And the Light Fades (chapter 1 part 2)

Blue light falls through the window of the attic, we cross the yard and Mom’s shadow is visible above us. My shoes splatter mud against the concrete walk way, I have to watch or Beaver will trip me. Sophia is waiting at the door for me. I open it and step inside to hold it back so she can get in, her arms full with the telescope and her notebooks.

Beaver runs in after Sophia. The cat steps quickly like there is something sticking to her black paws, weaving her way through Sophia’s legs. They both disappear into the kitchen. In the quiet house the stairs creak behind me. I turn around, Mom is standing—I count quickly—on the fifth step, her eyes glazed, leaning on the banister. She holds a lighter in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She doesn’t move when I call to her.

She looks drunk but I know that’s not what is wrong, she’s been like this before. Her head rolls to the side; the banister holds her weight, which isn’t much. Her strawberry blond hair falls into her face, a curtain over the white rod of the barrier. The lighter and cigarette seem like they are going to fall off the edge of the world, along with Mom’s sanity. Suzanna Averyson doesn’t make a sound, she just stares. It’s not usually this bad. Her hollowed eyes look off into space; I can’t tell if she’s looking down at me or behind me.

“Alyce!” Sophia calls from the kitchen; my eyes move away from my mother toward her voice. There is panic in her tone; it sends shivers spiraling down my spine. I take a deep breath and glance back at Mom. Her head is in the clouds, nothing but starry space occupying her eyes. She is rolling the papery tube of her cigarette between her fingers. Something rattles in the kitchen and Sophia curses.

I turn and walk around the couch my feet sinking slightly in the gray carpet. When I walk through the kitchen door, I can see Mom’s reflection in the mirror that hangs beside the entrance way. Beaver has descended the stairs and gently rubs up against her leg, her tail slipping through the gaps.

“Alyce, her pills are gone,” Sophia informs me frantically when I walk in. “Like completely gone, I don’t know what she did with them.”

“They can’t be gone! The whole point of hiding them was so she couldn’t find them.” I don’t know what she’s thinking but she is annoyed I can see it. “Maybe you just misplaced them.”

“Me, misplace them, seriously? You were the one who put them up, not me,” Sophia says, insulted. Something else falls from the cabinet and the chair that Sophia is standing on wobbles. I grab the back of the chair to steady it and, she continues to rummage through the medicine that has taken up the whole cabinet over the stove.

“I put it behind the Aspirin, like usual,” I tell her as she knocks over a bottle of Tums. Mom’s allergic to Aspirin so it

seemed like a logical place to hide her medicine. Red streaks of hair fall into Sophia’s face and she sighs loudly, her breath moving the strands.

“Well the bottle’s not there.” She jumps from the chair to the ground and begins to look back through the bottles that have been stacked on the stove top in her search. Something sloshes as another container falls; we ignore it. She picks up each pill bottle and examines it under the yellow glow of the stove light. The fan hums in the dining room, jiggling loudly in the socket; the only other sound is the rattle of pills on plastic.

“Aunt Suzie,” Sophia calls, but Mom doesn’t answer. I guess Sophia was going to ask Mom about the pills, even though she knows my mother won’t talk. Beaver meows loudly, I can hear her cry clearly from my place in the kitchen.

“Did you hear that?” I ask Sophia. There was a noise, not the cat that sounded from the living room. I don’t know what it was or if I even heard it, I just need to know if she did.

“That popping noise,” Sophia states. I can’t tell if it was question or not. I just stare back toward the living room. There is a flare in the mirror; I can see it barely from where I stand. My feet stick to the floor like they are glued to the tile. Sophia pushes past me. I am paralyzed. I sway in one spot as Sophia disappears around the corner. The mirror shakes as she bumps into the table underneath it. It hangs crooked against the green wall.

“Alyce!” Sophia screams; my name hangs in the air, shattering to the floor like broken glass. The impact splinters against me. My feet move slowly, sneakers squeaking when I turn into the living room.

I bite my lip to keep from screaming. Sophia is trapped between the couch and the front door. Lines of fire lick at the carpet. Smoke swirls in Sophia’s face, ashes landing in the fiery tint of her hair like they belong there.

“Get out!” I yell at her, “Go out the front door! Don’t just stand there!” I watch as she turns and reaches for the door knob, early morning light threads through the flames as the door opens the fire laps at the oxygen that streams in, fueling it. I scream her name as the fire detonates rushing toward the energy source and exploding outward, erasing her from my view, or my life. I can’t think about it; there isn’t time.

The fire spreads through the living room, eating at the furniture. I don’t wait to see what it does next; it’s too unpredictable. I run through the kitchen to the sliding door in the dining room. The glass is foggy. Cold wind hits me as I slip out the door. Beaver yowls as I shut the door, I slide it back open and she quickly runs out.

When the door slams my brain goes into over drive. Rules about what to do in a fire rush like steam out of my mind. All of the talk and plans we made if something happened escape me. I stop. The fire is rising, captivating me and making me sprout root into the dewy ground.

The back of the house is slowly feeling the burn of the fire. But the front has started to blacken and char. The front door is burnt away and the front wall has started to crumble. There is a crash as parts of the ceiling fall inward at the front of the house.

I can see Beaver and Sophia beside a tree in the front of the house toward the end of the driveway. They are sitting with Mrs. Saris, my neighbor, who is screaming into a telephone. I stay and watch as the crimson flames lick the rusty brown of the bricks. Silver smoke chokes me, the wind sending into my direction. I cough and swat at the air in front of me. My hands brush my face and water slips down my palm. I am crying.

If I cry rain will I be able to put out this fire?

I close my eyes and wait as the tears squeeze out of the corners. The fire flashes red behind my eyelids, the smell of smoke filling my nostrils. My throat is singed, I can’t cough. The pain is growing. My eyes spring open.

The smell of smoke clothes me, my eyes blurred gray with tears. The redness isn’t replaced by sunshine like it should be. It is gray and red, the colors of the fire. The popping sound of the fire escalating is replaced by the howl of a fire truck and police siren. It sounds like a toy but some where in my brain I know that the sounds are real, not recordings trapped in a plastic vehicle.

Alyce, where is your mother?

The voice is a whisper, a rasp lost in the smoke and wind. A tear slides down my cheek and I shake my head. I don’t

know where my mother is. She disappeared when the smoke started and the light ended. The tears keep coming whether it’s from the wind that is blowing, or the sorrow that is eating away at my heart.

She is gone, Alyce. They are coming for you.

It echoes in my ears but I can’t even look around before the voice melts, sliding into another sound.

“Sweetie?” I look behind me the tears sliding down. A woman is standing beside me. She is an EMT, Mrs. Saris called, and she tells me. That must have been who she was yelling at, I think looking behind the woman to my cousin. Sophia is being loaded onto a stretcher. Mrs. Saris is watching with her hand over her mouth, shaking her head at another medic.

“I’m going to have to ask you some questions, honey,” says the female EMT. I nod at her and wait. “Where are your parents?”

I take a breath, my mind wonders back to the fight my mother and I had earlier. I can hear Sophia in the other room crying. They are only memories of the things she said, but my voice is sorrowful and filled with regret, “My father is in a mental hospital; my mother is where she dreamed she'd end up: in the stars.”