Pretty Girl-13

CONFLAGRATION




HOW? HOW HAD SHE BROKEN OUT?

As my voice faded into the distance, chatting with Detective Brogan, I knew Lonely One was running the show. Would he be able to tell the difference? Would she give herself away?

I paced her room in near panic. The walls felt tight. I found it hard to breathe, which was stupid. I didn’t need to breathe. She was breathing for us.

I pinched myself experimentally. Yes, it hurt. Of course it did, because I expected it to hurt. So I kept breathing, because I expected myself to breathe.

Six steps across, six steps back. Again. I avoided the chair. No way was I going to sit down there and wait passively for Lonely One to come back for me. What if she left me here for three more years? Oh God. What if she left me here … forever?

I imagined all the terrible things she could be planning now—stealing Sammy and running away, dropping out of school, saying unforgivable things to Mom and Dad, ditching Lynn—the only person who might realize what had happened. If I could imagine them, surely she’d thought of them too.

My footsteps took on the rhythm of heartbeats or ticks of the clock, and I realized I’d lost any sense of time. Time had no meaning in here. It could be minutes, hours, even days since she’d switched places and locked me in.

I rattled the door again, banged and yelled till my imaginary voice was hoarse. No response. I stared at my hands, trying to will an ax to appear so I could chop my way out. It didn’t work. Maybe my mental conjuring only worked when I was the one in charge.

My heart squeezed bitterness. How could she do this to me?

And then I had the terrible thought—I’d done it to her first, hadn’t I?

Stupid. Stupid to think I could keep such a powerful part of me locked away once she’d tasted freedom, once she’d seen Sammy, once Brogan had confirmed that the sturdy toddler was her stolen baby.

I added another element to my pacing. One more step and I could crash hard into the wall at either side. The jolting kept me mad, gave me energy. I needed energy. The chair looked awfully tempting.

I could sink into it, and rock, and it would feel like no time passing. Nothing would ever change in this twilight dark room. I could rock, and mourn my life, and wait. I would become the lonely one. And she would become the Angie.

I took a step toward the chair. That wouldn’t be so awful, would it? Just to rest for a moment?

It was so quiet in here, except for the imaginary sound of my footsteps, my unnecessary breathing. The air was still. The flame in the oil lamp was steady and low, unflickering.

It burned there like a metaphor for my Self, my consciousness. Alive but unchanging, unmoving.

I left the path I was wearing across the room and went to the corner, picked up the lamp. It was warm, as I expected it to be. A warm metaphor. Light in the darkness, heat in the cold, a tiny flame of hope. The human brain is so weird, finding symbols and meaning in everything. Here I was, trapped in a metaphor of a walled-off compartment in my brain, holding a metaphor of something that gave me a shred of hope. Why? Why hope?

A spark of inspiration, like the spark of a match, came to me.

I threw the lamp to the wood floor. It crashed into pieces, oil spilling everywhere, catching, lighting all around. I would burn my way out.

Flames rose up the walls, as I knew they would.

The dry pine siding caught like kindling.

Flames danced across the floor, as I expected them to.

Golden-red tongues flicked everywhere, hot and hungry.

I felt their heat, soaked in their campfire light, waiting for the walls to char and crumble.

But the walls held.

The fire crept closer to the center of the room. With a whoosh, the rocker itself went up in flames, consumed to ash in moments. A wall of fire danced, circled me now. The heat intensified.

I moved to step through, but a blast of hot smoke pushed me back. My sleeve caught fire. Just a metaphor, I told myself, but no—the cloth burned and fell away, then my skin was on fire, painful, black, blistering. I screamed and tried to thump it out against my body.

Stop, drop, roll. The safety mantra ran through my head. Useless! The floor was burning.

Flame licked up the legs of my jeans. The smell of burning cloth and hair and flesh was overwhelming. The pain was unbearable. This must be the hell Yuncle warned us about.

“Lonely One,” I screamed. “Unlock me! Save me!”

I ran through the flames to the door. Black pegs I hardly recognized as arms banged against it weakly. “Please! Hear me!”

Oh God. This is it. The air, too thick, too smoky to breathe. I closed my eyes to pray.

The door gave way. It swung open, and there she was. Lonely One, a wide and terrified look in her eyes. A large blanket bundle in her arms. She thrust it at me.

“Take him,” she screamed. “I can’t do it. I don’t know how.”

I reached for the bundle. It was heavy and crying. “Annee, Annee,” it sobbed.

With an electric jolt, my heart hammered again in my chest. I felt it. I heard it. A blast of real heat struck me across the face. My true body solidified around me. I clutched Sam tight with real hands.

Smoke billowed through the doorway.

“Hurry! Leave me!” Lonely One pushed past me toward the inferno in the cabin of our mind, groping through the smoke for her rocking chair.

I dragged her back by one arm, pulled against her protests with all my strength. “You can’t go back in. It’s all gone.”

Ceiling beams crumbled as I spoke. Sparks shot up from the ruined timbers. Lonely One struggled in my grip, willing herself to be destroyed with her refuge, her prison.

But I couldn’t let her. “Come with me. Sam needs you. And I need you. Now.”

With a cry of fear, she fell into me, pushing me through the doorway and into full control, full consciousness. I blindly reached behind me for her hand, but she was gone.

The world spun crazily, and the burning cabin dissolved, and the room was Sammy’s, and the hallway outside was a mass of flame.

Lonely One’s memories tumbled, gushed into my head. She was with Sammy, reading. She was entranced, captivated by his sweetness. The smell of wood smoke all around was so familiar, she didn’t realize what was happening until the vaulted ceiling in the living room came down on the flaming Christmas tree with a shattering crash. That thunderous crack finally alerted her. She opened the bedroom door into a fiery hell. The house, the Harrises’ house, was burning, roaring, falling around us.

Sammy twisted in my arms. We had to get out. Six feet from his door was the bathroom, my only hope if we were going to make it out alive. Sirens sounded from outside the house, far down the street. We couldn’t wait for them.

“Be brave, little guy,” I whispered in his ear. Tucking him back inside the blanket, wrapping one arm across my eyes and nose, I took a last gasp of air from the bedroom and sprinted through the flames to the closed bathroom door. The handle scorched my fingers. I slammed us inside and turned on the shower full blast. In seconds we were drenched from head to foot with icy-cold water. Sam howled with shock.

I pulled two bath towels under the stream, soaked them, and wrapped Sam into a wet cocoon. A hand towel wrapped my nose and mouth. His blanket draped my head and upper body like a shroud. Outside the door, something crashed. Good God. The whole roof was coming down.

I hated to leave the wet, tiled sanctuary, but we had to or else be crushed under flaming beams. Sam struggled and squirmed in his casing. I squeezed him tight and muttered soothing nonsense words through the towels, my face pressed against the hard bulge of his head. “We’re going for it,” I said. “Now!”

Searing the other hand, I wrenched open the door. I couldn’t see past the hall, but no matter. I knew the only way out was through the hall and out the front door. If the living room had gone already, so had the kitchen and garage.

The rest was a blur, running, feeling, burning, protecting Sam’s cocoon with my body as best I could, until tile was under my feet, the huge scalding brass handle of the front door in my hand, and then running out into the front and stopping, dropping, rolling the two of us on the front lawn.

A fireman swore loudly, and a heavy smothering blanket dropped on us, along with several bodies.

“They’re out,” I heard. With my last ounce of coherent thought, I dragged the smothering towels off Sammy’s face.

He glared at me, drew a huge breath, and hollered his annoyance. “No, Annee! No baff.”

Thank God.

The burning pain I’d been holding off swamped every nerve ending in my scorched skin. And then I really was out.