something.
“You’ve already been thinking about leaving, haven’t you,” he demanded. “That’s why you won’t talk about getting married. ”
I rested my hand on his smooth chest.
“You were thinking about going alone!” He grasped my wrist, seemed ready to push it away. Then he held on to it, kept it. “You were just going to walk away from here and leave me.”
I turned so that he couldn’t see my face because now I had a feeling my emotions were all too obvious: Confusion, fear, hope… . Of course I had intended to go alone, and of course I hadn’t told anyone that I was leaving. And I had not decided yet how Dad’s disappearance would affect my going.
That raised frightening questions. What are my responsibilities? What will happen to my brothers if I leave them to Cory? They’re her sons, and she’ll move the earth to take care of them, keep them fed and clothed and housed. But can she do it alone?
How?
“I want to go,” I admitted, moving around, trying to be comfortable on the pallet of old sleepsacks that we had put down on the concrete floor. “I planned to go. Don’t tell anyone.”
“How can I if I go with you?”
I smiled, loving him. But… . “Cory and my brothers are going to need help,” I said. “When my father was here, I planned to go next year when I’m 18. Now. .
.I don’t know.”
“Where were you going?”
“North. Maybe as far as Canada. Maybe not.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Why alone, he meant.
I shrugged. “I could get killed as soon as I leave here. I could starve. The cops could pick me up.
Dogs could get me. I could catch a disease.
Anything could happen to me; I’ve thought about it. I haven’t named half the bad possibilities.”
“That’s why you need help!”
“That’s why I couldn’t ask anyone else to walk away from food and shelter and as much safety as there is in our world. To just start walking north, and hope you wind up some place good. How could I ask that of you?”
“It’s not that bad. Farther north, we can get work.”
“Maybe. But people have been flooding north for years. Jobs are scarce up there, too. And statelines and borders are closed.”
“There’s nothing down here!”
“I know.”
“So how can you help Cory and your brothers?”
“I want to marry you,” I said. I hesitated, and there was absolute silence. I couldn’t believe I’d heard myself say such a thing, but it was true. Maybe I was just feeling bereft. Keith, my father, the Garfields, Mrs. Quintanilla… . People could disappear so easily. I wanted someone with me who cared about me, and who wouldn’t disappear. But my judgement wasn’t entirely gone.
“When my family is back on its feet, we’ll marry,” I said. “Then we can get out of here. I just have to know that my brothers will be all right.”
“If we’re going to marry anyway, why not do it now?”
Because I have things to tell you, I thought. Because if you reject me or make me reject you with your reactions, I don’t want to have to hang around and watch you with someone else.
“Not now,” I said. “Wait for me,”
He shook his head in obvious disgust. “What the hell do you think I’ve been doing?”
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2026
It’s Christmas Eve.
Last night someone set fire to the Payne-Parrish house. While the community tried to put out the fire, and then tried to keep it from spreading, three other houses were robbed. Ours was one of the three.
Thieves took all our store-bought food: wheat flour,
sugar, canned goods, packaged goods… . They took our radio— our last one. The crazy thing is, before we went to bed we had been listening to a half-hour news feature about increasing arson.
People are setting more fires to cover crimes-although why they would bother these days, I don’t know. The police are no threat to criminals. People are setting fires to do what our arsonist did last night— to get the neighbors of the arson victim to leave their own homes unguarded. People are setting fires to get rid of whomever they dislike from personal enemies to anyone who looks or sounds foreign or racially different. People are setting fires because they’re frustrated, angry, hopeless. They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.
Then there’s that fire drug with its dozen or so names: Blaze, fuego, flash, sunfire… . The most popular name is pyro— short for pyromania, It’s all the same drug, and it’s been around for a while.
From what Keith said, it’s becoming more popular. It makes watching the leaping, changing patterns of fire a better, more intense, longer-lasting high than sex. Like Paracetco, my biological mother’s drug of choice, pyro
