Those Who Favor Fire

by Lauren Wolk

  “Sorry,” he said. “We’ve sort of let our manners lapse around here.”

  Rachel glanced at the clock above his head. She listened for the door. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, “You said Harry mentioned me?” she said, and could have ripped out her tongue. She looked down at the tabletop and saw her finger scratching a furrow in the sticky brown skin it wore. She put her hands into her lap.

  “Indeed he did,” Skip said, smiling. “He had to, really. I do the laundry around here.” He grinned, leaning back in his chair.

  For a moment, Rachel could make no sense of this. And then, remembering the bedsheets, she understood. She let her breath out slowly and looked right at him.

  “What did Harry say?”

  “Well,” Skip said. “I have to whisper this.” He moved his chair next to hers.

  Rachel began to know that this was not what she had been hoping for, but she wasn’t sure. She had only just met Skip. Perhaps he was simply eccentric. She had met so many eccentric people here at school. They had, in the beginning, astounded her, but after a time she had found them to be far more trustworthy and predictable than many of the more ordinary people she had encountered since leaving home. And so she gave Skip the benefit of the doubt and reluctantly, her shoulders hunched, offered her ear.

  “Harry said,” Skip whispered, at the same time sliding his hand around her arm, “that the two of you were a perfect fit.” He drew back for a moment, then again into her ear said, “Nice and tight.”

  By the time she realized what he was saying, he had put his tongue into her ear and was reaching for her with his other hand.

  Rachel knocked her chair over backward as she gained her feet and ran to the door. She ran for blocks before she lost her breath. She had left her jacket behind, but there was no way she was going back for it. She had her wallet and her keys. And she now knew everything she needed to know.

  Two days later, when Rachel finally found herself face-to-face with Harry, jostled together on their way into class, he had not spoken to her, had shown not the slightest recognition. She had not been surprised but, nonetheless, felt unspeakably sad and embarrassed, especially when she noticed the other boys from his fraternity looking at her in a way that made her want to gouge out their eyes with a spoon.

  Even so, even after everything had gone wrong, she had not gone crying to Paul. He had come crying to her.

  “I have something to tell you,” he said without preamble when she found him waiting outside her room on Friday evening. He was sitting on the floor, drinking a bottle of beer and working a crossword puzzle. Seeing him like this, Rachel was not at all prepared for the confession he had come to deliver. “Come on in,” she said, unlocking the door and turning on the lights.

  Once inside, he immediately said, “I know you’re feeling awful about Harry,” but she interrupted with a wave of her hand.

  “Oh, please, Paul. It’s over and done with, and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Well, I do. I like being your friend. It’s one of the things I like best in my life. Certainly better than that goddamned fraternity. But I can’t even look at you now without feeling terrible. I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to think about you. I don’t want to talk to you. When you look at me I feel sick. So I have to put things right with you, Rachel.” He ran both hands through his hair. “Although putting things right will probably get me kicked out the door, but I’ll take my chances.”

  By this time Rachel was more impatient than alarmed. “For heaven’s sake, Paul, tell me what’s wrong.”

  So he sat down on Rachel’s bed next to her and, after a moment, began to tell her why he had been so sure about Harry Gallagher.

  “Do you remember when Harry sent you out to the kitchen to get the ice cream?” Rachel nodded. “Well, as soon as you left the room he tried to convince me to leave so he could get you to bed, only I wouldn’t go. So then he said I could stay as long as I kept out of his way. He said he’d give a signal when it was time for me to get lost.”

  Paul looked away. Cleared his throat. “There’s a code we use,” he said. “All of us. It’s something we’re taught during Hell Week. Part of our initiation. I’ll bet you could walk into any boardroom in this country and ask for the signal for ‘okay, boys, this one’s ready,’ and a bunch of hands would go up.” He tried to chuckle but couldn’t quite manage it. Took a deep breath and blew it out loudly. “I live with a bunch of people who can be pretty vulgar, Rachel, and I guess when I’m with them I can too. I’ve seen a lot of disgusting stuff, and I’ve heard some things that I hope to God are lies. But I’ve never seen anyone act quite like he did that night. He was practically drooling. I don’t know, maybe he just seemed worse to me because you’re my friend.” He looked at her for a moment. “I know I should have intervened, but I was angry with you. For involving me. For making me an accomplice to something I had warned you to avoid. Besides, at that point you weren’t very drunk and I figured you could take care of yourself, make up your own mind. I didn’t know how … inexperienced you were. If I’d had more time, maybe I would have decided to get you away from him, but then you came back in with the ice cream, and Harry spent the next hour plying you with banana liqueur and I Love Lucy, for God’s sake. And I sat there and watched him putting his hands on you and watched you let him and didn’t know whether I should stay or leave or haul you out of there. And then suddenly Harry gave me the signal from behind your head while he was reaching up your sweater with his other hand and he wasn’t even looking at me. He was looking at where your pants had come un-snapped, and I went into the hallway and watched you until I felt like I was watching a movie. I almost left, but I couldn’t just leave you altogether. And then he took you off, out of my sight, and it was out of my hands.” Paul rubbed a knuckle against his lower lip and looked away from Rachel, who was squinting with distaste and eager for him to be gone.

  After a while, she went out the door and down the hall to the bathroom. She was gone for a long time. When she returned, she took a small suitcase out of her closet. “Give me your car keys, Paul,” she said as she folded up her nightgown.

  “My car keys? Why?”

  “Because I want to go somewhere for a couple of days and I don’t have a car. Is there a problem?”

  “No. No problem. Where are you going?” He pictured Rachel driving his old, beloved, bottom-heavy Impala and felt sick to his stomach.

  “I really haven’t decided,” she said impatiently. “Somewhere that isn’t here.”

  Once in the car, however, she knew exactly where she wanted to go. Cape Cod was only a couple of hours away. She could be there by ten. It had been three years since her parents had taken her to New England to look at colleges and to see the Atlantic for the first time, but she felt sure that she’d be able to find the little inn on the Cape where they had stayed for a day. The rooms had been plain and clean with wooden floors and white curtains. Sheets that smelled like wind, and a view of sea and sky.

  Crossing the canal was like crossing a border somehow. The air changed, grew sugary with fog, then clear and chill, then foggy again. The trees became stunted and bent. The road was dark, and the headlights of the Impala made the eyes of every meandering raccoon into minute beacons. She encountered few other cars, heard little but the wind, felt her hair thicken with salt, and was glad she had come.

  By the time she reached the inn it looked as if everyone had gone to bed. For a moment she was even afraid that they might have closed up for the season. But after parking the car in the small gravel lot, she heard through the still air the sound of voices and of music softly playing. She followed the sound to a lighted window and an unlatched side door. With rising anticipation, she opened the screen door and gave the heavy inner door a shove.

  Rachel did not know it, but she had stumbled upon one of those rare places that have managed to keep their secrets. A lot of people knew about the inn’s summertime bar with its old wooden tables and its
wraparound porch, but few knew about the tiny, off-season bar that was tucked behind the lilacs on the other side of the old, rambling building. The couple that ran the inn opened this winter pub only when they felt like company. If passersby saw a light in the window, they would often stop for a brandy and a chat before strolling on home. Strangers were scarce at this time of year in so small a town, and the chances of one finding the secret bar—and finding it open—were slim. Rachel was one of the lucky ones.

  “Hi,” she said to the man behind the bar. He wore a navy blue blazer, pants of white sailcloth, and boating shoes. He was an old man with brown, lined skin and little hair, but his eyes were clear and curious as he looked Rachel over.

  “Good evening,” he said gently. “I’m afraid we’re not really open tonight, miss, but as it’s chilly I’ll pour you one drink if you can show me some identification.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for a room,” she said, afraid now that she should have called first or gone to the kind of town with all-night clerks and swimming pools. “I guess I should have made a reservation.”

  The old man looked past Rachel toward the two women playing backgammon in front of a small fireplace. “Are we open for guests, Fiona?” he asked reluctantly.

  “No, we’re not,” she said. She wore a housecoat with pink rosebuds on it. Blue veins burrowed like worms along the tops of her feet, swollen in satin mules, and her shoulders were padded with fat. Rachel recognized her immediately, for there were dozens like her in Belle Haven, and knew that this was the woman who hung the sheets out in the sunshine, polished the wooden floors, and made sure that the windowpanes gleamed. When the woman looked up and saw who was asking, she put down the dice and sighed. “I’m sorry, honey, but I just wasn’t expecting anybody. I haven’t got a single room ready, and it’s already so cold upstairs. We only heat up the rooms if we know someone’s coming.”

  “Oh,” Rachel said, “I understand,” for she usually accepted what she was dealt, even when she knew that a bit of persuasion might turn things her way. “Thanks anyway.” She turned toward the door. But after the long, hopeful drive she had no stomach for a night in an infested motel or, worse, in the Impala. She wanted badly to sleep in the room upstairs where she had slept before, next door to the room where her parents had stayed, to look out the window the next morning to find the irreproachable sea waiting there for her. She wanted to be by herself in a safe and sheltered place where people would ask nothing of her and she need not ask much of them.

  It was therefore with a certain anxious determination that she turned back from the door, walked up to the tired woman, and said, “I don’t need sheets, or towels, or even a pillow. Just a blanket and some soap. Please. And I’ll leave everything tidy.” She realized that she sounded a bit unhinged, so she smiled and added, “My name is Rachel Hearn. I stayed here with my parents when I was seventeen, and I haven’t been back to the Cape since. I’m not sure where to go.”

  “You college kids are all alike,” the woman sighed, pushed herself out of the chair. But she smiled as she said it. “Take my place, Jack,” she instructed her husband as she led Rachel out of the bar and down a dim hallway, “but don’t drink my brandy. I’ll be right back.”

  The two women stopped at a vast linen closet and then climbed a narrow staircase to the rooms above. “Would it be all right if I stayed in the room with the painting of the rumrunner?” Rachel asked.

  “Of course … Rachel, is it? I’m Fiona.” She led Rachel down the hallway, her old eyes fumbling in the poor light. “This is the room,” she said, handing Rachel a bundle of cold, smooth linen so she could open the door, switch on the light, and make sure all was as it should be.

  Although Rachel protested, Fiona helped her make up the bed and even tracked down a hot-water bottle for her feet. She was generous with blankets and towels, unwrapped a bar of soap, opened the window for a moment to freshen the air, and then said good night. “I’ve forgotten your key,” she remembered as she was leaving, “but you can collect it at the desk when you go out in the morning. The heat will be up before long. Sweet dreams.” And then she was gone.

  Since there wasn’t yet any heat to hoard, Rachel turned out the light, opened the window wide, and leaned into the night. She could see the light from the bar below her tinting the bare branches of the lilacs and could hear the faint sound of voices. It was that quiet. She felt much as she had as a little girl, comforted by the knowledge that her large, capable, strong parents were in the house with her.

  Although she could not see it, Rachel knew that the ocean was very close by. She felt herself thriving on its kaleidoscopic smell, on the sounds of fledgling waves and of the rigging of sailboats at their moorings, beautiful as bells.

  She felt so removed from Harry and Paul, from her friends, and from everything that had become important to her in recent years. She felt so near to her parents, the old, ramshackle house she’d grown up in, and all the people whose faces she would still recognize decades from now because they were a part of Belle Haven, as she was.

  As she lay in bed that night, shivering and alone, she felt a peculiar joy. It was something akin to the feeling she always had at the end of each semester when it was time for her to go home. It made her smile and hug her knees to her chest, counting the weeks until Christmas break and remembering the taste of Belle Haven snow.

  As Rachel drove Paul’s Impala back to school on Sunday afternoon, she vowed to keep her sojourn a secret. The little town on Cape Cod with its one-of-a-kind inn, its clean, deserted coves, its trademark skiffs and oysters was a place she hoped to return to again and again throughout her life. She had no intention of sharing it.

  Rachel was not yet sure what she wanted to do with her life, what sort of work might best suit her. She had not really defined her dreams. She was not even entirely sure what sort of person she wanted to be and, so soon after Harry, was having trouble imagining herself with another man. But this time away from school had restored her equilibrium and left her hungry for trustworthy people who had good manners and things to teach her that she wanted to learn. She had already lived in one such place, was now leaving another, and was sure there must be many such secrets kept out of sight, around the bend, on the other side of a thousand bridges. She had made up her mind to find them.

  Rachel felt rested and relaxed as she opened the door to her room and turned on the lights. No one had warned her that every kind of pain is worse when you go toward it unprepared.

  “You had an emergency call from home. Call Dean Franklin immediately.” Someone had pushed the note under her door. It had her name on it and the dean’s telephone number. She stood there and looked down at it. Then she looked around her room, saw the books and the potted plants, blinked at the colors in the curtains her mother had sewn for her, and wondered who had left a beer bottle on her windowsill.

  Several of her neighbors arrived then, having heard her return, and told her that her phone had been ringing, off and on, for more than a day. They had heard people knocking at her door several times, seen Dean Franklin come and go, and knew something was wrong. But no one knew what. Call us if you need anything, they said, and left her alone.

  When Rachel phoned the dean, he told her that he’d be right over to see her, but she shrieked at him to tell her what was wrong. So he told her that her parents had been killed in an automobile accident. They had died instantly, he said. Without pain. But Rachel knew of nothing on earth that could promise her this was true. As if to blunt what he said, the dean kept talking. And Rachel continued to listen, holding the phone like a gun to her ear, as if letting go of it meant making a choice to go on with her life.

  Her parents, said the dean, had been on their way to have their few, peerless apples pressed into cider. Rachel loved apple cider, and it had always been their tradition, at Thanksgiving, to indulge her minor passion. They had not known, she suddenly realized, of her decision to spend this Thanksgiving at school, with friends. They had not known, eit
her, that she had lately discovered a liking for wine, that she had not given a thought to the cider she would be missing back home. She realized, as she spoke with the dean, that her parents had died while she sat on a small, white beach, wrapped in wind. She was horrified that both of them had left without her. She ached with gratitude that they had left together.

  It wasn’t until she was on her way to Belle Haven on the bus that night that she felt the keys to the Impala in her pocket—they were like teeth against her thigh—and remembered that she had once known a boy named Harry Gallagher.

  Chapter 7

  During his first hours of flight, Kit allowed the road to lead him. He simply didn’t care where he was going or when he would get there. As he drove, he found nothing entertaining in the moving mosaic beyond his windshield. Nothing from the outside world vexed him. Nothing alarmed him. There was enough boiling inside him to occupy every sense he had. He simply drove.

  When he grew hungry, he stopped at an all-night diner where everything tasted of the same rancid grease, was later violently sick in a musky pine forest, and eventually parked in the corner of a deserted rest area and slept until dawn.

  Kit woke early the next morning, cold, cramped, and disoriented, unable to see through the car’s foggy windows and unsure what he might find beyond them. With his palm he cleared enough of the glass to see that he was parked near a brick building. He was in a rest area. The thought of fresh water made him sit up straight. Water was one of many things he had not thought to bring with him.

  Armed with his overnight bag, Kit hurried into the rest house, put on a fresh shirt, brushed his teeth at a rusty sink, splashed cold water on his face, did his best to restore himself. He was exhausted. He was not sure where he was. As clean as he could manage, he returned to the lobby of the rest house and found a map mounted in a Plexiglas case. On it was a small arrow and the words YOU ARE HERE.