Surface Tension

by Brent Runyon

  I say, “So, can you tell me what happened?”

  “It's just like I wrote on the postcard.”

  “So there's nothing else to say?”

  “No. Not really. Do you really want to know?”

  “Um, yeah. I want to know. Tell me.” I don't know if I want to know, but I also don't want to stop talking to her. I want her to apologize or something, or at least feel a little bit bad.

  “I met someone. A guy.”

  “What's his name?”

  “Nathan.”

  “Jesus, Nathan? The guy's name is Nathan?” I can hear Mom in the other room doing something. I hope she's not listening to this.

  “Yes. Do you want to know more?”

  “Yes, tell me more.”

  “Do you really?”

  “Yeah. Tell me.” I don't, but I can't stop myself.

  “We watched Casablanca.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And it was incredibly romantic.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And then we slept together.”

  I don't say anything.

  “Do you want to know more?”

  I can't really think. It's like she just poured boiling water into my ear. Do I want to know more? No, I don't. “Is that the only time? Is that the only time you slept together?”

  “No. We also watched Dawn of the Dead and then slept together again.”

  “Really? A zombie movie? That's what puts you in the mood? That's fucked up.”

  “You don't have to insult me.”

  “I do, actually. I actually do have to insult you. That's one of the things a boyfriend has to do when his girlfriend sleeps with someone else. He has to insult her, so get used to it.” Mom drops something in the next room.

  “Why are you being mean?”

  “Uh, hmmm, why am I being mean? I don't know, I guess I don't have a reason to be mean, other than you slept with another guy—twice.”

  “Yeah, are you mad?” Her voice softens a little.

  “No, I'm not mad.” Did I just say I'm not mad? I am mad. “Wait, no, I am mad. I'm actually very mad at you. You shouldn't have done that. Why did you do that?”

  “I don't know. We're only sixteen—it's not like we were going to get married.”

  That's funny. I sort of thought we were going to get married. I guess we don't have anything else to say to each other. “Okay, I'm going to hang up on you now.” I hang up the phone. I slam down the receiver so hard that the bell inside it rings. I almost pick it up to see if it's Jennifer calling back, but I catch myself. I think I might have broken the phone. I go back to my room.

  I'm a mummy. I'm King Tut. All my organs have been cut out and replaced with sawdust. My skin has been wrapped in papyrus and my eyes have been removed.

  Mom opens the door and asks if I want to go to the baseball game with Roger, Kay, and Claire, but I can't speak. I'm a sarcophagus.

  It's ten-fourteen. I've been lying in here for I don't know how long. What am I supposed to do? This is so stupid. So fucking stupid. I can't go to sleep, because I'm not even tired. I try and relax and close my eyes. I take a deep breath to try and pull in all of that creek summer smell, but it doesn't smell the same tonight. It smells like someone is burning something somewhere. Like a pile of leaves or something. But I've smelled burning leaves before, and this doesn't smell like burning leaves. This smells like a bonfire, or not even like a bonfire. This smells like a fire. Is something on fire?

  I get up out of bed and walk down the hall. The smell is even stronger out here. I go into the kitchen and check the stove, but it's not on. There's no candles or anything. There's nothing. But there's still the smell. The wind picks up and I can hear the branches of the walnut tree scraping the roof.

  Where is that smell coming from? I wonder if there was lightning that hit a tree, but I didn't hear any thunder. I go over to the window and look up at the trees. There's nothing. I can't see anything, anyway.

  All I can see is the minister's house. He's got all his lights on but his van isn't in the driveway. Wait. Is that fire? Is his house on fire? Oh shit, his house is on fire. Fuck. Fucking shit.

  “Mom! Dad!”

  I don't hear anything in the back bedroom. This is bad. This isn't happening fast enough. “There's a fire! There's a fire at the minister's house!”

  No one is coming. I forgot they went out to a baseball game and then dinner. They're not back yet.

  What should I do? Call 911.

  I pick up the phone, but there's no dial tone. Fuck, I think I did break it. It doesn't work. What should I do? Go wake the Richardsons.

  I open the screen door, run across the lawn, jump over the wall, and knock on their door. Shit, everything is taking too long. I can hear the fire now. It's crackling.

  “Mr. Richardson! Fire! Call 911!”

  A light goes on in the bedroom on the first floor, and I run over to the open window. Mr. Richardson says, “What's happening out there?”

  “Fire, Mr. Richardson. Call 911.”

  There's a pause and then he says, “I can't find my glasses. Come on in and call.”

  I run back around to the front door and let myself in. There's a phone on the wall. I dial the numbers 9-1-1.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  “Fire. A fire in a cottage near the lake.”

  “What is your location?”

  “Uh, the lake road, about halfway down …”

  Mr. Richardson walks into the kitchen. I guess he found his glasses. He takes the phone from me and gives them the exact address.

  He listens on the phone for a second and says, “No, there's no one in the house.”

  Oh shit, I just remembered. There might be a little girl. “There might be a little girl.”

  “What?” Mr. Richardson stares at me. “A girl? He says there's a little girl.”

  I'm out the door and running across the lawn. The fire is inside the house. The whole thing looks like a lantern. That little girl is in there. Oh God.

  Why isn't anyone doing anything? Mr. Richardson has come out with his garden hose and he's trying to spray the house from halfway across his lawn. Mrs. Richardson is out in her nightgown, just standing there watching like it's a bonfire.

  At least the house has stone on the outside—otherwise I think it would be gone already. The fire's getting bigger inside, though. It's got most of the drapes. It's going to get the ceiling, and then the roof is going to go. They've got to hurry.

  “Mr. Richardson. How long did they say?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty minutes? Mr. Richardson, the whole house is going to be gone by then.”

  He looks at me like I'm an idiot. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  I don't know. I don't know what I want anyone to do about it. But what if the little girl is home? We can't just sit here and watch it burn. We've got to do something. Anything. Can't anyone do anything?

  I know where she'd be. I watched her go into that bedroom the other day. Come on. Come on. I can get to her. I can save her.

  “I've got to go in there,” I say to no one.

  “No,” Mr. Richardson says.

  “There's a kid in there. A girl. I know where she is.”

  “I'll go.”

  “I know where she is, though. I can do it.”

  “No. I'm not letting you go in there. It's not safe. Your parents—”

  “But we've got to hurry. The fire's burning. It's a kid.”

  “Let it burn.”

  He stares at me. I can't tell what he's thinking. But I don't care. I'm going in there.

  I've got it pictured in my head. I know how to do it. I know what to do. “Mrs. Richardson, get a bunch of blankets. Heavy blankets. We'll soak the blankets with the hose.”

  They're hesitating. We can't hesitate. We've got to move. I scream at them, “Go!” Now they're moving. Mr. Richardson heads back to his house. Where is he going? “Mrs. Richardson, buckets?”

/>   Mrs. Richardson nods her head and runs over to their garage.

  I can't wait any longer. I've got to go for a swim. I run down to the beach, just like I used to when I was a kid. My feet are tough enough to handle the rocks, and I sprint until I'm knee-deep in the water, and then I dive all the way in.

  I'm out before I even get in, but I get my hair wet enough to keep the fire off me, I hope.

  I run back up the beach, across the lawn, and to the minister's house. Mr. Richardson comes up behind me and puts a long, heavy wool coat on me. He's already soaked it. It must weigh a hundred pounds. He holds his big rain boots for me to put on. They're filled with water too. I slip my feet into the boots, and Mrs. Richardson piles wet blankets over my head.

  I'm about to open the sliding glass door when Mr. Richardson calls me back. “Cool Hand Luke,” he says. He holds up a pair of leather work gloves.

  That's a good idea. I forgot about my hands. I put them on and dunk them in Mrs. Richardson's bucket of water and go back to the glass door. I can't really see with these blankets over my head. I can just barely make out the shape of the sliding glass door. I pull it open and the heat comes at me all at once.

  The air is so hot I can't even breathe it. It's like that sauna air, but four or five times hotter. I step back and take a few breaths of the air I can breathe.

  Whatever water was on me has evaporated. I step into the house and start walking toward the girl's bedroom. The fire is loud all around me, like the crowd at a baseball game.

  I hear wood cracking somewhere. I hope it doesn't fall on me. I didn't realize I was holding my breath. I can't tell where I'm going. My eyes keep closing. The fire is too hot even for my eyes.

  I let out a little air and try and suck it back in, but all the smoke. I forgot there would be smoke. Come on, where is that door? Stupid door.

  I cough out all the smoke, but there's nothing left to breathe now. It's okay to hold your breath when there's some air in your lungs, but I'm trying to hold it with them empty, so nothing can get in. Oh God. Oh fuck. This was really stupid.

  Shit. I shouldn't have come in here. I'm going to die in here. I turn around and start looking for the exit signs. There's supposed to be exit signs. I go down to my knees.

  There's more air down here. I can almost breathe it. The door. The girl. Door. Handle. Turn. Open. Close.

  I'm in. I'm in. There's no fire in here. Thank God. I can breathe more. But there's no girl either. There's no girl. I look in the bed. No girl. Where's the girl? She was supposed to be here. She wasn't just a dream or something, right? She should be here. What if she's not here?

  Come on, girl. Where are you? Where the hell would you be? I didn't come in here just to die. Where are you? Under the bed? No. Under the covers? No. I take the blankets off my head so I can see better. Maybe she wasn't in this bedroom. Maybe she was in the one next door.

  I don't know if I can get out of here. The fire is so hot out there. I'm sweating, but it's so hot it's just evaporating right off my skin. If I could just find her, I'd be able to open that window and then jump right out. I don't know, I might have to do that anyway.

  I'm giving up. This was stupid.

  I go over to the window. There's no latch. There's no knob or anything. Does this window open? I push on it and pull on it. It's like a wall. Nothing is moving. Oh fuck me. I'm going to die in here.

  Fuck. Come on. This is such a stupid way to die. I don't want to die like this. I'm panicking. Don't panic. I turn around and look back at the room.

  The closet. I didn't check there, did I? Is she in there? Is she?

  That's her. There she is. Curled up on the floor. Oh my God.

  “I'm going to get you out of here, okay?”

  She's not saying anything, but she's looking right at me.

  I scoop her up and carry her over to the window. I need something to break it with. Something hard. There are dolls everywhere and stuffed animals. Shit. No dinosaurs. No rock collection. Wait, there's a perfect rock right on her bedside table. It's a skipping rock. She's got a skipping rock on her bedside table.

  I pick it up and sidearm it as hard as I can right through the window. It smashes, but there are all sorts of jagged pieces of glass. Too sharp to climb over. I punch them out with my leather gloves and lay a blanket over the glass to make it safe enough for the little girl.

  I pick her up and push her through the window feetfirst and then she drops to the ground. It's only a few feet. I climb through headfirst. Dad's here. Oh my God, Dad's here. He pulls me out the rest of the way, pulls me away from the house, and lays me down on the soft pine needles. Mom has the girl. Finally, I can breathe.

  Thank God, I can breathe.

  I'm inside an ambulance, going fast, looking up at two big lights and a woman in a ponytail. I'm okay. I don't like this plastic mask on my face. It smells too much like plastic. I try and take it off, but the woman yells at me to leave it on. The girl is next to me. They're paying more attention to her. That's good. I hope she's okay. They're going to take good care of her, I hope. I hope she's okay.

  I'm okay. I don't hurt anywhere, except my knees and it's hard to get a good breath. I say, “Is she okay?” but nobody hears me. It's too loud with the sirens and them all talking.

  I wonder if she's dying. I hope she's not dying. I turn my head and look at her. She's looking at me. She blinks and keeps looking at me. She's got an oxygen mask on, like me.

  I want to reach out and hold her hand and tell her that she's going to be okay. “Hey, you're going to be okay. Okay?” I say, but I don't think she can hear me.

  The people working on her are trying to get her at tention, but she just keeps looking at me. I reach out my hand.

  She reaches her hand out too, but we can't quite touch. The IV in my arm is tugging a little and her arms are really short. I point my index finger out at her, and she points hers at me.

  The woman in the ponytail pulls the little girl's arm back in. Shit, what's her name? I don't even know her name.

  I pull off my oxygen mask and say, “What's her name?” My voice sounds like it belongs to an old alcoholic comedian who smoked cigars his whole life.

  “What's her name?” I say it louder.

  The ponytail lady hears me and looks over her shoulder. The girl is saying something and the ponytail lady leans down to hear it.

  “Amelie. Her name is Amelie.” She says it so matter-of-factly, like it's not the prettiest name in the world.

  I'll go to the hospital for a while. I just want to make sure that Amelie is going to be okay and then I'll go home.

  They say they want to keep me overnight for observation. That's what they say, but I think it's bullshit. They say I inhaled so much smoke when I was in there that they want to make sure my lungs are working right. It does feel like I had a barbecue inside my chest. I keep coughing and I can't stop, like everything in there is a little char-grilled.

  My parents say Amelie is okay. She's in another part of the hospital, but she's going to be okay.

  I want to call Jennifer. I want to tell her about what happened, and maybe when she hears, she'll dump that guy and she'll come up here and spend the rest of the summer with me.

  I tell Mom that I need to call Jennifer, and she works it out with the nurses how to make a long-distance call from the room. She has to dial a bunch of numbers to make it work with her credit card. She hands me the phone and leaves the room.

  I don't know if I remember the phone number. Fuck, what was it? It's in my head, but I'm just too tired to get it out.

  I'll try and call tomorrow. I hang up and close my eyes.

  Kay, Roger, and Claire are in the hospital to visit. Kay and Roger are sitting by the hospital bed and Claire is standing in the back of the room. She hasn't made eye contact with me yet.

  Mom is saying something to Kay about how the fire might have started. It sounds like the police are investigating it.

  I don't care about that. It doesn't matter. Everyone's fi
ne. It doesn't matter.

  Claire is still standing at the back of the room. I want to tell her I'm sorry, but I don't know exactly the right way to put it. Fuck, when was the last time I had to apologize to Claire? When I hit her in the head with that chestnut when we were six.

  Dad asks Roger if they will bring over dinner and stay the night after I get out of the hospital. Roger says sure, they'll be happy to help out. Dad says, “Don't forget the peppermint stick ice cream.”

  Good, maybe I can apologize to her later.

  They release me from the hospital after one night and we all drive home together like a family, down the same highways we drive when we're arriving for the first time. Mom tells me that Amelie is doing okay but they're keeping her in for observation for another day.

  Dad is telling me they wrote about it in the paper and a reporter from the newspaper wants to interview me. They want to take my picture and talk to me about what happened. I can't help but think that it doesn't even matter. Nothing seems like it matters anymore.

  I just want to talk to Jennifer. I miss her. She doesn't even know what happened. She doesn't even know. I want to tell her the whole story. It won't even seem real until she knows about it.

  We drive down the old lake road, past the Wirth mansion and the house that looks like a tepee. I remember when I was a little kid and this drive was like the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. I remember it was just the best thing ever. I wish I could get back to that.

  I wish that it were somehow possible to go back and relive it all again, but without wanting to grow up so fast. Just to take it slow and be cool and enjoy being a little kid and running through the wet grass with bare feet. The feel of the stones when we first get here. How I'd try and run across the stones until my feet got tough enough so I didn't feel it anymore.

  I wish I could still do that. I wish I could carry myself like that, like nothing mattered but the sunlight and the time of day.

  We drive down the road, past the Vizquels', and there's the minister's cottage. All the windows are gone, and so is most of the roof, but the rest of the house is still standing. There's broken glass everywhere.

  I feel sick to my stomach just looking at it. I hope that it's not always going to look like that.