Page 49 of Envious Of Fire
They stop abruptly when the air splits apart before their startled faces, light blinding them—a narrow door sitting in the middle of nothing, opening in thin air.
The nurse appears, eclipsing the light, and leans against the frame of the door. “About took you long enough,” she teases.
“Oh, thank god,” mutters Nico, “I thought we’d lost you.”
“The others are ahead,” she tells him. “Be quick. Through here, you’ll find yourself in a bright hallway, then make a left. Don’t make a right—that takes you back into the House. After you go left, you’ll empty into an alleyway near the Bellagio.”
“Bellagio? You mean in Las Vegas? Las-fucking-Vegas?” Nico lets out a warm chuckle that sounds more human than hehas in months. “Quite a bit of ways from San Diego, but hey, freedom’s freedom, and I’ve got thumbs ready to hitch my way home. Ready, 1025?” He glances back.
Kaleb stares at his friend. He fights a sudden urge to tell his friend to wait, yet nothing comes. Nico returns a soft smile, winks playfully, then slips through the bright doorway. Kaleb limps up to the brink, right where he resists shielding his eyes.
Then he stops. Breaths pass. Seconds tick away.
Why won’t he step through?
“I understand,” says the nurse. Kaleb squints against the brightness, remaining silent, his heart still slamming away in his ears. “It’s quite a decision, isn’t it? Your next step?”
He doesn’t look her way. Something about her tone brings him pause. “I guess I …” He finds himself choosing every word with caution. “I … never quite shared … the same feeling … as the others do … about the gods.”
“The gods?”
“That’s what some of us call them.” He scrunches up his face, barely turning his head, still not looking the nurse in the eye. “Don’t you?”
The nurse doesn’t breathe, doesn’t stir, doesn’t pull her eyes from the side of Kaleb’s face. She just stands there by the magical door, as if holding it open for him, a doorwoman.
She asks, “Is that why you aren’t following your friend?”
Kaleb lifts his eyes, half-squinted, to the brightness beyond. He can’t see Nico. Can’t hear him, either. The second he went through, he vanished from existence.
“I think I’m … scared,” says Kaleb, inching into the truth.
“Of what?”
Kaleb lifts a hand to the light, as if testing it. It feels cold, not warm. “My friend pictures this life for us … his brother, a bakery in San Diego, but … I don’t think I belong there. This is the only life I know now. My old life burned away in that fire long ago.”It’s now that he brings his heavy gaze to the nurse. “Is it too late? For me to stay? Would I be a total coward if I … if I abandon my friends and … go back?”
The nurse studies him awhile longer before answering, in a tone that sounds as crisp as crystal: “It’s never too late.”
“You wanted to leave, too,” he says. “Are you going to head out with them?”
The nurse smiles, as if finding that funny. “Of course I plan to go. There are so many reasons to leave. My beautiful life is out there, waiting for me. Food of my choosing. Friends. My family. A cushy bed. Warm showers. Are you sure you don’t want to go and see what’s out there for you, too? It’s just a trip down this hall and out a door. Easy.”
Kaleb glances into the brightness again. He takes a breath. It’s now that he finally realizes he’s certain of his conviction. “I can’t,” he decides, then turns to her again. “I want to stay.”
Her eyes burn like blue fire, showing her satisfaction. She smirks, says, “Good boy.”
Then snaps her fingers.
At once, the entire room shatters.
10.
Are You Afraid?
—·—
From the mirrored ceiling to its mirrored pillars to its floor, everything cracks apart in a mad cacophony of screaming glass, the dark blue walls raining down in sharp, twirling splinters and shimmering shards all around Kaleb.
He ducks and shields his head, terrified.
