Home, Sweet Haunt

The reporter arrived before the fire truck. Through her bedroom window, Nora Wilson saw a woman with long blond hair standing on the sidewalk holding a microphone. A cameraman stood opposite, panning up and down the building as the woman spoke.

Nora couldn't hear what the lady said. All she could do was watch the perfectly dressed, glamorous woman gesture toward the tenth floor and point. Nora waved at the camera, desperately hoping that the fire truck was on its way.

The apartment was hot.

Too hot.

The smoke burned Nora's eyes. It filled her lungs
and made her cough. Her hair was streaked dark with soot and covered with white speckled ash.

“Step back!” Through the living room, she could hear neighbors trying to break through the apartment door and shouting directions to Nora's parents.

“Lie down on the floor!” Mrs. Daugherty, the elderly woman who lived next door in 10G, called out. “Try to breathe as little as possible!”

“The door is swollen and stuck,” a man, whose voice Nora didn't recognize, shouted before something metal slammed against the hinges. “It won't open.”

A minute later, the sirens arrived and the voices of Nora's neighbors disappeared.

Nora wanted them to stay.

But deep inside, she understood. It wasn't safe. Her neighbors had to leave the building. The firefighters would take over.

The sirens outside whistled and whirred. Inside, a wicked crackling noise echoed through the apartment as the fire spread from the kitchen into the living room.

“On your left!” Nora could hear her father barking orders at her mother as they fought the growing flames
with blankets, buckets of water, and a small kitchen fire extinguisher.

Nora didn't have to leave her room to know that anything outside her bedroom door, including the furniture, the TV, the photos and artwork—twelve years of Nora's life—was quickly turning into hot, white ash.

“Nora.” Her mother crawled on her belly, like a snake, into the bedroom. Nora's dad slithered along behind her. “Where's Lucas?”

Nora's eight-year-old brother was huddled in a corner of the room, tented under a wet towel. Normally an annoying chatterbox, he hadn't said a word since the fire began.

“The fire is out of control,” Nora's dad reported. “We need to stay in here.” He shut the bedroom door, dumped a bucket of water on Nora's floral comforter, and stuffed it into the narrow space between the door and the floor. “The fire department will break through the front.” He put his hand over Nora's and entwined their fingers. “We'll be fine.”

Nora gave her dad a weak smile.

He looked tired. The rims of his eyes were red, and soot covered his hands and face. But he wasn't panicked.

Nora's father and mother were calm about the whole situation. Even her mother, when the oven wiring burst into flames, remained coolly focused. She was a nurse, after all, used to seeing trauma and dealing with emergencies. Her father was an airline pilot who'd flown fighter jets. If they were worried about the fire, they didn't show it. And that kept Nora and Lucas calm as well.

There seemed to be no reason for any of them to be anxious. The firefighters had arrived. Either Nora and her family would soon be downstairs talking to that reporter . . . or . . .

Nora shook off the alternative.

There was nothing left to do but wait.

“Don't open the window,” Nora's father warned.

“I know.” He'd already told her that there was something called “backdraft.” If oxygen entered a sealed room too quickly, there could be a terrible explosion.

Nora rocked onto her knees and stared out at the commotion on the street below. The fire trucks had attached to hydrants. Nora could see the professional men and women wearing heavy black-and-yellow jackets, dragging long gray hoses into the building.

That pretty blond reporter was still there. She wasn't hot and sweating, eyes running, lips parched, covered in smelly ash, barely able to inhale.

No. The reporter still looked gorgeous. Clean white blouse. Straight black skirt. Not one hair out of place.

Nora could see her neighbors gathered on the street. It was early morning, and Mrs. Daugherty was wearing a tattered pink bathrobe with matching fuzzy slippers. Her thin gray hair was rolled in curlers. She was talking to the reporter.

Nora continued to look out the glass, careful not to touch the heated pane.

Backdraft. There was no need for her father to even mention it—Nora couldn't have opened the window if she tried. The lock had been broken, stuck in place, ever since the day her family had moved into the top floor of the ten-story apartment complex.

Her dad had filed a maintenance report. Many maintenance reports.

For twelve years, the property manager had sworn he'd fix it. And the locks on the other windows. And the sticky front door. And the prehistoric oven wiring . . .

TWO MONTHS LATER

Nora used to have a normal life. It was so normal it was boring. She went to school, did her homework, hung out with her friends, had dinner with her family, and avoided her irritating younger brother.

That was before. Before the fire swept through their apartment and her parents changed into nervous freaks.

The fire was in late August. When the school year started in September, her parents wouldn't let her or Lucas out of the apartment. Seriously. Not even into the hallway.

They wanted to be with Nora and Lucas all the time. Protect them from the world. Nora's parents, who had
never been afraid of anything, were suddenly afraid to let their children out of their sight.

For weeks after the fire, Nora insisted that “lightning doesn't strike the same place twice,” but her parents said she was wrong.

Her father understood weather patterns. He told Nora that the Empire State Building was hit by lightning as many as one hundred times each year. Her mother was frantic with worry that something bad might happen again.

Nora tried everything she could think of to convince them they were being overprotective. But they wouldn't bend.

Her mother quit her job to homeschool them. Her father quit his job to stay at home as well. They disconnected the Internet. Never replaced the TV, cell phones, or computers that had melted in the flames. Their furniture was charred and all their clothing smelled like barbecue. It didn't matter how many times the shirts and pants were washed.

Nora longed for the old kind of normal. She wished things would go back to the old kind of boring. She'd never complain again.

“Pssst.” Lucas stuck his shaggy brown head into Nora's bedroom. He was wearing pajama pants and a matching shirt. “Whatcha doing?”

Nora sighed. Before the fire her brother had bugged her, but at least she hadn't had to spend all day, every day, with him.

It was on Nora's tongue to say
None of your business
and toss Lucas out of her room, but she knew that the fire and everything after had been hard for him, too.

Before, Lucas had been creative, adventurous, and an expert at talking his way out of trouble. Stuck in the apartment, Lucas had no use for his skills. With nowhere to go and not much to do, he channeled all his energy into annoying Nora.

Unfortunately, Lucas had a lot of energy to channel.

Her mother told Nora to be nice.

It was hard, super hard, but since she didn't have any one else to hang out with, she tried her best.

Instead of booting her brother out of the room, Nora moved over on the bed to let Lucas sit next to her. In exchange for promising her parents that she'd be nice, Nora had gotten permission to push her bed over by the window. The lock still didn't open, but at least she could
look outside. There were a few shops and a park across the street.

Lucas piled Nora's pillows so that he could lie down and look outside at the same time. “Still staring out the window every morning?” her brother asked.

“And afternoon,” Nora said.

“You never give up, do you?”

That wasn't really a question, so Nora didn't reply. It was 7:37. Three more minutes. She didn't want to miss seeing her friends. This was the only way.

A few days after the fire, Nora had tried calling them on the only phone (cell or otherwise) that wasn't destroyed in the fire—the one in her parents' bedroom—but the connection was always bad. Although she could hear them perfectly, they could never hear her. Figuring the heat from the flames had melted the wiring, Nora asked her parents to contact the telephone company. That was around the time they called a “family meeting” to announce that they were both quitting their jobs, staying at home, and letting the less important bills lapse. They could no longer afford phones, Internet, and cable TV.

“I have to try,” Nora told Lucas. “Maybe if Hallie and Lindsay finally look up at my window, they will see me
and come over. There's no way my friends could have forgotten me already.”

Seven thirty-eight. She couldn't be distracted. “You can stay here,” she told Lucas, “but no talking.”

Lucas said, “Even if they did see you, Mom and Dad would never—”

Nora whipped her head around and shot him an evil look. “Shhhh.” She put a finger to her lips.

Lucas changed the subject. “Forget about them. We can have an adventure together today. I found this really great—”

“Quiet!” Nora hissed, interrupting him for the second time. “I
have
to pay attention.” Just past the park was an apartment building much like Nora's. The exterior had the same old-fashioned classic brickwork, but the inside had been renovated. None of their windows were stuck shut, and all their wiring worked.

Hallie and Lindsay lived in that building. In apartments on the same floor, next door to each other.

Nora had only one minute twenty-three seconds to get their attention. That was how long it took them to leave the building, walk by the park, and turn the corner toward school.

Today was the day they'd look up.