Origins: The Fire (6 page)

He looked startled; the same look everyone gave when they found out Mom chose to shun modern technology. One girl had even asked if I was Amish. “Parents” was all he finally said, though. With a knowing smile.

We headed back up the path leading back into school, side by side.

“What class do you have next?” he said, just before we reached the door.

“Pre-calc. You?”

“AP Chemistry.”

See that? Not even remotely dim. “Cool.”

When we reached the door, he leaned across me to open it. The brush of his arm across my shoulder sent a shiver rushing through me. I stepped into the congested hallway and fumbled to put a name to the strange feeling, just as a familiar voice rang out.

“Hey, Mila, there you are! And…you ran into
Hunter
?”

Kaylee stood a few feet away, arms crossed over her chest, forming a platform-heeled, long-legged obstacle that students veered to avoid hitting. Her emphasis on “ran into” wasn’t lost on me, even in the din of chattering voices and footsteps as kids rushed to their next class.

Her gaze touched on me, lingered longer on Hunter and even longer on the cell phones we still clutched in our hands. I shoved mine into my bag, even though I wasn’t sure why, exactly. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

She stepped closer, her grin flashing fewer teeth than usual. “So what were you guys doing out there? Was Mila helping you fill out your forms?”

Hunter shrugged and shook his hair out of his face. “Something like that,” he said. And then he winked at me before merging into the flow of students and ambling down the hallway.

Kaylee pressed a hand to her chest and watched his retreat. “Mysterious guys are so hot.”

But the second he was out of sight, her playfulness vanished. She whirled on me with her hands on her hips. “Is that why you ditched us at lunch today, so you could get Hunter all to yourself? What, are you some kind of stalker now? Oh my god, Mila, that is so uncool!”

Red blotches erupted on her cheeks, and her voice rose with each question, loud enough to garner sideways looks
from the kids passing by. Two girls from our homeroom started whispering, while a trio of boys poked one another and laughed.

“Shhhh!” I said.

“What, am I embarrassing you?” she said in an even louder voice. “About HUNTER?”

More kids turned to look, triggering that trapped feeling again. My muscles tensed. I wanted out of the public eye.
Now.

In a quick movement hidden by the position of her body, I grabbed Kaylee’s upper arm. Then I pulled her to the door and yanked it open. My momentum propelled both of us outside, away from the streaming students and their way-too-curious eyes.

“Mila, you’re hurting me!” Kaylee tugged against my grip.

With dawning horror, I looked down to see I was squeezing her upper arm. I released my grip, and her other hand immediately rubbed the spot. “What’s your deal?” she said, her stare all brown-eyed accusation.

I shook my head, dazed, gaping at the way she cradled her arm to her chest. Seriously, what
was
my deal?

I couldn’t believe I’d just grabbed Kaylee like that, out of nowhere. What a terrible thing to do.

“Kaylee, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. There were all those people, and I just…get a little claustrophobic
sometimes. I didn’t think.”

Between the jump with Bliss and my booth dive at Dairy Queen, there seemed to be a lot of that going on lately. Too much.

“You’re a nut, you know that?” she said, still clutching her arm.

My chin whipped up and down in my enthusiasm to agree. “I’ll work on it, promise.”

“Do that,” she said, shaking her head before walking off.

I tried to dismiss the incident. Really, I did. But a tiny, niggling worry made it difficult. The truth was, I hadn’t even been trying to grab Kaylee’s arm with any real degree of force. I definitely hadn’t been trying to hurt her.

So how on earth had it happened?

FIVE

T
he worry still niggled at me after dinner that night, when Mom’s yell summoned me from my book.

“Mila, come here!”

With a sigh, I jabbed my bookmark into the middle of
The Handmaid’s Tale
and rolled off the green-and-gold quilt that came with the room and always smelled faintly of mothballs and lavender. Rain tap-tapped an offbeat rhythm against the window. Figuring she wanted me to check on the horses, I slipped my feet into my discarded Nikes and headed down the hall.

Mom waited by the coat rack, practically drowning in the brown fleece blanket she’d tossed over her shoulder. An unusually wide grin spread across her face. The sight of that smile, aimed at me, melted away any residual craving for
Atwood and my bed. That was a smile from the old days. A smile that banished some of my loneliness and promised good things to come.

I almost didn’t want to say anything, in case talking broke the spell, but curiosity won out. “What are we doing?”

She pulled the front door open. “We’re going to watch the storm.”

I swung my legs back and forth against the rickety porch edge. Mom’s suggestion to go outside and experience the storm had sounded crazy at first, not to mention extremely un-Mom-like. But I couldn’t say no. Not when the invitations were so few and far between.

Raindrops splattered against my upturned palms. As usual, Mom was right—there was nothing quite like experiencing a Midwest storm firsthand. The sky’s vivid light show, the thick humidity that made my jeans cling to my legs, the smell of electricity and damp dirt, it enveloped us.

“Isn’t this amazing?” Mom asked.

In a stun of disbelief, I watched her peel off her boots and toss them over her shoulder. They hit the porch with a thud while she wiggled her bare toes under the drizzle. Her sigh was pure bliss. Yep. Decidedly un-Mom-like.

“You should try it.”

My shoes were stripped off before she could realize the storm had addled her brain. Under the dim light and mist,
our naked skin glowed a ghostly white.

“Feels great, doesn’t it?”

The tiny drops felt wet more than anything, but her enjoyment was infectious. What really felt great was her acceptance. “Definitely.”

Another diagonal of light cracked the night sky. For a moment, all of Clearwater was illuminated, like someone had switched on a giant spotlight. Just as quickly, the brightness was snatched away and darkness returned, broken only by the glow from our kitchen window.

“One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand, five—” A deep rumble overhead cut off Mom’s strange chant.

“What’s the counting for?”

“Just something…we used to do together.”

My legs stopped moving. Mom rarely talked about the past, especially not in the context of things we’d done together. I got the distinct impression that she wanted nothing more than to wipe the slate clean. To start completely fresh here in Clearwater.

Too many questions to name spiraled through my head. In the interest of starting small, I latched on to one of the most innocuous ones.

“Did I used to like nail polish? I mean, before?” I said, thinking back to Kaylee’s Dairy Queen convo.

I knew I’d made the right decision when even that
simple, fluffy inquiry caused her to flinch. I held my breath, half expecting her to ignore me.

“Yes. When you were little. But…but only toenail polish, and only if your dad and I would wear it, too.”

She started off hesitantly, but the longer she talked, the more the story gained steam. “In fact, this one time, your dad forgot to take it off, and then he went to the gym…well, you can imagine the looks he got.”

She reached out to squeeze my shoulder, laughing. “Can’t you picture it? Your big, manly father…sporting pink sparkle nail polish.”

And with her words as my guide, I could picture it. My stout, dark-haired father. Standing in his gym shorts in the locker room and shaking his head at his sparkling toes. I reveled in the image for a moment before pressing on. Her laughter, the shoulder squeeze, had made me bold.

“Did the doctors do anything to my ears, after the fire?”

The second her hand dropped away, I knew I’d made a mistake, pushed too far. But I pressed on. “I have this memory. Of a man, in a white coat. And he did something to my ear….”

It was no use. Even in the dim light, I could see her lips press together. She wrapped her arms around her waist, angled her head away from me, did everything short of slapping duct tape on her mouth and flashing a DON’T ASK sign.

“Why won’t you answer me?” I whispered, even as
the familiar weight of rejection settled on my shoulders. “Please. This has been hard for me, too.” I hated the beggarlike quality to my voice, but I couldn’t help it.

Her hand lifted, like she might stroke my cheek, the way she used to in Philly every night before bed, back when her nails weren’t brown from horse grime or pungent with liniment. I caught my breath while seconds built up between us. While my heart pounded out its yearning for a return of that nighttime ritual.

She shoved her hands into her lap and turned back to the storm.

I curled my toes to subdue the building scream. Had my faulty memory erased some terrible thing I’d done—was that it? Was that why Mom couldn’t resurrect even a tiny piece of our old relationship? Why I’d somehow lost both parents when only one had burned in the fire?

Under the cover of my hair, I pressed a trembling hand to my own cheek, half expecting to touch something repugnant. Instead, my skin felt normal. Slightly slick from the moisture-filled air, but warm and soft. Nothing that should scare a mother away.

“Why don’t you love me anymore?” I whispered, to no one, really. Because I knew she wouldn’t answer.

I rose. Though the storm still raged overhead, its allure drained away as surely as the water that dripped from my hem and pooled at my feet.

“The counting gives you an approximation of how far away the lightning really is. Five seconds for every mile.”

Mom’s steady voice paused me after only one step. Was this her deluded attempt at an olive branch?
Sorry, Mila, can’t hug you, but I can inundate you with random facts about storms.

Gee, thanks.

I didn’t have to listen to this.

Anger fueled my short walk to the door. I opened it, determined to escape to the safe haven of my room, where Atwood and my smelly quilt awaited.

“The thunder comes after the lightning, but it’s an illusion. It just seems that way because the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound.”

My grip tightened on the doorknob. I’d asked for her love, and instead got the speed of sound? Really?

“Also, the lightning bolt we see doesn’t really originate from the sky. It comes from the ground up.”

That did it. The door slam echoed in the night. I whirled, glaring at the sight of her slender back and that sleek, serene ponytail. “Why are you telling me this?”

I don’t care about the origins of lighting bolts and the speed of sound!
I wanted to scream.
I care about things that matter
. About my missing memory and her missing love, about the wrenching pain in my heart that never went away. Not about some stupid storm in the middle of stupid Minnesota.

Not about—

Another white line forked across the sky. I caught a flash of sagging porch and Mom’s hand clenched around that stupid birthstone necklace before darkness reclaimed them. It couldn’t reclaim my spark of intuition.

“Are you trying to say things aren’t always the way they appear? What, Mom? What isn’t how it appears?”

Boards creaked and thunder rumbled, but there was no reply.

No reply. Right. Just like there was nothing I could say to change anything. Still, I took a grim satisfaction in correcting her. “You don’t even have your facts right. Not everyone sees lightning from the bottom up. I don’t.”

Before I could head inside, something interrupted my brilliant exit.

I cocked my head. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“A noise. From the barn.” Over the patter of rain, I’d heard it.

Clank.

“There it goes again.”

Mom was on her feet in an instant. Barefoot, she raced for the front door, shoving it open so hard that the bottom smacked the doorstop and bounced back. She darted inside and reemerged seconds later, wielding the giant Maglite she stashed in a kitchen drawer for emergencies. Weapon in hand, she leaped off the porch and ran for the barn.

“Mom?” When she didn’t look back, I sprinted after her, my feet slapping the wet path while muddy water squished between my toes. I rounded the corner of our guesthouse in time to see Mom reach the oversized barn door, to hear the nickers and snorts that burst within at her arrival. Louder than usual.

Someone had left the door ajar.

My neck prickling, I pulled up behind Mom as she yanked the door open.

“Hello?” she called out, flipping on the light.

Her voice echoed back through the rafters, as even-keeled as ever. But in her right hand, the super-long, super-heavy Maglite was clenched and at the ready. Shoulder level, like a baseball bat.

Nothing but silence followed, except for the intermittent raindrops that drummed against the vaulted roof. And then a high-pitched whinny, and straw rustling under restless hooves.

Mom took four careful steps inside, half crouched like some kind of jungle cat. I knew I shouldn’t be surprised, that Mom was ultra-capable under any circumstance. Still, the transformation from mild-mannered veterinarian to prowling tiger was a little terrifying. Why would a few strange noises make her react this way?

Everything seemed normal. The sweet-sour smell of hay and horse bodies mingled into its familiar musk. The rows
of pine stalls on either side of the empty corridor looked as tidy as ever, and the stall doors were all closed, as they should be. Since we tended to leave the green-barred windows open, a few inquisitive horse heads poked out over the tops. Also normal.

And yet…there was almost no way Mom had forgotten to latch that door. Not after the mini-lecture I’d gotten when we first moved here. Plus she was so vigilant about locking the guesthouse, you’d think we stored diamonds in our beds.