“Lucy. Lucy.Lucy.”
Hands on me, gentle but shaking. Something soft being wound around my head—fabric, I think, but my thoughts are sluggish and confused.
“You’re okay, you’re okay, Lucy.”
I force my eyes open. My vision is blurry. Above me, Damiano’s face swims into focus.
He’s covered in soot and ash. His eyes are too wide, too bright. His hands shake as he wraps torn fabric around my head.
“You’re okay,” he keeps saying, but his voice cracks. “You’re okay.”
He gathers me up in his arms. He smells like singed fabric, smoke, and chemicals. His heart is racing so hard I can feel it against my cheek.
No one’s screaming anymore.
No one’s coming out of that burning house.
I can feel his head turning, searching. For help, maybe. For his sister, though we both know she’s gone. Everyone in that house is dead. His dad. His sister. All those scary people with strange eyes.
If it wasn’t for Damiano, I’d be dead too. I was sitting right next to those cars, and now they’re burning.
There are neighbors’ houses dotted around this place at a distance. No one comes to help us, but someone must have heard the explosion or seen the smoke, because eventually we hear sirens approaching.
Damiano picks me up in his arms and carries me out to the road. I wipe my eyes, look around, and see that the whole house is ablaze.
The firemen run past with hoses and other equipment, stopping long enough to ask us how many people are inside. Damiano pleads for them to help me, but the firemen don’t do much for us except wrap us in shiny metallic blankets and sit us on the curb to wait for the ambulance.
I hear the wordsmeth lab explosionfrom the firemen in tones of disgust. There are a few glances in our direction that are pitying, but most are unfriendly. They hate meth labs, and we were playing in the backyard, so we must be bad kids.
The ambulance arrives, and I’m put onto a stretcher and loaded inside. As the ambulance sets off, I’m suddenly sick with fear that I’m all alone with strangers who are poking and prodding me, and I cry out, “Damiano?”
There’s a reassuring squeeze of my shoulder. “I’m here.”
His voice is rough, scraped raw. But he’s here. He didn’t leave me.
At the hospital, I know Damiano is nearby, because I hear him defiantly say, “I’m staying with her,” several times, and asking different people if I’m going to be all right.
They stick a needle in my hand. The pain in my head fades, and I think I must fall asleep.
I wake up sometime later, blinking slowly and able to see again. My face feels clean. There’s a curtain around my hospital bed. Next to me in an uncomfortable-looking chair with his head pillowed on his arm is Damiano.
He must hear me moving because his eyelashes flutter, and he sits up. There are bandages on his hands and forearms, and ash streaked through his dark curls.
“Damiano, what happened to you?”
He glances at the bandages as if he’d forgotten they’re there. “It’s just some burns. Don’t worry about me. How are you feeling?” He scoots closer to the bed and reaches for my hand.
My head is fuzzy and my mouth is dry. I put my other hand up to touch something stiff in my curls. It feels like gauze. “What happened to me?”
“Burning metal from the explosion. It cut your head, and they stitched you up. You’re dehydrated so they put you on a drip.”
“Why doesn’t my head hurt? I feel strange.”
“They gave you something to stop the pain.”
I glance around, looking for a clock. “What time is it?”
“About nine in the morning.”
