers.”

  Micah bobs his head. “Yeah, I guess.”

  We look out onto the water. The cool air goes right through my yoga pants and hoodie. I cross my arms and try to keep warm. He takes off his beanie and scrunches it in his hands.

  “Like that Boar at Mission Dolores … I didn’t even blink. I didn’t take any joy in it, but it didn’t bother me either. I’m just going along at this point, but I don’t know what for. What happened to Bri was really fucking horrible, and at the time it convinced me that staying in the Stags was the best way to go about making it right. Now I don’t know. At least you’ve got your brother’s memory to keep you grounded.”

  “I guess. But it’s not like what I plan to do is exactly moral.” I blot my eyes with my jacket again. The fog bank creeps toward us from over the water. “Wait,” I ask, voice rising. “Do you know who did it? Who killed my brother?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’d tell you if I did, I swear.”

  “I’m not sure Jax is ever going to tell me,” I say sullenly. “I can’t figure out what he wants.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it, if you want,” Micah replies.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  I sigh. “That’d be amazing. Thanks.”

  He ruffles his hair. “In the meantime, I’m going to tell you my secret to surviving the Wars.”

  I sit up. “What?”

  “Think of an after. Envision your life when you’re done fighting whatever it is you’re fighting.”

  Peace, I think first, though it feels so cliché. Me and my parents happy, for once. And my dream trip—swimming in crystal-clear water, eating foods with ingredients I’ve never seen before, meeting family I never knew I had. I hadn’t thought about it in a while, but I still want to go.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks, so I tell him.

  “I know it’s probably not everything I’m thinking it is. The Philippines has a ton of corruption, and sometimes isn’t the safest of places, but … I don’t know,” I say, smiling and shrugging at the same time. “I’ve just always wanted to go.”

  “You will,” he says. “I’m sure of it.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulls out a business card. “When I’m out, I’m getting one of these dogs. I had one when I was a kid.”

  I take the card when he offers it. It’s for a breed of dog I’ve never heard of, but the smiling puppy on the card is enough to make me smile. “Why don’t you get one now?”

  “No yard. Also, no time. When this is done, I’m going to get a dog and move back up north.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Auburn. North of Sac. Moved to SF when I was ten.”

  “Cool.” I dust off a few stray leaves clinging to my leggings. “I don’t know that much about that area.”

  “It’s beautiful,” he says. “And quiet. And just … open.” He tugs at the end of his beanie. “I want to go home, or at least somewhere with more trees. More rain.”

  I nudge his arm. “No bougie hipsters?”

  He laughs. “Fuck no. No hipsters, just big rivers and crazy tall trees.”

  We spend the next minute tacking on entity after entity, escalating each time and making each one more ridiculous than the next.

  Finally I say, “I think we just described Narnia. Or Candy Land.”

  “Well, maybe that’s where I’ll go. Narnia, not Candy Land, obviously,” he says. Micah looks back at the water. He lifts up his hands and makes a picture frame with his fingers. “There’ll be sun there. Perfect sun, all the time.”

  He puts his arms back down and stares at the sea. There’s light on his cheeks, in his hair, in his eyes. “See? It’s fun to think of afters. Keeps you sane.”

  I smile, my heart lifting. I really hope Micah gets his after.

  And me? All this time I’ve been waiting to get into the Wars, and now I’m here. I’ve never really imagined what wou
ld be next. Maybe I can try to get my GED, then go to college like normal. I had looked up a few schools in the area but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I didn’t see myself pursuing baking as a career—I wanted to keep that fun and carefree. So many of my classmates had their shit together and their lives planned out, but Mom and Dad reminded me all the time that it was okay I didn’t 100 percent know what I wanted to do yet, which I was grateful for even before Leo died. We could all go on the Philippines trip together, I think. Do something together, for once.

  “Thank you, Micah,” I say quietly. “I really needed this.”

  He smiles back. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  18

  When we get back to the house, I check Matthew’s phone. Still nothing.

  “Please say something,” I say to no one, tucking the phone back in its place. I spend the rest of the evening with Matthew on my mind. I still can’t believe he’d think I would set him up, but it feels stupid and feeble to keep texting as much. I need to talk to him again, in person.

  So the next day, when Jax, Nianna, and Micah tell me they’re going to meet with the Boars, I send Matthew the text that it’s now or never.

  A minute passes. Then another.

  Then the phone lights up, his text a single word:

  Where?

  Yes! Okay. It has to be somewhere close enough to me that I can get there quickly and get back, but also far enough from the safe house that I don’t compromise it.

  The Sunset District. It’s in Stag territory, and practically a straight shot north of where I am. Even with traffic, it’s the best I’ve got.

  Adrenaline racing, I reply:

  Green Apple Books in the Sunset. I don’t have a lot of time. Come alone.

  He responds: I will. Be there as soon as I can.

  Like the night I left to go see Mom, I move quickly—because if I hesitate, I’ll change my mind. Slipping Matthew’s phone into my pocket, I bounce the other one in my hand and debate taking it. If someone texts me while I’m out, they’ll know right away something’s up when I don’t answer. But if I take it, Jax will know I’ve gone.