In my dream an angry wasp is buzzing around my head, but for some reason my hands don’t work, they’re too heavy to lift, so I can’t stop the wasp. What if it gets in my ear? What if it stings my brain?

That’s what wakes me up, fear of a stung brain. I’m lying on the porch with a cushion for a pillow. There’s some light in the sky, but not much. A little after dawn, is my guess. The air feels super hot and syrup thick. Gusts of wind rattle the trees.

I sit up, feeling sore from the hard porch floor, and look around. Delphy is slumped in the rocker, still sound asleep. I stand up carefully, not wanting to wake her, and search for the wasp buzzing against the screens. Because I didn’t dream that part, there really is an insect noise.

No, wait, not an insect. A distant engine, like a chain saw, or maybe a dirt bike. It fades in and out with the wind, but there is more than one engine. Two at least.

My heart starts slamming. People! They’re finally coming to rescue us, cutting a path through the woods.

I shake Delphy. She lurches awake, and not happily. “Hey, what are you doing? Leave me alone.”

“Listen! Can you hear that?”

She grabs her stick and gets to her feet, wincing from the pain in her swollen ankle. I help her down from the porch and we make our way through the meadow, down toward the pond. Toward the sound of gunning engines.

As we get closer to the pond, we see flashes on the opposite shore. Not a light, but fast-moving shapes.

Then I notice what we missed last evening in the fading sunset. Part of a roof and chimney, visible through the trees swaying in the wind. There’s a good-sized summer house on the opposite shore, and the shapes that are moving fast are a couple of dirt bikes zooming around the property. Above the noise of the revving engines, we can hear the riders whooping it up, shouting, “Away! Away!” or something like it. Hard to tell, exactly.

“We should yell back.” Delphy drops her stick and waves her arms.

“Wait. Not yet.”

I’ve got a bad feeling about the wild riders. Why are they circling the house and whooping it up? What are they celebrating? Are they having a party?

Delphy, ignoring my cautions, shouts, “Hey! Hey! Over here! Across the pond! Help! Help! Help!”

The bikes keep zooming around the house, vanishing into the trees and then reappearing. Maybe they can’t hear her above the scream of their engines.

What happens next makes my blood run cold. An orange light comes on inside the house, making a window glint. The light grows quickly, filling the house, getting brighter and brighter, and then it bursts through the roof as orange flames, leaping into the sky, lighting up the tall pine trees.

Fire, exploding from the house and spreading fast, driven by the wind.

“Delphy! We have to get out of here! They saw us for sure!”

She’s staring at the fire, as if she can’t believe it. Her hope of rescue going up in flames.

Across the pond, one of the dirt-bike riders comes to the edge of the water, looking directly at us. He raises his arm and points wildly. The other rider suddenly roars up beside him. Then they zoom off, vanishing into the woods ahead of the fire.

Do they know about the Jeep? Maybe spotted it from the logging trail as they zoomed around the pond to have their fun? No time to think about it. Concentrate on getting away from the fire.

The fire. The fire.

The fire grows like a thing alive, doubling every few seconds, getting hotter and brighter, until the whole pond glows orange and red, like there’s a fire inside the pond. A wave of intense heat scorches the air. Black smoke spreads across the pond like night fog, but way more deadly. Fog you can breathe, but not hot smoke.

The weird thing is, it’s so beautiful you can’t stop watching it.

“Delphy!”

She turns to me, blinking her eyes as if she’s just woken up from a dream.

“We have to go! They might be trying to find us! They might have seen the Jeep!”

“They’re the ones,” she says. “They started the whole thing.”

“Probably. Come on!”

She grabs hold of my shoulder and uses her stick for balance. We limp-run up the meadow, away from the pond, away from the fire. Delphy insists on retrieving her backpack, and I keep urging her to hurry.

We have to get to the Jeep before the dirt-bike riders find us.

I don’t know how I know they’re coming for us, but I do.