We were long due for a fire, Brooks told me. Inevitable. That’s what he said.
The slope we climbed is behind us now. My breath hitches. The wild stretch of fire laps out southeast—a raging pool of flames with black fields in its wake. The man at the barricade was right: We are surrounded. The fire is bursting everywhere. We stand on the hill that rolls down to my yard, facing the larger bank that looms over my house. I can’t breathe. Higher up, the black smoke entirely engulfs the hill, the land behind it, the trail I’ve walked my entire life—the fire zigzagging just below the smoke line like a river of lava snaking down to my home.
“What did I tell you?” Grace says. “Your house is good as gold.”
I’m going to be sick.
25
Stars
On that second day of July, my first time at Brooks’s house, after he told me his brother was dead, all I could manage to say was, “What?”
Brooks touched my arm, urging me away from the wall, the photo. “Last September, the day before he was supposed to go back to school.”
He yanked open the patio glass door, pulling it so hard that it slid off its track. He wouldn’t look at me, only shoved the door back into place. We stepped out into the dimming afternoon, and I tried to pull up words, think of the right thing to say.
His brother. Cameron. Dead.
I’d been imagining him alive, strong and tan and blond like Brooks, with a sharp jaw and wide eyes. Tall too, maybe hovering over Brooks by an inch, sprinting up sandstone Ivy League steps, clutching an armful of books to his chest, living somewhere that requires sweaters made of wool, a state not under constant threat of wildfires. My chest swelled, and I thought of Maya. She’s nearly another limb. To lose her, my heart cracked at the thought of it, and at the memory of when I thought I would lose her. Those were the worst days I know.
“Brooks,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
He rubbed his bad eye. “You know the band Stars?” I shook my head, and he slid the door into place, closed. He leaned against the glass, looking out past the trees lining his neighbors’ property. “They were Cameron’s favorite. Canadian, older. Poppy indie or whatever. I never understood the appeal, but Cameron—you know.”
I didn’t know. Not about Cameron or the band, but I said, “Yeah.”
“There’s this one song, from the early 2000s—” He glanced at me. “This guy talks before the music even starts, saying, When there’s nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire.” His arms were crossed lazily over his chest, his expression calm, as if he were reciting some anecdote at a party, not explaining his brother’s death. “Cameron posted that online the night before he died. When there’s nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire. The next morning, he went down to Alki Beach and dumped gasoline on himself.”
I tried to breathe, but it was like sand had filled my lungs.
“Fire,” I said, wanting to ask, desperate to ask, if this was really why he was so obsessed.
“His final words to the world.” Brooks’s voice was even, so crisp, but his hand clenched and unclenched around the Zippo. “A bullshit line. And then, he lit himself on fire.” His voice finally cracked. “He was my best friend.”
My skin seared. I stepped closer to him, his grief panging through my body. It suddenly all made sense, his aloofness at school, the scowl that’s set into his face, the way his hands often shake—still in mourning, soaked in grief, learning how to be without his brother.
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“Me too.” And he almost smiled. “But it happened. You know, now it’s just something that happened.” The same line he gave me about his parents’ rocky divorce.
I wanted to ask if Cameron’s death was why Brooks and his dad had moved, the cause of the divorce; I wanted to ask if Cameron had shared Brooks’s deep voice and shyness; I wanted to understand, but rocks sat on my tongue. Instead of saying anything, I reached for his hand.
* * *
* * *
There’s a fire pit in Brooks’s backyard. The gas fire pit—one of those Home Depot portable deals—sits in the middle of a pebble circle with two wood chairs on either side. Brooks and his dad, or maybe the plastic-wielding secretary, apparently forgot to purchase cushions for the chairs.
“Took me a whole day,” Brooks said. “This setup.”
“You did this?”
It was twilight—the sky a stretched-out topaz sheet above, bleached and tie-dyed orange and pink and red. A hot summer, newly July, and already blistered afternoons and coffee-brown hills. But coastal California guarantees a nearly year-round evening cool down, so I didn’t think twice when Brooks struck the long match, turned on the gas, and filled the metal bowl with light.
“We had a permanent pit back in Seattle,” he said. “I needed one here—a backyard bonfire is a necessity. But, well, fire hazard on the dead grass and what not, so solution! Pebble garden and non-wood burning.”
He was hyper, earnest, as if he hadn’t just explained his brother’s death by fire a few moments before, jumpy in the way that felt as if he were acutely skirting pain.
“Pebble garden.” I swallowed a mouthful of beer. “I like it.”
We sat on the ground—the rocks still warm, the day’s heat soft through my jeans—our knees touching. The flames licked at the metal cage. I wondered if Brooks and Cameron had sat in the Seattle rain around a fire pit.
“I wish I’d met you sooner.” Brooks’s eyes wandered my face, memorizing me, mesmerizing me. “All winter, every night, I was here. It would have been so nice to have been alone with you.”
I ducked my head, smiling. Alone with you. “You were out here even when it rained?”
“What, those four drizzly nights?” He tossed a stone into the fire. “Yes, even then.”
I whistled. “Dedication.”
A minute or two passed in silence. I wanted to ask Brooks if he had a favorite Californian tree, and I wanted to ask if Cameron had ever visited the Golden State, but the risk of stumbling over my words was at an all-time high. I was there alone with him, and he was still looking at me, eyes so green against his sage tee.
“But we have now.” He kissed my knuckles. “I’m lucky to be alone with you now.”
I didn’t know how to say that I felt the same—so stupidly lucky. “Why did you sit next to me?” I asked. “At senior prank night? I don’t even understand why you went. You didn’t sit next to anyone all semester. And you barely knew Grace. Why me?”
“It was my last chance to approach you.” Brooks touched my chin, nudging me to look at him. “And I wanted to. You looked as lonely as me.”
I looked at my hands. “Lonely.”
“Audrey,” Brooks said, his left eye watering. “You should know I really like you.”
I was dizzy and my feet were asleep and we’d only hung out a few times and ten minutes earlier I’d been drenched in his grief, Cameron’s death. But right then, there was a surge in my chest, hot and bursting, like sparklers on the Fourth of July. Can you fall for someone in such a fragment of time? I never thought I’d be the kind of girl to fall for a boy over a few summer nights. I didn’t hide my smile, didn’t bite down.
“I really like you too,” I said.
Brooks kissed me then, his hand on my neck, fingers in my hair, slow and sweet like the saltwater taffy we shared on the way home from Balboa. It was my first kiss, if I don’t count my kiss with Ross Bower in the fourth grade. I never count the Ross Bower kiss.
Brooks pulled me closer so that no pebbles were between us. Every inch of my skin buzzed. We’d only been hanging out for a few days, but he was eighteen, so this was inevitable. I didn’t like to be touched, I’ve never liked to be touched, but this felt oddly okay. This felt safe. But I couldn’t calm down, couldn’t steady my pulse. He was so close.
“I really, really lik
e you,” he said again.
The July sky darkened into night, and the stone in the fire popped and, with my eyes halfway closed, the sparks looked like a fury of fireflies. I forgot about Cameron and his suicide, instead thinking how nice it was going to be to turn sixteen and have been kissed by a boy who really , really liked me.
26
11:02 A.M.
Five minutes pass. Grace and I don’t move. The flames crawl just over the ridge of the bank above my home—brush I’ve walked through hundreds of times to get to the trails above. It is loud, a crushing, unfathomably bright roar. My house is drenched. A crew points hoses at the roof of terra-cotta tiles, spouting out water thick with chemicals that will keep my home soggy for hours. I squint through the haze to the glaring mound in my backyard. Our outdoor furniture has been shoved into the middle of the lawn, a blanket of foil draped over the sides. The pool shimmers with a film of ash. My skin is sticky, my body overheated, and for the first time in years I ache at the thought—with the desire—to undress and dive into the murky water.
I’m on my feet again. Huffing into my hoodie and trying to slow my breath. I squint until my vision blurs, trying to make out the figures below. Is Brooks down there?
No. He wouldn’t be. He’s just a volunteer reserve.
“Why the hell are they not spraying the fire?” Grace takes photos as she talks.
“Protocol,” I say.
My house isn’t receiving special attention. My neighbors are also being watered and wrapped. When a fire threatens subdivisions—especially high-priced subdivisions—the attack approach changes. Burning houses is what brings fires fame and exclusive coverage on the TV. In a remote area, a blaze can burn hundreds of thousands of acres, and yet, if no structures are threatened, it’ll never receive a place on the 5 o’clock news. It’s all about the houses. Save the homes. Save the memories. Defeat the monster nipping at the million-dollar boxes.
Brooks isn’t wrapping homes in aluminum foil like they’re sweet potatoes ready to plop into the oven. At least not willingly. He says it’s all for show, for the media, for politics, for money—the mind-set that fire is a villain to defeat. “Fires are meant to burn,” he says. He doesn’t believe in focusing on the homes. He hates that they turn a blaze into a million-dollar-a-day event.
“What do we do now?” Grace asks.
“We watch,” I say, but I’m not watching. I’m planning. I’m thinking about Maya dancing, Maya still thinking her kitten is safe. I check my phone. 11:10 A.M. The audition started at 10:00 A.M. Is Maya still on her toes, blowing the committee away?
I need to be able to tell her I saved Shadow. My ultimate congratulations.
Midway up the pluming slope, a line of firefighters hunch over in an effort to dig out a line of earth that will be brush-free, a ribbon to halt (or at least pause) the flames above—flames that appear frozen in place, as if licking at an invisible force field.
“It’s so slow,” Grace says.
“Fire climbs faster than it falls.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
I’m too thirsty to explain the science of it.
A helicopter sweeps above us. Can they see us? Have the firefighters below noticed us? Breaking news: Two dimwits evaporate from dehydration and heat exhaustion, next up on Channel 4. Embers drift up, floating to where we stand. We need to leave. We need to move. But the fire is above my home, beautiful and mesmerizing, pluming out mushrooms of gray smoke.
“Can we go?” Grace asks. “I need to pee.”
It’s undeniable. Fire is fascinating. Brooks told me so. How the word itself is derived from Latin, how it only shows enough of itself to lure you closer. He explained this on the beach at Balboa, but I didn’t really believe it until now. I can’t look away. You can’t look away.
Last night, I asked him, “Aren’t you worried?”
And, last night, he said, “Not really.”
And last night, Brooks’s hands everywhere, the light dimmed. He kissed me, and the chandelier swayed in the wind rustling through the open balcony door. I was ablaze, no longer under him. He yanked my jeans off. I yanked off his. He was breathing so hard, asking, You really want me now, you really still want me? I was dry and it kind of hurt and now Grace says again, “Audrey, shit.”
Because I’m back on my knees, dry heaving.
“I’m so sorry,” Grace says. “You have total permission to cry. I don’t know how you’ve been so calm.”
I’m not crying for my house.
No. That’s not right. I’m only crying for my house.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My skin streaks black with grime, with the dirt spinning from the sky. Last night and Thursday night and today—it’s not a series of Lifetime Special–worthy coincidences. A wildfire storming after I lose my virginity. No. It’s not nature overlapping with reality. It’s something more.
“Can you stand?” Grace asks. “We need to get you water.” She glances at her phone. “And I need to get home, get ready before Quinn comes over.”
She helps me to my feet. And I hear it again, that phantom meow, that low purring sound. The fire is still at the top of the bank, as if it hasn’t moved an inch—but it’s like a Las Vegas mirage, not real, a trick. My house drips with liquid chemicals, sticky yellow and gray, as if attacked by seagulls with a vendetta. The firefighters have moved on to the next house.
Grace helps me up. “Let’s go,” she says.
“Stay here,” I say. “Can you stay here?”
“ What are you talking about?”
“I have to save Maya’s cat.”
“What cat?” She stares. “No, you don’t. That’s insane. You—”
“Just stay here.” I hand her my hoodie.
I turn. My feet take hold and I run. My legs pump, lungs fill with smoke. I’m in the air. I’m flying downhill. I’m going home. Grace is screaming my name like I’ve never heard her scream before. I don’t stop. I’m hauling down the bank. I run through the high brush toward the flames. I run home.
27
Hunting Ground
Orange County is more than the pristine beaches and towering palm trees and glassy cliffside mansions depicted on TV. We are more than the home of Disneyland. Drive twenty minutes east (or forty, depending on the hour), gear a tad south, look past the countless subdivisions and glammed-up shopping centers, and the land ripples out in waves of chaparral—sagebrush and cacti, oaks and lilac. The banks give way to hills, and the hills give way to mountains that roll out to Mexico some hundred miles south.
This is my home.
In the sixth grade, I did a report on the area’s history. I’m a freak for remembering this, but I do. The thing is, I’ve always clung to facts. There is safety in what can’t be changed.
Back in 1908, President Roosevelt created the Cleveland National Forest—protecting 1,904,826 acres of land that sprawls out and encompasses the counties of Orange, Riverside, and San Diego. And good thing he did, because ultimately, what wasn’t protected was inevitably bought and sold and crafted to our needs. Million-dollar homes plotted on hillsides, tucked into valleys, flagged on crests. Shopping malls and strip malls and artificial lakes.
The Cleveland National Forest borders my home. It is my home.
Coto de Caza—originally envisioned in 1968 as a hunting lodge—was complete by 2003. A lavish, gated and privately guarded master-planned community of eventually some four thousand homes (and growing), two eighteen-hole golf courses (each accompanied by its own clubhouse), an equestrian center, a general store, and, later, the setting of a Bravo reality television show. Coto de Caza: painfully whitewashed and lacking in diversity. Last I checked online, the racial makeup behind the gates is apparently around 90 percent white, and, despite our proximity to Mexico, only 8 percent Hispanic or Latino.
Coto de Caza. It’s Spanish. Obviously.
&
nbsp; Translation?
According to Google: hunting.
According to SpanishDict (because translation is never simple): a legally regulated area for hunting, or (if used colloquially) a hunting ground.
This is my home.
Though I love it here, I can acknowledge the stereotypes exist for a reason.
We hunt for the best lots with the best views. For drugs to make us numb or wild or smaller or larger. For perky boobs and line-free faces, for muscle-strung arms and tight asses and enough space between our legs for the Santa Ana winds to swing through. The sparkly Mercedes and Escalades, the greenest lawns and most elaborate pools, straight white teeth and glossy hair and perfect tans and sparkle-bling-sparkle jewelry, the most extravagant parties and king-size candy to offer on Halloween.
We hunt one another.
But don’t let the media fool you. We’re no worse than anywhere else. Like everywhere, like everyone, we simply want to be happy. This is our truth. We hunt for hope. Don’t you?
Enjoy the sprawling natural landscape, they invite online, the winding trails that take you to the reaches of the Cleveland National Forest and Caspers Wilderness Park. One of a kind. A distinctive way of life. The most sought-after community to live and play.
And that’s great and all, but the problem with the natural landscape we’ve claimed and molded to our preferences is that, like all land, eventually it has to burn.
28
Wire Hanger
Another summer night, late July, sitting on the warm pebbles. We each held an unwound wire clothes hanger to the fire—a marshmallow on the end burning gold. Brooks had bought a bag of Jet-Puffed just for me. I hadn’t had a marshmallow in years. I thought I hated marshmallows. My hands and his both sticky sweet, the burnt sugar melting against my teeth, I decided I loved marshmallows.
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