Free Going Dark by Robison Wells Page B

screaming.
    I opened my eyes.
    I was in my room, my right hand gripping the leg of the bedside table. It was engulfed in flames.
    Celia leapt out of bed, yanking me free from the burning wood.
    A chunk of charcoal came off in my fingers, and I dropped it on the carpet.
    â€œWe have to get out of here!” Celia screamed in my face, but I just stared at the fire, too stunned to react. The flames were racing up the wall, spreading across the ceiling like dancing snakes.
    She slapped me, and lights exploded through my head.
    â€œCome on!” She pulled me by the arm and thrust me through the door.
    I was running now, throwing open the door to my brothers’ room and yelling at them to wake up. I picked up Cesar, my youngest brother, and ran into the hall, colliding with Papa.
    â€œGet out of the house,” he yelled, and pushed past me toward my bedroom.
    I darted down the stairs with Cesar, nearly tripping on a pair of discarded shoes, and tore the front door open.
    I hadn’t realized how much smoke was in the house until I was outside in the still, warm August night and I could finally breathe clean air.
    â€œWhat’s going on, Krezi?” Cesar asked sleepily.
    â€œEverything’s okay,” I told him, turning to look back at the fire. My bedroom window was glowing and flickering, flames eating up the curtains. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
    Celia and the other boys came outside, herded by Mama, and then finally Papa. Smoke was billowing out the front door now, and Mama made us move into the street. I could see flames in my brothers’ window.
    Cesar clung to my neck. I felt like I was in a bubble, things happening frantically around me as I stared at my house—the only home I’d ever known—burning down in front of me. Papa was pacing as he shouted into his cell phone. Mama was hugging the two other boys, and Celia was holding my hand.
    She wasn’t just holding it. She was looking at it, shining the light of her phone onto it.
    I wasn’t burned. My hand had been in the middle of the fire, clutching burning wood, and it wasn’t even blistered. There wasn’t a mark there at all.
    It didn’t make any sense.
    But Celia didn’t spend too much time checking on me. She squeezed my unharmed hand, kissed Cesar, and then moved to Mama, talking and gesturing wildly as she described the fire. My hand was the least of her concerns. I stared down at it for a minute, and when Mama came to take Cesar from me I looked at it more closely, stretching my fingers and tightening them into a fist.
    I was in a daze. I don’t know if it was from the fire or my concussion, but I just wasn’t connected to the world around me. I should have been huddled with everyone else, gazing painfully at the life that was being eaten up in the blaze. But instead I stared at my hand and thought of the charcoal, remembering the red-hot coals that had fallen from my fingers and ignited the carpet.
    And I felt cool. My fever had broken.

THREE
    FIREFIGHTERS CAME. THE STREET WAS a mass of sirens and people and flashing lights. All the neighbors watched as water was blasted through our broken windows.
    By the time most of the flames were extinguished, our aunt was there to take me and Cesar to her house. The other boys and Celia were going to various neighbors’, but Mama was worried about my concussion and about little Cesar being away from family. I climbed into the front seat of the car as ashes—wispy pieces of my old life—settled gently onto the windshield.
    We pulled away from the crowds and the emergency vehicles, and I finally started to cry.
    When I wiped my cheeks, black soot smeared onto my hand.
    Â 
    An inspector from the fire department visited the next morning. He was a short, stocky man, with biceps as big as my head. He had a metal clipboard and he made a note as he sat down in the recliner across from me. I was on the couch, wearing clothes that