Blood rushes through my ears.No. She’s lying. She has to be.
I spin on my heels and storm down the hallway. Mrs. Yang calls after me, but I can’t find it in me to react. There’s nothing wrong with my house. It’s completely fine. All my things are completely fine. This is a prank. My collection is untouched, and my room looks exactly the same as I left it yesterday.
The sound of my footsteps bounces along the empty corridors, echoing against the rows of metal lockers and glass cabinets filled with trophies. The exhaustion I felt before is hidden somewhere beneath the blanket of adrenaline.
If Mrs. Yang were telling the truth, I would know. Someone would have called me. My phone would have exploded with missed calls from my grandpa, or my grandma would have contacted me for the first time in my life. Maybe my uncle would have touched base to see if the scums of the family had finally been killed off.
My breath rushes out of me, and I stumble backward until my back hits a locker. I grind my teeth as I make out the face of my attacker.
“You mother—”
“Fucking bitch.” Kohen presses his forearm against my throat. The venomous look in his eyes makes me stall for half a second too long, giving him enough time to put more pressure on my windpipe. “You deserve everything that’s coming for you.”
Rage emanates from him in violent waves, and I can’t make sense of it or why it’s even there. What if he’s the one who’s setting me up? He’s making this one big practical joke because he somehow knowsabout the power Grandpa lords over me, and Kohen’s using him to exact punishment against me for skipping out on school and acting out. That’s probably why he was asking me if I’d be home yesterday. Fuck if I know. I’m so sick of everyone’s bullshit, and I have to see the lies for myself.
I shove him off me and duck under his arm. “Stay the fuck away from me, or you’ll pay for it!”
I whirl around and charge out of school. He yells something at my back, but I’m too far away to hear.
Once I finish high school, my house is the only thing I know for certain. Maybe I find a job, maybe I make it to college, but either way, there’s somewhere for me to go back to. I have a room with everything I’ve ever owned—clothes, books, a torn blanket underneath my pillow that I’ve had since I was a baby.
All the trinkets and bits and bobs along my dresser and shelves tell a tale. Like the thimble I pocketed the first and only time I visited my grandparents' house. A fraying Michael Kors wallet that I took from a woman who yelled at me in the grocery store.
Tucked away in the corner of one of the shelves is a single AA battery and a stone from the Dollar Tree that saysLive, Laugh, Love. Dad gave it to me at Christmas one year and tried to make it seem like a life lesson that I have to “stay solid and power on.” It was the smartest thing I’ve ever heard him say.
I can't pinpoint the moment I got to the start of the long, winding driveway leading to my house, but it's as if I blinked and found myself here. The nausea that lurked in the back seat since I left school comes to the forefront. My stomach isn't just a passenger now;it's the one calling the shots, steering me toward a nearby tree where I double over, dry heaving, wishing I could be anyone but myself.
Mrs. Yang was right.
I don’t need to trek down the path to know that fire touched the only solid thing in my life. Smoke and ash clog the back of my throat, spreading char down to my lungs. The distinct pattern of large tires has left black imprints on the once-gray concrete. I can hear it too. The slight groaning of what was once my home.
I force my feet forward. I have to see it with my own eyes. I could be imagining the rest. The smell is from a bonfire, the sound of chatter is from my parents’ friends. My shitty beat-up house will be at the end of the driveway. I’ll be able to see my shirt taped to the window, and broken pot on the front porch. I’ll walk up to my room and crawl into my bed and pretend this was one big joke.
But my delusions come crashing down when I see the fallen, charred remains of the place I’ve lived in since I was old enough to string a sentence together and not need a nanny to reach into the cupboard for me and drop a slice of bread into the toaster. All that’s left are the bare foundations of the only solid thing in my life.
I stumble back and gasp for air as a heavy weight presses down on my chest.
Two voices play in my head. The cracks in my own voice whisper, “They were right.”
And the second, much more sinister voice, is of a pyromaniac who makes every muscle stiffen and my veins flood with another burst of adrenaline.
“Are you going to spend another night alone in your shitty house?”
“I’m disappointing my family and ruining yours at the same time.”
“You deserve everything that’s coming for you.”
Kohen did this.
Hefucking did this.
That building is the oldest place I’ve ever known. There isn’t a single inch of it I haven’t explored. Not a tree around it I haven’t climbed. It is theonlything that hasn’t let me down. Every single day, from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep, the only certainty I had was that there would always be a roof over my head and a place for me to rest. I could be sober or out of my mind, and the shithole of a house would still be there.
Tied to the broken headboard in my bedroom is a dirty piece of ribbon and a smashed-up chocolate bar Mom gave me as an apology when I was five after coming home from a two-day bender. It was the only memory of my mother where she acted like a mother. She sat me down on the steps and braided the ribbon into my hair. Granted, she forgot to brush my hair out first, which she blamed on her “migraine,” but at that moment, I remember thinkingthis is it. Mom’s coming home for good. We’d finally be a family. Then I didn’t see her for another two weeks.
And I’ll never see any of my things—mymemories—again.
It’s gone.
