At the moment, he was using that pass through counter as a sort of barrier between him and the harridans of the street who had tormented me for the entire four years I'd lived here. Blamed me for all sorts of nasty incidents: graffiti on their trash cans, setting fire to paper bags on their steps when I was past that kind of juvenile behavior by the time I arrived. I shouldn't have been surprised to see them here at this time of the night, blaming me again for something that had nearly killed me.
"Tell them," Gramp said. He had a tight look to his lips that surprised me. I expected him to be more supportive of me and less indulgent of those nasty neighbors.
I did a double take. "Tell them what?"
"Tell these women you didn't set that fire," he said.
"Of course I didn't," I said and dropped the shell down onto the counter.
Mrs. Vanda snorted.
"Well, I didn't," I said, facing her with a glare. The curlers in her hair were a hot pink that made the purple rinse in her hair seem clownish.
Gramp disappeared from behind his pass through window for a moment and then reappeared in the doorway at the end of the hall. He stood there at the entrance to the kitchen with his garden browned hands on his hips. I understood that posture all too well. I'd seen it plenty.
"You think I did it," I said. It wasn't surprising that he thought so, but it did hurt. "Don't you?"
He scuffed his feet on the ageing gold shag carpet. I noticed he was wearing his Birkenstocks and for a second, a silver-haired man in red wool socks and sandals flashed across my mind. I couldn't breathe as the image pulsed there like a fevered artery behind my eyelids. I had to reach out to the wall to fight off the dizziness.
It wasn't until I felt the back of Gramp's fingers against my forehead that I realized I had all but blacked out.
I blinked up at him. He was tall for an old man. Still wiry and thick from his daily yoga practise and penchant for spinach smoothies. His bushy grey eyebrows furrowed together to meet above his eyes. They were black and every bit as piercing as a hot needle. I think my chin quivered. No doubt my reaction looked like guilt at that moment.
"Are you all right?" he said. "What happened? You're not on something are you?"
It was his tone that did it. I might have cried, but instead I felt a flush of anger.
"Of course I'm all right," I said. "Why wouldn't I be, when I just almost burned to death." I almost choked on that last, because I wanted to lash out at him about his drug comment, but I just couldn't get it out.
I expected him to gasp at that horrific news, but of course, word had come ahead of me, and he had already processed the fact I'd been stuck in a burning building and had moved to why that building was on fire in the first place. That was when he looked me up and down for what I guessed was the first time since I'd entered and saw something other than the granddaughter he expected to be filled with soot and sweat and tweaking pupils.
He reached down to pinch the material of my pants at the knee. Inspecting it, he twisted it back and forth. I looked down at the way his hands inspected my pants. Of course, the maniac's blood was gone. If it had ever been there, and the proof of that was the way he only worried the pants at the knee, where my blood soaked through.
"You hurt yourself," was what he said. Compassionate but cautious. Mrs. Vanda sent another scorching comment my way and he looked back over his shoulder at her. I could only guess what it must've been by the way she clamped her lips closed.
His palm went beneath my chin, his fingers gripping the back of my neck. This time more tender. His natural empathy was flooding to the surface, but it was cautious. I had the feeling he was checking for some residual high but wanted it to look like he was just concerned.
Those black eyes of his bore into me. Years ago, I might have squirmed.
"What happened?" he said.
Everything was on the top of my tongue and ready to spill out: the text from Sarah, slipping out and driving to the church, the smell of smoke and soot and fire. I was still struggling to understand the hallucinations and what they meant.
I started to put the experience into words, knowing he would listen, but one of the women whispered something about me being high as a kite to Mrs. Vanda and the moment was gone. My eyes flicked to the women behind him.
I backed away from the door and found the steps with the back of my boots.
"I'm going to my room," I said. It felt very much like something a young teenager would say, and I resented I had to use that tactic. But it was the best I could do with them all staring at me. I felt as though even breathing had become difficult. The adrenaline soaking my tissues had started to shut down my mind and what was left was urging me to run out the door and up the street until I couldn't run anymore.
"Wait right there," Gramp said with his palm in the air. "I'm not letting you off that easy this time."
"I'm eighteen for heaven sake," I argued. I couldn't stay there. Not with those women and their accusing eyes. "You can't stop me from going to my room."
"In six months," he said, correcting me. "And until then, I have every right."
It had nothing to do with rights, but I couldn't say that to him with them standing there watching every movement.
Mrs. Vanda took a step forward, as though she wanted to assert herself. "I'm telling you, she's a demon," she said. "She set that fire sure as shooting."
There it was. Flat out. That thing they were all thinking. What Callum had thought. What Gramp was thinking now. Something in my stomach hurt. I could barely lift my gaze to look at him.
The look on Gramp's face as he took in the woman made me think for a second that he might forgo his gentle and peaceful nature. Rip her a new one. Instead, I watched as he inhaled very deeply, obviously gathering his self-control from the corks of his Birkenstocks. I waited for him to speak, and when he didn't, I clenched the banister.
"If I was going to burn the place down," I said. "Do you really think I'd be stupid enough to do it while I was still inside?"
She shrugged. "You've done stupid things before."
I wanted to scratch her eyes out right then. Gramp stepped in front of her just as I lurched forward with every intention of doing just that. I caught his eye and realized his entire expression had softened. Those black eyes of his pinned themselves to my gaze and I knew looking at him that he knew-- just knew--I was at my limit. I halted as though he had gripped me by the shoulders.
Without so much as turning around, he lifted his hand in the air much the way an army marshal might to calm a crowd of unruly protesters. His eyes never left mine as he told them all to quiet down and go home. My gaze flicked past his shoulder to Mrs. Vanda. Her lips twisted into a tight line. Even so, she wrapped her coat around her shoulders, gathering her dignity. I had to resist the urge to stick my tongue out at her. And it was only because I was too busy clamping down on the sobs that wanted to escape.
She might have actually left and allowed me to breathe again, but a sharp rap sounded on the door and I jumped onto the bottom tread of the stairwell, my fingers spasming around the banister.
I could see Callum's dark head through the mottled window. I shuddered as I remembered touching him and feeling that terrible and ludicrous sense that whatever he called himself, Callum, Fireman, or hero, he was not human.
CHAPTER 6
Panic settled around my shoulders like a heavy coat.
"Don't open it," I said. Even I could hear the shrill note in my voice and I thought a splinter dug into my finger from the banister as I clutched at it.
I couldn't wait for him to come in or for the women to leave. I needed escape. I fled up the stairs and went straight to my room where I could slam the door just like a spoiled child. I didn't care that it felt good and that, at my age, I shouldn't have enjoyed it, I just did. I headed to the charger on my bureau and plugged in my phone. Twenty minutes. That was all it would take to get to at least half a charge. I could probably check it again in five.
I tried no
t to listen to what they were saying as I waited for my phone to charge, but it was tough. My bedroom was at the top of the stairs and the women at times were shrill as they decided to recite every last thing I had done to their properties during my first years in Dyre.
What they didn't understand was that then I was troubled and grieving and angry and scared. I'd been acting out. Just like most kids that age, and in that situation. Gramp had taken me in and stood up for me when no one else would.
The problem with that was I wasn't ready to be normal. I wasn't ready to be loved. It had taken my grandfather months upon months to build up a trust that allowed for an uneasy sort of truce where I left the house for school on my own in the morning even if I did avoid contact with every normal-looking teenager I could. I went out in the evening past curfew to meet up with some of the more nefarious dropouts who hung around in musty basements. He didn't ask me how my days at school went and I didn't tell him about the things I did in those musty basements. It was all part of the trust building process. And I tested that trust. Oh, how I had tested it, time and again, trying to force him to give up on me.
But he hadn't. And I loved him for it so fiercely, I would die for him.
So if those old women were honest with themselves, they would know I hadn't set a single fire in at least a year.
Every now and then I heard Callum's voice as he tried to reason with them. I wondered what he wanted from me, why he was in my house at all, defending me to women who would never see me as anything other than a delinquent.
Just as curious was the way my grandfather was deferring to him, even going so far as to agree with Callum when he said things like arsonists always returned to the scene of the crime, but are rarely foolish enough to be inside when they set the place to light. So. It seemed Callum either believed me or wanted something from me.
No doubt he wanted something from me. A person didn't just defend someone they didn't know for no reason. No matter how pathetic they looked. I didn't care how kind and compassionate he acted. In my experience, that was a sure sign someone wanted something from me.
I crossed my arms and leaned against the door, straining to hear. Maybe they'd just all go away. I knew Gramp was too polite to ask them to leave, but I also knew he wanted more than anything to talk to me about what had gone on in the building. He wanted to believe me; I knew he did because he always wanted to believe me. But this time, with one of the town's landmarks nearly destroyed, he would need more of an explanation. Like why I was in there in the first place.
I had nothing to be ashamed or afraid of. And now, safely in my room, with the familiarity of the smells of the house around me and the warmth of the furnace pumping quietly through the grates, I began to relax. See things for what they really were. Everything had been just a horrible nightmare. The fire had been real, certainly, and my near death of asphyxiation too. But the rest of it? The maniac, the Angel of Death, the feeling like Callum wasn't really human. All figments of an overactive imagination. Foolishness born of fear and exhaustion, not drugs like they all wanted to believe.
I blew relief out between pursed lips and looked around to be really sure I was home. I had never truly made the room my own in the four years I'd been here. It was still strewn with the books and papers that my grandfather had accumulated over his lifetime. This had been his office at some point, and if I looked beneath the facade of jeans and dresses and shoes littered over the space, I could still see all of the things that he'd left.
Eventually, I heard the women move into the hallway and out onto the porch. I heard Gramp tell them he would look into it and that everything would be alright.
I wanted to believe it. I think even Callum did, because I could hear him asking Gramp what he was going to do.
"Believe her," he said and my heart warmed just hearing it. One stalwart champion in a town of enemies.
"She said she was there to see a friend," Callum said.
I could almost hear Gramp shrug as he answered. "If she says so, it must be true, but I can't imagine it would be." He sighed loud enough for me to hear all the way up the stairs. "Whatever people she hangs out with on occasion, she would never call friends. She's been such a wild thing."
"Trouble, huh?" Callum said.
"Like a terrified squirrel except one that attacks you instead of running away," Gramp said with a laugh. "Do you know I had to buy a new bed for her when she came? She refused to sleep in her mother's room, and I figured out pretty early it was because she wanted me to think she could leave at any time. So I just let her stay in my office. It was just easier that way. Didn't even bother to move the bed from her mother's room in there. I figured after a while she wouldn't be so threatened by kindness and would eventually move into her mother's room."
"Did she?" Callum asked.
"What do you think?"
It was disconcerting to hear the struggles I had put Gramp through when I'd first come summarized into so few words, but I supposed it was accurate.
Poor Gramp. He had put up with so much from me.
I sagged against the door. I was exhausted and I wanted nothing more than to climb into bed and fall asleep, but I knew Callum would leave and Gramp would be turning down the lights and coming upstairs to bed. I expected him to stop at my room. I stole a look at my phone, just in case. If it was charged enough to turn it on, I could show him the texts from Sarah and at least prove she existed.
The charger light was on but nothing flickered to indicate a message of any sort. I shouldn't have been surprised. The only people who ever contacted me on social media were those destitute dropouts I had stopped hanging out with over three months ago. No one from school ever texted me. I didn't even have a social media presence.
Even so, I crossed the room to pick the cell up. Twenty five percent charged and still no messages. Well, if Sarah had wanted to meet me, maybe I'd just got the timing wrong, and she'd contact me again tomorrow. At least I hoped so. I thought of my mother's room down the hall and wondered if Sarah had a warm place to curl up tonight. Then I told myself that someone who had run away as many times as she had would be well practiced in the art of finding a place to sleep.
Laughter made its way up the stairs, which was an unexpected sound since I fully expected Callum to be gone. I dropped my phone back on the bureau and went to open the door a crack. Dishes clattered together in the kitchen and I could make out rush of water streaming from the tap. More muttering. When a cupboard door clattered closed and the silverware drawer rattled, I knew Gramp was making cocoa. His go to activity when he wanted to calm himself. Callum's voice. Then Gramp's.
This could be a long night.
I imagined the two of them getting cozy over a cup and felt both jealous and irritated. I sighed, too exhausted to wait this out. I tapped my fingers against my thigh then went to check my phone again. Still nothing. What were they doing downstairs anyway? Some mutterings about Callum deciding not to go to university, but to stay in town.
I clutched my phone and eased myself off the bed to tiptoe over to the door again. I opened it further so I could hear better.
"Training for my certification now," Callum said.
It was encouraging to hear that Gramp treated Callum as though he was human, that he seemed to know the guy, although up to this point I had never even known he existed. I told myself there was probably plenty of people in town that my grandfather knew that I didn't. Somehow just listening to the two of them made me feel more at ease after the events of the night. Except how did I explain the way my skin felt when he touched me--all electric and unnerving?
It was enough to make my calf itch. I rubbed the top of my foot over it absently, trying to find relief as the conversation continued downstairs. There was a moment when I imagined that if I looked at the skin, I would find a mark there. I even knew exactly what it would look like. Burned in. Like a brand except black as soot. It had been nothing but a hallucination, I told myself. My skin was itching only because I was stressing.
I was not going to give in to the thought that it had been true for one second by even lifting my jeans.
"I always thought you'd end up as a doctor or something," Gramp said to him. "Go to school on that wrestling scholarship."
"There was no scholarship, and it wasn't wrestling, it was martial arts," Callum said, not unkindly. "I don't think they give away education for anything except football. Not that it mattered. School wasn't for me. I prefer hard work with my hands. Volunteering at the station is what I love. Changed me."
"Good to hear," Gramp said and I got the feeling there was more behind his comment than a small bit of kindness for a neighbourhood boy. "Your parents would be proud."
Callum chuckled then, and it was a throaty sound that made me think that if I hadn't been all prickly with him, I might have had a chance to elicit that sound from him. Just hearing it gave me a terrible desire to go down the stairs and see what he might look like without a scowl on his face. I wanted to see if the laughter reached his eyes.
I looked at my cell phone. Still nothing. It had enough charge to last for 20 minutes, but if I went downstairs and plugged it in...
That was when I realized I wanted to go down. Neither of them seemed in a hurry to wrap it up, anyway, and waiting for the phone to charge enough to prove I had received texts at all was an endeavor that made my chest hurt. I just didn't want to be alone right then. I wanted to be drinking a cup of cocoa and laughing along with whatever joke they thought was funny.
So it seemed I had made up my mind. I reached for my charger and the cord trailed along behind me as I ran down the stairs. I could see through the window in the counter that the two of them were sitting across from each other at the table. Steaming mugs of cocoa in front of them. A third mug sat in front of an empty chair.
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