“It’s been a long morning,” I say. “Like you wouldn’t even believe.”
47
Burned
A blistering September. Summer was over and school had started for both of us. Back at Tesoro High for me, Saddleback Community College for Brooks. We were busy—reduced to random canyon night drives, texting, and sporadic meetings.
The second Friday of the semester, I stopped by his place with a gift. Anxious to see him, anxious for proof that things were still good—that we were still good even though it all felt so heavy, so strained by time constraints and grief. I craved the pebble-garden nights of summer and hadn’t been at his house since I met his dad weeks before. I missed his house, missed Miss Cat, missed him.
But when Brooks opened the front door, his hair was disheveled and there were pillow creases on his cheek. It was 4 P.M. He was wearing gray running sweats and a white OCFA shirt a size too big. He hadn’t shaved since I’d seen him earlier that week, his stubble grown in messy. I wanted to fold into him, or fold him into me. He never napped. He was always go, go, go. Full alert for the call. Hyper-giddy, hyper-passionate, no time for sleep, no reason to sleep, but he looked like he’d been sleeping so I asked—
“Were you sleeping?”
“Trying.”
I was dizzy from my early morning and the beginning-of-the-school-year rush, so I curtsied and sang, “Surprise!”
“Surprise indeed.” He nudged me to him. “Hi.”
It was too cold inside—colder than a December morning, the AC set too low—and it smelled like sautéed onions and garlic. It also smelled like something burnt, meat gone sour. I listened for the familiar purring, the sullen meow.
“You cook?” I asked.
“Last night,” Brooks said, “Dad and I attempted a family meal. Unfortunately we have no carrot cake leftovers, sorry.” Before I could react, he nodded at the small box I held. “What’s that?”
“A gift,” I said, and he peeled back the gold paper, his face scrunching at the reveal of a peppermint tea box. “It’s inside,” I added.
But when he pulled back the cardboard flap, he closed his eyes. “Audrey.”
“It’s adorable, right?” I pulled out the purple collar from the tea box. With the tiny bell jingling, I showed him the metal heart-shaped tag engraved with MISS CAT and Brooks’s cell phone number. “She’s snooty, don’t you think? So I figured Miss was necessary, even if you refuse to admit it.” When he pulled out his Zippo from the pocket of his sweats, tossing the silver between his hands, I added, “If you don’t like the color, we can go pick one out together. I just figured, you know, you wouldn’t care. And purple, purple is neutral—good—”
“Oh, Audrey,” he said.
He was so sad it made it hard to think.
I kneeled down on the floor and shook the collar so the little bell clanged as loudly as it could as I sang, “Cat, Cat, dear Miss Cat, where are you, Cat, Cat, I miss you, come here, Cat,” until Brooks yanked me up and pulled the collar from my grasp. He tossed it onto the counter.
“Cats aren’t dogs,” he said. “They don’t come when you call for them like a child.”
“But she likes me,” I said, hearing how pathetic I sounded.
Brooks glared up at the ceiling lights. “She’s not here. I haven’t seen the cat for weeks.”
Vertigo swayed. “What did you do?”
His cheeks hollowed. “You think I did something?” He released me in a breath, a choke in his throat. “I love you, and you think I’m a beast.”
My body went slack. My eyes stung. I gazed past him at the wall. The photo of him and Cameron on the trail was gone, and the frames on the fireplace mantel were all set face down. The sight swept me with nausea.
“Brooks,” I said, “that’s not what I meant.” But I wasn’t sure if that was fully true, I wasn’t sure what I’d meant. “Cats die around here all the time, remember, I said that?” I sighed. “It’s just—you said you would keep her inside.”
His breath was shallow, and he pulled me back to him. “I forgot, Audie. I’m sorry. It was an accident.” He wasn’t making sense. He was holding my arm so tight again. Did he know he was holding my arm so tight? “It’s been killing me—that I lost her—I know how much you loved her.”
I was biting on ice. I wanted to rewind. Go back. Take the cat home with me and name her something pretty and sweet. We’d keep her safe, keep her home. I wanted to go home. I wanted him to come back. My Brooks, the one who had swept me off my feet in June and July.
“Please don’t cry.” His hands fumbled around my chin. “Audrey, please—”
And I know what you’re thinking. Why didn’t I leave him then? Why not run out the door and never speak to him again? Why not tell Grace or my parents? Someone, anyone, what was happening?
Because here’s the deal: The signs were there all along. I should have seen. I did see. I knew something wasn’t right. Brooks wasn’t okay. And yet I wanted so much for it to be okay, for him to be okay. That first month, those weeks, were magic, and I wanted that back. He was my thing. I needed to pretend it still felt good, or that it at least could be good again.
So that hot September afternoon, in the frigid ice block of his house, after I gave Brooks the collar, I told myself I was only crying for the cat. Brooks’s hold was a gentle embrace. He hugged me, a hand on my neck. Holding me in the safest way I knew, in a way I recognized. It was only the hot winds—September in Southern California—the Santa Ana winds change everyone; I told myself this. And Brooks still didn’t have a fire to fight, and he’d wanted a fire so bad, and his brother had died last year at this time. Once the winds stopped, it’d be okay. We’d be like we were.
“Audie,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He wiped my cheeks. “I’m terrible. I hate that I’m terrible. It’s just. Cat leaving—and my dad, it gives my dad another reason to hate me, and I really did like Cat,” he said. “And with what Cameron used to do to cats—” I felt him swallow. “It’s been a year. We’re almost to the one-year anniversary of Cameron’s death, and you know, it’s getting to me. It hurts too much.” He ran a hand gently up my bruising arm. “Did I hurt you?”
“What did Cameron do to cats?” I asked.
A pause. I breathed in the whiskey. It’d had to be whiskey. Another pause. As if he were deciding if this was worthy of spreading more pain.
“You have to understand,” he said. “He was sick.”
“What did he do?”
“He burned them alive.”
48
3:55 P.M.
I’ve been reunited with Maya for some twenty minutes, and the ache behind my heart is only growing.
“It’s been a long morning how?” Maya asks again, tugging on her hospital gown.
My phone buzzes. A full body shock. But it’s not Brooks, it’s only Grace asking if Maya’s okay. I don’t answer. Maya’s looking at me as if I have blood pooling from my mouth. And I’m a coward, I’m not ready to talk about Shadow, so I ask a question I didn’t think I’d ever ask.
“You really love ballet,” I say. “Right?”
And it’s the most idiotic question because duh, yes, she loves ballet. Right away I know I did wrong.
“It’s not cool how you do that,” she says. “Just because ballet made you miserable doesn’t mean it has to be a bad thing for me.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m not you,” she says. “Why would you even—after this summer, you know I love it.”
“I was only checking,” I say, which sounds so lame. “I want you to be happy.”
“Uh, ditto. I want you to be happy,” Maya says. “I’m happy. What about you?” An accusation. And she says, “You’re always sad, even this summer.”
“I’m fine.”
She lets out a breath. “Really?”
I think of this morning, wat
ching the flames swim down to my house, and the slam of it—my heart both too fast and too slow—it’s what I feel now. All these years, I thought I’d done such a good job of keeping Maya in the dark, unaware of my sludge. But she saw and she sees. I sit on the bed beside her. Maya’s words hang high, sustained by the whir of machine beeps.
Is there a diagnosis for severe insecurity? With Brooks, in the beginning, I started to feel okay, because he was something to focus on, and he numbed the hurt of being stuck with myself, but now he is the hurt, and I don’t know where that leaves me.
“Come on,” Maya says.
I promised I’d be honest—that I wouldn’t lie for the rest of the day. But I don’t want to talk about this—not now, not today, not ever.
“I’m good,” I say. “I have you, Mom and Dad, Grace, and Brooks and Hayden.” But these names are making me stumble because of how complicated it all is, because since when did I think of Hayden in the same breath as Brooks?
Maya is narrowing her eyes, not convinced, so I go on.
“My life is so good. I’m so lucky. Where we live, our home—” I stop. “How could I be sad when I have so much?”
“Then why are you crying?” she presses.
I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand. “It’s been a bad day.”
She ignores this and softly adds, “And you never seem to eat anymore, not as much as you used to, at least.”
Maya is staring at me. She’s not going to drop it, and my heart feels too swollen to hold on to all of my secrets, all of this weight. So I speak before I can stop myself, “Sometimes I hate eating because it doesn’t feel good to be full when I don’t like myself. Most days I feel like shit and I don’t know why. Okay?”
“No,” she says. “No, that’s not okay.”
I wrap my arm around her, and she leans her head against my shoulder. “You’re too mature for your own good,” I say. “I mean, you’re in the ER after passing out at your audition, and you’re worrying about your older sister? That’s silly.”
She laughs. “It’s not silly! Can you please—I mean, will you talk to someone?” she asks. “Like, at least Mom? Or someone at school?”
I cling to Donny. “Maya.”
“What?”
“I’m going to get better,” I say.
“Pinky promise?”
I twist my pinky with hers, and when we release our fingers, we sit in the loud silence of the ER until I ask, carefully, “But how are you doing?”
“Aside from the whole fainting during my audition and stitched-up-head crap, I’m fantastic,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she says, and then, “but, uh, is there a reason you’re carrying Donny around?”
I look down at the faded gray elephant in my hand. I take a deep breath. “Maya—the fire. We were evacuated.”
Finally, Maya looks sick enough to be in a hospital.
49
My Trees
It was mid-September, and we were already in the mud of the semester. My backpack was heavy and my locker full: AP Psychology, AP Literature, Geometry, World History, Spanish II. Homework with Grace. Occasional study sessions with Hayden. Even without my late-night drives with Brooks, my 6:23 A.M. alarm chimed too early.
But those drives were often our only chance to see each other. He was busy too, with the firefighting drills, station calls, and sixteen units of courses at the local community college.
One night, on the side of an oak-canopied road, he asked, “Have you decided yet?”
“Decided what?”
“Your favorite tree.”
“Oh,” I said. “No.”
He smiled. “Audrey.”
I smiled too. “Brooks.”
“I gave you a whole summer to choose.”
I thought of my house. “Cedar, oak, and olive.”
“Right,” he said. “All trees that can easily be found in your backyard.”
“What? My favorite trees can’t be accessible?”
He tossed his Zippo between his hands. “I worry you didn’t think this through.”
“Oh, I did,” I said, because I had. In June, after our first date, I tried to decide on a favorite tree, but never found one that felt right, so these trees had become the top contenders. “Cedar is connected with healing, protection, cleansing. Oak is all about courage. And olive trees—well, you know, to extend an olive branch—”
“Hey, our relationship does not need repair.”
I pulled at the drawstring of my hoodie. “I’ll tell you my favorite tree if you show me your photos of the quaking aspens.”
He messed with the Zippo. “Like you haven’t already googled it.”
“I mean the photos from your camping trips with Cameron.” I needed to see them because I needed to believe him, believe in him. “You told me you’d show me them, and I want to see.”
Brooks snapped the Zippo closed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” My throat hurt, but I couldn’t drop it. It bothered me that he hadn’t shown me the photos, had bugged me ever since the night at his house when I met his dad and he’d thrown that fit. Bugged me more since Miss Cat went missing, since he told me what Cameron did to cats.
Brooks pushed the Audi back into drive and pulled out onto the road, too quickly, without looking. Maybe there never had been any photos. Two boys—a teenager and his young brother—trekking through the woods. Would they really be all that concerned with taking photographs?
Maybe Brooks had wished they had taken photos, and in the speed of all of our talking—the lust, the frenzy—Brooks had made up the fictional photographs without thinking. And now he didn’t want to admit his tiny lie. If that were the case, then I needed him to own up to it, so I could understand why none of this felt right.
“It’s not like I have the photos on my phone. Our last trip was years ago. I was still young,” he said. “And Cameron hated online shit, social media, whatever. Him and me both.”
“Oh.”
“Most of them are probably on my mom’s hard drive, up in Washington.”
“Okay.”
“Why, of course!” He slapped the steering wheel. “Cameron’s phone. The camping photos must have all been taken on his phone. Would you like me to track down my dead brother’s cell phone so you can examine a photo of a tree you’ve already seen? I’m sure there’s at least another bar of battery in it. The phone has to be hanging around somewhere.”
The easy plunge of his words grasped around my ribs—how quickly his mood had crashed, how careless I was for pushing on the topic. I wanted to apologize, because that’s what I’d usually do. But I felt sick to my stomach and more angry than sad.
“If there aren’t any photos you can admit it,” I said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“Do you really think the photos are what’s important here?”
I asked him to take me home.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I was a bitch. His brother committed suicide, and I was interrogating him about childhood photograph. I was sinking. “Me too,” I said.
He still gripped the steering wheel and stared out at the street. “Quaking aspen trees,” he said. “They often grow in colonies. Did you know that?” I shook my head. “An individual aspen lives up to some one hundred fifty years but—the root system—the colony—it, I don’t know, prevails for ages.” He flicked his Zippo, up and down, up and down. “For thousands of years, a colony of roots shooting up new trunks as the older ones die. Saplings flourishing from the old, the roots staying alive.”
I covered my palm against his hand, the Zippo, its Space Needle. “That’s incredible.”
“A colony of aspens is considered one living entity. Intrinsically, inextricably rooted together, always.” His left eye was watery, the scar somehow darker in the
dimmed light, and he nodded. “You and me, we’re like those quaking trees.”
My heart banged softly. “Oh.”
He pressed his thumb to my lower lip. “You and me, Audie,” he said. “You and me, always.”
“Always,” I said.
* * *
* * *
But that night, when I returned to my room, I opened my laptop.
I stared at the screen.
And I typed in Brooks Vanacore, Cameron Vanacore and clicked Search.
50
4:02 P.M.
Still in the ER, going on an hour in the hospital now, Maya sits back on the bed and grips the sheets. I sit beside her, because I know that while today has been a horror day of all days, what I’m about to say is going to kick deep. She asks me about the evacuation, about what happened, what I saved, who knocked, who rang the bell, if I ran, if I cried, if I could see the fire in the morning light.
She’s chewing the inside of her cheek again, and I know she’s dying to ask me, imagining the worst when the worst is probably the truth. Her bare feet shake.
There’s no easy way to ask, so I spit it out, sudden, rushed, “Did you have a cat in your closet? Is that what you were going to tell me yesterday?”
She looks up, a gasp of a smile. “You found Shadow!” But then she sees my face. “Oh.”
“I ran into Sam at Starbucks. She told me.”
Maya pushes off from the bed. “We have to go get her.”
I nudge her back down. “I already tried. I went back. She wasn’t in your closet or your room. I searched the house. The firefighters—I had to go. The fire was too close.” My throat threatens to seal. I don’t want to tell her how close the fire was. I can’t let Maya lose all hope.
“She’s dead?” Her eyes fill.
Nothing Left to Burn Page 17