Drummer shoves Luke with both hands, shocking all of us. He’s not one to defend himself, let alone anyone else. “Leave Hannah alone.”
Luke shoves him back, and Drummer makes a fist. Mo and Violet leap to their feet.
“Stop it!” Mo cries, her red eyebrows pulled in tight. “We can’t start fighting with each other. We need to calm down and think.”
Luke and Drummer drop their eyes to the floor.
“We’re in this together,” she adds.
I nod. “If we keep our mouths shut, this shouldn’t come back on us. It’s going to be okay.”
Violet clears her throat. “But people have died. Maybe we should tell?”
Mo glances at me with questions in her eyes. Drummer and Luke stiffen and shake their heads, suddenly on the same side. “No way,” says Luke.
“Fuck no,” Drummer adds.
“Look, guys,” I say, placing both hands softly on the bedspread, smoothing the wrinkles. “Violet and I rode to town as fast as we could. That was the right thing to do. But telling them we started the fire won’t help the firefighters put it out. There is absolutely nothing to gain by telling, and it will ruin our lives.” I swallow and my mouth feels dry, my tongue thick. “If I thought it would help in some way, yeah, I’d say let’s tell them, but it won’t. Why should we risk going to prison and losing our chance at college? How would that benefit anyone?”
“But it was an accident,” Violet says.
I peer at her, willing her to understand. “Starting a wildfire, even by accident, is a crime, V.”
“Listen to Hannah,” Luke grumbles, slanting his eyes toward me. “She knows everything.”
I exhale and rub my forehead. My friends might not like hearing it, but I am the sheriff’s daughter, and I need Violet to get it: we’re in big fucking trouble. “It’s reckless arson, V, and it can be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony, depending on the damage the fire causes and the decision of the district attorney. And you two are minors”—I point to Violet and Luke—“which means your parents will be responsible for whatever fines they charge us, which will be huge.”
Mo nods. “They fined that fifteen-year-old kid thirty-six million dollars for starting the Eagle Creek fire.”
Violet’s hands fly to her mouth. “Grammy would kill me.”
Luke chuckles grimly. “They aren’t getting any cash out of my broke-ass family.”
Drummer plops back onto the bed. “Hannah’s right. Telling the world we did it won’t help, and it’s not like we’re making things worse by staying silent.”
I let his words sink in, and when no one argues, I ask, “We’re agreed, then? No one talks?” Drummer, Luke, and Mo nod.
The four of us shift our eyes to Violet. She stares back, looking sulky in her off-the-shoulder top and long, curled eyelashes. It strikes me again that she’s an outsider. She wasn’t born and raised in Gap Mountain as we were. The four of us wait, watching her, and it feels like a divide is opening between us. Our first.
Finally, with a huff, she murmurs agreement. “I won’t say anything.”
Everyone takes a huge, steadying breath. In light of what we’re facing, arguing with one another is pointless anyway. I consider the felonies and fines that have been charged in the past. There were the two laborers who accidentally started the Zaca Fire while fixing a broken water pipe, the trash-burning transient who started the Day Fire, and the electric company that caused the Camp Fire in Paradise, California—all accidents, technically, but all facing fines and criminal charges. It’s imperative that we aren’t caught.
“I’m driving back to Gap Lake tonight to check the area,” I tell the group. “Dad said they took the main roadblock down, and I have to find that pipe and anything else we left behind.”
“Won’t it all be burned?” Violet asks.
I shrug. “The fire started small and traveled quickly away from us. Anything we left behind or dropped could still be there, with our fingerprints. Hopefully they haven’t made much progress on the investigation yet, but once they do, they’ll find the area of origin quickly and rope it off. Trust me, it isn’t that hard. Anyone want to come with me?”
“I’ll go with you,” Drummer says.
I smile, glad that it’s him, but my nerves remain coiled. I know how fast this can spiral out of control. The most important thing now is to remove evidence. The next is to lie low and hope this blows over.
We break apart, go to our separate rooms, and I set my phone alarm for 2:00 a.m.
9
July 10
Gap Fire: 0% contained
Fatalities: 3
Time: 2:06 a.m.
At two o’clock my alarm goes off, and I throw vending machine snacks into a bag along with two bottles of water. As I brush my teeth, I stare into the mirror, hunting for my soul. My friends and I killed people, good people. I lean forward until my nose touches the glass. I look the same as I did before, but I don’t feel the same. It’s like I’m trapped in a nightmare, or an alternate reality, or in hell itself. I reach for the life I had a few days ago, but with every hour it slides further away.
Bishop has been surreal the last two days. The wildfire smoke has reached us here and smeared the sky in a dismal haze. Gap Mountain refugees amble through stores and hotel lobbies and restaurants as if they’re lost or can’t remember who they are. Sometimes they halt midstride and stare at nothing at all.
Anxiety claws at me all day. I don’t know where my horses are—if they burned up like those deer we saw, if they fell into a canyon, or if predators got to them. Saliva fills my mouth, and I pinch my cheeks hard, glaring at myself in the mirror. “Keep it together, Hannah.”
I’m determined to hide what we did, and I wonder if this makes me a terrible person. Probably. A huff escapes my lips and steams up the glass. Leaping to the wrong side of the law is easier than I ever dreamed possible.
I gather my pack, kiss Matilda, and slip out of the hotel room. Down the hall, I find Drummer’s door and knock on it softly. There’s no noise inside his room, no sign of him getting ready. I knock again. “Hey, we have to go.” No response. Knowing Drummer, he forgot to set his alarm.
I have the extra key to his room, since it was supposed to be my dad’s room, and use it to open his door. “Drummer?” I whisper into the dark.
The sheets rustle. Yep, he forgot. I flip on the bathroom light, and the weak bulb illuminates the room and the bed.
Drummer is not alone.
I squint at two bodies—their tan legs entangled, her hair a tousled mess, and his arm wrapped protectively around her small frame. I stare stupidly, unable to move or breathe. I smell sex and sweat and her shampoo. She flips over, instinctively avoiding the light, and snuggles into his chest. The sheet falls away, revealing her smooth naked back. It’s Violet.
I slide out of the room before they notice me and stand in the hallway. My tall body bends in half as I suck for air. If I’ve been falling for Drummer since the sixth grade, then I just hit bottom with one hard smack. We promised not to do this: monsters don’t date monsters. Tears leak from my eyes, and I rub them away. Her naked back flashes in my mind like an assault. It turns out Violet does have everything: endless cash, movie star looks, my dream college—and Drummer.
All I want is to return to my room and hide, but I have to get to the Gap, with or without Drummer. I start to leave, then hesitate. No, he offered to come with me, and I’m going to make him keep his promise. I text him: I’m outside your room. You coming or not?
After a short while, I hear movement, and then his door creaks open, just an inch. He’s hiding her from me, and I bristle. I don’t think he’s ever hidden anything from me before. Drummer’s not wearing a shirt, and he blinks as he surfaces from the world of dreams. “Sorry, I forgot.”
“No kidding.”
He rubs his eyes
with two fists, like a little boy. “Right, just a sec.”
“Hurry,” I urge him.
Drummer shuts the door and then reappears—five excruciating minutes later—wearing jeans and a fresh white T-shirt he bought at Kmart yesterday. He’s quickly rinsed off, put on deodorant, and brushed his teeth, washing her off of him. My jaw tightens, and the pain in my head returns as I rub my forehead.
“Ready,” he says, adding a guilty smile, an expression of his I know well. We walk a fine line as best friends: he needs attention and I’m happy to give it, but when he’s getting it elsewhere, he practically forgets about me. Then we slip into the thick mire of his guilt and my hidden resentment as we pretend that nothing has changed. He exits his hotel room, careful to block my view of Violet, who is still sound asleep in his bed.
* * *
—
The ride to the trailhead is slow and quiet, and we reach it an hour later. I let Drummer drive, because he likes to play the role of alpha male when it suits him. “Stop,” I say when he steers us off the road to drive directly to Gap Lake. “Tire tracks.”
“What?”
“We don’t want fresh tire tracks near the area of origin that can be traced back to the Jeep. Park here at the trailhead.”
“All right, detective.” He pulls the emergency brake, and we step out of the Jeep and slide on the N95 face masks we snatched from the hotel lobby. The masks are everywhere in Bishop, offered for free. Smoke from our fire has reached as far as Washington, they said on the news.
Drummer and I strike out on the trail. “I don’t see how any of this can be traced back to us,” he shouts through the mask.
We’re the exact same height, and I easily keep pace with him. “Have you heard of pyro-forensics?” I ask.
He snorts. “Unless it’s on the back of a cereal box, then no.”
Drummer plays like he’s stupid, but it’s not true. He just can’t be bothered with homework, can’t sit still for it. I fill him in. “It’s the science of studying wildfires and finding their causes and places of origin. A team of fire investigators will figure out where this started, if they haven’t already.”
He raises his brows as if he doesn’t believe me.
I pull down my mask so he can hear me better. “Once they have the area of origin, then they’ll find the point of origin and begin looking for clues as to what started the fire. They’ll reach out through the news, question residents, write search warrants, and review CCTV of the roads leading to Gap Lake—they’ll be on a mission to arrest someone.” I touch his arm. “There are three people dead, Drummer, and more missing. The fire is still burning. Yosemite might evacuate. This is a big fucking deal.”
“I know that.” He pulls down his mask too. “But is all the damage our fault? I mean, we started it, yeah, but why can’t the firefighters put it out? Why didn’t the deputies get everyone out of Stony Ridge in time? We shouldn’t get the blame for everything.”
He’s pouting so I let him. As long as we find Luke’s pipe and anything else we left behind, his questions are moot. It’s almost dawn and we break into a slow jog the rest of the way up the trail.
When we arrive at the Gap, we pause to admire the sapphire water winking in the dawn light. The mountain air brushes the surface and ruffles our hair. Drummer holds my hand, and it’s like we’re the first two people on Earth, back when they were blameless and happy, and I feel reassured. This lake has been swallowing secrets for fifteen hundred years; it will swallow ours.
Drummer smiles. “Let’s do this, Hannah Banana.”
We start at the beach and search it first, using our phones as flashlights. As the sun rises slowly behind the mountains, it casts a gray glow that makes everything look the same. After determining that the beach is clean, we trek into the woods where Luke lit the pipe. The landscape ahead of us is charred and desolate as far as we can see. Blackened naked limbs hang off the trees, and utter silence reigns. The animals and insects are gone. It’s as if we landed on a lifeless planet.
“What’s that?” Drummer asks, pointing toward something fluttering in the breeze.
My stomach sinks as we draw closer. I lift it out of the grass, and Drummer whispers, “Oh shit.”
It’s police tape.
I drop it and look around, notice another strand of tape in the distance. My gut clenches. “The investigators have already been here. We’re too late.”
Drummer’s hands slide through his hair, and panic flits across his features. “I can’t do this. I can’t go to jail.” He stomps in a circle. “Hannah?” His expression is pleading, and this is the exact look he gave me when he got one of his girlfriends pregnant and came to me to fix it: Talk to her for me, find out what she’s going to do. My mom will take care of the kid, but I’m not going to marry her. Hannah, help me.
His cowardice should have turned me off, and it almost did, but his need for me overrode that. Turns out it wasn’t his kid, and he got pissed and yelled at the girl for cheating. Fucking Drummer.
“How did they find this place so fast?” he cries.
I point to a tree. “There are clues that backtrack the fire to this exact spot, things like char patterns, curling leaves, bent grasses, and soot deposits. I don’t understand it all, but the clues obviously led investigators here. They’ve already searched the area, but maybe they missed something. Come on, we have to find that pipe, but be careful, touch as little as possible.”
We drop down and start searching, gently lifting fragile branches, plants, and scorched grasses. I worry about leaving footprints, in case investigators come back, but don’t see how that can be avoided. Luke’s fingerprint-ridden pipe is more damning than our shoe treads. Every kid in Gap Mountain owns a pair of Vans, but that pipe leads straight back to Luke. Because of his vandalism charge, his fingerprints are on file, and a match could quickly be made.
Once he’s arrested, the rest of us will fall like dominoes. Our cover story is decent, but I don’t think it will withstand close scrutiny. There are too many loose ends, like Luke picking up the book of matches at Sam’s and the photo Mo posted. The key to controlling this is keeping the attention off of us completely.
After almost an hour of searching, we give up. “The pipe’s not here. They must have found it.”
Drummer squats, drops his face into his hands, and groans.
I rub his back, impatient. The predawn light spreads quicker from behind its smokescreen, lighting the forest from gray to soft gold. I don’t want anyone to see us here. Suspects often return to the scene of their crimes, a sentence from some criminology book I read once, or maybe I heard it in a movie. I’ll find out when I get to San Diego State and start my classes, if I can just get through the next few weeks.
Drummer stands and throws a rock into the Gap. It strikes the surface with an anticlimactic splash and vanishes. I imagine it sinking, one cold foot at a time, until it reaches the bottom, where it will never be found. The tight band of tension around my forehead loosens. “Look,” I say to Drummer. “Odds are, the fingerprints will have burned off the pipe, or the pipe itself will have melted. We’re fine. It’s all going to be okay. Let’s go.”
On our way back, we keep our eyes peeled for anything else we might have left behind—sandwich wrappers, sunscreen, towels—but the place has been picked clean. Drummer calms down and his mind turns to other things. “Have you ever been anybody’s first time?” he asks.
For a second, I can’t reference what he’s talking about. “First time doing what?”
He laughs darkly and lifts his eyebrows.
Oh god. He’s talking about sex. I feel instantly sick. “You know I’ve never—” I cut myself off. I don’t want to talk about this.
“The first time is special,” he says, plowing on and ignoring my discomfort.
I swallow, positive he’s referring to Violet. Was last night h
er first time? Because I know it wasn’t his. There is pride and tenderness in Drummer’s voice, and I don’t trust myself to speak. He’s never called sex with any girl special before. I imagine the word forming a hoop around just the two of them. It edges me out, and I feel the forest spin around me like a toy top.
Drummer can’t abandon me now, not with three dead bodies and arson charges hanging over us. He should be leaning on me, not her. I’m the one who’s trying to keep us safe. I’m the one who’s going to get us out of this mess.
“Are you talking about someone in particular?” I ask without turning around. I think he wants to confess that he broke our pact, and if he does, I’ll forgive him. It will mean she’s not important.
But he doesn’t confess. “No one in particular. Just thinking out loud.”
My nails dig into my palms. Drummer is lying, and I lose my breath. He doesn’t lie, not to me. My thoughts blacken like the forest behind us. He heads toward the driver’s side of my Jeep.
“I’ll drive,” I say, forcing the words past the hard ball in my throat. I grind the gears and spin the tires as I pull out of the trailhead parking lot. I want to punch the steering wheel, drive off a cliff, scream in rage. But I don’t. I drive and we don’t speak. My head is pounding when we get back to the hotel.
“You okay?” Drummer asks.
“I’m tired.” We separate in the hallway, and I enter my room, leash Matilda, and take her for a walk.
After a long stroll through Bishop, my rage settles. Drummer will tire of Violet, as he tires of all the girls. He will come back to me. All I have to do is wait.
10
July 16
Gap Fire: 20% contained
Fatalities: 7
Time: 11:00 a.m.
Nine days after the evacuation, those of us who still have homes are allowed to move back to Gap Mountain. Three more bodies are discovered in the Stony Ridge neighborhood rubble, and an elderly Gap Mountain resident who stayed to fight the fire died in the hospital from his injuries, bringing the death toll to seven. A female firefighter was hospitalized when tornado-strength winds caused by the blaze ripped a tree out of the earth and flung it at her; she’s in critical condition. Violet can’t stop crying, and the rest of us are too stunned to react. We just want to go home.
Lies Like Wildfire Page 6