The smoke alarm in the hallway was shrieking in disapproval. When I made it to the kitchen, I tried to yank the extinguisher off the wall but it refused to come out of its metal bracket. I yanked harder, but it still resisted. Finally, I realized that I had to lift it up and out, but once I did, it was way heavier than I’d expected. I hefted it in both arms like a fat baby and ran back to my room.
The far end of my bed was a pyre.
I pulled the extinguisher’s pin, aimed it, and squeezed the handle. It sputtered, a white glop of foam dribbling out of the nozzle. I squeezed the handle again and again, shaking the thing, begging it to work. For a moment, I considered lobbing the entire red canister into the fire, but I was afraid it would explode or something. Instead, I set it down, and it rolled away like some giant, sentient hot dog.
Fire crept up the walls now, devouring the wallpaper and quickly changing the decor of my room to monochrome black—a color I’d once wanted to paint it, which had caused a huge fight with my mother that I had obviously lost. Lower down, the flames were licking at my backpack, which I’d left on the floor near the bed when I’d run for the extinguisher. I kicked out my foot and snagged one of the straps, pulling it toward me.
When I had it in my arms, I backed out of the room. Out in the smoke-filled hallway, I slammed my bedroom door shut, as if that might keep the monster at bay a little longer.
I had to get out of the house now, CAMFers or not.
The smoke was getting thick. My lungs were burning. Fire and heat and smoke went up. I needed to get below it.
I got down on my knees, but I couldn’t crawl in the damn robe. The air was better though. I took a careful, sipping breath between coughs and tried to think. I had to ditch the robe. It was either that or die of modesty. I undid the belt, threw the thing off and slung the backpack on to my bare back. It hummed between my shoulder blades, warning me what I already knew—the CAMFers were out there.
Wearing just my underwear, I crawled down the hall and into the kitchen. The cold, hard tile felt like soothing water flowing beneath my knees. The back door was so close. It was right there. All I had to do was open it, run out on to the porch and into the back yard, and I’d be safe. Or would I?
The house was beginning to make strange groaning noises. If I could just hold out until the fire department arrived, surely the CAMFers would be gone, but I didn’t even hear sirens yet. Hadn’t anyone noticed my house was a raging inferno?
The kitchen was filling with smoke. My eyes were a watery blur, and I squeezed them shut. It didn’t really matter. I couldn’t see anything anyway. I needed to get below the smoke, but I was already sprawled on the floor. What was lower than the floor?
That was it
. There was a place lower than the floor, a place to escape the smoke and possibly get out past the CAMFers unseen.
I felt my way around the butcher block island that my dad had made my mother for their fifteenth anniversary. I crawled until my head hit the wall, then felt along the baseboard to the basement door. Reaching up, I turned the knob and opened it. Cool, fresh air hit me immediately, and I gulped it in. Quickly, I slid onto the cool top step of the basement stairwell and pulled the door shut behind me. I took a few deep breaths, coughing the smoke out of my system, and forced my stinging eyes open. My ghost hand cast a blue glow down the steep stairs.
I stood up, grabbed the railing, and started down. The wooden steps felt worn and smooth under my bare feet. About halfway to the bottom, I hit a distinct line of even cooler air, the point at which the staircase descended below the insulated ground. I was crossing into another world—the underworld—and a chill traveled up my body as I went down, making things perky and alert that didn’t need to be.
In the world above, something fell with a thundering crash, rattling the stairwell and raining dust down on my head from the basement ceiling above. I squealed and leapt the last few steps to the frigid cement floor.
Laid out before me, by the glow of my hand, was the strange jumbled landscape of the basement—mountains of crookedly stacked boxes, foothills of carefully labeled storage tubs, and the occasional strange architecture of abandoned, dusty exercise equipment. Somewhere, there were probably boxes of old clothes, but I didn’t have time to look for them. Hanging from a nail on one of the support beams was my mother’s old rain poncho. I grabbed it and threw it over my head. It was big enough to go right over the backpack and cover most of my important parts, but it was short enough not to impede me if I had to crawl again. And I was pretty sure I’d have to.
Grey moonlight streamed in the basement’s side windows, but not through the two at the back. That was because my mom and dad had added the back porch after they’d bought the house, and now those two windows opened to the underporch, a small area now enclosed by the porch’s sides.
At the time of the porch addition, I had been ten, and I’d begged my dad to make the underporch into a clubhouse for me and Emma. He had even helped me draw up plans for it, but my mother had vetoed the idea based on the strong opinion that little girls shouldn’t be encouraged to crawl around under porches like disobedient dogs or trolls. That hadn’t stopped my dad from making a trapdoor into the underporch from the back yard, with a wink in my direction and an explanation to my mom that it was for “maintenance purposes.” The trap-door was barely noticeable from the exterior of the house, unless you knew what to look for. The CAMFers would not be guarding it.
Another groan and crash shook the ceiling over my head. The burning house seemed to be thinking of collapsing straight into the basement, and I really didn’t want to be there when it did.
I hurried to the right window on the farthest wall and tried to pull it open. It didn’t budge. The wooden frame felt damp against my fingers. Probably swollen shut by moisture. If the other was jammed, I’d be trapped, buried alive under a burning house.
Don’t think about it. Solve the problem. Get yourself out.
Somewhere up above me, in the far-off land of Greenfield, sirens finally began wailing. The cavalry was coming, but I couldn’t wait for them. The house was burning down around my ears.
I abandoned the right window and crossed to the other one. It felt dry, and though it didn’t open easily, I could feel it give when I pulled. I pulled harder and was rewarded when the window suddenly swung upwards. It had a hook that fit an eyelet in the ceiling so the window could be secured open. I hooked the window, but the opening was too high for me to just crawl through. I shoved a couple boxes in place and stepped up on them.
Shit! There was no way I was going to fit through the narrow window with my backpack on. I yanked off the poncho and the backpack and pitched them both into the dark ahead of me. Then, I wiggled my way through the window headfirst, my cleavage bulldozing a pile of dust in front of me. When I had pulled my legs and feet through, I sat up and looked around.
There was the trapdoor, outlined by a lighter square of cracks. It was big enough. I could get through with the backpack and poncho, so I put them back on, careful not to make too much noise. I crawled over to the trap door and laid an eye against one of its cracks. I couldn’t see much, just a strip of grass and the dark backdrop of the woods behind the house, a strange orange glow flickering at the tops of the trees—the reflection of my house burning down above me. I tried looking through several more cracks with similar results. I couldn’t see anyone out there waiting for me. I couldn’t hear anyone either, because the sirens were getting close now, blocking out all the more subtle sounds with their wailing urgency. My backpack was silent and still against my back. When had the blades stopped buzzing? I had no idea. It could mean the CAMFers were gone. Or it could just mean they had turned off their meters. Should I make a run for it, or hide under the porch until the firemen arrived?
The fire decided for me as the peaceful, cool underworld of the basement caved in with a deafening roar. Smoke and dust, and house shrapnel exploded through both the windows leading into the underporch, scouring me like an apocalyptic wind. I was thrown against the trap door. It burst open, and I tumbled out onto the grass.
The sirens were at the front of the house. The stars swam above me in their dark lake. I lay panting and hurting, curled in a fetal position as my house crackled and hissed into the night. My mother’s poncho was bunched up around my neck. Eventually, I sat up and pulled it down over my chest and lap. Why was my face wet? There was a medium-sized piece of glass embedded in my thigh. I pulled it out and held it in my ghost hand, watching my PSS shine through it.
Men’s voices called to one another. I knew I should get up and go to the firemen, but I just didn’t have the will or the energy. The heat of the burning house was so intense though, that I did crawl away and lean against my father’s old art studio. At least his art was safe. Except for
The Other Olivia
. She’d be gone forever. But all the rest of it had been saved by my mother’s refusal to face death. Maybe every cloud really did have a silver lining. I would have given anything for a sip of water. My eyeballs felt swollen. My tongue tasted like charcoal.
“Olivia,” called a deep voice as a figure stepped out of the smoke. Mike Palmer, the fire chief, strode toward me, his long, thick, fireman’s coat billowing out behind him like a superhero’s cape. When he crouched next to me, I saw that he hadn’t fastened it up all the way in the front, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath. He must have gotten geared up in a hurry.
“Olivia, you’re okay.”
He sounded sure, so that was good.
“I’ve got the girl over here,” he called over his shoulder as he fastened his fireman’s jacket closed. Several more firemen rounded the back corner of the house pulling a hose with them. Wayne Ramping, rooky fireman and only two years older than me, rushed over with what looked like a giant tackle box. He crouched at my other side, then froze as he suddenly realized I was half-naked.
“A blanket,” Chief Palmer barked, and Wayne opened the tackle box and pulled out what looked like a huge piece of tin foil. He threw it over my legs, wrapping me up like a space-age burrito and started asking me questions as he and the Chief pulled various medical things out of the box and poked me with them.
“Are you injured?” Wayne asked.
I shook my head, though I wasn’t sure.
“Can you breathe easily, or does it hurt?”
“Hurts.” It hurt to breath. It hurt to talk. It just plain hurt.
“What is today’s date?”
“Friday.” I knew that was the day, not the date, but it was shorter.
“Was your mother in the house?”
“No,” the Chief answered before I could. “She was the only one inside.” Had I already told him that?
“Do you know how the fire started?” Wayne went on.
“She needs oxygen,” the Chief said, leaning across me to yank an oxygen mask from Wayne’s magic box, which must also contain a small oxygen tank. As Palmer’s arm passed over me, I caught a whiff of something familiar. Something muted, but strong enough to break through the smoky air and my singed nostrils. With the smell came a rush of memory. A flying ball of orange light. The torch on my rug. The man at my window trying to beat the fire out of his own shirt.
I looked up at Chief Palmer as he stretched the oxygen mask’s band over my head, his hands leaving behind the faint but distinct smell of gasoline.
UMLOT MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
I woke up in a sunny hospital room, which immediately annoyed me. I hated hospitals. They smelled like disinfected death, and were populated by curt, smiling nurses who never left you alone, and cold, cocky doctors who were never there when you needed them. This hospital, the Greenfield Umlot Memorial Hospital, I hated particularly well. It was where my dad had died. It was where I had spent months watching him waste away, and I had exerted a lot of effort over the last four years avoiding it, which hadn’t been easy because my mom actually worked at UMH three days a week.
I looked around the room. It was a double, not a private, and they’d put me in the bed closest to the door. The other bed, near the window, was made up and its curtain was open which meant no roommate, so that was good. There was a chair pulled up to the other side of my bed. My mother’s purse was on the bedside table next to a half empty glass of water with lipstick on the rim.
Seeing the water made me suddenly have to pee, probably thanks to the giant IV bag plugged into my arm. The bathroom door was only a few feet away, but in addition to the IV, I had one of those pinchy things clamped onto the end of my finger, its cord trailing off to a monitor near the head of the bed.
I was still debating whether to push the nurse call button, when the door swung open and Nurse Jane came in, a familiar face from my dad’s hospital days. He had always referred to her as “one of the good ones.”
“Hey, you’re awake,” Nurse Jane said, glancing down at the clipboard in her hands. “How are you feeling?”
Right behind her came my mother.
“Olivia,” she crossed quickly to the bedside and took my left hand in hers, finger clamp and all. “How are you, sweetheart? I’ve been so worried.”
I opened my mouth to respond and croaked like a frog.
My mother handed me her glass of water and after a healthy swig, I tried again.
“My throat hurts,” I said, my voice still husky, “and I sound like a smoker.”
My mother gave me a strange look and seemed about to say something, but Nurse Jane interjected, “That’s no surprise.” She pulled a pen from her shirt pocket, jotting something down. “You’re suffering from smoke inhalation, but it isn’t too bad. Your chest x-ray came back clear, and your pulse oximetry is good,” she rattled off, gesturing at the monitor. “We’re just waiting for some blood tests to come back, but Doctor Fineman thinks you can go ho—,” Nurse Jane stopped, quickly redirecting her sentence. “He thinks we’ll be able to release you tomorrow.”
Release me to where? I no longer had a home, which was exactly why Nurse Jane had just corrected herself. My home had been set on fire and burned to the ground by Greenfield’s own Fire Chief, who apparently moonlighted as a secret CAMFer spy.