“Dad!” I shout, my throat raw.
I scramble off my bed, circling in one spot to try and find an opening or a way out.
“Tucker!” I hear my dad shout in the distance. “You need to get out. Now.”
“I don’t know where to go,” I cry out as loud as my lungs let me, tears spilling from my eyes.
“Find a way out!” My mom shouts from what sounds like another part of the house.
Fear freezes me in place and my hands fly out to the side as if bracing for impact, when I hear another crash followed by what sounds like my mom screaming.
“Mom! MOM!” I shout, rushing for the door. But when my hands land on it, it burns my palms, forcing me to jump back. “No. No. No,” I mutter. The heat in the room presses in from all sides now.
Stop, drop, and roll? No, I’m not on fire.
I snap my head around to my window, and I see an opening. I rush toward it, needing to get out of this room so I can fix this. If I move fast enough, if I choose right, if I hold everything together with my bare hands, the house will listen.
It doesn’t.
The smoke thickens around me.
There’s another crash, followed by the sounds of my dad and baby brother screaming.
“No!” I scream, straddling the window. “Dad! Brady!”
There’s no response.
I fumble with the latch, a cough ripping through my chest.
If I can just get out of my room, I can save them.
My eyes sting and my vision is blurred as I wrench the window open. The rush of air is immediate and for half a second everything goes still as the room inhales a deep, violent gulp of oxygen.
Heat punches the air behind me with a force so strong that it knocks the breath from my lungs. The walls groan before something else gives way. I know suddenly, with sick certainty, that this is bigger than me.
It’s no longer safe here.
I fight back the bile rising from my throat.
Instinct takes over and I swing a leg over the ledge and throw myself out without thinking, barely registering the drop before I hit the ground and roll. The smell is everywhere, sinking into my clothes—my bones. I leap up, stumbling across the lawn before turning around to take in the house. My eyes scan every inch of the yard, looking for my mom, my dad, my baby brother. Anyone.
They had to have gotten out, right?
But I see no one.
No one is here.
The blast follows as a thunderous crack splits the air as flames burst outward.
The house doesn’t just burn.
It collapses.
Everything crumbles to the ground with my family nowhere in sight.
“NOOOO!” I scream loud enough for the whole town to hear.
But I can barely hear my own voice as I shout because all I can hear is the ringing in my ears.
