Fire-Safe: A Novel; ch.1 (PG-13)

Being written for a Creative Writing class-- any and all criticism welcome, please!!

Fire-Safe

I was never the kind of girl who listened well to her mother, a fact which I briefly regretted when I saw the smoldering and charred remains of her house that Thursday afternoon.

A little too briefly, if we’re going to be honest.

Which I am. Or at least, I’m going to try.

Now let’s make one thing very clear, right off the bat, okay? I did not hate my mother. I never hated her. I just...wasn’t the most obedient or devoted daughter anyone could have, I guess. I never broke any major rules or anything, but I never cleaned my room when she asked me to, say.

I just don’t see the point in doing something just for the sake of doing it. Why clean your room when it’s just you living in it? The neighborhood girls definitely weren’t coming over for any Disney Princess slumber party bullshit, and I didn’t have any siblings to play with, so who exactly was around to care?

So when my mother made a big show of buying one of those stupid fire-safe boxes for all her most important possessions, I just rolled my eyes as usual. Only my mother could make something as dumb as a fire-safe box sound like life or death. Which it actually turned out to be, so to speak. Come to think of it, the whole situation was kind of ironic. I mean, the one thing my mother claimed to fear more than anything else in the world was fire. She often said she wished the cavemen had never invented it at all, which was a pretty idiotic thing to say. I told her that all the time. So the one thing my mother fears over anything else is the one thing that...

And that’s when I start laughing. Just start laughing my goddamn head off at the end of the driveway, with policemen and firemen like ants at an abandoned picnic—rummaging and taking and digging and lifting five hundred times their body weight. And suddenly at my shoulder, which is jerking up and down with my fit, there’s the shortest man there ever was and he’s speaking in the lowest voice I’ve ever heard. It takes a while for me to even register what he’s saying because his mere existence is enough to set me off all over again.

“Miss Delaney,” he attempts, his face an unfortunate shade of puce, as if he knows I’m laughing at him. Well, he probably gets it a lot.

“De-lau-ney,” I correct him automatically. Well, I get it a lot.

“It’s French. Sorry.” I wipe a tear from the corner of my eye and opt not to really look at him. The last thing I need is for someone to think I’m going crazy over the house being burned down. Or for someone to think I’m going crazy at all, for that matter.

“Yes,” he says slowly, in his crazy basso profundo voice. I wish he’d start singing Das Rheingold, but I guess you can’t get everything you want in life. “Miss Delauney, my name is Scott Barrett, and I’m the arson inspector who’s been assigned to your case.”

“Arson?” I repeat, glazing over around the edges. “What are you talking about?”

Was it my imagination or did Scott Barrett give me a look like he was— well, sizing me up?

“We need to know if your mother had any enemies, ma’am. Anyone you can think of who may have wished her harm in any way?”

“Wait,” I say, as the focus came back way too quickly. “Wait, are you telling me she was in there?”

Now Scott Barrett just looks awkward. “Well, I...I thought that you—”

“Is this some kind of fucking joke? This is how you choose to tell me? Where is she? Is she even still alive?”

Mr. Scott Barrett, the arson inspector, looking like he would take death himself over having to continue this conversation. “I’m afraid...I’m afraid that your mother did not make it out of the house this afternoon.”

“Oh, Christ.” The words hiss through my teeth as I sink down on my heels and stare at the concrete, dotted with ashy footprints. I guess Scott Barrett calls for back-up, because suddenly this woman with beautiful caramel-colored skin is crouching next to me, saying my first name softly and kindly, and I instantly hate and love her. Hate her, because I know right away that she was some kind of grief counselor or something dumb like that, brought in with the police department or EMTs to soothe the kind of girl who listened to her mother. Love her, because I know right away that if I have to have a grief counselor or something dumb like that, she was exactly the one I want to have.

“Natalie,” she murmurs, and when I breathe, she smells like fire and lavender. “Honey, do you need a minute?”

“I need a lifetime of minutes,” I grumble, and she laughs.

“My name is Desiree,” she tells me, and then she stands and pulls me gently to my feet.

The firemen won’t let me go into the grayish piles of rubble and ash to retrieve anything—not that there is much to retrieve, they remind me frequently enough. They sit me on the inside of the ambulance, my legs dangling at least a foot above the pavement. I stare at them. There’s a run in my stocking. Has it been there all morning? Probably.

Someone brings the fire-safe box out and presents it to me, but I can’t care less. I knew the kind of things my mother probably found important enough to store inside, and besides, I don’t know the stupid combination. They somehow manage to bring some clothes out of the bureau that crashed through the floor of my second story bedroom. They are all smeared with smoke and smell disgusting. I throw them in the back of the ambulance, and despite the look of bemused interest from Desiree, who has been glued to my side since the moment she sat me down inside the truck, I resolve to forget about them.

Then a police officer who has been talking to a man I can only assume is the coroner for about twenty minutes comes over with a Ziploc bag pinched in between the thumb and forefinger of each hand.

“Personal effects, miss,” he explains, and I take it from him just as gingerly. “And there is something in particular in there we need to ask you about, if you don’t mind.”

I shake my head. What do I care? I open the bag, and my eyes are immediately drawn to a scrap of a photograph pressed into the corner. I pluck it out, careful not to let the edges crumble away any more.

“That’s the one, miss,” says the officer. “It was in her hand when we found her. Do you know if it was anything important?”

When I look at him, he stumbles. “I wouldn’t ask, miss, only it’s officially an arson case, so we’ll take any leads we can find.”