it's so appropriate
the way we amplify the sound
the employment pages, death cab for cutie
There's a house a hundred yards from her own, and it's burning down.
Jack is playing firefighter (all little boys want to at some point, don't they?) and James is everywhere at once, telling them all what to do (it looks wrong; she thinks he's missing a suit) and she and Juliet help where they can, or, more aptly, Juliet does, because Kate is stuck somewhere between running and paralysis, and she knows it's ridiculous and melodramatic and all the things she doesn't want to be, but Kate half-expects people to start staring at her, pointing fingers, whispering, gathering their pitchforks and forming a mob, because she did it once--why wouldn't she do it again?
The flames crackle and curl and spread faster and faster and the siren whirs louder and louder but noise can't triumph over heat, and someone, a little child, a baby (boy or girl, she doesn't know) is calling for its mother, and a man is screaming God, my hands! and the smell of burning, wood and flesh and ka-POW! there goes the gas, fills her nostrils, making her retch.
The lightning in the bathroom makes her look pale and little and unfriendly, freckles almost faded, lips cracked and dry, and she smoothes her freshly starched uniform down over her hips, leaving her cold (anemic?) hands to rest at her sides like she's a soldier, like she's going to battle to bring down Troy once and for all (she's not Helen, not this time, because she's not the beautiful young one anymore and who would fight over her, anyway?).
You and whose army? The voice in her head is sarcastic and undefined, and she snickers at her reflection, involuntarily, because that's the real question, isn't it?
There's a brisk knock-knock outside, at the front of the house, and thirty seconds later an echoing rap at the bathroom door. Kate sticks her head out and Marcia, her housemate, swings her blond shiny hair around her shoulder, giggling, because that cute guy is here again, the janitor, I think he likes you!
Kate smiles back, (it doesn't hurt, it doesn't), and gets going, because maybe if she eats breakfast her insides will feel less hollow.
Juliet is so lovely now. Kate doesn't know why this strikes her so hard, but maybe it has something to do with role reversal, and the way Juliet laughs when her boyfriend says something funny is so perfect that Kate wouldn't switch places, not for anything. She wouldn't play the part half as well.
Jack still looks at her the same as always, like he's startled by what he sees and scared that she'll vanish, and she lets him run his hand down the side of her face, gently, because he needs to feel her and she needs to be felt, and when his eyes shimmer at her, through a film of his tears or possibly hers (are you okay? is silent, implicit, between them, a question asked so many times it doesn't need to be verbalized, and her barely perceptible nod is the answer), she lets him kiss her.
His lips are so soft.
Jack doesn't snore (he's formal even in his sleep), never has, and the steady rush of air in out in out is muted, controlled, like he's holding his breath, like he's dreaming. She hopes that it's about something nice.
He'd fallen asleep almost immediately after (I love you, I'm so tired), his arm still curled around her ribcage, and she'd tried to follow his example but couldn't, because she still half-expected to hear a baby's cry in the night, a phantom child's whisper in her ear, and it made (makes) her tense.
The tears come, like they always do, and they drip-drip-drip on the pillowcase, silently. Her eyes will not, can not, close, and the air in her lungs burns like she's inhaling gas.
She moves his hand down a little so that it's lying flat on her stomach, and twists her fingers through his, and this makes it a little bit less difficult to breathe.
This house, she won't let it burn.
Not again.