Page 36 of Heart of Stone
I was bone tired and didn’t even lift my head from the chair as she shuffled back through. Then, unexpectedly, she stopped just before disappearing back down the hallway. She turned to me, and the rational, clearheaded expression from this morning flashed across her face. “Whatever you do, sweetheart, my beautiful Amy, chase happiness no matter how long it takes.” Then her shoulders rolled forward. She shut the towel tighter around herself and whatever snack she’d grabbed from the kitchen, and she plodded back to her room.
I watched the empty doorway wondering if in my groggy state, I’d just imagined those last few seconds.
I rested my head back. My lids felt heavy from the long day. I let sleep take me away from reality.
It was a cracklingsound that woke me. As I urged my mind out of the dream I’d been having, I tried to reconcile the sound with anything I’d ever heard before. But I couldn’t. A loud snapping sound made me jolt forward. The haze in the room was not in my head. It was smoke. Not a burnt toast or singed popcorn smoke. It was a horrible, acrid smoke as if chemicals and fabrics and things were being consumed by fire.
I jumped up. The darkness in the hallway had been replaced by a thick gray mist. I raced to my mom’s door and grabbed the doorknob. It was hot but I wrapped my fingers around it and turned it. The door didn’t budge. I’d removed the lock long ago, but something was blocking it and keeping it from opening.
“Mom!” I pounded on the door. “Mom, let me in!” I jammed my shoulder against it and pushed with all my weight. Whatever was on the other side weighed more than me. It was as if she had moved all her furniture in front of the door. Smoke curled up from beneath the door like vicious gray fingers, teasing me, letting me know that I had no chance to get in.
I stepped back and ran toward the door. I rammed the door and sharp pain tore through my shoulder. I kicked the door again. “Mom, go out the window!” I screamed.
A sound behind me made me spin around. It was the drapes in the front room. The flames had crawled up and over the roof. Fire was taking the whole house. Heat and smoke filled the narrow hallway. As I ran for the front door, Dad’s old easy chair, the place I had just been sleeping, burst into flames. Fire quickly traveled from the front window drapes to the faded green curtains on the front door.
I raced to the kitchen. The window hadn’t been opened in years, and it was glued shut like cement. Panic and shock made me freeze. I had no idea which way to go. The flames were winning, and I couldn’t seem to outpace them.
I was struggling to breathe, and my eyes watered from the smoke. I stooped down. I needed to get to my bedroom and out to the yard so I could get to my mom’s window. The smoke and heat in the hallway were so bad I had to feel my way along the walls. Paint was blistering off the plaster. I couldn’t catch a decent breath. I yanked my shirt up over my mouth and nose, but it did little to filter the air. It felt as if all the oxygen in the house had been replaced by bitter, pungent chemical smells.
Dizziness overwhelmed me, and I dropped to my kneesto crawl. The pain in my shoulder made my right arm weak, and I had to pull myself along with my left. But I could no longer see where I was going. I smacked my head hard on the edge of the bathroom door.
“Mom,” I cried weakly. Tears flowed from my eyes. I was suffocating. I curled into a ball and waited for the flames to take me.
TWENTY-THREE
HUNTER
“What the hell are you burning, Slade?” I called from the dark of my room. I shook off the sleep and sat up.
“Holy shit!” Slade yelled. “Amy’s house is on fire.”
I shot out of bed and pulled on my jeans. I grabbed my shoes on the way out the door and hopped into them as I raced across the front yard. Several of the neighbors had stumbled out of their houses. Mr. Ames, who lived across the street, was on the phone calling the fire department. Flames were already shooting up from the roof, and the whole house was surrounded by smoke. Slade reached the front porch just ahead of me.
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. Slade reached for the doorknob, but his hand flew off. “Fuck! It’s too hot.”
“Get out of the way,” I yelled. Slade moved aside, and I ran at the door and kicked it in. It was half melted by the heat and peeled away from its hinges. Blinding smoke billowed out.
“They’re on their way,” Mr. Ames called from the frontyard. “You boys can’t go in there.”
I hadn’t had time to pull on a shirt, so I covered my nose and mouth with my forearm and forged through the smoke and fire. It was hard to see anything, but I heard Slade’s footsteps right behind me. The front room was engulfed in flames. The heat seared my shoulders and arms.
“You with me, Slade?” I called, no longer able to see more than a foot in front of me.
“I’m with you. Fuck, I can’t breathe. Where is she?”
“Amy!” I yelled. There was no response. All I could think was— if she was dead then I’d just follow her right into the flames. I wasn’t going to make it without her. No way to live without her.
Slade had broken into a coughing fit behind me.
“You all right?” My voice was being choked off by the bitter ashes in my throat.
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I can see the white edge of the hallway door.” He turned my shoulder in the right direction, and we pushed through the blistering heat. The entire house was a furnace, and somewhere inside the raging hell was my angel.
“Amy!” I called.
Then, somehow, through the clamor of wood and rafters falling in on each other, I heard a small cry. I waved my arms around to clear the smoke. There, curled up in a corner of the hallway was the girl I loved. “Amy, fucking hell, baby.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. I’d learned to turn off tears when I was a kid because they only made my dad swing his belt harder.
I grabbed her up in my arms, and she clung to me.
