I walk back the way I came, through the spray paint room, through the kitchen, through the room with the girl on her swing.
I feel someone watching me. For a disgusting second I think maybe Blue Cheese is following me and I tighten my hands into fists in preparation, but when I turn around he’s not there. I hear the crashing sound of another wall falling. More cheers. I walk through people, bumping into elbows and arms. I don’t try and get out of the way. I climb the stairs and then up another flight and I’m in a hallway I haven’t been in before. My eyes burn. It’s hard to breathe up here.
Two shirtless guys in painter’s overalls are walking toward me, each with a giant canvas bag over his shoulder. “Geeet your hammers here people, hammers, bowling balls, chunks of scrap metal. Geeeet your hammers!” When they get closer I can see that one of the guys has demolition crew written in paint on the front of his overalls. Demolition Crew stops right in front of me. “And for you, m’lady,” he says. He hands me a giant sledgehammer. I stare at it in my hand. “See?” says the other guy. “It fits you perfectly.” I tighten my fist around the handle. This feels good. “No matter what’s wrong,” he says, “smashing will fix it.” The hammer guy looks me straight in the eye. “It’s just human nature to want to smash things.” And then they both walk away.
I squeeze the handle so hard my knuckles turn white. I push my way down the hallway. I’m standing in a giant room, staring at a silver wall covered in an enormous black outline of a spaceship. I’m numb now. There’s nothing in my head. I swing the hammer up toward the ceiling, feeling the weight of it tugging against my shoulders. When the hammer is up at the top of the arc, it feels, just for a second, like time has frozen. And then, it swings back down. The head of the hammer connects with the wall, and there’s just the slightest bit of resistance before it passes right through with a delicate crunch like eggshells breaking. A cloud of plaster dust swirls away from the new hole like smoke. That was a piece of solid wall that had been there for who knows how many years, witness to who knows how many things, but with one swift motion it has been transformed into an empty space and a pile of rubble. And I did that. I stand there, looking at the empty space, the ragged edges, and I feel a strange sense of relief.
But it only lasts for a second, because then the screaming starts—a girl’s voice calling the same thing over and over and over, one word, but I can’t make out what it is. And then a flood of people start running past me, one giant writhing unit of arms and legs and heads. A girl trips on her spike heels, and a guy reaches down and pulls her up under one of his arms, dragging her with him, her skinny little legs dangling a few inches above the floor.
And then comes the smoke, heavy and thick, an impossible amount of it all at once. I start to cough. Inside my head I am screaming, but my whole body is frozen. Hours pass, days pass, years pass, all of time passes in that one second before I hear a voice next to my head shouting, “RUN!” It’s like I’ve woken up. “RUN!” And this time I do.
The air is opaque with smoke. I don’t even know what direction to go in, but I see a girl’s back, tumbling forward, and I tumble after her. I take a breath but there’s no relief in it, the air doesn’t seem to be doing its job. I’m choking, still running forward, my eyes burning. I hear voices but all I can see is white, everywhere. My arms are out in front of me and the smoke is so thick I can’t even see my hands. I keep going, keep going, keep going.
Finally I burst out onto the front lawn, gasping for breath, the air sweeter than any air I’ve ever breathed before in my life. The music has stopped. And hundreds of people are outside now. The pirates, the mermaids, the stilt walkers, the girl in the bronze body paint, a group of guys who look like they’re from the future, a bunch of girls dressed as sexy robots, Freshie and her friend. They’re all out here with the same slightly dazed expression on their faces, did that really just happen?
I stand there panting. But where the hell is Amanda? I turn to the left and to the right. I don’t have to worry long because my phone starts ringing. It’s her. “HOLY SHIT, ELLIE!”
She’s talking fast, and even though I know I’m outside and that I’m safe now, the panic in her voice scares me. Amanda never panics. “I was up at the car talking on the phone to Eric and I smelled the smoke and saw the fire and I ran back down and oh my God!” I tell her where I am. She says she’s coming to find me. And then I just stand and watch the flames.
Have you ever seen a house burning down? If you landed here from another planet and didn’t know what fire meant, you’d think it was beautiful, gentle even—delicate orange and gold and red and yellow flames, licking the house into nothingness.