Fuel the Fire

by Krista Ritchie

  We abruptly meet at the curb of Scott’s driveway, and he strangely lingers instead of passing me, as though waiting for me to tell him that he’s making the correct choice.

  “Where are you going?” I ask Garrison, though I’m one-hundred percent sure of his destination and his plans. The flowers. The formal attire. The date. It all points to prom.

  He combs his hand through his brown hair. “Some douchebag bailed on Willow, so I decided I’d ask her out…” he trails off, studying my blank face for a reaction.

  I wear none. The sun is beginning to set. “You have a couple hours before prom starts.”

  Garrison points at me with his flowers, his features contorting in confusion. “You know…people still talk about you at Faust. The upperclassmen said you had an answer for everything—that you were some kind of prodigy.”

  A prodigy. I almost laugh. I’m satisfied knowing that this immortal, godly version of me still floats around the dorm rooms and hallways of Faust. I’m even more satisfied knowing that the vulnerable man remains in the arms of Rose, my passionate, gorgeous wife.

  “Here’s my answer for you,” I tell him. “Ask your friend to prom for no selfish reasons, no vain motives, nothing less than because you admire her and because you’d rather spend two minutes sitting beside her at a dance than five hours in the company of anyone else.”

  His brows pinch in contemplation, as though it clicks. I like her a lot. I’m doing the right thing.

  Garrison and Willow would seemingly never be friends. She’s sitting inside with faded overalls, a blue shirt with bat-prints, and glasses crooked on her nose. She’s introverted and bookish. He’s rebellious and outcast.

  Their unique interests may not align, but something in the core of their hearts does—and that makes the difference.

  I’m running out of time, so I begin to head up the steep driveway.

  “Where are you going?” Garrison wonders.

  I look over my shoulder once. “To set things straight.”

  He nods to me. “Good luck.”

  I smile. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I don’t need luck.” I turn back around and walk unflinchingly to my destination.

  Fuck luck. I’ve spent months preparing for this, to put myself in this position on the chessboard, and in one strike, I may finally knock down the most abhorrent opponent I’ve ever faced.

  There is no luck in my final moves.

  The credit belongs to me.

  [ 59 ]

  CONNOR COBALT

  I take a beer from Scott and sit on the couch next to Trent. He’s a thirty-year-old trendy photographer from L.A., black suspenders and a handlebar mustache evidence enough. I only know him by Scott’s constant aggravating reminder that Trent had sex with Daisy after a photo shoot, years ago.

  “Scott says you’re cool,” Trent tells me, chewing on the end of a toothpick.

  “In what sense?” I take a swig of beer.

  “You’re game for anything—you don’t take life too seriously, that kinda thing.”

  My life is serious to me. It matters. I’m sitting in a cage of buffoons, acting like one because I can’t fathom Scott existing for unquantifiable time in my world. I’m giving him thirty more minutes, and then he’s gone.

  “Sounds like me,” I say with a smile into my next swig.

  Scott enters the living room with a remote in hand. “Is Simon still shitting?” he asks.

  Trent’s best friend has been puking in the bathroom since I arrived. “He snorted too much coke before the plane ride,” Trent says. “I told him you had extra, but he was convinced he’d spend two days without it.”

  “Idiot.” Scott plops down on the square, modern chair. He switches the television to an input that connects his computer to the TV screen. “Pick a number one through seven.”

  “Me or Connor?” Trent asks.

  “Either or.” He scrolls through a video playlist labeled with only single-digit numbers, and I watch his cursor light up each one in temptation.

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  And he starts at the beginning again, waiting for us to choose. I look to Trent, and he hardly seems perplexed by the videos. I assume he’s watched some, if not all, before.

  So I say, “You pick.”

  Trent squints at the numbers. “…I can’t remember the video where he tells her to strip.”

  “She’s naked in four through seven,” Scott answers, the cursor lighting up these numbers.

  4

  5

  6

  7

  I stretch my arm over the couch but clutch my phone tighter. I have an idea what this is now, and I have to make an unsuspicious excuse to leave quickly. I touch my lips with my phone in mock contemplation. “Do you two always do this in your free time?” I ask with a blasé smile.

  I hoped their illegal activities would start and end with drugs. The answer that hammers my brain has rippling consequences, and if I misstep even once, this will blow up in my face.

  “Dude, when you see what Scott has, you’ll wish he showed you sooner,” Trent tells me. “It doesn’t beat the real thing though.” He laughs and pats my shoulder while he drinks his beer, verifying that he actually fucked whoever is on these tapes.

  Scott mutters, “Lucky bastard.”

  Daisy.

  I’m ninety-nine percent certain. I was only twenty percent at Saturn Bridges when Scott brought her up in the context of oral sex, and I was seventy percent sure the minute he brought up the numbered videos. But now I know.

  Daisy is on one through seven. There are so many reasons why I would never watch them. Why I can’t. Why it makes me physically ill to even picture Scott, Trent, and whoever else repeatedly viewing these.

  5

  6

  “That one,” Trent says.

  I act like my phone buzzes. “Shit,” I curse, scrolling through an old text and springing to my feet.

  “What?” Scott stops the cursor on number six.

  “Jane fell off her fucking highchair.” I rake my hand through my hair, appearing distressed. “I’ll be right back—you can start without me.”

  “She’s probably fine,” Scott says. “You don’t want to miss this.” He clicks into the video.

  “How long is it?” I wonder.

  “This one is a half hour,” Scott says, waving the remote at me to come back and join them. I waver, to act like I really want to watch. My muscles pull taut, flexing as I force myself to linger in fake curiosity.

  The basement of a townhouse blinks on screen, a timestamp in the bottom right corner, affirming the date of when Princesses of Philly aired. The camera overlooks the small room with a bed and a wooden dresser. Daisy’s ex-boyfriend sits on the edge while she’s already half-undressed and begins to shimmy her panties down her legs.

  Don’t look.

  It’s too late.

  My pulse jackhammers, nausea rising to my throat, and I check my phone again, acting like Rose keeps texting.

  Scott said he destroyed the footage of Daisy, but clearly he kept some of what he filmed during Princesses of Philly. Like the rest of us, she had no idea cameras were in the bedrooms. So she undressed and she hooked up with her then-boyfriend without fear of being recorded.

  Daisy was only seventeen at the time.

  “Take it off, baby,” Trent laughs and looks to me. “She sucks him off at fifteen minutes.”

  I try to appear what he wants me to be—excited but dejected that I have to go home and miss it. I glance at my phone and groan. “Shit.”

  “What?” Scott asks.

  “Rose thinks Jane hurt her arm. I’ll be right back.” With this, I sprint out of the door, able to run without them questioning my motives.

  As I race down the driveway, the facts hit me all at once—facts that I researched after Saturn Bridges, to reaffirm what I already knew.

  Pennsylvania state
law prohibits the photographing, filming, and videotaping of a sexual act involving a child under the age of 18.

  I run faster across the street.

  Pennsylvania law punishes the voluntary viewing or possession of child pornography within an individual’s home.

  I am so close to joining him in breaking the law, but it’s not why I sprint, why when I reach the mailbox I increase my stride.

  There’s only a small window of opportunity to fuck Scott over. I can’t chance waiting another hour or another day. This is it.

  When I enter the house, I bolt up the stairs, not even paying attention to Lo, Garrison, and Ryke in the living room. “Connor?!” Lo calls, worry in his tone.

  I confidently head down the hallway, listening to a group of voices…in my room. I turn sharply and open the door to find the girls huddled around the vanity with Willow. In seconds I deduce that she agreed to go to prom with her friend, and Rose, Lily, and Daisy have been helping her get ready.

  All four heads whip towards me in unison.

  “I need you and you,” I order, pointing to Daisy and then Rose. I gesture for them to go to the bathroom.

  “What’s going on?” Lily asks, confused as to why I’d leave her out.

  “Connor?” Rose stands and approaches me while Daisy hesitantly heads into the bathroom.

  I clutch the back of Rose’s head and whisper quickly in her ear, explaining everything in a few sentences. I feel her entire body constrict and coil against mine.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Ryke asks in the doorway, following me upstairs with Loren in tow. I hold out my hand, telling him to stay back for a second.

  “He wants to talk to Daisy,” Lily explains.

  When I finish filling Rose in, she looks horrified for a single second before she layers on an enraged, hostile expression, venom pouring through her yellow-green eyes.

  “We’ll be five minutes,” Rose says, taking my hand and following me into the bathroom.

  “Cobalt!” Ryke shouts.

  Rose shuts the bathroom door on him, and then Daisy hops up on the sink counter and swings her feet. “What’s up, guys?”

  I stand side-by-side with Rose, hand-in-hand, prepared to drop a grenade on a girl who has suffered through too many already. I usually always have the right words, but it’s hard to express the weight of what I’m about to unleash—and what it means to her life.

  Rose is quiet as well. How do you tell a young girl that she’s been violated? I remember how I bought and destroyed pictures of her backstage undressing—from a photographer—to avoid this for Daisy, and with strange circularity, she’s about to experience a version of that anyway.

  “Guys?” Her smile wanes. “What’s going on?”

  A chill snakes down my back and arms. “I just found out that Scott still has footage of you from Princesses of Philly. In your bedroom.”

  Her face falls. “What…that’s…”

  “It’s not online. It can’t be,” I try to ease her concern. “It’s child pornography, Daisy. It’s a felony for him to film it, let alone watch the footage.”

  She stares up at the ceiling, horrified like Rose had been.

  “He’s going to pay for this,” Rose says adamantly. “Okay? He’s not getting away with it, but we need your consent to call the cops.”

  She shakes her head in a daze. “Why do you need my consent? It’s illegal…”

  “Daisy…” Rose detaches from my hand and kneels in front of Daisy, collecting her sister’s hands in hers. “He has footage of you, which will be the basis of the case against him. You may have to go to court and testify…or at least make a statement.”

  “He hurt you,” Daisy says, tears rising, almost as pissed as her sister’s. “He hurt me. Who else is he going to hurt?” She inhales strongly and then extends her hand to me.

  I frown, not understanding this action.

  “I want to call the cops.”

  I think two years ago, Daisy would’ve had a hard time standing up for herself, even in a situation as grotesque and abysmal as this one. She would have asked me to call the police. She would have asked her sister to finish the job. Anyone but her.

  Rose stands up straight and motions for me to give Daisy the phone, and there is pride in Rose’s eyes. She even hugs her sister to her side.

  “How long will he go to jail for?” Daisy asks as I pass her the cell. For Rose, to put Scott in jail for eternity would’ve been easy. For me, it would’ve been a guiltless action. For someone like Daisy, it’s difficult, but I hear no remorse in her voice.

  She raises her chin like Rose, following her older sister’s powerful, confident demeanor.

  “Maybe five years,” I tell her, “and he’ll be registered as a sexual predator.” He may also face federal charges, but right now, I’m looking at the state law and that alone will ruin his life.

  It’s not blackmail. It’s not unjust. Scott is going to jail for crimes that he’s escaped and twisted for years. If I never became his friend, I would’ve never found out what he had in his house. He would’ve never even thought to show me or trust me with it.

  I would’ve never reached this place.

  Daisy puts the phone to her ear. “Hi, I’d like to report a crime…”

  [ 60 ]

  ROSE COBALT

  Two police cars hug the street curb, one beside Scott’s house and one beside ours. I drill holes at Scott’s mailbox, waiting for his disgusting, wretched self to appear in cuffs.

  “He’s cooperating,” the officer tells us. “We’re taking his computer as evidence, and with what we’ve seen so far, we’ll be able to get a warrant to search his house for anything else.”

  Perfect.

  Connor stands at the end of our driveway with me, poised and collected while I’m fuming, a shark with jaws wide open, a lioness crouched and ready to pounce with claws bared.

  “If you need my cellphone records, you can have them,” Connor says. “He texted me to come over there today, and when I saw what he was planning to watch, I immediately ran back to call the police.”

  The officer jots this down in his notebook. “That’d be helpful, thank you.”

  I perk up the minute I spot the other officer across the street, a bit diagonal to us. He escorts the three guys out of that house. Connor said two were named Trent and Simon, and of course I can distinguish Scott among them, no longer smiling with smug delight. He scowls at the cop car, all three men handcuffed behind their backs.

  Turn around, I mentally command to Scott, but his face is still pinned to the vehicle. They’re out of earshot, and I watch Trent and Simon slide into the car, and the officer shuts the door on them. He sets a hand on Scott’s shoulder and directs him to the police car in front of us.

  “Excuse me,” the police officer says, leaving our side to talk to his partner.

  Scott Van Wright is handcuffed.

  Scott Van Wright is going to jail.

  Scott Van Wright is never obtaining anything he desires, ever again.

  “There were so many days,” I tell Connor, “where I thought he’d always walk free, travel in his yacht.” I cringe in distaste. “Get a tan, get high, and apparently watch my little sister…” I can’t even finish that truth.

  It’s one thing to watch me, but to know, all this time without our knowledge, he’s been getting off to Daisy—it’s past conscionable.

  Connor wraps his arm around my waist. “Those days are gone,” he announces the best truth of all.

  The two officers chat off to the side while they leave Scott by the car door, closer to us than to them. I hear the word “cocaine” so I assume he’ll be booked for more than just filming and viewing child pornography.

  Scott has largely kept his back to us, but he finally shifts, leaning his hip on the car door. His snide fury morphs his face into a repulsed snarl as he looks between my husband and me.

  Connor laces his fingers through mine. I stand even taller with my husband, my five-inch heels mi
ghty beneath my feet.

  I have no trite jeers for Scott, no how do those handcuffs feel? or have fun in hell.

  What he did was so vile, so gross that there is no word in my vocabulary that is even worthy of attaching itself to him. I just let my glare puncture him tenfold.

  Scott lets out a short, incensed laugh beneath his breath. “You fucking bitch—”

  “No,” Connor says, silencing Scott at this. “The next time you ever say anything derogatory about my wife or about any woman, it’ll be in jail.”

  Inside I am doing victory laps around my driveway with fists raised, barefooted, and howling at the sun. It’s something my sisters would do. Something I’m proud to imagine, them here feeling the triumph with me.

  Scott sets his murderous gaze on Connor. “You haven’t been real with me at all, have you? It wasn’t just this one thing that pushed you over. Or was it?”

  In the most even-tempered voice, Connor says, “Do you know what an Aesculapian snake is? No.” He looks to me. “Rose?”

  I know where he’s going with this. “A species of nonvenomous snake,” I answer with my head held high.

  “Among which is the rat snake.” Connor focuses on Scott again. “Rat snakes are like ordinary snakes, except when held captive. When you trap a rat snake, it will attempt to swallow its own body and eventually self-cannibalize.” Connor says, “You are the rat snake, and you’ve been slowly eating yourself to death ever since you moved across the street.”

  Scott’s face—a twisted ball of shock, rage and terror—is priceless. He looks like he may puke, and he braces more of his body weight against the police car. He stares faraway, as though adding up all the months Connor deceived him. The shots Connor took at me, at the only person he’s ever loved. To accomplish what Connor did and still have a soul—it takes rare strength and power that no human being could ever match, not to this uncharted degree.

  Scott slowly raises his gaze to my husband. “You’re a psychopath.”

  “No,” Connor says, “I just really fucking hate you.”

  Then the police officers begin to return to the car. Connor and I say a short goodbye to them and walk back up our driveway, distancing ourselves from Scott.