Gasp (Visions) (3 page)

“Why don’t you ever answer your fucking phone?” Trey shouts, and I feel his breath hit my face. He stares at me, his face breaking. “We have to go.”

My stomach twists. “What? What is it? What happened?”

“It’s not Dad,” he says quietly. “It’s . . . it’s worse. Come on!”

“What is it?” I nearly
scream as my brother races down the hallway to the elevator. I chase after him.

Trey stops in front of the closed elevator doors and turns so we’re standing face-to-face. His dark eyes are pooled with fear and he works his jaw like he does when he’s trying not to cry. “It’s a fire,” he says.

I stare. “What?”

“The restaurant,” he says, his voice cracking. “It’s on fire.”

My throat is closed. I am unable to choke out a single word. I hear Sawyer swear under his breath from somewhere behind me. I didn’t hear him approach. I didn’t hear anything. And then he’s explaining things in gibberish to the interns and security guards who have followed
us, apologizing, and then when the people stop crowding around us he’s ushering Trey and me into the open elevator and pushing the buttons.

The elevator door closes and my senses return.

“Holy shit,” I say. “Oh my God—Rowan?”

“She’s fine. She’s the one who called me.”

“What about Mom and Dad? Tony? Aunt Mary?”

Trey shakes his head, dazed. “I don’t know anything else for sure. Rowan was pretty hysterical. She and Tony and Mom were the only ones in the restaurant, and when she called me she was standing outside with Tony. She said she thought Mom got out but now she can’t find her. . . .”

“Oh my God, Mom!” I scream.

The elevator door opens to a few curious stares. Sawyer pulls us out of the hospital and points in the direction of the car. We start running, blindly snaking around buildings and down car-lined streets. I pull my phone out of my pocket and see I have three messages. One from Rowan, two from Trey.

“Shit,” I say, nearly tripping on a crack in the sidewalk. I dial Rowan, and she answers.

“Rowan! What’s happening?”

“Did you find Trey?” She’s sobbing.

“Yes, he’s with me now. Is Mom okay?”

“I don’t know!” Rowan screams. “Just get here!”

“Oh my God,” I say as I climb into Sawyer’s car. “What about Dad?”

“I don’t know! I haven’t seen him, and the firefighters won’t let me get any closer. Tony’s running around to the front and he told me to stay here and watch for them.” Her voice hitches in a sob. “Just hurry up!”

“We’re driving. Sawyer’s going as fast as he can. We’ll be there in less than an hour.”

“Forty minutes,” Sawyer says.

“Forty minutes,” I tell Rowan. “Just, whatever you do, stay safe! And call me when you find Mom and Dad.”

“I will.”

I hang up. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

From the backseat Trey says, “She told me it was just her and Tony in the kitchen and Mom was out in the dining area. There were only a couple of customers . . .” He trails off. “Tony must have spilled some oil or something.”

“Or it could’ve been a pan on the stove. . . .” Only three of them working. So Dad must have been upstairs. Neither of us says it.

Sawyer grips the wheel and stays silent, concentrating on the road. If we talk, I don’t remember any of it. All I need to focus on is that Rowan is okay.

•  •  •

When we get close to home, we can see the lights of police and fire vehicles. The whole block is cordoned
off and the sky is filled with smoke, lit up by spectacular, horrible flames. Sawyer parks as close as he can, and Trey and I jump out of the car, pound the pavement, and dodge onlookers, searching for Rowan in the back parking lot.

And she’s there, a stranger’s blanket draped around her. Trey and I run to her and fold her in our arms and hold her. Her phone shakes in her hand and her face is streaked with tears. “They’re okay,” she says. “They’re on the other side. Dad was on a delivery . . . I didn’t know . . .”

“Mom and Dad?” I ask, making sure before the hope can rise too far. “Both of them are okay?”

“Yeah. Tony just called me—Mom twisted her ankle helping customers get out. She crawled out and has been stuck on the other side all this time trying to find me and calling me from other people’s cell phones because she left hers in the restaurant. But I wasn’t answering because I was trying to call her and you guys and Tony and Dad. Dad was doing the last delivery, which I didn’t even know about, and he’s back now, and they’re both fine.” She releases a shuddering sigh. “Tony and Dad are helping Mom walk around the block to meet us here.”

“Thank God,” Trey says. He hugs us both again. And then we hear warning shouts from firefighters who have been spraying down the buildings on either side of ours—a florist on one side and a bike shop on the other, with apartments above, just like ours. Their buildings are so close to
ours that there’s no possible way the entire block hasn’t gone up in flames, yet there they are, bricks scorched but no sign of interior flames so far. We turn back and stare at our restaurant . . . and our home.

The firefighters’ shouts grow louder. They begin to push back from the building, and with a roar and a rush of gasps, the roof falls in on everything we own, everything my parents have worked their entire lives for, everything my father has collected and hoarded for the past ten years. The sparks fly like shooting stars into the night sky.

•  •  •

We stay all night.

Not because we have nowhere else to go. We stay because our parents won’t leave, and we won’t leave them.

My father’s face is like an old worn painting, gray and cracking. He looks eighty years old today as he watches, mourning his business and his precious hoards of recipes and treasures. My mother fusses over us for a while, telling us not to worry. Telling us that we’ll get more clothes, of all things—right there in the middle of the parking lot, with her whole life crashing down in front of her, Mom is worried about us being upset that we have nothing to change into. How does one become this person? I don’t know.

I don’t think my father even notices that Sawyer is there, bringing blankets and food and water and collapsible sports chairs from neighbors and I don’t know where else so
we can sit down on something other than the cold cement curb of the parking lot. My mother notices, though. When he shows her the chair, she puts her hand on his arm, thanks him with her wet eyes, and sits. He nods and presses his lips together, and I realize how much it means to him to have her approval.

Sawyer hovers nearby. Rowan, Trey, and I all sit together in birth order, thinking about all the things we’ll never see again, and every once in a while stating the obvious: “Everything is gone.” But it’s not everything. It’s weird. I have my boyfriend, my siblings, my parents. I’ll miss the pillow I pretended was Sawyer. My favorite pajama shirt. My hairbrush and clothes and makeup. But I realize there isn’t much else up there that’s all mine. Certainly there was no space up there that was all mine. These people—this is what’s mine.

I look around, realizing Tony has gone home. “How did it start?” I ask Rowan after a while.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“But you were in the kitchen, right?”

“Yeah. But it didn’t start there, or we might’ve been able to put it out. Tony and I grabbed fire extinguishers as soon as we heard the smoke alarms, but it was already too late and we had to get out of there.”

Weird. I heard my parents warning us about fire hazards in the galley so often that I figured restaurant
fires must always start in the kitchen. “I guess they’ll investigate.”

Rowan shrugs. Nothing is important right now. I look at Trey and he looks at me, and I don’t know what to say or do. Nothing is adequate to express how I am feeling. As we turn our eyes back to the smoldering remains of our lives, I hold his arm and rest my head on his shoulder, and we speak at the same time.

He says, “Happy birthday.”

And I say, “Did you make out?”

And we look at each other again, absolutely beside ourselves with the strangeness of this all.

“Thanks,” I answer. “Best one yet.”

“No,” he says. “But he touched my face and kissed me.”

And that’s the thing that makes me start to cry.

In the morning, Sawyer reluctantly
leaves to get ready for school. Neighbors and people from my parents’ church come with clothes and food, and we don’t know what to do with it all. We put it in the meatball truck and try to figure out where to go from here. There have been offers, but no one is able to put all five of us up together for more than a few nights. I guess hoarders don’t tend to have a lot of friends.

Is it wrong that I’m okay with that?

Is it wrong that I don’t want to go live in some other person’s house?

Now that the fire has been mostly out for hours, the lack of flames helps Dad focus. “We’ll go to Vito and Mary’s,” he says. My uncle Vito and aunt Mary, our hostess, have
four kids. The oldest, my cousin Nick, occasionally works—worked—for the restaurant on the pizza holidays. Night before Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Super Bowl, prom. Days like those. Nick has three sisters. It’s hard to keep track of how old they are, or even which one is which—they’re a lot younger and they all look sort of the same. And I’m sorry, but there’s not enough room in their house.

“I’ll stay with a friend,” Trey offers.

“Me too,” I say. Yeah, right. I have none.

Rowan frowns. “I’ll go with Jules.”

“We’re all staying with Mary,” Dad says, and it’s clear that now is not the time to argue. “At least for now.”

•  •  •

When it’s finally clear to my dad that the firefighters aren’t going to let him poke around in the still-burning embers, we pack up the meatball truck and the delivery car and drive away with everything we own. We park in the elementary school parking lot across the street from Aunt Mary’s house. We drag our bags of random donations inside and crash in Aunt Mary’s living room while her kids are in school.

•  •  •

When I wake up, it’s two in the afternoon. I have a crick in my neck and for a minute I can’t figure out where I am. But then I hear my mom and dad talking about insurance and it all comes back to me.

Five things that rush through your brain when you wake up midday in a strange place after your house burns down:

1. It feels like somebody died.

2. I wonder what the losers at school are saying about this.

3. I guess that’s one way to get rid of all Dad’s shit.

4. My hair absolutely reeks.

5. Oh yeah, it’s my birthday.

Wait. One more thought:

6. Um, why didn’t anyone have a vision to help prevent this?

From the reclining chair I’ve been sleeping in, I watch my parents talking at the kitchen table. My dad looks like he got hit by a truck. His hair is all messed up and his face is gray leather. I don’t think he slept much. Mom looks tired, but not as bad as my dad. She’s always been stronger than him. I get up and venture over to them.

Mom looks up and sees me. She smiles and points to a chair. “Did you sleep okay, birthday girl?”

My lips try to smile, but for some stupid reason I’m overcome by the fact that in the midst of this mess, my mother remembers it’s my birthday, so I do this weird
screwed-up face instead. “Not bad, considering it’s a lumpy chair. I just want a shower.”

“You’ve got about an hour before your cousins get home,” she says. “Aunt Mary has everything you’ll need in the bathroom.”

I get up, and she grabs my hand. I stop.

“We had gifts for you,” she says through pinched lips.

I swallow hard and feel dumb that I’m so emotional about this. The whole house and restaurant is gone, and I feel sorry for myself because my birthday presents burned up. “I don’t need anything,” I say. “I wasn’t even going to mention it.”

“I know.” She squeezes my hand. “We’ll all go out for dinner—the five of us, I mean. For your birthday.”

I glance at my dad, and he nods. He pats his shirt pocket. “I have my delivery tips to pay for it.”

It’s a joke.

My dad made a joke.

And I remember when I used to love him.

Sawyer calls when I’m putting
on some stranger’s donated clothes.

“Happy birthday,” he says. “I love you. What do you need most for your birthday?”

“Besides you?”

“Besides me.”

“A phone charger.”

“That can be arranged. What else?”

I think about this stranger’s bra I’m wearing that doesn’t quite fit, and cringe. “Some . . . you know. Embarrassing schtuff.”

“Ahhm . . . ,” he says, and I can tell he has no idea where to begin. He guesses. “Like panty liner shit? And whatever else? ’Cause Kate’s got like a whole drawer full of
that stuff and she said I could bring you whatever.” Kate is Sawyer’s college-aged cousin who he moved in with after his dad gave him a black eye.

“Thankfully, no.” I think about how much it would suck to have your house burn down on the night before your birthday and also get your period, and I realize things could actually be worse. “Like underwear.” I blush. Apparently we haven’t gotten to the underwear-discussion stage in our relationship.

“Hey, that’s perfect—according to my sources, underwear is the five-week-dating anniversary gift,” he says. “Can we go shopping today? Or are you too busy with . . . uh . . .”

“With wearing a stranger’s underwear?”

“Yeah.” He laughs.

“I can probably sneak out of here for a couple hours. I’ll need to be home in time to do my birthday dinner, which should be a wild party.” I search through Aunt Mary’s bathroom cupboards for a hair dryer. “Can you pick me up in thirty minutes?”

“Aren’t your parents around?”

“I don’t care. I’m getting out of here for a while, and I’m leaving with you, and it’s too bad if they see me. They have enough other stuff to get ridiculous about.”

He hesitates. “I don’t want to cause them any more stress.”

I pause. “No, it’s cool. I’ll talk to my mom. She’s starting to dig you a little.”

“She is?”

“Don’t tell her I told you.”