by Sarah Beard
When the wax on his painting had cooled, he rolled up the canvas and gave it to me. The house was quiet and dark as we went upstairs, and figuring everyone had gone to bed, we spoke in hushed voices as we went outside to get in his Bronco. Thomas started the engine and I set the canvas in the back seat, but I couldn’t bring myself to climb in. I stared through the moonlit night in the direction of Dad’s house, and I had an overwhelming desire to go check up on him.
“You want to go say hi?” Thomas asked as if reading my thoughts.
“It’s Christmas Eve,” I shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt to wish him a merry Christmas.”
Thomas cut the engine and nodded. “I’ll go with you.”
We walked down the tree-lined street, ice crunching beneath our feet in the silent night. He took my hand and smiled at me, like he could sense how nervous I was. He lifted my hand and kissed it. “It’ll be okay.”
When we reached Dad’s house, all the lights were off, but we stepped onto the porch and I knocked anyway.
“Do you think he’s working tonight?” Thomas asked when there was no answer.
“Maybe.” I stepped off the porch. “I’ll see if his truck is here.” I began circling the house, but I stopped in front of the parlor window and looked inside. The room was unchanged since the last time I’d seen it, the window still broken, the floor littered with pieces of Mom’s piano.
Thomas must have seen the hurt look on my face because he came and folded his arms around me. “You know,” he murmured into my hair, “it’s possible that he’ll change someday. Maybe someday your relationship with him will be mended.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “He’s broken, and a broken man can’t be fixed.”
“Yes, he can. Someone will come along and give him what he needs, mend his wounds, and he’ll be almost as good as new.” He sighed. “That’s what you’ve done for me, Aria. So I know it’s possible for him as well.”
I looked up at him, wanting him to elaborate, but something else caught my attention. The sky behind him was lit up with a strange orange glow. He must have seen the wonder in my face, because he turned around to see what I was looking at.
It only took two seconds for us to register what it meant.
“Fire!” Thomas yelled as he broke into a sprint toward his house.
thirteen
I raced down the road behind Thomas, slipping and stumbling on ice as I went. Through the trees, I saw flames consuming the second floor of his house, black smoke billowing out through broken windows. He got there long before I did, and I found him on the porch, alternating between kicking and slamming his body into the front door. When he saw me, he stopped just long enough to fling his cell phone at me.
“Call 911!”
The phone slipped through my shaking fingers, and I fished it out of the snow, my hands taking much longer than they should to place the call. As I shouted instructions to the dispatcher, Thomas picked up a chair on the porch and launched it through a window. The glass shattered, and smoke came pouring out. A second later, the front door opened, and a figure came rushing out, coughing and choking.
It was Richard. He stumbled to his knees on the porch.
“Where are Mom and Dad?” Thomas shouted.
He couldn’t seem to get any words out between coughing and gasping, so he pointed in the house. Thomas charged into the house, disappearing into the smoke.
“Thomas!” I screamed, tossing the phone at Richard and running in after him. Instantly, the smoke blinded me and choked my breath. I found Thomas with my outstretched hands and threw myself at him, pulling on his coat. My own strength surprised me. I didn’t know what I was doing; I just knew I couldn’t bear to lose him. He ripped my hands from his coat and pushed me back out of the house, throwing me down on the porch. “Stay here!” he yelled, then rushed back into the house.
Without thinking about consequences, I ran back into the house. “Thomas!” I managed to scream before the smoke hit my lungs. I dropped to the floor. I tried to call his name again, but my voice was squashed by a deafening crash. Black ash and flames flurried around me, blinding me. A sudden wave of heat washed over me, and it felt like my skin was on fire. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, but I inched my way farther into the fire. I couldn’t go back, not without Thomas.
The smoke closed in on me, filling my mouth, my nose, my lungs. I was drowning in a black, boiling sea, unable to surface for breath. I wanted to call out his name, but I didn’t have any air to exhale. So I searched with my arm, waving and reaching, crawling and groping. It grew hotter and darker until I was on the threshold of consciousness. Sirens wailed in the distance, but I knew the firefighters were too late. His parents were gone. Thomas was probably gone. And I might be gone too. In a delirious dream-state, I thought I saw Thomas’s face. But then the image turned into black vapor, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the rest of him vanished into a puff of smoke.
~
For days after the fire, I stumbled through a haze, each moment spent trying to decipher what was real. My skin was stained with the smell of smoke, of death, constantly testifying that what had happened was real. Thomas’s parents had died an unspeakable death. He had tried to save them and failed.
Thomas spent a few days in the hospital for smoke inhalation and a third-degree burn on his arm, and I didn’t see him much in the two weeks after the fire. He stayed at a motel while he worked with the fire department and tried to plan his parents’ funeral. I spent my days worrying about him, wondering how he was feeling, and spent each night reliving the fire in horrendous detail.
One night I dreamed that Thomas hadn’t survived the fire. I saw the firefighters carry him out on a stretcher, his body burned and lifeless, and I woke up in a cold sweat, my cheeks wet with tears.
With a trembling hand, I reached through the darkness for the phone at my bedside. I had to hear his voice, had to know my dream wasn’t real. I dialed his number and put the phone to my ear.
It rang. And rang. And rang.
“Hey.”
I heaved a sigh of relief, then bit my lip to keep tears at bay. “Did I wake you?”
There was a long pause, followed by, “No.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
“Can I come see you?”
“You don’t have to. It’s the middle of the night.” His voice was flat, emotionless. It terrified me.
“I want to. I’ll borrow Nathaniel’s car.”
He sighed, and in the long silence that followed, I mouthed the word please a dozen times. “I’ll come see you tomorrow,” he finally said.
After we hung up, I got up and paced my room, worrying about him. He wasn’t sleeping. He was alone. I had an overwhelming feeling that he needed me, so I got up and threw some clothes on. I coiled the scarf I’d made for him around my neck and put on my coat, then left a note for Nathaniel and swiped the keys to his car. Twenty minutes later, I showed up at Thomas’s motel. I parked next to his Bronco and knocked lightly on his door.
When the door opened and I saw Thomas, it was like coming up for air after being underwater for two weeks. He looked pale and his face seemed thinner, like he hadn’t eaten for days. He tried to smile, but only managed to straighten his lips. I threw myself into his arms, assuring myself that he was still living and breathing.
After a long hug, he pulled me into his room and closed the door behind him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to see you.”
The bathroom light was on, casting a dim glow into the room.
“Where’s Richard?” I asked.
“He went back to California.” His voice was reserved, quiet. He stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed.
I took off my coat and the scarf, tossing them in a chair by the window, then sat beside him. He seemed tense, like if he relaxed, the weight on his shoulders would crush him. I laced my fingers through his; they felt cold and lifeless. I wanted him to look at me and tell me everyt
hing he was feeling, but he kept his head down and his eyes on the floor.
“How are you?” I whispered, desperate to hear his voice.
It took him a long time to answer. “It was my fault,” he finally whispered, so low I barely heard him.
“What do you mean?” I angled myself toward him and touched his forearm. He winced, and I realized there was a bandage on his arm where he’d been burned.
“The fire started downstairs. In my room.”
“How do you know?”
“The fire chief told me. I left my heat tools on, and somehow . . .” He shook his head. “Somehow . . .” He leaned over and dropped his head into his hands. His back began shaking, and his sniffles filled the quiet room. “They’re gone because of me.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It was an accident.”
He lay on the bed, and turning on his side, he burst into tears. I was curled behind him in an instant, sliding my arm under his neck and cradling his head against mine. I wrapped my other arm around his chest and felt his abdomen shake as he cried.
“Talk to me,” I whispered.
“I . . . can’t . . . ,” he said between ragged breaths. I rubbed his chest and he drew in a stuttered lungful of air, trying to catch his breath. “I can’t stop thinking,” he cried. “I keep replaying that night over and over, calculating, reliving, trying to set things right. If I would have installed the smoke detectors like my dad asked. If the door wouldn’t have been locked. If I could’ve found my stupid keys. If Richard would have woken up my parents before he saved himself. If you—”
My heart stopped as I registered what he was about to say. “If I hadn’t pulled you back.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I would’ve had time to get them before the second floor came down.”
“Thomas, I’m so sorry. I . . . I didn’t have time to think. I just didn’t want to lose you.”
“It doesn’t matter. None of that would matter if I hadn’t been so thoughtless and left on my heat tools.” Another heartbreaking cry broke through his lips.
“Thomas . . .”
“Shhh. Don’t, Aria. Don’t.” He put his hand on mine.
I stayed quiet, trying in vain to find words that might comfort him. Over the years, the pain from Mom’s death had dulled somewhat, like an overused knife. But hearing Thomas crying and feeling him tremble in my arms sharpened my pain again. Not like the sting of a razor, but like a serrated blade, sawing back and forth, cutting deeper with each stroke. I saw myself in him, and I felt his pain because I knew it all too well. And I knew from experience that nothing I could say would make a dent in the agony he was feeling. So instead I kissed his head, stroked his hair, rubbed his chest.
I held him for the rest of the night, listening to him cry, feeling his body shake with each new wave of emotion. I cried my own silent tears, not wanting him to feel the need to comfort me. He finally drifted off to sleep in the early hours of morning, just as the sky started to light up. And when he fell asleep, I finally fell asleep too.
~
It was late morning when I woke up, and Thomas was lying next to me on his side, still asleep. I propped myself on my elbow and looked at him. I hadn’t noticed the night before, but he was in his jeans and sweater, and his hiking boots were still on his feet. His hair was disheveled and his lips were dry and chapped, but his face was peaceful. I decided he needed to eat something, so I went to the motel office to get some continental breakfast. I loaded a tray with bagels, yogurt, and fruit, then added two tall glasses of orange juice.
He was sitting at the desk when I came into the room, spinning a pen on the surface. “I thought you could use some food,” I said, setting the tray in front of him.
A fleeting smile passed across his lips when he saw the food, the first smile I’d seen from him since Christmas Eve. He picked up the orange juice and chugged the entire glass.
“You can have mine too,” I said, placing it in front of him.
I sat on the bed with my legs folded beneath me and watched him pick at his food. He managed a few bites, then went back to spinning the pen, a troubled frown creasing his brow. I sensed the spinning pen mirrored what was going on in his own mind.
“The funeral is next Friday in Pasadena,” he said, his voice quiet and somber.
“I’ll come with you.”
He turned to look at me. “You need to stay here and prepare for your audition. It’s only weeks away.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’d rather be there for you.”
He got up and sat next to me on the bed. “It does matter. You have to get into Juilliard. And you can’t afford to miss a week of practice. It could make all the difference.”
I raised a shoulder. “I’ll be fine. And anyway, there’s always next year.”
He laid his hand on mine. “No. I want you to stay here.” He gave me a pleading look I couldn’t argue with. A look that reached inside me and rattled something loose. His expression darkened, and he looked down at his hands. “Besides—I don’t think I’ll even go to the funeral.”
“What?”
He stood and went to the window, where he stared through the pane and blew out a ragged breath. “What am I going to say to people when they ask what happened?”
I hesitated. “You’re going to say it was an accident.”
He shook his head, then mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, “They’ve already heard that one.”
Wondering if I’d misheard, I rose and went to him. “What do you mean?”
He was quiet for a long time, then said, “Nothing.” There was a despondency in his face I’d never seen before, and it sent an uneasy chill down my back. I searched for the words to reel him back in, to rescue him from the ravine he seemed lost in. But my seventeen-year-old mind had no wisdom to offer, no counsel to help him make sense of what he was feeling. All I could offer was myself. I wrapped my arms around his waist, and his hand fell on my back, but it felt stiff.
“Are you coming back here after the funeral?” I asked.
His silence answered the question.
I pulled away and stared at him. “You’re not coming back?”
He released a sigh. “I’m going to stay in Pasadena until I graduate.”
“But what about—”
“Our plans are still the same, Aria.” He looked down at me. “I’ll come get you in June, and we’ll drive to New York together. We’ll still be together, okay?”
“June is five months away. Why can’t you just finish high school here?”
“Where am I going to live?”
“Where will you live if you go to Pasadena?”
“My parents still have a house there. Richard’s moving in. That’s one of the reasons I need to stay there for a while. My parents have a ton of stuff in their old house and in storage, and I need to go through it and decide what to do with everything. If I leave it up to Richard, he’ll just pawn it all and spend it on drugs.”
I felt my breath accelerate, my hands go cold. I thought about what he’d said the night before, how he might have had time to save his parents if I hadn’t held him back. Maybe he was more angry with me than I realized. “Please . . .” The broken plea sounded desperate as it escaped my lips.
His eyes softened. “Aria,” he groaned, “please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“Please don’t leave me,” I whispered as my eyes filled with tears.
He put his palm on my cheek and wiped away the tears that were spilling over. “I can’t stay,” he said, tears brimming in his own eyes. “Right now I need to get as far away from here as I can.”
I dropped my head.
“Listen to me,” he whispered as he slid his hand behind my neck. “I love you. I could never live without you. I just . . . need to get away from here . . . to settle the storm that’s whirling around in my head.”
The only response I could muster was a sad, broken cry.
“Look,” he said, “
you’re going to get accepted to Juilliard, and in the summer, I’ll come pick you up.”
I nodded as more tears rolled down my cheeks.
“Do you trust me?”
I nodded again.
“Then believe me when I say that I can’t stay. Trust me that I will come back for you. Trust that we’ll be together.”
He leaned in and kissed me in a way that sealed his promise.
After packing his few things into a backpack, he slung it over his shoulder and opened the door, letting the morning sun and the cold winter air spill in. I put on my coat and picked up the scarf, then went and stood in front of him.
“I didn’t get a chance to give this to you,” I said, lifting it over his head and pulling it snug around his neck. I had been right: the blue in the scarf matched his eyes perfectly. “It was supposed to be for Christmas.”
He looked down and picked up one end of the scarf, examining it. “Did you make it?”
I nodded.
His eyes glistened as they met mine. “Thank you,” he whispered, pulling me into his arms.
We went out to where our cars were parked. He opened his car door and tossed his backpack on the passenger seat, then turned to look at me. “Aria, there’s something else you need to know.”
“What’s that?”
He leaned against the driver seat and took one of my hands in his. “One of the firefighters told me . . . that your dad was the one who found you and carried you out. He saved your life.”
I was speechless, stunned. I couldn’t even begin to speculate what that meant. So I nodded and pushed it to the back of my mind, focusing instead on the fact that Thomas was about to get in his Bronco and leave me for five months. He reached in the backseat, pulled out the painting he’d given me on Christmas Eve, and handed it to me. I took it, then leaned into him and wrapped my arms around him. He held me and planted a kiss in my hair. I clung to him, wishing I never had to let go, fearing that if I did, I’d never see him again.