Page 65

1998

As time froze, as the girl burned, these thoughts ran through Orchid’s head:

Never throw water on a grease fire.

Star was too young, too stupid, too naive to know it.

Orchid had been right all along.

Her pondering took less than a second, but even that was too long to waste. Orchid clicked into rescue mode, sprang into action. There was a tea towel beside the sink, and she ran to it, covered her hands. She grabbed for Star, pushed her from the burning room, swatting at the flames that continued to lick up her body. Outside, she shoved the girl off the deck onto the crisp lawn, where Star rolled and writhed in anguish and terror. Orchid dove on top of her, smothering the flames with her body. Orchid wore jeans, a flannel shirt over a T-shirt. Only the exposed skin at her neck and ankles smarted and singed, but she stayed there until Star stopped moving.

Climbing off her, Orchid saw the damage. The girl was charred and blackened, but she couldn’t be sure what was soot and what was burned skin. Star was beginning to tremble with shock, the pain too much to handle. Orchid knew she needed help, and fast.

“You’ll be okay,” she told Star, though it may have been a lie. “I’m going to find a phone and call for help.”

Star’s words were muffled, barely audible. Her throat was probably burned. “Don’t let me die.” Her eyes, white against her skin, bore into Orchid’s, pleaded with her.

“You’re not going to die.” Orchid sounded confident to the point of annoyance. But this girl needed an ambulance fast, or she would die. Orchid replayed her route here, the quiet streets, the vacant homes, the convenience store several blocks away. Running for help would take too long. There was a phone inside Allan’s house. Turning toward it, she saw that the flames were still contained in the kitchen. But not for long.

Even as she ran back onto the porch, kicked in a living room window, and watched the glass splinter, she knew this was risky, probably stupid. She knew she could succumb to the smoke before she found the phone, that she could collapse and die while Star expired on the back lawn. But she was already climbing through the broken pane, already finding herself in an outdated living room, the smoke hovering near the ceiling still. Orchid peered around the room at the ornate furniture, the silk flower arrangements, the linoleum flooring. Where was the fucking phone?

“Help!”

It was Carol. In Orchid’s panic, she had forgotten about Allan’s wife, the person Star had come to kill. The woman’s voice was thin and distant, down a hallway, in a bedroom probably. But why wasn’t she coming out? Even if she was drunk, she was conscious. Surely, she could stagger out of the room to save herself.

“Please!” The voice came again. “Someone help me!”

Life had hardened Orchid, but she was not without a soul. She could not walk away and let this woman burn to death. Not while she called out for help, begged and pleaded for her life. Orchid ran toward the sound of her voice.

Carol was in the last bedroom on the right. At first, Orchid thought the room was empty, but then she saw her, lying on the floor next to a single bed. Several feet away, pushed into a corner, was a wheelchair. Allan’s wife wasn’t an alcoholic: She was a paraplegic. He had wanted his disabled wife to burn to death.

“Who are you?” the woman asked through a voice hoarse from screaming.

Orchid didn’t answer. She searched the room for a phone and found it on the dresser, unplugged from the wall. Allan had thought of everything… except for the fact that Orchid still had a kernel of compassion in her. She hurried to the phone, plugged it in, and dialed 9-1-1. When she’d given them the address from the crumpled piece of paper in her pocket, she moved to the woman’s bed.

Carol coughed weakly. Orchid lifted her body, so wizened, so shriveled, but still heavy in Orchid’s arms, and placed her in the wheelchair. Then she pushed her down the hall, into the living room now misty with smoke, and up to that broken window. With great effort, Orchid hoisted the older woman through the gap and climbed out after her. She half carried, half dragged Carol out into the yard, dropping her next to Star’s blackened body, though the woman shrank away in horror.

Orchid took off her flannel shirt and draped it over her prone friend. “You’re okay, Star. They’re almost here.”

“Don’t leave me,” the girl whispered, but she was drifting in and out of consciousness.

“I’ll be right here,” Orchid assured her as she watched Star fade away. Her chest still moved, slowly, imperceptibly. She was alive. But for how much longer?

Carol coughed out a word, “Why?”

“Your husband wants you dead,” Orchid said. “He did this.”

The sirens were drawing closer, and Orchid knew she couldn’t stay, couldn’t explain what she and Star were doing here, how it had all gone so wrong. So she ran. She left the two women in the grass, injured but alive, and she sprinted away. Star might die. Carol might never be the same, but Orchid had to go.

Her damaged lungs screamed, her throat was parched and sore, but she ran through the neighborhood, still eerily quiet despite the tragedy playing out nearby. She moved away from the emergency vehicles, back the way she came, until she reached the convenience store. At the bus stop, she collapsed onto the seat, prayed her ride would come quickly.

As her breathing slowed, as her rabbiting heartbeat calmed, Orchid looked at her hands. The tea towel had provided minimal protection as she’d batted at the flames engulfing Star, and they were badly burned. Though she felt nothing, her palms were smooth and red, her fingertips already blistering. Orchid looked at the skin stretched thin, smoothing the whorls and ridges unique to her. The skin would die, fall away, and with it, her identity.

The bus to take her home was approaching, and Orchid stood. She could get on it, go back to her single room, to hardened Lucy and damaged Tracey. She could return to a life of dealing, grifting, and scamming. Of helping a man burn his paraplegic wife to death. Or she could seize this opportunity. In the distance, the sirens had silenced. Help had arrived.

Orchid crossed the street and hailed a cab.