Page 131 of Lotus

She blinks away the haze, tossing the lamp aside and jumping into action. “Fuck, sorry.”

Sydney mounts me, hands quivering as she attempts to release the restraints. Our faces are close together, her warm breath on my cheek the greatest solace I’ve ever known. That breath hitches with tiny gasps of disbelief as tears well and fall upon my skin, her body shaking above me. “I’m trying t-to… God, it’s so tight…” she stammers, glancing over to Travis’ motionless body every so often.

“Just call the police, Syd. He won’t be out long.”

Her fingers continue to work. “He took our phones.”

“Go get help,” I insist. “Run next door and fetch my brother. Don’t worry about me.”

Sydney’s eyes ping open, meeting with mine, but she ignores the request and keeps tinkering with the ropes. “I’m not leaving unless you leave with me.”

“That’s absur—”

My words are cut short when Travis tackles Sydney onto the mattress with a punishing growl, her scream also curtailed when his hand clamps over her mouth.

“You’re a firecracker, Syd,” he hisses, his words hitting the air like toxic waste as I continue to struggle out of my binds. “Firecrackers are designed to go up in flames.”

Travis rolls them off the foot of bed, and I start shouting for help, pulling and tugging with every aching ounce of strength inside me, calling for Sydney,desperateandsickandpetrified. They are scuffling, gasping and growling, back on their feet and toppling into Sydney’s dresser where her candles sit above it on a ledge wall. A candle tips as Travis throws Sydney back to the ground and climbs on top of her.

And then I see it, I watch it unfold in slow motion—a small orange spark dancing to life in the corner of the bedroom, latching onto Sydney’s window coverings and blooming into a tangerine tragedy.

Her pillar candle caught the fabric.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

Everything seems to fade away for one impossible minute.

It’s only a minute, but it’s a powerful minute. A life-changing minute—just like the minute I sat helpless, tied up in the backseat of a stranger’s vehicle, staring at the fireworks outside the window and wondering if Sydney was watching those same ones. I knew in that minute that everything would change. Life, as I knew it, was over… and I missed her immensely.

That same feeling of heartbreaking disintegration digs its claws into me.

As the flames flicker and climb, an inferno threatening to burn down the life I’ve rebuilt, I close my eyes and make a wish. I wish on fireworks, on every shooting star, on birthday candles and dandelion seeds. I wish to the man in the sky with all my heart, with each tumbling tear…

“One second, almost done!” Sydney calls back, finalizing her wish. She smiles at me as she packs her bookbag, glancing over her shoulder. “I have to go now.”

“Yeah…” I murmur through my disappointment. “What did you wish for?”

Sydney’s baby blue eyes twinkle brighter than all the stars in the sky. “Us.”

Before I can question her further, she is already skipping down the hill.

“Okay, coming,” she says to Travis, who is waiting at the bottom. She sends me a final wave goodbye. “Bye, Oliver!”

I wave back as the fireworks blast above me. “Bye, Syd. See you tomorrow.”

I wish for tomorrow and the tomorrow after that.

I wish for all the tomorrows…with her.

His fingers wrap around my neck, his lower body pressing me into the carpet like I’m a ragdoll. My wrists are cut and stained with blood from the rope, there are stars in my eyes as my oxygen depletes, and my throat is burning from screeching through my gag.

Wait.

Burning.

My skin warms with a wave of heat right as Travis loosens his grip, his focus shifting to just over my shoulder across the room. I smell the smoke then, and all I can think about is Oliver.

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