THE BURNING
The alarms go off with a clamor unlike anything I’ve heard before—sirens and screams, flashing white lights. The detective shoots us a glance and bolts out the door. The dean follows in her wake.
The sheriff puts a hand on my shoulder so I won’t run.
“You stick with me, and I won’t cuff you just yet. Understand?”
“It’s probably not occurred to you, Sheriff, but I have nowhere to go. Goode is my home now.”
His cell phone rings, and with another warning glance, he answers it. “Yeah, Kate. Yes. We can smell the smoke. Second floor? Got it.”
The dean comes back into her office. “The security panel says there’s a fire on the sophomores’ hall. The fire suppression system should have kicked in by now. I don’t know why it’s not. It’s new this year, they tested it, our art is—”
“Ford, we need to get everyone out.”
The dean turns on me, face ferocious. “Did you do this?”
“Me? No, Dean. I swear it.”
“The alarms started across from your room.”
“It’s her,” I breathe. “You know it is. She ruins everything. She’s trying to cover her tracks.”
“Come on, we can do this later.” The sheriff hurries me out of the dean’s office with a hand clamped on my shoulder. There is pandemonium in the hall.
The detective runs up, breathless. “We have to get the gates open, Tony. The fire trucks need to park in front of Main.”
“That’s a crime scene. Damn it all, Ford, why don’t you have cameras so we can see what the hell is happening?”
“You can berate me later. Damn, Tony, there’s real smoke here.”
She isn’t wrong. There is a fire burning, and burning hard. If it started across from my room, it’s Ashlyn, doing something to draw the attention away.
Has she done this for me? To give me a chance to escape the sheriff’s custody?
Possibly. But there’s nowhere for me to go. I refuse to run anymore.
Dr. Viridian, the chemistry teacher, is waving toward the dean. “The fourth floor is clear, so is the third. The fire is moving quickly. What happened to the suppression system?”
“It’s not working, Phyllis.”
Melanie, loyal assistant to the end, hurries forward, a handkerchief over her mouth.
“Dean, we have to get out. Now. The students are all outside. We’re doing a headcount. A few are missing.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know. We don’t know! But there are only 195 girls outside.”
I hear the fire now. It chuckles to life behind me, the ceilings are starting to blister.
“Open the fucking gates, Tony!” the dean screams.
The sheriff is done playing around, he speaks into his shoulder mic, then herds us toward the front doors and out into the quad. The smoke is heavy, pouring out after us. I cough and cough the bitterness out of my lungs.
The gate is open—what have they done with Becca?—and the fire trucks come barreling through. They swarm the grounds, forcing us back, back, until the sheriff is pulled away and it’s just me and the dean, standing in the center of the quad, watching.
They are too late. The delay getting Becca’s body off the gate and opening it wide gives the fire enough time to sink its teeth into Goode. The winds following the overnight storms have started, the cold front howling through the trees, the forest bending, furious at this scary intrusion. The sparks fly from one end of the school to the other. The conflagration is intense, and it feels like time is standing still, though I know it’s at least an hour that we stand, horrified, as the school burns.
Shouts, calls, water being sprayed. Nothing seems to work. We watch the flames grow higher and higher, the brick veneer blacken and crumble.
The firefighters put up a heroic effort. But when the roof collapses with a rending groan, the dean puts up a weary hand and says the words that doom The Goode School forever.
“Let it burn. It’s cursed anyway.”