Nothing Left to Burn

by Heather Ezell

  I recognized him from around campus. I was even familiar with his scarred eye from the whispers in the halls. It was suspected it was the reason he’d been kicked out of his previous school—maybe something as terrible as a knife fight. But a few of my friends had been in classes with him, Grace’s brother included, and they had used words like chill and intense to describe him. “He’s way too into chem and entirely checked out.” Every description a contradiction.

  I sometimes saw him at lunch whenever he sat beneath the sycamore tree in the middle of the quad, dust jackets always stripped from whatever book he was reading. I’d wanted to talk to him. Of course I wanted to talk to him. Everyone did.

  Yet the night of the senior prank, he sat next to me—me—on that bench. And he was looking at me, a flush in his cheeks.

  “You’re not a senior,” he said. He smiled so steady, but his hands were shaking, and he must have noticed that I noticed, because he stuffed them into his pockets. He leaned away and, exaggerating his gaze, looked me up and down. “You should be more excited right now—a youngster in on a senior prank. Huge deal,” he said. “You look ready for bed.”

  “Hey,” I said, my voice a squeak. “I’m not a youngster.”

  I was a sophomore in pajama pants and an old Nutcracker tee. My face was bare beyond sugary lip-gloss, and I hadn’t touched my hair since that morning. I was totally a youngster.

  “I’m guessing fourteen?” Brooks asked.

  I laughed naive, fourteen-year-old-like giggles. I felt tipsy on the sparkling wine Grace likes to snatch from her mom. “I’m nearly sixteen, thank you very much,” I said.

  He grinned. “Hate to break it to you, but fourteen and fifteen are pretty much the same thing.”

  “Maybe for you,” I said, “but not for me.”

  He toyed with a silver Zippo, striking the flame up only to let it breathe out and die, and I remembered the silver glint in his hands while he’d read at lunch. The way he would quickly pass the metal back and forth between hands, letting it catch on the sun for a glance. Toying with campus contraband so carefully but with urgency.

  “You should know I’m not a creep,” he said. “I’m recently acquainted with Quinn and Grace. They directed me over. Quinn said she’d pay me a buck if I made you smile.”

  This was disappointing. I’d rather him have been a creep who’d simply wanted to talk to me than a friend-provided escort. I turned around and spotted the two of them watching, snickering. I rolled my eyes and turned back to Brooks.

  “I guess Quinn better pay up,” I said.

  A guy with a buzz cut and steroid-induced biceps squirted ketchup onto the sidewalk. Our campus looked like the aftermath of a fast food battle, not a murder scene.

  “I have to say, as a fellow senior, I’m embarrassed.” Brooks drew in a breath. “Weak, weak, weak prank.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, and I wondered why he was there at all, why he’d ever voluntarily choose to come to the social gathering of a prank. I let myself imagine he’d come just to meet me.

  “We’re clearly not needed here,” he said. “Want to go for a drive?”

  “I don’t even know your name.” Lie.

  Still sitting, he bowed. “My apologies, mademoiselle. I’m Brooks Vanacore.” He clutched my hand and pressed it to his lips. I was horrified—my palms had been sweating since he’d sat down—but I was electrified, smiling, unable to stop. “May I have the pleasure to know your name?” he asked.

  “Grace didn’t tell you?”

  “She did.” His green eyes soaked me. “But I’d rather our meeting be, well, traditional and shit.”

  “Right.” I looked at our hands, still clutched together—his so warm and heavy, calloused and firm, my hand too small. “I’m Audrey.”

  “Audrey?” Brooks ran his thumb along the inside of my palm. I was as bright as the sun, so light I could have swum to the sky. Time slowed, and he wasn’t letting go, was looking at me as if I were already his everything.

  I breathed. “Audrey Harper,” I said.

  His smile hitched my breath—a small smile, but so sweet and genuine and only for me. He pulled his car keys from his back pocket and dangled them in the air. “Well, Miss Harper. I’m bored and you’re bored and I have gas in my tank, so let’s go.”

  My jaw ached, and yet it felt so good. Talking to him felt so good.

  So, I went.

  8

  6:31 A.M.

  Brooks is here. He’s kissing my head and touching my cheeks, and everyone in the café is watching. He’s whispering those words again—I had to see you one last time—because I keep asking, Why, why, why. He’s holding my hand and ordering a latte and a blueberry crumble muffin, buying me a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant that I don’t want. Well, he’s not actually buying anything because the woman behind the register is blinking at his uniform—everyone is blinking at his uniform—and she’s smiling so wide with these misty hazel eyes.

  “We got you covered,” she says. “Thank you so much for your service.”

  Brooks bows his head. “My pleasure,” he says.

  I want to add that it really is, that it really is his fucking pleasure. But I don’t because I’m getting sucked into this too, because it’s him: Brooks in his fire-resistant pants and boots, a metal canteen hooked to a belt loop. Brooks standing tall, ready to fight what’s forced all of us out of our homes. He’s going to save the day. Brooks, my Brooks. He’s a hero. He has to be. He is. I still believe in him and—

  My mouth tastes like puke.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I ask into his arm.

  He kisses my ear. “I had to see you.”

  “Excuse me.” An older man approaches us. He shakes Brooks’s hand. “Thank you. I wanted to shake your hand properly and say thank you.”

  And then another. “So, what do you think?” A dad with a kid hiding behind his legs. “You think this will be beat soon?”

  And Brooks nods, because he knows what he’s talking about, this is fire after all, and he’s been waiting to talk about fire his entire life. “In time,” he says, and it’s strange because his voice doesn’t shake like it normally does—the fire has cured his perpetual shyness. “We’ll get this in time.”

  And the dad asks, “Would you mind? Would you mind taking a photo with my son?”

  You have got to be kidding me.

  But Brooks doesn’t even consider it. He’s kneeling beside the boy, his face serious but with the slightest of smiles, one arm slung around those small shoulders shaking beneath a thin blue shirt.

  Brooks can’t wipe the dazed smile off his face. I wonder if anyone has noticed that he’s not dirty and ashen, that he’s in a freaking Starbucks waiting for an extra-hot latte and warmed muffin and not out, you know, firefighting.

  “You’re already a legend,” I say, after we get our drinks and food and go outside, where the patio is vacated and the wind rips ash and leaves across the parking lot. “I guess dreams do come true.”

  He doesn’t catch my tone—he must not—because he smiles. “Maybe.” He’s nervous now; he’s never been so nervous. He chews a hunk from his muffin and says, “I wanted, you know, I needed to see you.”

  His smile bites my heart.

  I hope my words bite back. “You need to get into your car and go.”

  Brooks sets his breakfast on the patio table. “Please, Audie, please do me a favor and don’t freak out. You have to treat it like it’s a normal day.”

  “How is this possibly a normal day? How can you even ask me that after—”

  “After what?” He levels my gaze. If anyone is observing us from inside they’re thinking he’s dazzling. He’s charming. What a brilliantly awkward smile. What wide, sad eyes. None of that is incorrect; it’s just not the whole story. His green eyes narrow just the slightest, and he says, “Af
ter last night?”

  “No,” I say. “After my being evacuated, after so many families being evacuated.” I can’t find the words I need to say, the words I want to say. The wind tangles my hair and it hurts to breathe and it hurts even more to speak so I stare at him instead, until I don’t want to stare anymore, and I say, “My house could burn down.”

  A family passes us as they go into Starbucks. They’re in pajamas. They’re an upheaved mess. They’re smiling at Brooks and he’s nodding back.

  “Many families’ homes are going to burn down,” I add.

  Brooks finishes his muffin in a single bite. He looks at me. “Do you really have so little faith in your local firefighters?” He tries to laugh but it’s dry. “We got this.”

  Something spurs in me deeper. It must be the caffeine. “You have nothing,” I say, a crack in my throat. “You’re a liar at Starbucks consuming copious amounts of sugar.”

  I’ve never talked to him like this before, and I know he’s thinking the same thing: that we’re pushing beyond repair. Our hearts are already broken.

  “A liar, eh?” His voice is hushed. “Don’t forget it takes two.”

  I step back. He’s no longer smiling. A beat passes. His jaw pulses. “Why are you so convinced that I’m the beast here?” It’s so soft, like how he says I love you late at night, in the car, over the phone, after a din of silence.

  I don’t answer. I can’t answer. Because if he isn’t the beast, what does that make me?

  But he tugs me into him, embraces me so tight that for a moment I forget where we are, what day it is, what we’ve become.

  “I didn’t mean to start a fight,” he says. “I only came to say goodbye.”

  And as angry as I am right now, after the final words of last night, I can’t let go. There’s a part of me that still wants to tuck him in and keep him safe. Mine. My everything. He’s not ready to fight any fires. He’s doesn’t need to fight fires.

  I press my lips into his shirt. “Stop acting like you’re going to die out there,” I say.

  He holds me tighter. “Trust me, please?” He’s grasping my chin, letting his left eye drip tears on my cheek. “You have to stay quiet, stay low.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  On cue, his phone lets out a low wail. The station is calling him. It’s happening. He talks fast now. “You’re risking my life, Audie. Our lives,” he says.

  “The sooner we—”

  But he ignores me. “Thank you for last night.” He raises my hand to kiss it, like our first night together, almost bowing, a knight heading off to battle. “Just—” He presses a finger firmly against my lips. “Shhhhhhh.”

  The morning spins and he kisses me deep and I kiss him soft because maybe we aren’t beyond repair. But then he’s leaving, walking backward into the wind, hair blowing, keys and wailing phone in his hand. It’s his time to fight.

  “Trust me,” he says.

  9

  Quaking

  Brooks drives a black Audi—a sleek two-door that reeks of old coffee. That first June night I met him, after we’d escaped the senior prank, he drummed on the steering wheel and announced my first and only nickname.

  “Audie,” he said. “It’s brilliant. Audrey. Audi. Audie.” He didn’t pronounce it like the car, but rather just my name without the r, like what Maya called me when she was four. “I’m a genius!”

  I stared at him. “You’re naming me after your car? Seriously? Your car?”

  “Nicknaming you,” he said. “And Audie with an e so—”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “Is there a difference?” He scoffed, giving me a side smile. We abandoned the parking spot, zipping past the condiment-dousing seniors, up the bank, away from the school. “Really, you should be honored. This car is my pride, worth three summers of pizza and espresso slinging. I must really like you.”

  I was too flustered to acknowledge the last statement, too flushed and exhilarated. So I texted Grace, letting her know I’d left.

  “Audie,” I said, trying it on, my tongue slipping.

  “You hate it. Shit. I am an ass.” His voice cracked. “Really though, seriously, it’s a compliment—this is my glory. Did I mention the espresso slinging?”

  I shook my head. “There’s no way you bought this from minimum wage.”

  And then Brooks grinned, revealing an extra-pointy back tooth, an oddity of his otherwise braces-straight smile. “Impressed yet?”

  But I was already far past impressed. I was enthralled.

  I’d never had a nickname before. I’d never had a boy so eager to talk to me. And this was Brooks, the guy I’d ogled all semester, the boy everyone wanted to know, who everyone thought was dark and creepy. He wasn’t. I could see it, feel it already. He was striking—his tough exterior and half smiles and scarred eye—but he was also more than that. He was vulnerable, passionate, springing with excitement. Smiling at me. He was beautiful and sweet. And he’d chosen me, me, as a companion for his drive. I couldn’t make myself care that his car partly inspired his name for me—the name already felt like mine, like a secret between him and me.

  “You can call me Audie,” I said.

  * * *

  * * *

  We sped through Trabuco Canyon, and he asked me whether or not I liked Orange County and if I had a favorite tree. His is the quaking aspen, a tree speckled through his native Washington state and nowhere to be found in the dry Southern California terrain.

  “Quaking,” I said. “Like earthquakes.” Like a dimwit not knowing how to hold a conversation about trees.

  Brooks smiled. “Sure, like earthquakes.” He shifted, rounding a dark curve. “The leaves—” He lifted a hand from the steering wheel, waved his fingers down, demonstrating. “The leaves kind of do a tremble deal in the wind, like quaking, you know, or something. You can’t find them here. Up in Washington though, in the fall—shit, they’re gorgeous. Have you ever seen a fall outside of Orange County?”

  “No. I’m born and raised.” A tizzy in my throat—I knew his state, his home.

  “In Washington, my older brother used to take me camping in autumn—we’d go east and backpack and pitch this sad sheet of a tent. We had to share a sleeping bag to keep warm. It’d be freezing, but so worth it. We never went summer camping. Why bother building a fire if you don’t really need it to survive?” He shrugged. “Cameron said summer camping was too easy. Autumn a doable struggle.”

  “How old were you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, probably ten the first time?” Brooks said. “And then, there on out, it was a tradition.”

  I could see it: a thirteen-year-old leading his younger brother into the forest, dirt-smudged cheeks and fallen branches for walking sticks.

  He stared ahead. “Cameron went out east for school though, two years ago. And now I’m here.” With one hand, Brooks flicked his Zippo against the steering wheel. “Cameron said the trees were the only reason to backpack. The reward. I’ll find photos for you. You’ll see. When October hits, the quaking aspen groves, they look like fire.”

  This is how it was between Brooks and me. How it started, and how it remained. We are defined by his stories. I would have listened to him talk all night long if he’d let me. I wanted to swallow every sentence. Wanted to catch his fervor in my hand, store it in my gut and let it fill me up.

  And that night in June, beyond the headlights, the canyon road was black. Oak trees hunched over the road, their spindly branches bridging the roadsides above, cloaking any light from the sky or homes nestled among the foothills.

  “Tell me,” Brooks said, his eyes so briefly meeting mine. “What do you love?”

  My response was immediate. “Maya. My little sister. She—”

  He waved his hand. “Not who. What.”

  I stilled, thinking I didn’t love anything worthy
of mention. “Having a sister then,” I said. “I love that. And baths, showers, water. I miss the rain.”

  He smiled. “Keep going.”

  I pulled at the drawstring of my pajamas. “Grace. I love her, and I love that she’s my best friend, that she isn’t afraid to share with the world who she is—her full self—and that she talked to me first, insisted we be friends.” Because I guess I can be off-putting sometimes. My silent discomfort translates into bitchy intimidation. “And I love school.” I went on. “The sense of control when I’ve finished my homework. Like, when I understand something new, when I know I’ve learned something after trial and error,” I said. “I love that.”

  “Yeah.” He was nodding. “Me too.”

  “What about you?” I asked. “What do you love?”

  He squinted at this. “I love that you love those things.” Which felt like a cop out, but I was too entranced to call him out on it.

  When he wasn’t messing with the Zippo and pretending his fingers were quaking aspen leaves, Brooks gripped the wheel with both hands. His gaze rarely diverged from the road ahead. I could stare at him freely. Stare at the stubble on his face, at his heavy eyebrows that crept from the beanie he tugged at, stare at the edge of his cheek. I wanted to get closer, closer until I found every last scar on his skin, every secret tucked away.

  “When did you move to California?” I asked, though I mostly knew the answer.

  Brooks nodded at the street, as if nodding north. “This past winter. My dad was offered a position at a firm down here.” He held his Zippo in his right hand, against the wheel, pressing it into his palm. His smile faltered. “He and my mom were on rocky grounds already—finalizing their divorce—and my mom and me, we’re not on the best terms, so he took the leap.”

  “And you jumped too,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He flicked up his flame but had nothing to burn. “I did.”