Page 80 of Our Last Resort

He thrust the bottle into my hand.

“You do it.”

I considered it, then shook my head.

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

Gabriel wrapped his fingers around mine, tightened my grip around the bottle.

“It should be you,” he said.

He didn’t have to say why.

Gabriel intuited it before I did—that the only kind of justice I would ever receive was the kind I would make happen for myself.

I started pouring. Just then, a thought took hold in my mind. Dark, toxic.

Émile was sleeping upstairs. That, I knew.

But maybe he wasn’t alone.

Maybe Edwina was inside, too. In Émile’s room, doing to someone else what she’d done to me. Standing in the corner. Hands around another girl’s limbs.

My mouth opened.

I didn’t know, of course. There was no way to know for sure.But it was a distinct possibility.

I held them in my mind. Émile, Edwina. And the other girl. The one being held down.

She would escape, whoever she was. I was sure of it. We, the girls this had happened to—every day of our life was a building on fire. The girl would recognize the blaze for what it was: a chance to escape Émile, to end this terrible moment.

And Edwina?

Edwina was a different story.

She’d want to protect Émile. That was her purpose. She’d want to get him out, away from the flames. She’d breathe in smoke. Edwina would burn, if she had to.

I heard all the possibilities in my head:Stop, wait. We can’t do this.I felt Edwina’s hands around my ankles. The rehearsed expertise of her gestures, her confident strength. How I’d known immediately: She had done it before; she would do it again.

The last drops of gasoline trickled out of the bottle.

“Go ahead,” I told Gabriel.

This is how the fire was set, in the end: I poured the accelerant, and he struck the match.

Gabriel hadn’t lied: As far as accelerants went, gasoline worked.Reallyworked. The flames rose, tall and fierce and hungry.

For about ten seconds, it felt good. It feltgreat.Émile’s office. His papers. Histhoughts,ablaze.

The fire spread to Émile’s desk, his chair, his books. It started creeping up the wall, reaching greedily for the ceiling.

“Let’s go,” I said, but Gabriel was already at the door.

We ran. There was no time to hesitate, no time for sadness.

Once we’d almost reached the edge of Émile’s world, we stopped to look back.

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