Fiction
The Burn
An attempt to use every May Word-A-Day prompt in one story
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TW: fire, injury
Niamh Kelly sure knew how to throw a party. Any occasion, any time of year: she was your girl if you wanted to throw a rager. She was the only girl I knew who could turn a memorial into an excuse to get wasted and blast EDM in somebody’s basement. I watched her curiously, wondering what series of events had led me here.
Already tipsy, she was filling a line of red solo cups for the first round of beer pong and explaining the rules loudly to a beefy dude in a hockey jersey. Brian, was it? We’d been introduced, but Niamh’s friends were like migratory birds — they went their separate ways for months at a time before flocking together again for the next party, with never quite the same arrangement of people. Brian or whateverhisnamewas would probably be around for a weekend or a semester before flying the coop, like most of her admirers.
I’d known Niamh since Kindergarten. Our older siblings — Niamh’s sister and my brother — had dated on and off since eighth grade. I was always that weird tagalong, following Niamh to parties and picnics and the mall when she hung out with the popular kids. Although invisible to everyone else, Niamh saw me; she understood me in a way no one else did. I liked to think I understood her too, though some things about her still mystified me after all these years.
I slumped against the wall, holding my untouched drink to my lips every so often so as not to appear prudish. Tonight’s party was courtesy of a holiday called Beltane — an ancient Irish tradition, Niamh assured me as we stood in line to pay for the beer.
“An ancient custom of the tribe of Kelly!” she explained under the sterile fluorescent lights of the LCBO. “A most delightful fiesta to celebrate the incoming summer — booze and a bonfire, need I say more?”
She paid for the beer with her dad’s credit card.
So here I was, babysitting yet another party. It was only eight o’clock, and the crowd — ever growing — was restless and rowdy. Someone with a prescription for medicinal marijuana (they had announced so loudly) was passing a blunt around; it wasn’t too skunky, but I hated to think what the furniture would smell like tomorrow.
Taking my role of co-host very seriously — even though no one had appointed me, and it wasn’t my basement — I asked the smoker to step outside with his contraband. For my trouble, I got a smoke ring blown in my face, but he did ascend the stairs and let himself out the back, which I considered a win.
“You’ll never have fun with that sort of mentality,” someone close to my shoulder said. I just about jumped out of my skin, feeling her breath on the back of my neck.
For a moment, I thought she was Niamh. Niamh liked to startle me; it was part of her charm, really, that she lacked boundaries.
The person who had spoken wasn’t Niamh, but one of the migratory birds. She had blond hair with the tips dyed pink and bright red lipstick that was smeared a little on one side from drinking out of her red solo cup. Her pupils looked unnaturally dilated. I raised my eyebrows at her and hmmed noncommittally.
“Let me enlighten you,” she said, speaking far more articulately than I expected from someone in her condition. “When at a party, it is customary to consume the alcohol in one’s cup, rather than just pretending to.”
I felt the back of my neck flushing, unaccustomed to being called out. Nobody noticed me at Niamh’s parties, usually. I was a wallflower, silently observing, participating only when asked directly by the hostess. I liked to narrate the events unfolding as though doing a voice-over for a nature documentary. And now the young females are forming a dance circle, performing the mating ritual.
To be looked at, rather than doing the looking, was new for me. I instinctively looked across the room for Niamh, feeling the slightest jolt of panic. She was laughing, touching Brian’s arm. His competitor sunk a ping pong ball into one of Brian’s cups and let out a drunken, victorious cheer.
“I don’t come to parties to get drunk,” I said lamely.
“No, I don’t suppose you do.”
I gave this girl a hard look, then. She was wearing a mix of styles that clashed pleasantly: a ratty vintage jean jacket over a crop top, wide-legged plaid pants cinched with a chunky studded belt, and a shiny leather bag that, if I had to guess, looked like it cost more than my car.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Someone turned the music up and I felt my voice getting lost under the bassline. She shrugged and took a sip from her cup, further smearing her lipstick. Acting as if she were Niamh, my automatic response was to reach out and correct the smudge with my thumb.
I pulled my hand away quickly. “Your lipstick — ” I explained quickly, but she just laughed and waved me off.
“Maternal instinct!” she said loudly over the music. “You’re the mom friend!”
I frowned. “I’m not the mom friend,” I said.
“You are, though!” she said, gesturing to my full cup. “You won’t let go and have fun because you’re too busy takin’ care of everybody and worrying about the furniture!”
I hated that she was right. My hackles were raised, waiting for someone to light up a joint so that I could tell them to take it outside. My gaze strayed to Niamh involuntarily every so often, to check that she was okay and that Brian wasn’t misbehaving. I was worried about the furniture. I did periodically check the bathrooms in case someone was throwing up or OD’ing on drugs.
I had been satisfied being Niamh’s uptight wallflower friend for too long and this girl — I hadn’t even gotten her name — was calling me out. I made a resolution at that moment to let go a little. I would be a senior in college next semester and I’d never gotten shitfaced at one of Niamh’s parties — it was a travesty.
Steeling my resolve like a soldier going off to war, I downed my drink in three quick gulps. I thought I heard the girl whistle, but it was hard to know for sure over the remixed pop song thrumming in my teeth. It was a stellar performance, I thought; the role of a lifetime, laid-back partygoer!
“I’m not the mom friend tonight!” I told her, as if I had something to prove. “I’m just Alex!”
“To ‘Just Alex’!” she said, raising her own cup to her lips and draining it. “Let’s get you another drink!”
One more drink turned into three as we managed to scavenge some beers from Niamh’s hoard behind the sofa. She told me her name was Clementine, then Sage, then Juniper. With every drink her name changed. Mine was always Just Alex.
We danced when the song changed to something she found amusing. I met Niamh’s eyes, somehow, near the bottom of my fourth drink. Niamh seemed surprised to see me dancing and drinking. The emergence of this New Alex seemed to intrigue her.
I turned away from Niamh’s curious gaze, burying my flushed face into Juniper’s neck. One hand holding a half-full beer (my fourth? fifth?), I pulled Juniper closer to me and began to sway unsteadily, completely off-beat with the music. Juniper laughed: I felt it in my sternum and throat. Being this close to her felt like indulging in a decadent dessert; the smell of her skin was sweet and made me feel slightly delirious, intoxicated. Or maybe that was the alcohol.
Niamh announced that it was time to light the bonfire. The party began to migrate toward the backyard in anticipation, the current round of beer pong abandoned for the promise of fire and sparklers.
Normally, I would be the one filling a bucket with water; assembling a teepee of dry branches and wood from the pile behind the shed; adding a layer of dryer lint or newspaper for kindling; lighting the match; cupping my hands over my mouth to blow on a glowing ember, coaxing the fire to grow, gently but surely, into a size and shape safe for roasting marshmallows or hot dogs.
Not tonight. Tonight, my heart was leaping in my throat as Juniper’s fingers grazed the skin where the waist of my jeans met my t-shirt. Her touch was electric. Somebody else could light the fire. Somebody sober, preferably.
Eventually, the pull of peer pressure moved us toward the stairs. Juniper kept hold of my wrist as we moved among the last few partygoers in the migration toward the backyard. Through the glass patio doors, I saw that someone had already set up the fire; it was burning low and slow, just as I would have done.
I moved toward the door, but Juniper’s hand on my wrist pulled me in the other direction. I followed her lead without question, downing the rest of my drink and depositing my cup on top of the piano as we passed through the living room. The sounds of the party dulled slightly as Juniper walked purposefully through the house with me on her heels.
We walked upstairs, the one area of the house completely untouched by the party. I didn’t question it as Juniper opened the door to Niamh’s bedroom and led me inside by the hand. Only when she closed the door behind us did I stop to wonder what we were doing here; it occurred to me only vaguely that Niamh wouldn’t want us in her bedroom.
“C’mere,” Juniper said, dropping my wrist in favor of grabbing the back of my neck with both hands. She pulled me into a kiss that tasted like a distillery smells. My hands remained awkwardly at my sides as she pushed her body against mine, backing me up against the door.
Once my brain kicked into gear, I kissed her back. I felt like I had dived into the ocean and resurfaced with a new clarity of mind. Juniper — not her real name, I was sure — had taken me away from the party to make out. A girl was kissing me. A very pretty girl. A very pretty girl who smelled really good.
The world fell away. Juniper kissed the corner of my mouth, dragged her lower lip across my cheek, and then latched onto my earlobe with her teeth. Her hands wandered all over me. There was no rhyme or reason to her movements, her touches. I tried to follow her lead, but I felt like she was following a script and I was a clueless understudy, thrown on stage without my lines.
I stumbled as she pulled me without warning away from the door and toward Niamh’s bed. I was a jumble of limbs, awkwardly flailing as she pulled me down on top of her. Our teeth clashed together, and I winced. She laughed and wiped my cheek with her hand where what was left of her lipstick had been deposited.
She kissed me again, breathlessly and softly, before pulling away again the next second.
“You wanna…?” she asked, bumping her nose against mine.
“Want to?” I asked, trying to keep up.
She sighed dramatically and took my hand, moving it to her belt. “Sample the local cuisine?”
“Oh? Ohh. Um.” I fumbled at her belt for a second, feeling a rushing in my ears and blood rising to my cheeks. “Yeah. Yes. I haven’t — but yeah, sure.”
She grabbed my hands, which had just made it to the button of her fly, and looked at me seriously. “You haven’t done this before?”
“No.”
She barked out a laugh, and then covered her mouth with both hands. “Sorry! Sorry. I just — a virgin friend of Niamh’s? You’re an endangered species.”
Trying to be suave, I raised an eyebrow at her in what I hoped was a seductive way. “Well, I hope so. Put me out of my misery, Juniper.”
“Shannon,” she said. “It’s actually Shannon. We shouldn’t — I mean, this isn’t really — and you should know my name if we — ”
I kissed her, taking the lead. My head was spinning, but all I kept thinking was: if not tonight, when? The fact that we were in Niamh’s room — on her bed — didn’t occur to me. The sounds of the party in the basement below were dulled, distant.
There are moments in your life that you remember with a kind of clarity that makes all your other memories seem unreal and pixelated. I remember undoing Shannon’s chunky belt, black leather with silver studs. I remember the way she shimmied out of her pants. I remember the smell and taste of her, the warmth of her skin, the pinpricks of pain in my scalp as she pulled on my hair.
Dizzy from the alcohol and excitement, I remember bumping my head against her knee softly as she slung her leg over my shoulder. The rushing in my ears has dissipated, leaving in its wake the thrumming of my own heart which seemed to match the beat of the music from the party below us.
I remember her pulling me up by my hair to kiss her again. I remember her hand undoing my fly deftly, reaching her hand inside my pants and touching me with sure fingers.
I remember the word “oh,” leaving my mouth against her mouth, and then the wrong name coming to my lips: not Shannon or even Juniper, Sage, or Clementine…
So softly I hoped she hadn’t heard it, I said the name “Niamh.”
Time slowed. There was a flash from the window. It wasn’t quite like a camera flash. It was a warm glow and a cascade of sparks.
I remember that rush of pure adrenaline when I heard the first scream: not the woo of an excited girl when her song comes on, but a scream of terror. A deep bellow of a man joined her voice. Others, yelling.
For a moment my body froze. Shannon’s grip on my hair slackened as she turned to the window, which was aglow with firelight.
We sprung apart. I stumbled to the window and looked down on the backyard. A column of smoke obscured the scene, but through the smoke, I saw a figure moving, robed in heat and light —
Someone was on fire.
My heart in my throat, I backed away from the window.
No, I thought. That can’t be right. The fire was small. It was small and contained and someone sober was watching it — someone had to be in charge. Someone had to —
Shannon had her pants back on before my body began to move again, to the door, down the stairs, into the kitchen. Mechanically, or perhaps in a trance, I located the fire extinguisher in the pantry and followed the sound of screaming.
It had to have been only a minute, but felt longer, time crawling as I shouldered my way past the frantic, panicking bodies pouring into the living room, and out the glass door.
I pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger as I broke through the line and felt the heat on my face. A spray of white — what is it in a fire extinguisher, anyway?
Two writhing shapes on the ground moaning. Who was it? Who?
Someone had grabbed a blanket off the couch and threw it over one of them. The flames were out but the air was so thick with smoke I couldn’t see. I remember the dull thud of the spent extinguisher hitting the grass as I let it go.
What do you do for burns once the fire is out? Did they Stop, Drop, and Roll? Why were there no sirens? Had no one called 911?
Clarity: the smoke cleared and I could see. What I could see, then, was that Brian had gotten the worst of it. I wondered if they’d be able to save his hands. He lay crumpled and whimpering, still conscious, holding out his hands. I turned away, unable to look.
“Call 911,” I said, but the smoke caught my voice. The music, which had somehow still been playing, suddenly cut out. I pointed to someone and repeated in a louder voice, “Call 911.”
Someone had already called: Shannon was on the phone with them on the landing, not daring to come closer. Someone in the kitchen as well, sobbing into her iPhone. The boy I pointed to fumbled for his phone and called, began babbling.
I heard the words but only processed perhaps one in five: Bonfire. Gasoline. Explosion. Lakeshore Drive. Ambulance. Hurry.
I saw a few girls sitting against the fence, marveling at bright red patches on their hands and arms as I moved toward the second shape in the grass. She was wrapped in a blanket from the living room, shivering. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were moving but no sound came out.
“I’m here,” I said, crouching beside her. “It’s Alex. I’m here.”
I almost said the words, ‘You’re okay,’ and ‘It’ll be okay,’ but they died in my throat. This wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay.
I sat with Niamh until the ambulance arrived. Those minutes passed the slowest in my life. Brian was unconscious by then: a blessing. His burns were significant. Hands and arms and chest and one side of his face. Niamh had been luckier, had had a second to turn away from the explosion and shield her face with her arms.
I sat in the grass until well after the ambulances had gone to the hospital with Niamh and Brian. A few other girls, with less severe burns, were driven to the ER by a neighbour. The entire neighbourhood was lit up and awake, craning their necks from the street to see the carnage.
I sat there in the midst of it, the backyard that was now a crater of smoke and ash and the smell of burnt flesh and fear. That was where we used to build blanket-forts, I thought hysterically, looking at the blackened grass. We used to sleep side-by-side under the stars here.
Shannon found me and lowered herself beside me. The warmth of her bare arm against my bare arm seemed to burn, and I flinched away from her touch.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she said, as though reading my mind.
“No,” I said, not looking at her. “It was yours.”
I remember the sound she made. It was something between a sob and a laugh. I would later regret saying that to her. I had made my own choices that night. I had chosen to abandon the party to follow Shannon. It had been my decision too.
Brian had chosen to siphon some gas from his car to make the fire bigger. He had chosen to pour the gasoline onto the fire, with the fumes of it in his mouth and on his hands.
His choices led to the explosion, not mine or Shannon’s. But I felt responsible. In my heart, I had always felt responsible for Niamh. I had promised to protect her when we were just eight years old. We would hold hands to cross the street when we walked to school.
Her scars would forever remind me of that broken promise. She would never blame me, of course. Niamh didn’t ask me to be the fire marshal or to stay sober to supervise. She never assumed that I would, either, and had been happy to see me enjoying the party.
But I would know.
I would know that her name had come to mind with another woman’s hand in my pants. I would know that, deep down, part of me had wished it were Niamh that led me upstairs to her bedroom. I would know that the drinking and the dancing had been for her benefit, not mine.
Notice me, my soul had screamed.
And when her eyes turned away and her hand reached for Brian — well. I would know that my judgement had been clouded. That I should have been there, as her friend, to have a water bucket beside the fire and to tell Brian not to fuck with gasoline.
If I had been braver…
Shannon stood and left without a word. I closed my eyes and felt the cool night air on my hot skin, burning with shame.
Thank you to Christine Graves for compiling this list of words, one for each day in May. Rather than use them correctly as individual prompts, I’ve decided to use them all in one story. They are not in the correct order, but all 31 do appear in some form (and are bolded) throughout the story.
This turned out much darker than I anticipated when I started writing it, but the outcome of automatic writing is often unexpected! Thank you also to Ravyne Hawke and Promptly Written for continuing to publish my work, and for choosing my sepigram “Sink or Swim” as the winner of the April Poetry Writing Challenge.
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