Playing with Fire

by April Henry

  Ryan nodded. “You could be right.”

  Wyatt frowned. “But what kind of store would sell something like that? It looked like it belonged in a museum.”

  “Hey,” Darryl said. “There is a small museum not far from here, out in the middle of nowhere, on the other side of the Columbia. It used to be an estate, and as a museum it’s kind of a hodgepodge. It’s been years since I was there, but I remember they had all these things that used to belong to some queen.”

  “What kind of things?” Beatriz asked.

  “Icons. Paintings. Gowns. This elaborately carved furniture. And the queen’s jewels.”

  “Well, whatever that was,” Natalia said, “Jason’s still got it, plus the bear spray.”

  “Bear spray would really reach out and touch someone,” Marco said. “I’m glad you didn’t go after him, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt shrugged. “I might have been okay. It’s kind of counterintuitive, but pepper spray for people is actually way stronger than the pepper spray for bears.”

  “I wish he hadn’t taken that food,” Zion said. “I’m really hungry.”

  Natalia looked down at the diminished pile of provisions. The red road flare caught her eye again, only this time she knew where she had seen it. Or part of it. Her stomach somersaulting, she leaned down and grabbed it up.

  “Look at this!” Her voice was shaking as she held it up. “Look at the cap on it! It has a big red dot on the top.”

  “That’s the striking surface,” Wyatt said. “A flare is basically like a giant match.”

  Normally just the thought of a match would make her flinch, but not now. “Remember?” She pointed it at him. “The cap on this flare looks exactly like that plastic cap Jason was carrying while he passed us on his way in!”

  Wyatt lifted one shoulder. “I didn’t notice his hands.”

  More images crowded into her head. “When you were climbing up to get cell service, I saw Jason throwing the cap into the water. I was glaring at him because I thought he was littering, and he was glaring right back.” Natalia exhaled sharply as it all came into focus. “But he was really getting rid of the evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” Marco asked.

  AJ’s voice cracked with excitement as he said what Natalia was thinking. “Wyatt said people use road flares to start fires. Jason must have started the fire.”

  Ryan sounded skeptical. “And then he went hiking?”

  But Natalia knew in her bones that was what had happened. She looked around the ring of faces. “I’m guessing something happened that Jason didn’t expect. He was probably in a car accident, put out a flare, and then it accidentally caught the grass on fire.” No wonder he had been in such a hurry when he passed her and Wyatt. He had been running away from the fire. The fire he had accidentally caused. “And then he kept quiet and hoped that nobody noticed.”

  “But you did notice,” Wyatt said. “You said you glared at him when he tossed the cap into the water. So he knows you saw it.”

  “Oh my God, Natalia.” Beatriz put her hand over her mouth. “And then he tried to push you off at Sky Bridge.”

  It all made sense now. “And when I was looking for Susan, I kept feeling like someone was following me. I didn’t say anything because I thought I was imagining it.”

  Wyatt didn’t say anything, just put his arms around Natalia and pulled her close.

  Blue whined and nosed Darryl, who stumbled backward a half step.

  Zion threw his arms around the dog’s neck. “It’s okay, Blue,” he said, but his voice shook.

  “What’s he going to do?” Lisa clutched Trask tighter. “What’s Jason going to do now that all of us know?”

  CHAPTER 20

  IS THIS TOO CLOSE?

  2:25 A.M.

  RYAN PUT HIS UNBURNED hand on Lisa’s shoulder. “It’s okay, honey. He’s certainly not going to do anything tonight. He’s too busy running away.”

  Darryl laughed without mirth. “And what could he do to us that would be worse than what’s already happening?”

  Zion puffed out his chest. “Plus there’s ten of us and only one of him. Eleven if you count Trask.”

  “For now, let’s not think about Jason. Stick to the original plan,” Beatriz said.

  Wyatt nodded. “Beatriz is right. We’ll eat something, drink a little water, and try to sleep for a couple of hours.”

  Lisa’s hand sanitizer started going from hand to hand, as Wyatt began cutting up the apple and the various bars with his knife. Without the bag of trail mix, the amount of food looked pitifully small.

  “Anyone have allergies?” Wyatt asked. As people shook their heads, he arranged the results until they were more or less eleven equal piles.

  Darryl said, “Zion can have my share.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Zion won’t starve to death, and we all need to eat a little something to keep on going.”

  “I’m not that hungry anyway, Grandpa,” Zion said loyally.

  As people gathered up their share of the food, Wyatt redistributed anything extra they could use to keep warm: beach towels, foil blankets, rain jackets, and extra clothes.

  Some people ate quickly, while others tried to savor their few bites. With a whine, Blue nosed Darryl until Marco hauled the dog back and apologized for his begging. Natalia slipped Blue her bit of apple, and she wasn’t the only one who shared with the dog.

  “Come on, Susan, you need to eat,” AJ coaxed.

  Susan was sitting with her back against a tree trunk, her untouched food in a pile in her lap. She started to bring a carrot to her lips, then stopped when her headlamp illuminated her scratches. “What happened to my arms?”

  “Oh, you got scratched a little bit,” Darryl said. “But you’re okay.”

  She put her fingers to her temples. “I wish I could think. Lately I feel like someone put my head in a bucket of Jell-O.”

  Darryl tried to make a joke of it. “Even Jell-O sounds good right about now.”

  Marco had carried a clutch of water bottles to the nearby stream and filled them. Now Wyatt’s water filtration device went from person to person. The bottom end of the short tube went into the water, while the top of the tube was capped with a plastic straw. When it was their turn to use it, some people rubbed the end of the straw on their shirts. Natalia didn’t bother.

  It took more effort to suck the water up through the straw than she had thought, enough that her cheeks went hollow. Even though it wasn’t much, just a few mouthfuls of food and water made her feel stronger, like a plant in the desert after a rain, its limp leaves lifting.

  “You were right about us needing to stop,” she said, passing the filtration device back to Wyatt. Even though it was his, he was the last to use it. “I do feel better.”

  “We’re all dead on our feet.”

  With the food gone, people began to curl up and try to get comfortable. The clearing was small enough that they were all only a few feet apart. They were in pairs. Marco and Beatriz, with Blue between them and her beach towel over them. Darryl and Zion shared a space blanket. Ryan and Lisa had Trask between them and a couple of rain jackets over them. Even Susan and AJ lay next to each other, she in her sleeping bag and he underneath a space blanket. They weren’t close enough for it to be called cuddling, but perhaps they still spread a little warmth to each other.

  Wyatt picked up a small bag that had come from his pack. “You’ll want to take off your boots before you get into the bivy bag,” he told Natalia.

  “It’s yours, though. Are you sure you don’t want to use it?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’ve got a beach towel.”

  Natalia unlaced her boots and pulled them off, ignoring how it made the pain on her blistered toe come into focus again. She was definitely not taking off her socks. She didn’t want to know how bad it was. On the horizon, fires patched and speckled the slopes so that, in the dark, the distant hillside looked like a lava flow.

  She swallowed and turned away. Af
ter toggling off her headlamp, she began to wriggle her way into the bivy bag. It was like a narrow sleeping bag, only without any padding. The outside was dark orange. The inside was the same silvery stuff as a foil blanket.

  Unbidden, the memory of how her mom used to wrap Conner up like a burrito popped into her thoughts. With the memory came pain so sharp and sudden it was like someone had slipped a knife between her ribs and given it a twist. Her mom always said babies liked the security of being swaddled. But the tightness of the bag around her legs just made Natalia feel trapped.

  As she rocked from side to side to pull the bag past her hips, Wyatt smoothed a space with the flat of his hands, occasionally tossing a rock into the trees ringing the clearing. He stretched out and then patted the ground in front of him. By accident or design, the way he was lying meant Natalia couldn’t face the fire without also facing him. In the limited space, that would have put their faces only a few inches apart, which seemed too intimate. Besides, she was hyperaware of how long it had been since she had brushed her teeth. So she lay with her back to him, her arms outside the bag, and the fire out of her direct range of sight.

  Wyatt’s warm breath stirred the hairs on the nape of her neck. “Is this too close?” he whispered.

  “No. It’s fine.” The whole length of her body was suddenly aware of his body behind her, not quite touching but not quite not touching, either.

  The ground was unyielding. Despite Wyatt’s efforts, rocks dug into Natalia’s hip and shoulder and the arm she had curled under her head.

  A good portion of the sky glowed red, as did the moon. The flames cast a strange yellow light that sometimes grew so bright she could see everything around them. Then the light would die down, and it would get darker again. She forced herself to close her eyes.

  What if they all drifted off and awoke only when it was too late, when the trees ringing them burst into flame? She remembered reading about a forest fire that had overrun a group of smoke jumpers, firefighters who parachuted in to fight the flames. They had deployed their emergency shelters, supposedly safe to five hundred degrees—and roasted alive inside them.

  Natalia’s eyes flew open. What if her staying awake was the only thing keeping them all safe? Keeping them alive? She started to shiver. She tried to will it to stop but failed.

  Wyatt’s fingers cupped her hip. “Are you cold?” He hitched his lower body a half inch closer. Now she could feel his knees against the backs of her own.

  “I’m not cold.” His touch made her tremble even harder. “I don’t know why I’m shaking.”

  “Animals shake after they escape a predator. It’s your body processing everything that’s happened tonight.”

  Closing her eyes, she twisted her head back toward Wyatt. In the lightest of whispers, she said, “I’m afraid of fire. It’s personal for me.” What was she doing? She never talked about what had happened.

  “I guessed it might be.”

  “You did?”

  “You told me earlier that you were afraid of fire. And when you rolled up your pants to go wading, I saw the scars on the back of your leg.” Wyatt had told her to bring a swimsuit, but Natalia had pretended she had forgotten.

  “Oh.” She’d thought she had been careful not to expose her scars, with their thickness, their odd color. Another shiver, more violent, rocked her. Wyatt hitched himself even closer. Now she could feel his chest against her shoulder blades. “When I was in fifth grade, there was a fire. My house burned down. And my little brother died.”

  It was a version of the truth, told in the passive voice. Told in passing. As if it weren’t Natalia’s fault. As if it weren’t the one thing that had shaped every day since.

  “Oh, Natalia, I’m so sorry.”

  The darkness, and the fact she couldn’t see his face, allowed her to say the next part. The worst part.

  “It was all my fault. I’m the one who started the fire.”

  The words seemed to hang in the air.

  She whispered the rest in a rush. “I tried to save him by holding him out the second-floor window. But he fell.” Her breathing hitched when she exhaled. Wasn’t Wyatt going to say anything?

  Wyatt finally broke the silence. “Did you say you were in fifth grade?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So just a couple of years older than Zion?”

  She realized this was probably true. Even though Zion seemed so small. So young. So helpless. “Yeah.” Something inside her chest felt loosened the tiniest bit.

  After another long silence, Wyatt sighed and said, “It’s hard not to try to take responsibility for everything, even things not in your control. Like right now. What if I’ve made the wrong decision about us taking a break? Then it will be my fault if it all goes south.”

  “No, it won’t.” Natalia shifted again, but it was like trying to get comfortable on concrete. The only enjoyable part was feeling his warmth behind her. “You’re doing the best you can. And you know more about the outdoors than any of us.”

  “Just like I’m sure you did the best you could with what you knew back then. And look at what you’ve done tonight. You helped Ryan and AJ and Lisa.”

  She felt a small surge of pride but still couldn’t stop arguing. “And if we all burn up, none of that will matter.”

  “Won’t it? Everyone dies, but that doesn’t mean that what happens in between being born and dying doesn’t count.” He sighed. “But I guess we can’t solve life’s mysteries tonight. You should at least try to get a few minutes’ sleep.”

  “Okay.” Obediently Natalia again closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Lisa and Ryan were talking in low voices. Marco’s cough had become constant. Then Darryl began to snore, the sound a cross between a grumble and a chain saw. Her back felt stiff. Even the novelty of having Wyatt so close wore off. At one point she started to doze, but as her body relaxed another rock jabbed her. She jerked awake again.

  The dark, empty minutes crawled by. How long the night was, and how slowly it passed. She imagined saying that to Dr. Paris. But wouldn’t Dr. Paris point out that no matter how long it felt, it was always finite?

  Suddenly Beatriz shrieked. Those who had been sleeping startled awake. To her surprise, Natalia realized she might have been one of them.

  Wyatt and a few others were on their feet, their hands balled into fists as if ready to fight. Natalia pushed herself to her knees, the bivy sack tight around her lower body.

  “What’s wrong, B?” Marco’s voice was filled with alarm.

  “Sorry! Sorry! Something just crawled over my arm.”

  Before anyone could respond, a crash came from the woods behind them.

  Susan gasped. “What was that?”

  “Is it Jason?” Lisa clutched Trask, who let out a startled hiccup.

  From the woods came a strange noise that reminded Natalia of Chewbacca from Star Wars. A howl, wordless but filled with emotion.

  Snorting and snuffling, three dark creatures lumbered into the edge of the clearing. One huge. Two smaller. A mother bear and her cubs.

  Natalia let out an involuntary shriek. The mother’s heavy head swung around. And suddenly Natalia was transported back to her nightmares.

  CHAPTER 21

  TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT

  SIX YEARS EARLIER

  “NO, NO, NO!” THE dark beast leapt toward Natalia, jaws spread wide. She cowered, wrapping her arms around her head. Knowing it wouldn’t make any difference.

  “Natalia! Wake up! Natalia!”

  The beast shook her back and forth. Its teeth sank into her upper arms.

  “Natalia! Honey!” Not an animal’s growl but her mom’s voice. “Wake up! You’re just having another nightmare. You’re all right.”

  Natalia opened her eyes. The pressure on her arms wasn’t from teeth but her mom’s frantic fingers. It was night. She and her parents were standing in the parking lot of their new apartment building. Against the icy blacktop, her feet were bare. She was dressed only in thin pajama
s, but that wasn’t why she was shivering, vibrating so hard it felt like she might fly apart. In her dream, a great dark beast had been chasing her.

  During the day, the fire was never far from her thoughts. She often imagined the smell of smoke or thought she caught the flicker of flames with the corner of an eye. But at night, she drowned, or dangled from cliffs, or was crushed in car accidents, or fought off monsters both human and animal. Natalia didn’t know if it was a blessing that she never dreamed of the fire.

  Now her mom held her upper arms, while her dad stood watching, his big hands empty, dangling helplessly. Both their faces were drawn with guilt and grief. In the building behind them, lights were coming on and curtains pushed back as their new neighbors gawped or silently cursed at them. This wasn’t the first time Natalia had woken up outside screaming. With no memory of how she had gotten there. Of how she must have undone the two locks and the chain on their new front door.

  When she’d finally come home from the hospital, it wasn’t home at all. It was this anonymous apartment building, while their house was being rebuilt. Only a few things hadn’t been ruined by the smoke, flames, or the water from the firefighters’ hoses: a teapot, a few utensils, a couple of cast-iron frying pans. That was it. But it was petty to miss her favorite clothes and books. Not when her brother was dead.

  “That’s it,” her dad said. “This can’t go on. She has to see someone.”

  “N-no.” It was an effort for Natalia to speak. Her head still felt muddled. When her mom finally let go of her arms, she half expected to feel hot blood dripping off her elbows. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to be left alone.”

  “You’re not getting any better, Natalia.” Her dad sighed heavily. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”

  * * *

  “I’m Dr. Paris,” the psychiatrist said. She had just firmly told Natalia’s mom it would be best for them to talk alone. Now she put out her hand. Hesitantly, Natalia took it. She had never shaken a grown-up’s hand before, and she knew immediately she was doing it wrong. Her grip was too weak, too wishy-washy. It was surely being judged and found wanting.