Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  I was still looking at the storm clouds above my head when Brody said, ‘Look, Sophie—’ He was clamping and unclamping his fists, and his eyes were green with frustration.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  There was no answer.

  In half a step forward and less than a second, his right hand touched my hip, his left hand seized my jaw – and Brody Meine was kissing me.

  I’d never done this before. I’d never found myself in a situation where this kind of thing was possible. It took longer for my brain to catch up with what was happening than it did for my body to respond. My handbag and cardigan fell to the ground.

  First his lips were pressed to mine, then his mouth was on my mouth and his strong arms were squeezing my body against his with tender force. Soon my mouth was full of his lips and tongue, his mouth was full of mine and I could barely breathe – I didn’t want to. The heat of two bodies pressed together was scalding; there was instant sweat on my forehead, and back, and my chest and my legs. I didn’t know what I was doing but my arms had snaked around his neck and I grabbed handfuls of his hair through my fingers while his hands snatched through my dress for the skin of my legs, hips and back. From my mouth to my knees my body was melting. I could feel heat radiate around us and that smell – that Brody smell – burned into my nostrils, my mouth and my hair.

  I wanted more of it. I wanted his arms to clutch me tighter, his limbs to press deeper into mine. My body swelled and throbbed and ripened as the hardness of his arms and face and chest and legs pushed against the softness of my own muscle and skin.

  I was dizzy with breathlessness, and my lungs turned to burning water. Brody’s arms were a cage around my back, and the panting breaths we both took cooled the moisture his mouth had left around my lips. It was like being kissed by the air.

  I stared into his eyes. He was beautiful. I wanted to say something but there were no words that were better than being held against his body as his chest rose and fell. So I smiled and Brody smiled and for the first time I noticed how small and white his teeth were.

  Staring into his emerald green eyes, so close to mine, I saw orange light. As my body registered a physical world beyond Brody I felt outside heat on my skin. With alarm, I smelled smoke.

  Brody registered the change in my expression and turned his head to the road. I followed his eyes.

  The storm clouds had gone and the promise of rain had vanished into a thin haze of smoke that was thickening, rapidly. It crawled into my eyes and throat, making them water.

  Here were the bright orange flames.

  Across the street from my house, Boronia Road was burning. Flames shot above roofs and gardens, scorching trees. I heard screaming. There were people racing out of their houses with scared children, tumbling onto the road in their pyjamas.

  Half of Boronia Road was on fire. All the houses on the western side of the street. Every one.

  PART

  TWO

  1

  We stood on the street, staring at the burning houses, and I couldn’t tell if my body was shaking because of Brody, the kiss or the fire. The sound of the whole world was our heaving breath, people screaming and wood and glass popping in the flames. Tongues of the fire licked the black night. I may have been shaking, but apart from that, I couldn’t move.

  Brody spun me round, clenching my shoulders in his hands. ‘Get your dad! You got a hose in the garden?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Hose down the front of the house facing the fire – if embers come near you, you hose them. Try to block your roof drains and fill them with water. Close all the windows and doors in the house. Get wet towels under all the door frames, keep a cloth over your mouth if you’re outside. Don’t move anywhere fast or the smoke will get in your lungs – and when it gets too hot out here, get inside. Fill all the sinks, the bath, with water. An ember can get into the house and you want to douse it as fast as you can.’

  He let go of me and moved down the street.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I hollered after him.

  ‘Tell people what I just said,’ he said, skipping back to face me. ‘You do the houses to the right of yours when you’ve closed all the doors and your dad has the hose!’

  Smoke crossed the road and I realised my eyes were watering. I just stood there, watching Brody walk towards the house on the left of ours. Again he turned around. ‘Get your dad!’ he screamed.

  Somewhere, a fire alarm began to shriek.

  With limbs weak from shock, I wiped my eyes with the bandage on my hand, scooped my handbag and cardigan from the ground and scurried towards the house. In the seconds it took me to reach the door, the smoke was thicker. Fighting the smoke out of my throat, and with a wall of heat radiating towards me, I scrunched the cardigan over my nose and mouth and spent infinite seconds on our doorstep trying to shake my keys into the lock until, panicking, I thundered knocks against the door.

  Dad opened the door. His calm face flowered from relaxed welcome to abject fear as his eyes took in the inferno on the other side of the road. I was coughing and fighting my way past him into the house. ‘Are you all right?’ he roared, slamming the door as I ran towards the kitchen sink and tried to wash the smoke from my eyes.

  In moments he was at the landline telephone in the kitchen, pounding at buttons, begging an operator for fire engines. With the tap running, I heard the phone collapse against the receiver.

  I tore the plastic crown from my head and threw it across the room. ‘The hose – get the hose and hose down the front of the house!’ Dad didn’t move. ‘Do it!’ I said, flicking through a kitchen drawer looking for tea towels. I threw one at Dad. With the towel on his mouth, he ripped open the sliding doors and staggered outside.

  ‘I’m going to warn people next door! Get wet towels under the front door as soon as you can!’ I screamed as he slid shut the door.

  I ran water over half of my tea towel. I reckoned I could wipe smoke out of my eyes with the wet half, and I put the dry half over my mouth as a filter. I did a frantic circuit closing every window in the house, and turned on the taps for the bath and the sinks. Then I ran outside.

  Smoke was everywhere now, and the heat was so blistering that my racing heart thudded extra hard at the thought of Brody being lost somewhere amongst it. I marched towards next door with the tea towel over my mouth, batting wildly at the air to keep the smoke out of my eyes, and my mind raced faster – it saw Brody choking on smoke, Brody collapsing in a doorway, Brody caught by an ember, on fire, burning alive. As I beat at the door of the house to our left, and shouted Brody’s instructions to the confused, frightened woman in front of me, I made a promise to myself to search for Brody as soon as I’d hit all the houses on this side of the street.

  By the time I scampered down the driveway of the next house I could hear fire sirens. At the door, another ashen face stared at me, stared at the fire, screamed for their family. I used the damp end of my tea towel to smear the smoke from my stinging eyes, as I strode on to the next house. My skin felt so hot I thought my dress would melt. I thought of Dad, and our house, and I convinced myself we’d acted fast enough and he was okay.

  I was at the fourth house when the fire trucks began to arrive. There were two trucks, and some smaller vehicles, and I saw also ambulances and a police car. Flashing lights fought with the light of fires for space in the air. It was impossible to believe that this was the same calm street I had walked along less than an hour ago. The site of my first kiss was now an elemental war zone.

  By the fifth house, the occupants had heard the fire alarms and the sirens and smelled the smoke and were at their front door. I barked instructions to them and headed on. What must they have thought of the deranged girl in the little pink dress, banging on their doors and probably – definitely – stinking of boy?

  Behind me I heard hoses unravelling from the fire-trucks, the spray of high pressure water, the firefighter commanders shouting into megaphones. They were calling on people in the burning h
ouses to cross to the other side of the street, to let firefighters know immediately if anyone was trapped, to gather in an orderly fashion.

  By the time I was almost at the end of the street I could hear the fizz of garden hoses on the front walls of homes. There was steam rising everywhere. Red and blue lights flashed all over the street. Brody Meine, Brody Meine, Brody Meine chanted the blood pumping through my heart. My left hand was clenched around my pendant. I was covered in grey sweat.

  My eyes were on the smoky darkness of the street beyond my house when one hand snatched me – then another. I was pulled off my feet. ‘Put me down!’ I screamed, flailing in these strange arms until the edge of a plastic fire helmet scratched my cheek.

  ‘Easy, princess!’ said a firefighter with a rough voice. ‘You’re safe, I’ve got you.’

  ‘I’ve got to find my friend! Put me back down!’

  ‘This is a fire zone and we want you indoors.’

  Over his shoulder I saw emergency workers had already erected a barrier of police tape between the edge of the road and the footpath, and were herding people behind it. Instructions were being blurted out through a megaphone but I wriggled in my captor’s grasp and couldn’t make them out. Moving fast was causing my lungs to fill with smoke – I started to cough again.

  ‘I’ll get behind the tape if you just let me find my friend!’ I screeched.

  ‘Brad!’ called the firefighter. ‘We’ve got a live one here.’

  In seconds, I felt plastic gloves under my armpits and the two men dragged me towards the other side of the tape.

  ‘Was your friend in one of the burning houses?’ said the man who wasn’t Brad.

  I coughed in response. ‘He went up the street. He was telling people about the hoses and the doors—’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ repeated the firefighter.

  ‘Put her down here, Mick,’ said Brad. They set my feet gently to the ground, but Brad didn’t release his grip.

  ‘Get inside this house here—’ He gestured to the house next door to mine.

  ‘I live there,’ I said, pointing at my own house. My lungs burned.

  ‘Okay, walk quickly, don’t run,’ he said, letting go of me.

  ‘His name’s Brody,’ I said. I could barely hear myself over the sound of the blaring megaphone. Brad turned on his heel towards the announcement; I grabbed at the tough nylon of his sleeve and pulled his attention back towards me. ‘My friend’s name is Brody,’ I shouted.

  Mick’s face swooped at mine, and our eyes were inches apart. Siren lights flashed on the plastic of his face shield.

  ‘Brody Meine?’ he barked.

  2

  Dad stood under the porch light at our front door. Sweat poured from his smoke-blackened skin and his short-sleeved shirt stuck to his chest as if he’d been swimming in it. He didn’t see me as I hobbled down the footpath to him. He was coughing heavily into his tea towel with one hand, holding the hose in his other, limply spraying into the air above our front lawn. In the porch light, I could see withered, ashy leaves drip from the air towards the ground.

  Instead of hugging him with relief, I snatched the hose from his hand and sprayed him with it. He used the water and the tea towel to wipe some of the gunk from his face. I saw there was a dirty, damp towel pressed into the crack under the front door.

  ‘Go to the side door and get in the house,’ he said.

  Too weak with the smoke and the heat to argue, I stumbled around the side of the house. I was feeling light-headed and I suddenly thirsted for water. As I took the last few steps through the backyard towards the sliding doors, my eyes took a couple of seconds to adjust to the light coming from inside the house. There was a surreal tranquillity to the vision I saw through the glass. Unlike the transformed world of the burning street, the dining table and chairs were exactly where they’d been when I’d careened out of the house a few hours and centuries ago. Only the wet towel pressed to the bottom of the sliding doors gave any clue of the emergency in progress on the other side of the house. I reached for the doorhandle.

  The vision dissolved. Before my hand had a chance to touch the handle, a man in a white T-shirt and flannel pyjama pants was waving frantically at me through the glass, warning me not to touch anything. Behind him, a young, weary woman appeared. I knew neither of them.

  The woman had a crying baby in her arms, and her face was marked with pain.

  3

  Oh. My. God. Who were they? Lauren wrote, typing faster than I ever could.

  The people from the house across the road. My fingers were slow and sticky on the keyboard of Dad’s laptop. The emergency workers put people whose houses were on fire into the houses that were being defended. It was to stop smoke inhalation and make evacuations easier.

  Is your house still there?

  Yeah, it’s fine – but everyone from the street’s been evacuated because they’re worried about smoke and embers and stuff. The couple – Rod and Lisa – they’ve only had that house for two years and they don’t know if the place is so wrecked it’ll have to be pulled down. Their kid is only nine months old. It’s horrible.

  What about Brody?

  I didn’t know how to answer that question yet.

  Did something happen to Brody? Did the fire guys find him?

  I sighed. My fingers hovered over the keyboard.

  Okay. I swallowed a breath. I’m in the house with Rod and Lisa and their baby and eventually Dad comes in and tells us that we’re being taken to buses and evacuated. I’ve got less than two minutes to bring some stuff with me so I grab my schoolbag and shove some clothes in it and then I have the idea of getting Dad’s laptop. It was crazy – all the phones were cut off and no mobiles were working. I couldn’t call Mum, nothing.

  Anyway, we get out and there are emergency workers on the street – there’s tape everywhere, there are lights flashing, the hoses are still going – they give us these little mask things to put on and these fire blankets to hold over our heads so embers don’t fall on us. We have to walk single file and get into these buses at the end of the street.

  I’m looking everywhere for Brody and I can’t see him. As we walk up the street, the whole place is just covered in firefighters and fire trucks and smoke and all these bits of burning leaves and everything else. I start to worry because I haven’t seen him at all since he ran down the street. I can’t even find the fire guy who knew his name. I can barely find Dad and I’m walking behind him.

  By the time I get on the bus I have convinced myself that Brody’s dead. All these people are in there who’ve lost everything and they’re crying and it’s not helping. The emergency people keep going round with these clipboards, asking if anyone’s missing and OF COURSE there are all these people whose kids are at Belinda Maitland’s party and the parents are all freaking out because they can’t call them and they don’t want their kids coming back to an emergency zone, etc. etc.

  I don’t even know where the bus I’m on is going, because I am that preoccupied, but we pull into this hotel that’s on the bluff on the other side of Yarrindi Bay. It’s actually a resort and it’s really nice. We’re guided into the building and taken into the ‘ballroom’ (apparently, everyone who gets married in Yarrindi has their reception in this room), and they brief us as to what’s going on, what they’re going to do with all the houses, what’s going to happen to us, stuff about insurance. It goes on and on and then dawn is breaking and this pale lemon light is coming through the windows and bouncing off the ocean outside. The people in charge announce that everyone’s going to have a medical check and then we’ll go in families into rooms in the hotel. All these doctors start arriving – we’re seated on formal dining chairs as we get strapped up to blood pressure pumps. When the doctor who’s seeing me is shining a torch in my eye, somehow I manage to notice that Brody Meine is sitting on the other side of the room with a doctor shoving a tongue-depressor in his mouth. Bang, bang, bang goes my heart.

  I’m elated – totally ela
ted – to see him. I want to run across the room and just sink into his arms.

  Did you?? wrote Lauren.

  I let the doctor finish checking me, and then Dad was in my ear about something, and I see Brody stand up and walk towards the doorway. Not waving, nothing. I thought he maybe hadn’t seen me. So I just ignored Dad, got up and skittered across this room – this room that is PACKED full of people – and I grab him by the arm. I’m so emotionally exhausted by everything that’s happened that I can’t even say hi, I just look into his eyes and say, ‘I’m so glad you’re all right.’

  And what did he say?

  He said, ‘Yeah, you too. Guess I’ll see you at school.’

  And then what? Lauren asked.

  Nothing. He just left.

  He just walked out?

  He just walked out. And I stood there. Like the biggest loser in the world.

  There was silence in Gmail chat. In my mind, Brody turned away from me and the last I saw of him was the back of his filthy checked shirt as he loped away from the Noah’s Resort Ballroom.

  Okay, screw next weekend in Canberra, wrote Lauren. I don’t want to move there for uni, anyway. I’ll cancel all this stuff with Mum, come back Friday as planned and try to get us an invitation to Lucy’s stripper party on Saturday. We’ll see if we can’t get Sue Cho the Nerd Princess to come along.

  Really? I replied. Dude, half the town burned down last night – it’s not like anyone is gonna care about what I was doing if I wasn’t at Belinda’s stupid party.

  Don’t be so sure. Anyway, I think you need to get out of town for a while. Yarrindi, she wrote, is just NOT a relaxing place.

  4

  Once Dad and I had been cleared by the doctor and both said no to waiting for trauma counselling (although, given Brody’s behaviour in the ballroom, I strongly considered accepting), we were issued a room key and told by an emergency worker to find our room and go to sleep.