There’s no fence on this side.
“Now what?” Hayden asks.
“I’m going to the T,” I say.
He’s leaning over, hands on his knees. “Grace isn’t going to believe any of this.”
I take a deep breath. “You need to stay here.”
“You’re serious?” He looks up at me. “What if you need help?”
“I won’t.” I need to do this alone. “Wait here,” I say.
“No—”
“Trust me, Hayden. Please?”
Hayden shakes his head, curses under his breath, but finally says, “If you’re not down here after thirty minutes, I’m coming up.”
Fine. “Okay.”
* * *
* * *
So I climb. It’s not far, maybe a twenty-minute ascent. The hill is dry, hard packed and rocky, but the path through the brush is well worn with loose gravel. Smoke has made a home in my body. I’m almost there when I freeze at the sound of coughing. It’s him.
I walk the trail to Brooks.
70
9:09 P.M.
I see him now, up ahead.
First the reflective strips of his jacket and pants and boots, then the glare of his helmet, which he holds against his chest. A fist of air leaves my lungs. He’s streaked with soot—soiled and burnt and beat. He’s been working all day. He’s been running all day, all night. This isn’t a costume. It’s real. There’s a soiled red bandana tied around his neck, goggles at his feet.
Brooks is a firefighter. That wasn’t a lie.
He’s sitting in the dirt, his back against the ledge of the T where I kissed Hayden on Friday. His shoulders are hunched over. He’s struggling to flick a white lighter against the yellow toe of his boot. The small glints light his face. My chest aches.
He looks up. “Audie.”
I can’t move, because I want to go to him and hold him, and I want to kick him and make him bleed. I hate him for what he’s done. And what I’ve done because of him, for what he’s asked of me: lying or running. I hold my elbows.
He looks to the fire and waves to the burning hills. “It’s beautiful.”
A searing bruise spreads through my body. “I won’t do it,” I say. “Take the fall for you.”
His gaze meets mine. “You have to.”
My eyes sting. “You’re breaking my heart.”
“Audie,” he says, and he rushes to me, and now he’s holding me and kissing my hair. He smells like campfire and sweat and mud. He says he fucked up, he fucked up so bad. “This is the only way. It being your fire,” he says. “It has to be.”
He’s not letting it go. It’s the story he’s warped into his new truth.
“Come with me,” I beg. “Tell the truth.”
I let him hold me. Minutes pass, and I think he’s ready to leave with me. Ready to head down the hill to the lights at the front of the school. Ready to face what we did.
But then he releases me and he says, “I killed him.” And I’m not sure if he’s referring to Cameron or the firefighter lost in the flames. “Do you hear me?” Brooks asks, his eyes wild. “Someone is dead. Do you get it yet?”
And I do. I do get it. “Murder,” I say. “We’ll be tried for homicide.”
“We? There is no we,” he says. “You. As a minor—you’ll be charged with homicide.”
71
9:18 P.M.
Brooks nudges me to view the fire, his grip on my shoulders tight.
“You made this,” he says.
“No.”
“It’s the only way for me to stay.”
“It’s not,” I say.
But he’s right. If we confess the truth, he’ll be locked up for most of his life.
Brooks spins me around to face him. His eyes are bright, frantic, like the first night I met him—everything a possibility. “You even have the Zippo,” he says. “It’ll make the final touch. You can show it, the Zippo, how you started the fire using what you stole when I left you. They’ll never doubt the story.”
“I don’t know where the Zippo is,” I say.
“Come on, Audie.” The softest laugh.
“I was silent. I didn’t stop you or the fire from growing. I didn’t call it in. I’m responsible,” I say. “But not like you.”
His left eyes drips, and both eyes are swollen, like he’s been fighting tears all day, like he’s been splintering piece by piece, hour by hour.
“You set fire to dried ground—earth you’ve always known would easily burn,” I say. “Rather than tell me the truth about Cameron, you made a new fire.”
He breathes fast. “I know. I know.”
“Arson. That’s what you did. I won’t take the blame to protect you.” I wipe away tears and soot from my face. “And if you love me, you won’t ask me to again.”
He’s nodding, he’s actually nodding. Turning away, he paces—paces to the T and back, as if caged, as if there’s a gun to his head. But then he stops. He sweeps to me. A smile. That smile so wide, sincere. “Then Alaska.” He breathes. “The northern lights. You and me.”
The dream of it flickers, the possibility, the wildness of the adventure. Snow and ice, the dark winters, the endless days of summer—the world a mystery. But the vision isn’t mine.
“I’m confessing with or without you,” I say.
He holds my shoulders, leans on me with too much weight. “I was going to stop it,” he says. “I thought I’d stop it. That it’d be different. I’d make my dad proud, maybe even my mom—that she could stand to look at me again.”
I’m too heavy. I’m too heavy with his grief, his guilt, his dream of being a hero. The story he created, the story he built his identity on—it’s collapsed. I’m tired of grasping at the seams of his lie. We’re wasting time. Fifteen minutes. At least fifteen minutes have passed since I climbed.
“Tell me what happened with Cameron.”
He backs away from me, lets out a choked laugh. “God,” he says. “That’s the only reason you’re here, isn’t it?” He tilts his head up, his mouth wide as if to catch ash on his tongue. “You only want to confirm I’m this beast you’ve set out to slay.”
I pull the Zippo from my pocket and hold it out in my palm. An offering. “Tell me and I’ll give it back.” I shake so bad it’s hard to stand. “I need to know.”
He eyes the Zippo wearily. “You know enough about Cameron’s death to know that that trash is meaningless.” Brooks walks to the T and sits at its edge. “And the truth—it’s meaningless too. My brother is dead either way. I told you a new version. What difference does it make?”
“Understanding,” I say. “I want to understand.”
He stares up at me. “It was such a relief for someone I love to look at me and not see a killer. It was a lie, fine, but I changed the story for you,” he says. “And you loved me for it.”
I shake my head. “I love you for you.”
“Cameron died when I was eight,” Brooks says. “He died in a fire I set.”
“An accident,” I say.
“I killed him. There was no dog. No fancy settlement. My dad bought the Audi.” He gestures to his bad eye. “This came from fire. From the fire I set. It’s a burn, not a dog scratch.”
I press my hand to my chest and breathe through the smoke, this pain.
“Cameron left me to play with his friends while our parents were gone. He was supposed to be watching me, hanging out with me, but he hid my bike so I wouldn’t follow him.”
I squeeze the Zippo.
“I was bored, angry, so I crawled under the deck and started a fire. I used Doritos for kindling like he’d shown me, and his comic books for revenge. It blew up so fast. I was happy, you know, because it was my fire and I wouldn’t have to share it. Then it got big quick. I tried kicking dirt on it.” He kicks at the ground, as if t
o demonstrate. “But the dirt was full of pine needles, dried branches, so it only grew, and a lit splinter hit my eye. I crawled out, howling, the pain, you know, and I ran into the woods behind our yard. When I looked back, the house was a torch.”
“You were a kid,” I say. “A child.”
Brooks laughs, the sound shattered by a sob. “I loved it. I loved that Cameron would be pissed because he missed it. He was the one obsessed with fire. Always messing with cherry bombs and fireworks. I loved that I’d created something bigger than he had. I stood there and watched my house burn, and I didn’t do a thing.”
“You’re not remembering what you felt right,” I say. “You can’t be.”
“I am,” he says. “Every detail is seared in.” His voice cracks. “They found his charred remains in my room. He’d come back for me and got trapped.” Brooks’s eyes meet mine. “I guess he decided I was old enough, good enough to play with him after all.”
I can’t move. “What could you have done to stop it? You were eight.”
“I didn’t want to stop it,” he says. And then, “It was easier to let you love me if you didn’t know why I am who I am.”
“Who burned cats then?” I ask. “If Cameron died when he was eleven, then who burned—”
He stares at me. “Who do you think?”
“You’re not a monster,” I say.
“No?” He’s no longer laughing. “Well, it doesn’t take much. It doesn’t take much to keep something down.” But he dips his head. “Miss Cat ran away, that’s the truth.”
My heart beats too fast. The wind shifts again and—for a moment—embers fall, small hot shocks with the potential to start a new blaze where we stand. We have to leave. We have to go.
“I’m so sorry for what happened with Cameron,” I say. “I can’t imagine. I can’t. But it wasn’t your fault, and it doesn’t change you, it doesn’t change how I see you.” And I am sorry. I am. “But this,” I say. “The fire. What we did. Someone is dead. We did that. You did it.”
“Audrey,” he says. “It’s your turn. Your turn to tell a story.”
I toss the Zippo to his feet. “I won’t lie for you.”
I turn and start for the rocky path that heads back down to campus. But a snap of twigs. A tumble of rocks. I’m on my stomach. Brooks is on top of me. I taste dirt. And it’s like Thursday night, only this time he doesn’t go sweet and sad. I reel onto my back and try to push him off but it hurts, hurts so bad, the day long overdone.
“You have to come with me,” he says. “I won’t let you go.”
He has me pinned. I hit. Scratch. Scream. Thinking maybe I need Hayden’s help after all. But Brooks shifts and loosens his grip for a moment. Space opens, and I thrust my knee into his groin, hard. He grunts and curves into himself, moaning.
I roll away and push myself to standing.
“This isn’t you,” I say. “Brooks, this isn’t you.”
He sits, hunched into himself. It feels as if he takes minutes to speak. He runs his hands across his face, his fingers clenching. And then, finally, he says, “Come with me.”
“I can’t.” Because after this day—all of its pressure and pain, and my moving through it without him, on my own—I know why I have to stay.
“I love you, Brooks, but I don’t need you. I don’t need this.”
He pauses at my words. His head down. His shoulders loosening. When he stands, he does so with care, and I see the glint back in his palm. The Zippo. He gave it meaning with his story, his desperation to see himself as something different than a boy who caused his brother’s death. He runs his finger over the silver Seattle skyline. He looks at me—suddenly so calm.
And he asks, gently, “Do you regret last night?”
“No.” The truth.
He looks down at the Zippo. “It never should have been suicide,” he murmurs, slipping it into a pocket. “An accident with his friends, on a sailboat, something—that lie would have hurt less. Not as grotesque. It still hurt so bad to believe it, to tell it.”
“Your guilt,” I say. “Get rid of it. You were just a kid.”
Brooks smiles. “I miss him every day, who he was, who he didn’t have the chance to be.”
We stand close. The wind howls and ash swirls. Brooks watches it, the fire—seemingly closer since I climbed. His breath is tattered but soft. I reach for his hand. He squeezes mine and a quiet washes over him. His expression almost serene, looking to the hills yet to burn and the land already ravaged.
“Okay,” he finally says, still holding my hand. “Okay. This is okay.”
He’s relenting. We’re doing this. My heart is loud in my ears. The air is blistering dry. Brooks kisses my hand, like on our first night.
And then he lets go.
His absence is an immediate throb. He turns away. Not toward the school or the light on the hills above.
He turns to the fire.
I grab his arm. “Brooks.”
He smiles. “I’ll meet you there.”
“What?”
His burned eye drips. “This is it.”
I’m trembling. “No. I won’t let you.” I grip his arm tight. “I’ll do it,” I say, before I can think. “I’ll take the blame, stay quiet—” Because I know if he runs, if he leaves, I won’t be able to keep up. And it can’t end this way. He can still have hope, even with a charge of arson and second-degree homicide. There is still hope.
“I never should have asked you to lie,” he says.
His stillness makes me sob. “Killing yourself won’t make you a hero.”
Brooks eyes are like sparks, like it’s July and he’s falling in love with me all over again, falling in love with his new past. “That’s not what I’m doing. I wouldn’t do that to you. To my dad.” He shakes his head. “I’m going north, alone. And you. You can tell the truth. All of it.”
I stare at him. His expression holds more courage than I’ve seen in weeks. The passion that initially swept me away, he’s found a new flame in a new place—a thing to grasp on to for hope.
“I’ll hike back, past the fire, around it. I have cash in my car, and maybe I can beat the cops to it, maybe not, but even still—I’ll try to get a train ticket to Washington. And from there, hitchhike up, get past the borders somehow—take the ferry.” He pulls off his reflective jacket, drops it to the ground. He’ll hike in only his black shirt and turnout pants. “I can do this. It’s possible. Another chance. I have to try.”
My mouth won’t work. I love you. Don’t go. Don’t run. Stay. It’ll be okay. But I’m choking on smoke, choking on my heartbreak.
“It’s still cold in Alaska,” he says. “And I think I need that change.”
I look to the fire, its irrational swarm. “It’s too dangerous. Brooks, you know it’s too dangerous. It’ll take you all night to walk to a main road, to get to your car. The fire—you’ll get caught in it. You could die. And Alaska—how will you—? Please.” I break off. “Don’t go.”
He cups my chin in his hand. “My Audie, always an open heart.” His voice a tremble. He’s scared too. “Keeping this lie would kill you. And me?” He’s smiling so sincere, so big I can see his sharp back tooth. “I have to try again,” he says. “Tell my dad I’m okay, that I love him and Mom, that I’m so sorry. That I’ll try to be better.”
“Give the truth a try.”
He holds me close. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“What if I can’t do it?” I ask. “Confess alone. I’m scared.”
“You’ll blow them away.”
He kisses my forehead. “We’ll always be entwined, like those aspen trees. You and me,” he says. “Don’t forget.”
And in one swoop, he shoves me away, gentle enough not to hurt me again, but strong enough to send me stumbling back.
“Brooks.”
He looks up to the
media and police on the ridge and says, “Go.”
And then he’s securing the bandana over his mouth. He’s walking away, running into the brush, to the blooming red. I’m running too. I’m screaming for him, shouting his name, begging him to stop. But I stumble over high brush. The smoke is too thick. The fire a massive fury of red and orange and light. His expansive fire so bright it feels like it could blind like the sun. How will he skirt it? Get around it? It’s impossible. Hayden is shouting my name, and Brooks is moving too fast. His body is used to the smoke. He’s trained for these conditions. I can’t follow him. I can’t stop him. He’s a dark shadow against the flames. But then I can’t see him anymore, I can only see fire. I can only feel the strong, erratic winds.
A burning leaf floats down above me. A single firefly. I’ll meet you there. I can’t save him. I never could. But maybe there is still hope. Maybe I get stronger, and he gets a new story. He gets Alaska.
But the winds—the fire—his dehydration. His living on lies. I can see him trapped by fire, burning alive, unable to complete a Hail Mary fire circle. Brooks walking into a fire. The risk is so high.
I turn, and I run toward the lights above the school.
“Audrey!” Hayden’s calling for me, the thirty minutes past, my earlier screams an echo.
“I’m here,” I yell. “I’m right here.”
72
10:04 P.M.
I run so fast the earth burns in my shins and knees. Hayden barely keeps up. I slide down the steepest part of the hillside, falling with the rocks and brush that break my skin, until I can stand again.
Brooks is walking to the fire. He’s walking around the fire. He’s running to Alaska. The campus is emptied, the fire camp mostly broken down. But the media is still up there, utilizing the epic bright view. When I hit the pavement of the parking lot, I hurdle toward their lights. I pound up the steep street, the one entrance and exit for my school. The asphalt rings through my knees.
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