The Color of Lies

by CJ Lyons

  Headlights from an oncoming car blind me. If I sit here much longer, someone will probably call the cops. The car pulls into a neighbor’s driveway and the lights go out.

  Maybe tonight’s not the night. Dad always says I’m too intense, too focused. Says it turns people off, that I need to learn to give people space.

  It’s a lesson I wished I’d paid attention to before I met Ella. I turn my bike around to head back to campus. There’s always tomorrow, I tell myself. She’s not going anywhere. Except maybe to Paris.

  The night air smells of rain and smoke. I look over my shoulder one last time before leaving. From this angle, I can see down the driveway to the old garage she uses as her studio. It’s clouded by a haze that blocks out the stars.

  A haze that sits much too low, far below the sky above. A haze of black, oily smoke. I pop my kickstand down and get off the bike, sniffing the air. The scent of wood burning is corrupted by an acrid chemical stench. A tongue of flame licks at the garage door windows.

  Arms pumping, I sprint to the garage. I try to open the main overhead door, but it won’t budge. The small windows lining the top of the door are almost totally black with smoke. Beyond the glass flames dance in warped configurations over the rafters as they devour Ella’s canvases.

  I race around to the side door. Ella’s uncle is tugging at the doorknob, frantic.

  “Is she still in there?” I shout at him, my words propelled by adrenaline.

  Joe glances up, flames reflected from the window etching his face into strange angles. “What are you doing here?”

  I barely hear the older man as I join him at the door and try the handle. Locked. “Where’s the key?”

  “I don’t know!” Joe sounds panicked, desperate. “Did you lock it on the way out? Why would you do that?”

  “It wasn’t me!” I grab my phone to call 9-1-1. Why would Ella lock herself in? Obvious answer: to keep me out.

  “This is all your fault!” Joe yells. “You had to come, meddle in everything, get her upset—” A wall of flame fills the window. Something inside explodes with a loud pop and the crash of shattered glass. Joe grabs a log from the woodpile.

  “Stop,” I tell him. “You’ll just make things worse, give it oxygen.”

  He doesn’t listen. He smashes the window. Heat and flames blast out at us. Smoke billows through the opening, thick, noxious fumes that have us both coughing as we take shelter.

  There’s no going in. Not that way. Which means Ella’s trapped.

  CHAPTER 29

  Ella

  I never knew fire could be so loud. Crackling campfires or a few logs tumbled into the fireplace on a cold winter’s night, sure. But this? Deafening. The roar of the fire is ravenous, an ancient beast raging, searching for its prey.

  For a moment, I’m transported back in time, to that terrified little girl hiding from the dragon-monster of smoke and flames blocking her path to her family. Tears cloud my vision and my throat burns as if I’ve been screaming.

  I start crawling, my face pressed as close to the floor as possible, searching for the garage door. It seems much farther away than it should—have I gone off course? Blazing remnants of my canvases shower me from above. A few are heavy enough that they set the back of my sweater on fire and I take precious seconds to roll over, smother them. Others spark in my hair, forcing me to swat at them. Time and oxygen wasted, and I’m running out of both.

  My fear is as alive as the flames surrounding me, wanting to devour me from the inside out. I force myself to breathe slow and deep, pretend I’m in the swimming pool and this is all happening above the water that protects me, all happening very far away.

  It works until something angers the flames; they leap and caper and grow larger as a gust of air rushes into the room. I think I hear someone calling my name but it’s very far away and I don’t have the breath to call back—not that it would do any good, since the flames will smother any sound I make.

  I hear the clatter of easels falling, stacks of material tumbling to the ground. My life’s work gone, but there isn’t time to worry about that. Somehow, I find the strength, now coughing even through my makeshift mask, noxious fumes gagging me, to reach the garage door. My palm slaps against its rough wood hard enough to rattle it in its tracks. The overhead door hasn’t been used in almost a decade—not since I took over the garage.

  I tear away the old blanket I keep shoved against its bottom gasket, blindly searching for the latch. Thankfully the door is locked from the inside; a mere turn of the latch should allow me to open it. A large canvas topples in the windstorm created by the fire, cracking me on the back of the head with the corner of its frame, engulfing me in flames.

  Primal fear sets in and I forget all about staying calm and breathing slow as I battle the searing strands of canvas to free myself. My sweater starts to smolder, and then to burn, and in an instant, I’m on fire.

  I roll, bouncing into the door, flounder in the other direction as the blankets also blaze to life, and somehow manage to free myself from the sweater’s embrace.

  In the dark, with my only illumination waves of flame washing down from above, it’s impossible to orient myself—is the latch to my right or left? My breathing is now ragged, all pretense of controlling it long gone, and each coughing fit leaves me wanting to embrace the concrete floor and never move again. But I keep going until my fingers stumble against something metal. The latch.

  I try to turn it. No good. It’s been locked for years, is not about to relinquish its grip so easily. With my last ounce of strength, I push my weight against it. Slowly, painfully, it yields.

  A coughing attack tears at my lungs and I collapse, my hands flailing against the door, fingers pushing past the rubber gasket at its bottom, trying to gain purchase.

  Suddenly a second pair of hands from outside cover my own. I know without seeing that it’s Alec. He gets his hands beneath the door and pushes up. I taste vomit in the back of my throat—linseed oil and turpentine and all the noxious smoke have gathered there, filling me up inside and out—but somehow manage to help push as well.

  The door creaks and groans, its weight shudders up, grudgingly lifts a few inches then stops, refusing to yield. I collapse, embracing the tiny draft of fresh air coming in through the crack we’ve created. Exhausted, I can’t move, it’s all I can do to simply breathe. Alec’s face appears mere inches away from mine, but all I can see are the flames reflected in his eyes. The entire ceiling is engulfed, the rafters dripping in fire.

  Then he smiles, and suddenly that’s my whole world. “I’ve got you.”

  His hands grip the door and I see his knees bend, hear his grunt of effort as he manages to raise it a few more inches. Then he slithers inside the inferno and throws his arms around my shoulders. Together we crawl forward, Alec shielding me from the flames with his own body. Once we’re most of the way past the door, Alec rolls out into the fresh air as I weakly claw my way against the asphalt drive. Then he’s there, reaching down for my hands, pulling me free from the fire.

  We’re both coughing and gagging, stumbling in a weird half-walk, half-crawl free fall down the driveway until we finally collapse onto the front lawn. Alec wraps his hand in mine but he’s coughing too hard to talk. His face is streaked with smoke and tears. I’m sure I look worse. I feel worse, probably have burns and cuts that will awaken as soon as my need for oxygen eases, but we’re alive.

  He holds me close, fear quaking both of our bodies, neither of us able to talk as sirens fill the night along with shouts as neighbors come running. All I can do is close my eyes and breathe.

  CHAPTER 30

  Ella

  It isn’t until the paramedics bundle Alec and me into the back of the ambulance that the puking starts. The only consolation is that Alec is almost as bad off as I am, both of us clutching emesis basins and oxygen masks as the ambulance bounces and swerves, diesel fumes adding to my nausea.

  Alec greedily sucks on his oxygen from the bench seat bes
ide the cot where I’m strapped in. The medic has me on a big monitor and Alec on a smaller, portable one. Our heartbeats chime through the air, synchronizing except when one of us has a coughing fit. The medic’s aura is a calm, reassuring cerulean, very relaxing.

  “Where’s my uncle?” I ask, not for the first time, as the paramedic trades my puke bowl—good thing I hadn’t eaten dinner yet—for a wet wipe.

  His partner answers from the driver’s seat behind me. “En route to the hospital. They found him collapsed. Chest pains.”

  “Chest pains?” My voice, already hoarse, breaks with panic. “Is he going to be all right? Did he have a heart attack?”

  The medic can only shrug in answer. What if Joe dies because he was upset about the fire? Because of me? I couldn’t bear it, I just couldn’t. My eyes are dry and scratchy, unable to produce tears despite my anguish. “I need to call Darrin.”

  My words are muff led by the oxygen, and the medic has moved to stand between me and Alec as he examines my head wound. I, of course, don’t have my phone—it’s on its charger in my room—but Alec’s hand slides between me and the medic, his phone at the ready.

  I hold it like a lifeline until I realize I can’t remember Darrin’s number or which restaurant Joe said Darrin and Helen were going to. Cleary and Sons does business with several, and they’re always ready to roll out the red carpet for Darrin and give him a quiet, private room so Helen’s synesthesia won’t be roiled by unwanted noises. I try to dial Rory but end up getting her number wrong, a gruff older man answering instead. I mumble an apology as the ambulance comes to a stop then begins backing up, and I realize we’re at the hospital.

  Alec’s phone’s home screen fills with a background picture of his parents flying a kite on the beach, their auras so bright with joy that it makes me blink. Wordlessly, I hand it back to him. He glances at the photo, his expression transforming as if just seeing their picture gives him strength, and then he slides it back into his pocket.

  The next bit is like being a scrap of paper tossed into a tornado. Alec and I are separated, each given our own team of nurses and doctors. I’m undressed, examined, vampired—again and again, my arm for an IV and blood work, then my wrist for blood from an artery, which hurt more than the burns I was finally starting to feel—salved and greased and wrapped and stapled—turns out that bump on the head was more like a laceration—x-rayed, nebulized, examined again, and finally ushered into a separate room at the far end of the ER.

  “Our observation area,” the nurse tells me as she wheels me down the hall. “Everything looks good, but your carboxyhemoglobin levels are borderline high—that measures the amount of carbon monoxide in your system. We’ll need to keep you on oxygen—flush it out, so to speak—and monitor you.”

  “For how long?” My voice is still raspy and my throat stings, but after the breathing treatment, my cough is pretty much gone.

  “Just overnight. We’ll redress your burns and send you home in the morning.” She leans down to help me out of the chair—which I don’t actually need, except I’d probably trip over the assorted paraphernalia that came along for the ride. “I’ll see if I can book the whirlpool for you in the morning. Best way to treat burns like yours. Much less painful.”

  The burns aren’t serious, the doctor had assured me, but they are already rather painful. “Thanks. Have you heard anything about my uncle?”

  “Waiting for his cardiac enzymes to return. I’ll let him know you asked. It might be a while before you can see him, but he’s doing fine.”

  “And my friend, Alec Ravenell? He was in the fire, came in with me?”

  “Right behind you.” Alec’s voice rings out from the door behind me—observation rooms come with actual doors instead of curtains. “You decent for company?”

  The nurse finishes tucking me in, shows me how to work the bed and the monitor and IV in case I need to go to the bathroom. “But the first few times, hit this button and call us. Don’t try it alone.”

  Right. Like that’s going to happen. She leaves and allows Alec to come in. He has a bandage on his wrist that matches mine. But otherwise he looks fine. Much better than me, I’m sure—in addition to the new staples on the back of my scalp, the fire singed my hair so it’s all ratty and uneven, and I’m wearing an oh-so-lovely hospital gown. My clothes are gone. All that I have left are my shoes in a plastic bag dangling from the end of the bed, and my underwear.

  “Are you okay?” he asks at the same time as I do. He smiles. “Jinx.”

  “They’re watching me overnight. Something about carbon monoxide levels.”

  He holds up his phone open to a Google page. “Yeah, they checked me for it too. But you were in there so much longer than I was. Guess you’re lucky it wasn’t a lot worse.”

  “I held my breath most of the time.” I don’t really want to talk about the fire. If I do, I’m afraid all the terror I’ve been holding back will break free.

  He settles into the chair beside the bed. “I’m sorry you lost all your paintings.”

  I can’t help my sigh. “No great loss. I have it on good authority that apparently I suck when it comes to portraiture.”

  He looks down at his boots. “Actually, that was what I was coming to tell you. Why I went back. I was wrong.”

  “Excuse me? Mr. Truth Above All Else?”

  “Maybe there’s more than one kind of truth. There are the facts. But then there’s the understanding of the why behind the facts.”

  “Which is why you’re interested in my parents’ case.”

  “Right.” He glances up, meets my eyes. “I know the facts, but I want to understand them. But what you see, what you paint—that’s a whole different truth. No less valid, maybe even more important.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You see possibilities. What the truth could be—or maybe what it should be. Like that picture of Rory. It wasn’t her as she is now, but even though the physical facts weren’t accurate, it represented the woman she’s destined to become. And anatomy has nothing to do with that.” He worries with the tape binding the gauze to his wrist. “Does that make any sense?”

  “No,” is my knee-jerk response. His expression crumbles. “I mean, yes. It makes sense. But no, what you’re talking about is a level of talent I could only hope to achieve. What you’re saying is what real artists do—revealing a hidden truth not just about their subjects, but about the world.” I shake my head and offer him a timid smile. “I love that you think maybe someday I could do that. It makes losing everything seem not so bad, like maybe I can do better next time around.”

  His smile meets mine, releasing a flush of warmth inside me. “No maybe about it. I know you can. You will.”

  Then I realize. “Rory! If I don’t call her, let her know what happened, she’ll freak.”

  “Already taken care of. She and Max are out hunting for your grandmother and Darrin.”

  “They went out to dinner with her new producer, but Darrin will have his cell phone turned off while he’s with Gram.”

  “Right. Forgot about the family quirks.”

  We fall silent, the raucous sounds of the ER surrounding us, isolating us from the rest of the world.

  “I asked them,” I say. My fingers knot the sheet and I’m suddenly fascinated by the red glow of the oxygen monitor clipped to my ring finger. “About my parents. About why my dad did that. No one knew.” I turn in the bed, facing him. “Do you really think you can find out?”

  “I want to. I mean, I have all the facts of the case, and they all add up—except they don’t.”

  “Same way I feel when I can’t figure out a painting. Like something’s missing.”

  “Exactly. Maybe if you tell me about your parents. What you remember. What were they like?”

  I hesitate, gulping in more oxygen. The plastic smell of it is an oil slick on the back of my palate. I’m scared—who wouldn’t be? All my life I’ve cherished these memories. They’re all that I have left of
my parents. Last thing I want is to bring my memories into the light and dissect them until they’re empty corpses.

  “It can’t be all lies.” His tone is encouraging. I’ll bet he’s good at coaxing kittens out of trees. “Maybe what I know isn’t all of the truth.”

  “So you admit you might be wrong about what happened?”

  His face twists. “I admit that there might be more to it. Maybe we can figure it out. Together.”

  I nod, the heartbeat monitor speeding up a bit. This is scary—in some ways more frightening than facing the fire.

  “Let’s start with your mom. I know she worked with your dad.”

  “She was actually at Cleary and Sons before he was. He was still at grad school when my grandfather hired Mom even though she didn’t have a degree. Because she had a talent with numbers—a different type of synesthesia than mine, more like seeing them as a puzzle. When Dad joined the firm, she was already running their fraud department.”

  “But, what was she like?”

  “She was . . .” I falter, pretend to adjust the IV needle to a more comfortable position. But really, I’m trying to separate what I really know with what I’ve been told over the years. “She was from Sarajevo. They lost everyone in the war.” Not that anyone ever really talks about it. Certainly not Helen or Joe. I frown, struggling. “That’s it. I just can’t—”

  Alec senses my distress. He reaches his hand to cover mine on the bedrail. “You were only three when they died. Most people don’t have any concrete memories that far back. But I guess what I’m asking is, how did she make you feel?”

  I lean back on the starched sheets and close my eyes. “I remember . . . I remember music, always music when she was near. Humming or singing or just tapping her fingers as she worked while I played in my crib beside her desk.” I jerk my chin up, eyes popping open as the memory fills me. This is true, this is real.