by Patty Blount
There weren’t many photos of me.
I tried to tell myself it was because I was the second baby. That my mother was exhausted from taking care of not one but two toddlers. If either of those reasons had been true, it would have sucked, but I could have accepted them.
Eventually.
But the truth was it was entirely my fault. My mom, my grandparents—both sides—even my favorite Aunt Sue all told me that when I was a baby, I’d screamed for hours, slept very little, and needed speech therapy just to say da-da. By the time I’d begun school, I’d been tested for Asperger’s and ADHD and didn’t have any friends. Dad and Matt had gone on countless camping and hunting trips—just the two of them. Every time I’d asked to come, Dad had told me, “When you’re older.”
That day had never come.
Things got way better by the time I’d hit fourth grade, when a particularly attentive teacher discovered I was “brilliant.”
Her word, not mine.
She claimed all those development problems were really just frustration. My brain was whipping along at warp speed, but my body couldn’t keep up, so I had a lot of meltdowns and tantrums. With the right guidance and structure, I thrived. I was put into a gifted program, and I loved it. I joined the chess club where I met Alex, the first real friend I ever made. But it turned out I wasn’t brilliant at all. I just tested well because I never forgot anything. My teacher said I have an eidetic memory.
But Matt really was special. I could have resented him or been jealous of him, maybe even hated him. But he wouldn’t let that happen. Maybe he felt guilty. Or maybe he just really liked me. The reasons didn’t matter much, but Matt used to do things with me that Dad never did, like take me to the lake and toss me a ball. Eventually, I learned to bypass Dad and just ask Matt whenever I needed something.
I shoved a hand into my pocket, took out my note, and scrawled a few more lines. I refolded the paper and squeezed my eyes shut. God, Matt, I miss you so fucking much.
A throat cleared, and I jerked in my seat.
“Hey, Peanut.” A skinny blond kid smirked down at me, hands buried in his pockets—the same kid who’d managed to put on the entire bunker gear ensemble in one minute, fifty seconds.
“My name’s Logan.”
The kid’s grin got wider. “Your dad calls you Peanut. He really hates you.”
You have no idea. For as long as I could remember, Dad called me peanut butter cup because of my name. I never understood it. Did he name me Reece just so he could make fun of me? I said nothing as the kid’s eyes raked me up and down.
“Did you really kill your own brother?”
“Back off, Kev.” Max, the kid with all the muscle, came to my rescue.
Kev shot a nervous look at Max, the tall, older guy kicked back with his feet on the table. A diamond stud glittered in his ear. He looked like he was twice our age. I nodded my thanks. All I got back was a shrug.
“You’re taller than your brother, but skinnier. Probably can’t even lift a hose line.” The skinny kid tried to rile me again, but this time in a lower voice.
“Won’t know until I try.”
“I can lift the two-and-a-half on my own.”
“Bullshit.”
I turned at the sound of another voice and watched another boy approach. Not very tall, but he was built like a bull, all shoulders and broad chest. He had dark, buzzed hair and shuffled when he walked. “Don’t listen to Kevin, dude. The only thing he can lift around here are the doughnuts.”
Kevin punched the wide kid’s shoulder.
“I’m Ricky Acosta, but everyone calls me Bear. That’s Kevin and Ty.” He pointed to the kid I’d met earlier. “And that guy’s Max.” Bear shuffled around and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the guy I’d figured was already a full-fledged firefighter. Tall, dark, and ripped, with a line of fuzz outlining his entire jaw, Max looked like one of the guys in the last firefighter calendar Matt brought home, pissed off he wasn’t in it. It hung over the dartboard in our basement—one of the things Mom absolutely refused to get rid of.
“He’s a junior? I thought he was, like, twenty-five.”
Bear held up his hands with an anxious glance over his shoulder. “Shhh, don’t say that too loud. It’ll go straight to his head, and there’s no room in there for more.”
Max lifted his middle finger and went back to reading the text.
I snorted. I knew the type well. “Are those two a couple or something?” I lifted my chin toward Amanda and Gage, still whispering at the back of the room. It had been five minutes already.
Bear laughed. “No way. Man doesn’t date, and Gage does whatever she needs him to do.”
“She’s in charge. The squad captain,” Kevin added.
I looked from Bear to Kevin to Ty. “Man?”
“Amanda. We call her Man. Makes her feel like one of the guys,” Ty said proudly.
So noted. “Is she really in charge?”
“It’s not official or anything. Every year, we all vote which kid is the best leader. That’s Amanda now.”
He didn’t need to tell me that Matt used to be the squad’s captain. Kevin slid my book across the table and leafed through it. “So what’s your deal, man? Why you here?”
I eyeballed all three guys. I stood up, slowly eased a hip to the corner of the table, and stated the obvious. “I want to be a firefighter like you guys.”
“Bullshit,” Bear said again. “If you wanted to be a firefighter, why didn’t you start squad when you were twelve, like everybody else?”
Crossing my arms, I shook my head. “I wasn’t allowed. My dad wouldn’t sign the form.”
Ty and Kevin exchanged shocked looks. “Your dad? Lieutenant John I eat fire for breakfast Logan actually said no? Why the hell would he do that?”
I ground my teeth together. Because Matt wanted to be a firefighter first. And Dad always gave Matt what he wanted. “Doesn’t matter. My mom signed the damn form this year, so I’m ready to catch up.”
Another loud laugh, another round of exchanged glances. “Yeah. Good luck with that.” Kevin snorted. “So what’s the real story with your brother’s crash?”
“Shut up, Kevin.” Bear nudged him, and the skinny kid almost fell. Then he glanced at the wall clock. “Five minutes left. Better start reading.” He slid my book back across the table and then angled his head at me. “You got any idea what causes green fire?”
I shook my head. “No. Why?”
Bear lifted his massive shoulders. “I heard the fire marshal talking to the chief and—”
“Oh, the arson?” Kevin’s eyes went wide.
“Shhh.” Bear looked over his shoulder. “We’re not supposed to speculate, remember?”
“What arson?” I didn’t hear anything. Then again, it’s not like my dad ever talked about stuff with me.
Bear glanced around again. Amanda and Gage were still talking quietly at the back of the room. Max, the tall kid, was still kicked back in his seat. “Three so far this year. All empty houses.”
“How were they set?”
“Don’t know. The chief won’t talk about the details with us. All I know is that there was green flame at the last one. It was up on the north side of the lake, on Greenley Street.”
Before I could say anything, Amanda was in front of me. Bear shuffled to his seat, taking Kevin and Ty with him.
“Hey, Logan. He’ll probably look to trip you up again.” She shifted her weight and looked over her shoulder at the door.
I folded my arms. “So?” What the hell did she care?
“Here’s what you do. In two minutes, when he starts firing questions at us, questions that aren’t in this book, you remember this. The most important thing you have to know about SCBA is how to take care of your tank. It holds maybe twenty minutes of oxygen. You check it before and after ever
y shift. Make sure all the pieces are working and not cracked—face mask, hose, gauge. Make sure the harness straps aren’t tangled and the buckles are intact. Check the test date, and make sure your cylinder is a hundred percent full. If it’s not, you need to recharge it.”
Jesus. I could only gape as Amanda rattled off all the SCBA maintenance tips. “Recharge it. Right. How?”
“I’ll explain that when we have more time.” She waved a hand. “Next, you should always make sure the cylinder and the remote pressure gauge’s readings match within ten percent. Got that? Ten percent.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.” I’d never needed to take notes before. So why was I suddenly wishing I’d written all of that down?
“Last one. If he asks you when you should wear SCBA, the answer is always, okay? Even outdoors.”
“Okay. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because outdoor fires can still burn toxic.”
“No. I mean why are you doing this? You made it pretty obvious you don’t like me and don’t want me here, and now you’re helping me. Why?”
She glanced over her shoulder again. “No, I don’t. But I also don’t like the way John’s using my class to get back at you. So don’t let him, okay?”
Don’t you let him. Promise me!
The scrape of her chair jolted me out of my memory. Amanda took her seat just as my father strode back into the room, glaring holes through me.
Amanda was right; Dad did fire questions at the class, his face growing redder with each answer I nailed. By the time class was over, I was smiling.
Dad wasn’t.
Chapter 6
Amanda
“I’m sorry.” Gage pulled the car to the curb and shifted into park. “About before. What I said about Matt.”
I lifted a shoulder and just kept looking out the passenger side window. I heard Gage sigh heavily.
“Man, listen.” He shifted. “I miss him. A lot. Matt was…God—”He pounded the wheel. “He was the best. But Reece isn’t him. I keep seeing you stare at him with hope in your eyes.”
My head whipped around. “You’re seeing things, Gage.” Hope was something I hadn’t had since I was nine and a lawyer promised me my mom would come home soon.
Gage held up both hands, surrender style. “You gonna be okay?”
Slowly, I nodded. “He’s ours now, Gage. Like it or not.” And I really, really did not.
“A brother, Mandy.”
I twitched. Oh, I knew he meant a member of our brotherhood. But it felt like another reminder. Like I’d ever forget Reece was Matt’s brother? I flung my head back against the seat and groaned. “This sucks, Gage. Did you see the way John looked at him?”
“Did you see the way Reece looked at John?” Gage countered, shaking his head. “That kid’s messed up. I just—” He broke off, biting his lip. “Forget it.”
“No, what?”
He searched my eyes. “Mandy, just…just stay out of it. You always get all messed up over family stuff. It gets into your head,” he said, swirling a finger next to his own.
“No, I don’t.” I looked away.
Gage cocked his head and smirked. “Oh really? So you’re saying that the time Kevin’s mom flipped out when he got hurt during class had no effect on you at all.”
I blew out a loud sigh. Okay, so maybe I was a little upset when my guys had problems with their parents or something. Didn’t mean it messed me up. “I was worried for him. She said he had to quit.”
“Man, you threw up. You actually puked and don’t think that has anything to do with your own mother? Denial much?”
I shot him a glare. “She had nothing to do with that.”
Gage shook his head. “Really? So why haven’t you gone to see her?”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “That’s really none of your business.” I hadn’t seen my mother in a year. As far as I was concerned, I’d never see her again.
“Oh, it’s my business when it clouds your judgment.”
“My judgment is fine, Gage. Back off. I promised the chief I’d help Logan learn the material, not have his babies.”
He rolled his eyes. “Be serious. Whatever’s between Reece and John needs to stay between them.”
“Yeah. Okay, got it.” I shoved out of the car and ignored the good night he called out. On my way up the walk to the front door, I suddenly froze.
Mrs. Beckett had planted flowers all along the front yard. Spring colors, lots of blue, white, purple, and pink, sweet smells filling up my nose. I didn’t know much about flowers. There was only one I recognized.
“Mandy, sweetie, hand me that trowel,” Mom had said, and I skipped over to her tools, grabbed the thing with the long curved blade.
“Good girl. Now it’s time to dig. See, flowers like to play in the dirt.”
“Me too!”
Mom touched a finger to my nose and laughed. “I know, and so does the bathtub. Let’s make a nice deep hole…that’s it…perfect. Now I’ll put the flower in, and you scoop some dirt all around it so it stands up.” I’d scooped and patted dirt all around the white flower with its yellow face. Mom grabbed a watering can and gave it a nice shower. We worked together, planting a long row of daisies, and then Mom said it was time to go in.
“But what about this one?”
Mom smiled and handed the last daisy to me. “That’s for you. You can put it in a little vase next to your bed.”
I did. Two days later, it was dead.
I turned and walked into the Becketts’ house. I’d been with the Becketts for a couple of years now—a record. Mrs. Beckett stayed home, and Mr. Beckett was a science teacher at my high school. I liked them both very much, and I liked Larry, another child they fostered. He was a year behind me in school. I hoped I’d get to stay here until I aged out of the system, but there were never any guarantees.
“Amanda. What’s up?” Larry greeted me from the den, surrounded by scraps of paper and poster board.
“Hey,” I replied. “How’s it going?”
“I finished my project. Want to see?”
“Um, yeah, sure.” We’d eaten a whole bushel of apples over the last month because Larry was trying to determine what makes apples turn brown, which had something to do with acids and bases, according to Mr. Beckett. Larry had treated apple slices with a bunch of different things like lemon juice to see if the rate of browning slowed down. “Very cool, Larry.”
“Yeah. Mr. Beckett helped.” He smoothed out a glue bubble under one of his photos. “So how did training go today?”
“Okay. We got a new cadet.”
“Sweet!”
“Amanda? That you?”
“Hi, Mr. Beckett.”
My foster father stood in the doorway, reading glasses perched on top of his head, which meant he was either planning next week’s lessons or grading lab reports.“How was your class today?”
“Good. We got a new instructor.”
Mr. Beckett winced. “Already? Who’d Chief Duffy pick?”
“John Logan.”
“Hey, did you see my project, Mr. Beckett? It’s done.”
Mr. Beckett turned to squint at Larry’s poster board and examined the research. “Nicely done, Larry. I see you took my advice and used the milk of magnesia solution too. Good man.”
Ugh. I hoped we didn’t eat those slices.
“Hey, Amanda.” Mrs. Beckett popped her head into the room, her dark hair pulled back in a messy bun. “Dinner in five, everybody. Get cleaned up.”
Larry dropped to the floor and began picking up scraps of paper.
“I’ll give you a hand.” I crouched, collected the marker pens, and replaced them in their case. “It looks really great, Larry. Hope you win.”
Larry shot me a hopeful grin and flipped hair out of his eyes. “You think it’s good enough?
”
“Yeah. I really do.”
He put the board carefully on a side table, scooped the trash into the bin, and headed to the kitchen.
We sat around the round oak table tucked into the corner, pretending we were a real family. The Becketts had no kids of their own. Couldn’t. So they rented. That’s how I thought of it. Except instead of paying rent, they got paid—some for me, some for Larry. We never called them Mom and Dad or even by their first names. It was all very polite, like being invited over to somebody’s house, except you didn’t leave for a while.
We dug into Mrs. Beckett’s meatloaf, trading stories about our days. It wasn’t a real family, but I was warm, I had food to eat and clothes to wear and people who wanted to hear what I had to say. People who planted flowers in the yard.
“Did that boy give you any more trouble?” Mr. Beckett asked, and Mrs. Beckett’s eyebrows shot up. I quickly shook my head.
“No, not at all.”
“Good.”
Mrs. Beckett cleared her throat. “So, Amanda. We’ve had a call from your social worker. Your mother’s requested a visit.”
The fork froze halfway to my mouth. “No.”
“Now, Amanda,” Mr. Beckett began, using his best sitcom-dad voice.
“No.”
“Amanda.” The fake voice was gone. In its place was Rental Dad, the voice that reminded me that even without breaking a rule, I could be shipped back at any time. I shut my eyes, but it didn’t help. I could see Mom’s face the night she was arrested. All she cared about was him. She never gave me a thought, and now she suddenly wanted to see me?
I would not let that happen.
Chapter 7
Reece
I should have done this years ago. If I had, would it have helped? I don’t know, and for that, I’m sorry.
“You should have been there, Alex. He was actually speechless.” I wadded up the cellophane wrapper around my sandwich and tossed it to my tray.
Alex looked up from his tablet and smiled. “Told you. Here.” He slid the tablet across the table. “Your move.”