Free Darla's Story by Mike Mullin Page A

eyes stung, my throat felt raw and, to
top it all off, my head had started to ache.
    Two huge steps led down from the cab. I
stumbled on the first one and almost fell out of the truck
backward. I caught myself on the grab bar mounted to the side of
the truck. When I reached the ground, I kept one hand on the bar,
holding myself upright.
    The house was wrecked. It looked like a giant
fist had descended from the heavens, punching a round hole in the
roof above my sister’s room and collapsing the front of the house.
Flames shot into the sky above the hole and licked up the roof.
Ugly brown smoke billowed out everywhere.
    Thank God my sister wasn’t home. If she’d
been in her room, she’d be dead now. An hour ago I’d been looking
forward to an entire weekend without her. Now I wanted nothing more
than to see her again—soon, I hoped. Mom would burn rubber all the
way back from my uncle’s place in Illinois as soon as she heard
about the fire. It was only a two-hour drive. I gripped the bar on
the fire truck more tightly and tried to swallow, but my mouth was
parched.
    The firefighter wrestled a hose toward the
front of the house. Tiny hunched over the hydrant across the
street, using a huge wrench to connect another hose to it. Darren
and Joe were standing in our next-door neighbor’s yard, so I
stumbled over to them. From there I could see the side of my
house. One of the firefighters opened the dining room window
from the inside and smoke surged out.
    “You okay?” Darren asked.
    “Not really.” I collapsed into the cool grass
and watched my house burn.
    “We should take you to the hospital.”
    “No, I’m okay. Can I borrow your cell? Mine’s
in there. Melted, I guess.” I wanted, needed, to call Mom. To know
she was on her way back and would soon be here taking care of
things. Taking care of me.
    “Still no service on mine, sorry.”
    “Maybe it’s only our carrier,” Joe said.
“I’ll see if anyone else has service.” He walked across the street
toward a knot of people who’d gathered there, rubbernecking.
    I lay back in the grass and closed my eyes.
Even from the neighbor’s yard, I felt the heat of the fire washing
over my body in waves. I smelled smoke, too, but that might
have been from my clothing.
    A few minutes later, I heard Joe’s voice
again. “Nobody’s got cell service. Verizon,
Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T—all down. Nobody’s got power
or landlines, either.”
    I opened my eyes. “I thought landlines
weren’t supposed to go down. I mean, when our power’s out, the old
house phone still works. Just not the cordless phones.”
    “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But
nobody’s telephones work.”
    “Huh.”
    “You know what happened to your house? Looks
like something fell on the roof.”
    “I dunno. Power went out, and then, wham , the whole house fell on me.”
    “Meteor, you think? Or a piece of an
airplane, maybe?”
    “Would that make the power and phones go
down?”
    “No . . . shouldn’t.”
    “And there are other fires. At least four,
judging by the smoke.”
    Joe peered at the sky. “Yeah. Looks like
they’re a ways off. In Waterloo, maybe.”
    I tried to sit up. The motion triggered a
coughing spasm—dry, hacking coughs, every one of them setting
off a sharp pain in my head. By the time my coughing fit passed,
the headache was threatening to blow off the top of my head.
    “You want some water?” Joe asked. “Yeah,” I
wheezed.
    “We should take you to the hospital,” Darren
said again, as Joe trotted back across the street toward their
house.
    I closed my eyes again, which helped the
headache some. The water Joe brought me helped more. I chugged the
first bottle and sipped the second. Joe left again—said he was
going to find batteries for their radio. Darren stood beside me,
and we watched the firefighters work.
    They’d strung two hoses through a window at
the side of the house. All four of the firefighters were inside
now, doing