Smoke hits me like a wave.
Hot. Blinding. Alive.
It pours into the room, thick and black and swallowing everything.
I stagger back, eyes wide, heart slamming in my chest.
Neve.
Oh God,Neve.
She’s in the spare room. My pulse spikes again, pure adrenaline slicing through the fog in my brain.
I move through the hallway, bent low, one arm outstretched to feel the wall, the other clutching the phone to my chest. Thedrywall is warm beneath my fingers. The smoke is so thick now it feels like I’m walking through water—heavy and choking.
When I reach the spare room, I start banging on the door with the flat of my hand. “Neve!” I cough. “Neve, wake up!”
No answer.
I twist the knob and shove it open.
The room is dim, hazy, but I can still make out the shape of her curled up on the bed under a blanket, unmoving.
My heart lurches.
“Neve!” I scream, stumbling inside.
Neve jerks upright, coughing hard, eyes wide and wild. “What—what’s happening?” she gasps, already pulling the blanket off, panic sharpening her voice.
“There’s a fire,” I shout back, my own voice hoarse and broken. “I called 911, but we have togo. Now.”
She swings her legs over the bed, coughing again, harder this time. She stumbles toward the dresser. The smoke alarm blares above us, shrill and piercing, a jagged scream that splits through the chaos like it's coming from inside my skull. It’s relentless—high-pitched, metallic, deafening. Each pulse of it feels like it’s pushing the panic higher, faster, louder.
“Get a shirt!” I yell. “Wrap it around your mouth and nose—hurry!”
She nods frantically, grabbing an old sweatshirt and tying the arms around her face, her movements clumsy with fear.
The smoke pours in now, thicker, meaner. It coils around our legs and blurs the edges of everything.
“We need to stay low,” I say, already dropping to my knees.
We crawl into the hallway on all fours, hands scraping the floor, the hoodie around my face damp with sweat and smoke. Every inch forward feels like a mile. My lungs are screaming.
Neve’s right behind me, coughing into the crook of her elbow.
We reach the front door ahead.
I reach out?—
“Shit,” I hiss, yanking my hand back. The metal handle isscalding. Too hot to touch.
Neve looks at me, eyes wide, waiting.
I shake my head. “Too hot. We can’t go that way.”
Her panic spikes. I see it in the way her chest heaves behind the shirt wrapped around her mouth.
“Back,” I shout, coughing. “We have to go back—to the fire escape.”
