Something Sacred Read online

  Thinking of her makes my chest hurt.

  She was so beautiful until she faded away. It was like living with a ghost.

  Two ghosts.

  Our lives were far from perfect, but we worked. We agreed on where to go to dinner and quietly did homework together in the evenings. We made love on our flimsy mattress and huddled together for warmth in the winter when our jobs didn’t pay enough to cover the expense of raising our heat. We cooked beside each other, laughed together…

  Deo volente, my mother had told me when I told her Macie was pregnant. It was the same day of the Galstons’ party. God willing, she said, as if everything would work itself out if only I was patient. I was patient and fearful of the future, but I held onto each day with her like it was a gift.

  And it was a gift, until I came home and had to break down my own bathroom door. I never imagined having to use the training I learned in the fire academy in our own apartment. While my fiancée sobbed on the other side of the door but refused to open it for me, I took measured breaths and counted to three—and then I smashed the door open, and my whole life splintered with it.

  “Get out,” she moaned at me. Her hands flexed over her stomach, leaving red streaks on her cream-colored dress. The thing was ruined, soaked through at the bottom. It had been hitched up, exposing her underwear, by the time I arrived. She squeezed her eyes shut as if to block out the pain and whimpered, “Jared,” right before she started to cry. “I think we’re dying.”

  I shake my head and walk over to where McNally has finally reappeared. “There you are, Brown. You look like shit.”

  “Sorry, sir,” I respond.

  He shakes his head. “I think you’re done for the day.” His eyes focus on something behind me, and he raises his voice to yell, “Leo, get your ass over here!”

  A kid with a spray of freckles across his face makes his way over, an axe slung over his shoulder. “Yes, boss?”

  “Brown, this here is Leo. He’s one of my senior firefighters. Leo, take Jared down the mountain and have him wait on base. We’ll be back soon. Go the short way.”

  A grin appears on Leo’s face, and he jerks his helmeted head for me to follow him.

  I follow the kid down a side path, which quickly turns into a switchback trail. Only deer are crazy enough to use this, I think. It zigzags down the mountainside when the terrain gets too steep to go straight down. “This is the short way?” I ask, sliding a bit on some rock.

  Leo turns around and winks at me. “McNally wanted you down quick, apparently. There’s the easy short way, but…this way is faster.”

  I slip again, but manage to catch myself. “What’s your real name?”

  “Leon Hollaski. Nearly everyone calls me Leo, except my mother. She is usually yelling my full name. You…” he broke off and chuckled. “If you stick around, you can call me whatever the fuck you want.”

  “You seem young to be a senior firefighter.” The jackass moves quick, too, and he is almost parallel to me on the mountainside, thirty feet down.

  “I’ve been doing this my whole life.”

  I have nothing to say to that.

  Finally, we make it to flat ground. I heave a sigh, and Leo laughs. “Let’s hope Cora’s in a forgiving mood.”

  I glance at him. “What do you mean?”

  He smiles at me and nods to an approaching truck in the distance. We stand there until it stops in front of us, and Cora jumps out. “What the fuck, Leo?”

  He holds up a hand and yanks off his helmet with the other. I’m surprised at the shock of dark red curls that fall around his face. “Now, Cora, before you start—”

  “Before I start? Leon Jeffrey Hollaski, if you don’t want to finish what you start, you better never try this shit again.”

  I’m beginning to think McNally was right when he said she was hot and cold. Cora whips around and glares at me as if she knows exactly where my thoughts are, and I hold up my hands in surrender—until I realize I look just like Leo.

  “In the truck, Fire Science,” she orders.

  Leo groans. “He doesn’t care one bit about our business, Cora. And he’s going to be packed up and out of here by the end of the day. Don’t you worry.” He turns to me and sniggers, “She’s just in awe of your pretty blue eyes, Brown.”

  “I’m just—” I shake my head as I step around Cora and slide into the passenger seat, closing the door. Unfortunately for them, the windows are open and their voices float into the truck with me.

  “Look, it isn’t anything personal, Cora,” Leo says in a softer voice. “I thought you knew what we were getting into.”

  She scoffs. “Getting into? Leo, I wanted to sleep with you. I didn’t ask for marriage. I didn’t even ask for any sort of commitment. I certainly didn’t ask for a fucking note on my pillow telling me I better not call you. We work together. I’m not one of those fire bunnies in town. You can’t fuck me and then pretend I don’t exist.”

  I can imagine what a fire bunny is. We didn’t have that kind of following in the city. I think it was because our jobs were less rescuing kittens from trees and more blocking traffic because of house fires or car accidents.

  “I don’t want to pretend you don’t exist,” Leo tells her.

  “Oh? You just want to pretend you didn’t see me naked.”

  I wince and look across the plain toward base, trying to block them out. The sky is so blue, I can’t picture it filled with smoke. I can’t imagine everyone in the town nearby fearing for their lives. I can’t imagine…

  “Wake up, Fire Science,” Cora says, slamming the door of the truck closed. I look over at her as she hits the gas. Her tires take a moment to catch, and then we’re off. I missed the end of the conversation, but I have a feeling it didn’t end well.

  I turn around in my seat and see Leo still standing there, looking…pissed? Sad?

  “Leo isn’t coming with us?”

  “I told him to hitch his ass back up that dangerous fucking switchback trail or walk back to base. Short way, my ass. You have to watch out for hazing, Fire Science.”

  I look over at her. She added a vest over her flannel shirt and a baseball cap sometime between the morning and now. “Right,” I say.

  “Leo is as bad as the rest of them. How’d you do?”

  I scowl. “Didn’t he just tell you I’m going home?”

  “He’s full of shit six ways to Sunday. I want to hear it from you.”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “I might be going home. But I didn’t pass out. I didn’t quit. I just…”

  She laughs. “Wow, okay. You might be the most negative optimistic fucker I’ve ever met.”

  “The negativity is new. I used to be all optimism, all the time.”

  She shoots me a glance. “What happened?”

  I tip my head back against the seat. “My baby died.”

  That confession is met with silence, and I can’t look at Cora to see her reaction. I’ve had to say it so many times to friends, my parents, Macie’s family, it almost lost its meaning. But this time I feel it like a sucker punch, and I can’t breathe because my baby died. I allow the lump in my throat to block my breath, but I don’t give myself the satisfaction of choking on tears. I hold everything inside; I hold my breath, I try to hold my heartbeat still, because if I move an inch, my facade will shatter. It’s a few long minutes before I can breathe without breaking. And in the end, everything stays locked up tight.

  Once we get back, I can’t stop pacing like a caged animal. I’m covered in sweat, shaking slightly now that my body temperature is back to normal. Cora watches me from the corner while she chews on a pen and types on her laptop. It puts me more on edge.

  “Why am I here?” I finally ask her.

  She opens her mouth and the pen falls to her lap. “Why are you here? You didn’t figure that out before you got on a plane?”

  I shake my head. “I thought I was escaping something.” My miserable fiancée. My numb life. My cage. Here I am, in another o
ne.

  She rolls her eyes and sets aside her laptop. I don’t realize I’m still pacing until she lands in front of me with her arms out, catching my shoulders. She gives me a little shake. “You don’t escape to wildfires, Jared. Thousands of people escape from them every year. Millions of acres are destroyed. It’s our job to stand between innocent people and the flames to give them a chance to survive. You can’t do that if you’re running from something else. Because,” she cuts off and tips her head back for a second, “trust me, when you’re staring at a wall of fire that will not be stopped, and you have to stop it anyway, whatever chased you this far will not be enough to keep you here.”

  She motions to the lockers around the room, most of them left open. It shows the level of trust the crew has, I suppose. “Everyone here became a firefighter for a reason. But then they became a hotshot for an even bigger reason. It’s bigger than themselves. It’s bigger than you. Maybe you don’t know it yet.” She shakes her head. “You’re from D.C.? The largest fire you probably saw was an office building?” She snorts.

  “A farm,” I admit. “The barn had caught, which led to the house and the field. A lot of death.” I could still hear screaming horses, desperate people, the sound of the fire—unlike a structural fire, this thing was alive as it crawled through the field. The smell of fear almost drowned out the smoke.

  “Yeah,” she answers. “You might not be ready for the fire season. It fucks with you.”

  My eyes narrow. “I’ll be ready.”

  She sighs and lets go of my shoulders. “There’s a box of sweatshirts in the back. You look pathetic shivering.” In the back room, she goes to a box and digs out a black sweatshirt for me. “Oh, and Jared?” I look at her. “You better find a reason to run toward the flames. That’s the only way you’ll make it.”

  Something keeps me from asking her what her reason is. Why is she here? Why does she run into danger?

  After what feels like hours of supervised paperwork—initial here, sign here, read all of this—I throw down the stack of papers that make me officially one of the crew. Sure, I have twenty-nine days left of being watched like a hawk, but if I could survive today, I can survive anything.

  Cora straightens in her seat next to me. “Boys are back,” she says.

  They storm through the door, one after another, just as thunder rumbles in the distance. I look out a window, surprised at how dark the sky is.

  “Storms roll in quick. Roll out fast, too,” Cora mutters.

  I look from her to Leo, who just strolled into the building. He’s gangly and all smiles until he sees Cora. He scowls and looks away. “Uh, what’s up with you two?”

  She grimaces. “Save your inquisition for someone else, Fire Science.” And then she claps her hands together, drawing the eyes of the nineteen men in the room, and says, “This is Jared Brown. Your newest member. Also known as Fire Science.” Some of the men snicker. “Okay, Fire Science, I hope you’re ready to memorize names.” She grabs my arm and drags me with her, introducing me to everyone. I only catch half of their names, but I shake all of their hands. In truth, I feel like they’re going to raid my apartment in the middle of the night and kidnap me—fraternity style hazing.

  I swallow.

  Leo turns my handshake into a bro-hug, and I try not to act surprised. “Dudes, he’s cool,” he says to the others. “Handled the switchback like a pro!”

  The rest of them laugh, and I hope that will be the end of it.

  Cora’s voice jerks my attention back to her. “Last, we have Miller and Jones. Miller is the captain, which means he’s in charge when McNally isn’t around. Jones is his second in command, but he’s also a captain.”

  They both shake my hand. “We’ve heard some interesting things about you, Fire Science,” Miller says, easily picking up on my new nickname. He’s about my height, but with a wilder gleam in his eye. He looks me up and down and finally smiles. “We’ll make you into something that’ll make your momma proud.”

  Jones grins but doesn’t say anything. He’s tall—taller than Leo, even. Jesus, to get his muscles I’d have to live in the gym. They’re all more fit than anyone in D.C., bodies made from running and working under hard conditions. That will be part of my transformation, too.

  “We love fresh meat,” Leo interjects. “Right, boys?”

  “You’re from D.C.?”

  “I lived there,” I answer Miller. “Originally from Massachusetts.”

  “They don’t have many wildfires out there,” he tells me. “So you must’ve done structures.”

  “Yeah. Needed a change of pace.” I watch Cora out of the corner of my eye, but she’s studying Leo. I shake my head and focus back on Miller. “If I get my wish, I’ll never go back to structures.”

  “Well, hey,” Miller says, smacking my back. “We’re happy to have you.”

  I raise my eyebrows and Jones snickers.

  “That’ll do, boys,” Cora says.

  They disperse like smoke, and Cora starts chuckling.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  She reaches up and yanks something off of my back, then shows me. Kick me, the paper says. I stifle my sigh. “Are they twelve?”

  “It’s okay to let your inner kid out sometimes, rookie,” Jones says from behind me. “You’ll need it.”

  My childhood had been a series of stops and starts. There were the bad times: my parents arguing, the house burning, losing everything, being sent away when I was sixteen, my relationship with my dad—which promptly imploded the day he drove me up to boarding school. I’ve tried to focus on the good: becoming friends with Charlie, conquering my fears, the massive amount of adventuring. Boarding school was rough. College was better. But having an inner kid? It didn’t come out too much. It didn’t help that my relationship with my dad cracked… and later shattered.

  I follow Cora out to her car, and she drives me home in silence.

  “Why doesn’t your radio work?” I finally ask her.

  She smiles as it starts to rain. “I disconnected it.”

  “On purpose?”

  She pulls into a parking space in front of my apartment. My new living quarters resemble my life: somewhat empty. I have a bed that came shipped in a box. A futon I still need to put together. My fridge is half-full. Life changed so sharply within just a few months.

  I exhale and get out of the car. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I mutter.

  “Night, Fire Science,” she calls after me.

  2

  I rub the sleep from my eyes as I open the door, then turn the full power of my glare on Cora. She smiles at me with her fist still in the air.

  It’s been a week since I started with the Boulder Mountain Hotshots. Every time Cora and I were alone, she’d open her mouth like she wanted to say something—and then get interrupted. She’d scowl and walk away, shaking her head, as I was pulled away for conditioning or cleaning equipment. I guess she got tired of waiting for a quiet moment to talk at work.

  “About time,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been knocking for five minutes.”

  “I was sleeping,” I mutter. And dreaming about Charlie, of all people. We were best friends a lifetime ago, but she’s only just started to resurface in my thoughts. In the dream, she was standing with me, and we were staring up at the waterfall I had once brought her to. I think I was fourteen. But then she looked at me and asked, Why did you leave me? I shake away that image. I didn’t leave home until I was sixteen, so my subconscious is screwing with me. I focus back on Cora. “Why are you here so early?”

  She holds up a paper bag. “I got us breakfast sandwiches. I’m assuming you have coffee or tea or whatever fancy D.C. people drink.”

  I laugh and close the door behind her. “I drink coffee. Do you?”

  “Only if you don’t burn it.”

  She takes a slow turn around my small apartment and whistles. I have a futon and TV set up, a meager amount of dishware in the kitchen, and a mattress on the floor in my be
droom. I’m not nearly as ashamed of it as I should be. For once, I’m not trying to impress anyone. I can’t explain the feeling living alone gives me.

  In D.C., the whole apartment was filled with things that didn’t mean anything to me—Macie’s collection of books, paintings, flower pots, baubles. I loved her, and I loved how being surrounded by her things made me feel… until I didn’t. Until it became too much. I couldn’t even look at her teapot without seeing blood on the bathroom floor. And, apparently, now I can’t even think her name without seeing that image.

  I clear my throat and say, “I don’t burn coffee. Let me…” I step around her and make a pot before going to change out of my sleep clothes. It’s remarkable she didn’t comment on my shorts and worn t-shirt. I throw on a sweatshirt and jeans, brush my teeth, and find her with a cup of coffee on the futon when I reemerge. “So, what brings you here this morning?”

  “We need to talk.”

  I sigh. “Let me at least get my mug first.”

  Once I do, and join her on the futon, she turns part way to me and starts, “You can’t just say your baby died and then not talk about it.”

  “That’s what this is about?” It feels like someone stabbed me in the stomach. Jesus, all it took was moving across the country to pull away the numbness? “I don’t—”

  “Oh, please,” she scoffs. She pulls out a breakfast sandwich wrapped in foil and tosses it to me. “This is payment for your story. I’m a good secret keeper, I promise.”

  “This isn’t nearly payment enough,” I answer. “I’ll need some secrets from you, too.”

  She laughs. “I like a good barter system. Okay, deal. I have some juicy ones.”

  I unwrap the sandwich and stare down at it. “Where do I start?”

  “The beginning, of course.”

  Macie and I caught fire from one tiny spark of attraction. Her beauty terrified me, but I let myself get close anyway. She was at a bar, surrounded by friends and rebuffing every guy who wanted to talk to her. A classmate from George Washington University told me her group regularly frequented that bar, so I took a chance. I leaned across the bar toward the bartender and asked if he knew her favorite drink, and when he said yes, I had him send one to her from me. She took the drink, followed the bartender’s finger in my direction, and gave me a smile. I went over and shook her hand, surprised by the zap of electricity that shot through me.