by Erin Saldin
There’s the fruit bowl on the dining room table. There’s the paperback book, facedown by an easy chair. Into the kitchen now. There’s the sheaf of papers, real estate contracts probably, on the counter. I pick one up, see the signature, hold the lighter to it, watch it curl into itself, drop it on the linoleum floor.
There’s a creaking sound from upstairs—like a floorboard. I freeze. But then—nothing. These old houses with their old bones—everything creaks.
There’s a bedroom off of the kitchen—old servants’ quarters, probably.
A man’s sweater, folded on the bed in the master.
Probably wouldn’t be a good idea. It’s a big city. More dangerous than you’d think.
Hairbrush with a few strands of long hair in it. Forgotten toothbrush. Old compact, jar of hand cream.
I wouldn’t have much time. And I’d feel bad about that.
Scuffed dock shoes in the closet. Lube in the bedside drawer.
Abby and I’ve been having problems. She’s not—Careful what you wish for, right?
No photographs. No diaries. Nothing lasting.
What I’m saying is, it’s not a good time. But this has been nice, hasn’t it?
Gasoline on the curtains, on the rug, poured in a figure eight across the bed. I douse the moss-filled socks with gasoline and wedge them under the mattress.
Great to catch up. Next time. Next time.
Finally, I reach into my backpack and pull out the necklace, the cup, the stuffed rabbit with one floppy ear. All the things I took from Layla this summer. The things I took to remind myself that I mattered—that I was more important to her than these things. I hold up the lighter, and can just make out the words that are etched onto its side: Gold Fork Grand. It’s the first thing I ever stole.
I place the items on the bed.
But hey. Here’s a little something. College expenses. All I can do.
It was then—the minute he gave me the check for three thousand dollars with a sort of apologetic shrug—that I knew for sure he was never coming back. I’d never see my dad again.
All I can do.
I think about the check, cashed and divided into two envelopes on my dresser at home. Then I light up the pile on the bed. I walk out of the guest room and through the kitchen to the sliding door, closing it behind me, shutting it tight.
• • •
The first time was easy. More of an experiment, really. Walk back into the chapel when no one else is looking. Drop a match on the ground, next to a pile of old hymnals. Walk out again. Wait and see.
To be honest, I didn’t really think it would catch. And I didn’t know about the cat, or that Ana would go in after it. I didn’t know—how could I—that the ember would hit the tent where Chrissy Nolls was sleeping.
If I’d known that, I never never never never would have done it.
But it was useful, in its way. When I saw the flames licking at the chapel’s stained-glass windows, I’d felt powerful. It was the first time I felt like I could control something other than how fast my feet were moving. And I liked it.
And after that, I used fire to settle myself when things were stressful. Bad track meet? Burn a piece of paper in the sink. Not hitting my target time in practice? Light up some twigs and sticks out at an abandoned campsite. Never anything lasting. Never anything big. Just a way to let things go.
But at the Nelsons’, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was nervous. I moved quickly, but I was sloppy, and that cost me time. Didn’t bring enough kindling and had to go out scrounging around the Nelsons’ cabin for sticks and things like some lame pioneer. Added the letter at the last minute—rookie mistake. By the time I was ready, I’d been there almost two hours, and I knew the Beast would be wondering where I was. Every minute was one more minute in which someone might knock on the door—a caretaker, maybe. Friendly neighbor. Not the cleaning lady. I knew she cleaned the place on Wednesday mornings.
The first curls of smoke were barely visible over the trees as I jumped on my bike and rode away. You get what you deserve, I thought. You get what’s coming to you.
The call had come a couple of days before. The phone wasn’t for me—it was for the Beast. But she wasn’t home. I was.
“Erik, hi.” Ms. Henderson sounded surprised that I answered. Surprised and a little nervous. “Is your mom home?”
“She’s working.” I didn’t tell the guidance counselor that the Beast would be back any minute, actually. I held the phone to my ear and looked down at our kitchen counter, an old laminate speckled with gold. I remember thinking that, just like everything else in the house, it was trying to be something it wasn’t.
“Oh.” There was a pause. “Could you—There’s something I need to discuss with her. Tell her, actually.”
For someone whose entire job has to do with communicating, she was doing a pretty crap job of it. So I didn’t say anything. I waited her out.
“Well, the thing is, I don’t know if I should tell you.” Then, like she was speaking to herself, she added, “Not that you won’t know, or shouldn’t know. It’s your future, after all.”
The thing is. The thing is. This was too much. “Ms. Henderson,” I said, “can you just tell me what’s going on?” I had to struggle to keep my voice calm, flat. But my chest had seized like it does in the minute before I start a race. “Have I gotten in trouble for something?” I was thinking, shit, pregnancy, Kelly or Mischa freaking out and going to the guidance counselor. Thinking about the chapel, the cat, Chrissy. Stupid. No way, not after all this time. Nothing I can’t handle, I told myself.
Henderson sighed. “Sure. Okay. The thing is, Erik, I know you were told you won the athletic award. And you did win it. I mean, you earned it.” Her voice went down an octave when she said this, and I knew that whatever she was about to say, it was worse than knocking someone up. “But the bylaws stipulate that the winner can have no previous financial connection to the donors, and the couple who funds the scholarships, the Nelsons . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“The Nelsons.”
“Yes. I mean, generally, they don’t advertise their role, but when the committee got back to them with your name, they recognized it and . . .”
“Yes.” Gold-colored flecks on beige plastic. That’s all I could see.
She kept talking. “They’d have figured it out sooner, but they were out of the country. And by the time they came back, it had been announced. You already knew.”
“Yes.”
“I asked them if there was a work-around. We all feel so horrible. I even suggested—I know this wasn’t my place, but forgive me—that your mother could quit cleaning for them. That maybe this wasn’t what the bylaw meant.” She sounded like she was going to cry. “But they’re adamant. Oh, sympathetic,” she added quickly, “but adamant.”
Our car pulled up to the curb. I watched out the kitchen window as the Beast of Burden got out, put one hand on her back, grimaced, stretched before opening the trunk and pulling out the vacuum.
“I’ll tell my mom,” I said. “It’ll be better coming from me.”
“Erik. I don’t know what to—”
“It’s okay.” She was almost to the front door. “I understand. Rules are rules.”
I could hear Henderson sigh over the phone. “A letter will arrive,” she said. “To make it official.” Then: “Come in and see me before classes get out. Let’s come up with a plan B.”
“I will.” The creak of our screen door. “Thanks.” The doorknob turned. “I have to go.”
“Remember, Erik—” Henderson was still talking when I hung up the phone and turned toward my mother.
“Who was that?”
“High school reporter. They’re doing an article about me.” I smiled at her, though everything looked blurry. I could only see her outline: frizzy hair, slumped shoulders. Failure embodied. “It’s not every day a Gold Fork kid gets a full ride.”
Two days later, I burned the place down.
• �
� •
I’m down at the broken dock. The air is filling with smoke now, and I know the cabin is burning. Just for a second, I think about hiking back up to watch, but I know how reckless it would be. Time to go. I’m about to step into the canoe and push off when I see a boat coming toward me. It’s coming in so fast that I jump back onto shore. The boat slows suddenly, sending waves over the dock, and Davis is jumping out and tying it up even as the wood is still rocking under him.
“You didn’t!” he’s yelling. And, “You couldn’t!” And something else that I can’t make out.
There’s a noise behind me, a sort of hollow popping sound, and I know from the Nelsons’ that it’s a window exploding.
He’s running toward me and I think for a crazy second that he’s going to hit me. But he swerves and starts up the path. I can hardly hear what he’s saying, but then what he’s been screaming makes sense. He turns and shouts again, “Ana’s in there! Ana’s in there, you crazy fuck!”
DAVIS
He just stands there. For a half second, he starts toward me. Then he looks at me, his eyebrows pulled together in a question, his mouth open like he’s going to say something. He stops. Looks down and shakes his head. Turns, and steps into the canoe.
“Come on!” I yell. My voice sounds unfamiliar—high and screechy. “Come on!”
But he pushes off with one paddle, gliding across the lake, and I don’t have time. I don’t have time. I turn and run toward the house.
I’m flying through the trees. Stumble over a root. Something scratches my cheek—quick flash of heat—and I swipe my hand across, smear of blood, keep running. Ana.
It’s already—oh God, it’s already on fire.
Can’t wait to see you, she’d texted, and I’d felt a wave of hope.
I remember putting on a clean shirt. Thinking maybe tonight I’ll finally tell Ana how I feel. Maybe I matter to her the way she matters to me. And I remember thinking, suddenly, of Erik.
Think we’ll ever matter? he’d asked on the dock.
One window has burst in the kitchen, and flames reach out for me as I start toward the porch.
The shoe print—a running shoe. Erik’s mom, working for the Nelsons. Just a name on a form. And the conversation I overheard between him and Georgie: Red tape. That’s what happened. Something clicked. It just took a phone call for me to put it together. Just the right question, just a follow-up, really, about whether the Nelsons had any other connections to their cleaning lady besides the usual. All of it coming out quickly, then. Mrs. Nelson’s sympathetic voice: Such a shame. But the scholarship language was very clear. Would have looked like we were showing a preference to our cleaning lady’s son. And we can’t show a preference.
After I hung up the phone, I grabbed my binoculars and stepped onto my deck, training them on the Den. Scanned the water below—nothing. Glanced toward the house. Remembered Erik, once, talking about—who? The Weekenders? His dad? Was he talking about his dad? I hope they burn. God. How did I not see it? At the marina: I’m sorry. You’ll tell them that, right? As I watched through my binoculars, a small curl of smoke rose lazily out of the house like an afterthought.
That’s when I jumped into my parents’ boat.
The porch explodes. A burst of light throwing me back, heat so searing I can’t see. The whole porch gone, just a wall of fire now.
“Ana!” I can’t even hear my voice over the noise. It’s like being in the middle of a wind tunnel. “Ana!”
I stick to the trees, run around to the other side of the house. And I see them there—Erik’s dad, Abby. They’re sitting on the gravel in the driveway, a few hundred feet from the house, and Erik’s dad has his phone out and is jabbing at the screen with his finger. They look stoned, almost comatose with confusion.
“Where is she?” I scream over the noise, running toward them, looking around. “Where is she?”
“Let me just—” Kyle hits the screen again. “Why isn’t this working?” It’s as though he can’t hear me.
Abby looks at me. She’s crying, and her arms are hanging loose at her sides like a rag doll’s. “She’s inside. We were upstairs—giving a tour. She’d—gone to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I’d said, ‘Glasses next to the sink,’ let her go herself, and then—” She shakes her head. “We got out through a window.”
But I’m not listening. I’m running back toward the house, heading for the door, opening it, yelling, “Ana!”
The heat.
The smothering heat.
It sucks the breath out of my lungs.
And I almost turn around, fresh air right behind me, so close I can still feel it on my back. God. So close.
But I can’t. I push into the house, arm over my mouth.
“Here!” Her voice. Small, strong, clear. “Davis! I’m here!”
I head toward the kitchen, the blaze of it. The living room is starting to light up, but I make it through, skirting furniture, drapes that are moving with the heat.
She’s sitting, back against the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. Her arm is bleeding as it wraps around a knee.
I’m picking her up, my arms under hers, before she says, “I fell. There was—what? An explosion?” She looks around through the smoke like she can’t quite place where she is.
“Come on,” I say.
“Did I pass out?” She struggles to stand, and I stumble forward, one arm around her waist, the other across her front, a sideways waltz.
The door is ahead of us, things crashing behind. I hear another window pop, a whooshing sound, and then the fire pushes us out the door—an insistent, searing hand on our backs. We tumble to the ground, crawling toward the gravel on our hands and knees.
When we’re clear of the house, I take a long, cold breath of air. Like drinking water in a desert. I can’t get enough of it. I can hear Ana gasping next to me. Five, six, seven breaths. Then I turn to look at the house.
The whole thing is blazing. It’s not even a house. I can see the skeleton of it through the flames, and I know there’s no saving it now.
“Davis.” Ana is panting, but she looks at me, clear-eyed, perfect even in the smoke. “We just almost—” Her breath catches and I reach for her, pull her toward me. I press my cheek to the top of her head, run my hand down her arm.
I want to hold her like this forever.
“Fire department is on its way.” Kyle’s voice, above us. “Sons of bitches can’t get here faster?” Nothing about us. Nothing about death.
I stand, legs shaky. Ana stands, too. “We’re fine, thanks,” I say.
“Thank God.” Abby’s voice. And it sounds genuine. She’s still sitting, but she makes this kind of ridiculous wave with her hand in our direction. “This feels like a dream. Like a—thank God,” she says again.
Ana’s hand on my arm. “How did you know? How did you know there was a fire?”
And I remember the look on Erik’s face as he registered what I was yelling to him. How he stepped into that canoe and pushed off. How he knew everyone would know it was him. I stumble, take a breath, and move toward the water, pulling Ana after me. Kyle says something, but I can’t hear him over the sound of the fire, and besides, I don’t care.
“Wait,” Ana says, panting. “The fire department. The police, probably. Right? We have to stay.” She’s tugging on my arm. “Davis. Where are you going?”
I stop in the trees, far enough away from the smoke and heat that I can talk. “It was Erik. Ana, we have to get to him. He thinks you’re still in there.” I point back to the burning cabin. “He thinks he’s killed you.”
“Erik?” Then: “Erik.” She looks at me. There’s a second when I think she might lose it, but she takes a deep breath. Coughs and nods. “Where is he now?”
“I’m not sure,” I say as we start running down through the trees again, feet hitting dirt, then rocks, then the sand of the small beach where my boat is tied. I look across the water. Small pinpricks of light flicker at the to
p of Washer’s Landing, where everyone we know and mostly people we don’t are dancing on the ashes of everything Erik ever wanted. Georgie’s up there somewhere. The one person he’d run to. “But I have a pretty good guess.”
ANA
Erik.
Davis guns the motor and we’re roaring across the lake, the water choppy beneath us. He tries to steer into each wave, but we still pitch back and forth, hitting the water with hard smacks. It’s too loud to talk at first. I sink into the seat beside Davis, who stands at the wheel. The air is cold on my cheeks.
Blessedly cold.
• • •
It happened so quickly. I remember getting the tour—room after room of beds covered in Pendleton blankets. Abby saying to me as I headed for the stairs, “Glasses next to the sink.” I remember going to the bathroom and washing my hands, taking time to smell the expensive soap in a little silver dish on the sink in the bathroom. I think I remember turning on the faucet for water in the kitchen, think I recall the feel of the glass in my hand, but I’m not sure, because there was something in the corner of the room, something flickering from the doorway of a bedroom off the kitchen. That much I remember. And this: When I realized what was happening, saw the flames coming toward me, I turned and—slipped.
At least, that’s what I think happened. For a second, I saw the cat, curled around her kittens, crying softly. I think I moved toward them—or maybe I didn’t. Because then I was on the floor, and fire—the blistering cloak of heat—disoriented me. Everything after that flashes back to me as Davis drives across the lake: an explosion outside, crawling toward the sound of people yelling, terror replaced with—crazy—intense fatigue, leaning my back against the doorframe, thinking—why on earth would I think this—that I needed to rest for just a minute.
And then Davis.
I look over at him as he drives the boat, his mouth set in a hard line, eyes peering across the dark water. Davis’s arm around me, picking me up. Davis pushing us both through the door before the whole house went up in flames. The moment I wanted to stay in forever: his cheek on my head, arms around me.