Trial by Fire

“Fantastic.” Juliet paused. She and Lily started laughing at the same time. “How bad is it?”


“Oh, it’s pretty impressive, Jules.” Lily finished counting the pills. “I just checked, and she took all her meds today, so we’ll have to talk to the doctors about her dosage again. I can clean up the mess myself, but I’m worried about leaving her alone tonight. And I have this thing.”

“A date?” Juliet practically screamed with excitement.

“Sort of.” Lily felt her cheeks heat with a blush. “Tristan’s taking me to a party.”

“A party.” Juliet sighed heavily. “Lily, are you sure about that? With all the hair products and perfume that the girls will be wearing, and the alcohol and smoke?”

“Can you come or not?” Lily asked quietly. “It would mean a lot to me.”

Juliet paused. “We’ll talk about the party when I get there,” she said, and ended the call.

Lily decided to start on the Jeep first. Her dad’s spot could wait. It wasn’t like he’d be coming home that night anyway.

Technically, Lily’s parents weren’t divorced, but her father had pretty much abandoned the family about the time her mother started wandering around sleepy Salem, screaming at everyone to shut up. James had hung in there for a few years. Lily was in eighth grade when her allergy symptoms started escalating exponentially and, as luck would have it, at around the same time Samantha began accosting people at the grocery store. She’d started walking right up to people, telling them she knew about the affair they were having, the bankruptcy they were hiding, or the Adderall they were stealing from their kids to lose weight.

Sometimes she was right, and sometimes she wasn’t. When she was wrong, she simply said that another “version” of the person she’d accused had done what she’d said. Samantha caused a lot of trouble for some good people, but she’d downright humiliated anyone with the last name Proctor. In a small community like Salem, having a crazy mother was not something that was easily overlooked. By the time Juliet went to college two years ago, it seemed like all of Salem had turned on the Proctor family and wanted to run them out of town.

That’s when James stopped coming home most nights. He couldn’t take the embarrassment of being married to the town kook, but he knew that if he filed for divorce he’d end up getting burdened with Lily. No court would grant Samantha custody of a minor with as many medical problems as Lily had, and James didn’t like sickness, either mental or physical. He didn’t file for divorce or involve the legal system in any way because he knew he would end up with more responsibility. Instead, he just stopped showing up.

Lily filled a bucket with soap and water and opened the garage door so she could let out the fumes of the cleaning goop while she scrubbed. Even the non-toxic stuff her mom bought at Whole Foods still irritated Lily if she was around it in it’s undiluted form for too long. Ten minutes later, her eyes were watering from the chemicals so badly she could barely see. She ignored them. She had a party to go to, damn it, and after everything that had already happened that day, a couple of leaky eyes weren’t about to stop her. Another twenty minutes later, she was mostly done with the Jeep, when she heard Juliet’s car pull into the driveway and park.

“You know what? The way the clay’s all flung out like that, it almost looks festive,” her sister said from the garage door.

“I’ll be your best friend if you check on Mom,” Lily said, wiping her hair off her damp forehead.

“Fever?” Juliet crossed the garage to Lily. Her giant brown eyes were rounded with concern. Lily edged away from her sister’s smooth, cool hands before Juliet could touch her face.