Parker
Chapter four
There isn’t anywhere in this house I’m supposed to be. The kitchen is Mrs. Broussard’s, the recliner is Mr. Broussard’s, the beanbag in the den is Bree’s, and I’ve been standing in the hallway between them for ten minutes because sitting down anywhere feels like taking something.
I keep thinking I should ask Lance to drive me back to the shelter. At least there, anyone looking for me would know where to find me.
But the truth is that I don’t want to go to the shelter because I’m afraid I’ll be forgotten there, and everybody will go on with their lives but me. At least here, that could never happen.
I’ve ruined family game night too. Apparently it’s been a tradition since the Earth cooled, but nobody felt like playing Clue after everything.
They invited me like I was a real member of the family, but Lance and I could barely keep our eyes open, so it was shelved.
I wish it hadn’t been. I haven’t played a board game since I was really little—Elliott doesn’t understand rules and gets frustrated—and I would have loved to learn.
I tried to explain that, but it made Mrs. Broussard get that sad look in her eye.
Every time I look at the door, I try to picture Elliott coming through it.
He’ll be telling me that he’s really sad that he couldn’t take his Super Mario posters.
I wonder if he is still in the stage where he thinks that it’s a great big adventure or the one where he discovers that he forgot something or that his shoes pinch, and he wants to go home.
The family congregates in the living room to watch the news.
I catch Lance’s parents exchanging a quick, careful glance before they look at me, like they’re checking to see if I’ll hold.
Lance pats the space next to him on the sofa.
I hover for a second, then sit, leaving a careful gap between us.
There’s empty space on the other side that I could have gone to, but he ignores it.
I fold my hands in my lap and sit straight so that no part of our bodies touches.
The local news covers what we already know—the stories of hope, the pockets of people who survived, the street that was almost miraculously untouched, and the four shelters trying to cope with the influx of people. Nobody speaks until the program ends.
“So many shelters,” I say. “And that’s not counting people who went to friends and family. Small wonder nobody knows anything.” I look at Lance. “How long do you think they’ll try to find people?”
“I’m sure they’ll be working late into the night,” Lance answers me.
Someone’s cell rings and, instinctively, I grab for mine, even though it’s not my ringtone.
Mrs. Broussard puts hers to her ear. “This is Jackie Broussard,” she says after a second.
Her face clears. “Oh. Okay. Yes. Tomorrow morning. Of course. No, Social Services haven’t been by yet.
” She listens. “I can tell him. We’ll see you tomorrow. ”
She hangs up. “Parker, honey, that was someone from the University. She got our number from the shelter. Your Aunt Shelley’s in Denver for work, but she’s been told about you and she’s already on her way. We’re to expect her in the morning.”
“Aunt Shelley. That’s good, right? Does she know anything about my family?” I ask.
“No, but she’s been trying to get in touch since she heard the news and finally got through to the shelter at the right time. So she knows about as much as we do. But she’s coming.”
I don’t know what that means for me. She is a complete stranger. Why didn’t she call me? I gave that woman my name. “I need to plug in my phone. It’s running low.” I stand up as the broadcaster for the national news comes on.
“Day of Fire: scenes of panic and fear as wildfires devastate the town of Fairhaven, Virginia, the death toll uncertain.”
I stop where I am. I look back up at the screen as the anchor recites the day’s headlines before switching back to us.
Fairhaven is the lead story. On the national news.
I sink back onto the couch and grip Lance’s hand.
This anchor is grave and polished, and the opening music and production values make everything that happened here seem far more significant and dramatic.
“The tiny college town of Fairhaven, Virginia, has been ravaged by a fast-moving wildfire that has devastated entire communities as hundreds of people evacuated, many only minutes away from the fires that would destroy their homes.” There is a montage of pictures: homes on fire, charred automobiles, an exhausted firefighter battling out-of-control flames.
I scan every image. Every car, every face in every crowd shot.
None of them are Mom. None of them are Elliott.
“Our local correspondent, Tricia Hamm, has the story. Tricia, what’s the mood in town?”
Lance puts his arm around me, and I lean against him, staring up at the screen.
“Somber,” the correspondent says. She’s talking about early warning and word of mouth and minutes to evacuate, and I’m catching about one word in three. Poor early warning. Fractured communications. Survivors still separated from their loved ones.
“Awful,” the newscaster says. “And have there been any positive stories out of this?”
“There are some very touching stories of bravery, such as seventeen-year-old Lance Broussard, who braved the fires to save his boyfriend, seventeen-year-old Parker Bishop. Both boys have made it out of the fires safely.”
And then there’s a photograph of us. The two of us on a cot in the gym at the exact moment Lance kissed my forehead.
Our faces are dirty from smoke and there are tear tracks on my cheeks.
I look broken and scared, huddling into his arms. The man with the camera.
I remember the laminated card swinging from his neck while he worked the room.
I saw it. I looked right at it and it didn’t mean anything to me.
My jaw drops. Lance’s parents look over at me. I can’t stop looking at my own face on the screen, my terror displayed for the whole country like it belongs to them now.
“Can you give us some sense of the devastation here?”
She’s saying something about the Holy Light Baptist Church.
The camera pans across what used to be forest and is now a field of black stumps.
Across the street, where this morning there were houses, there is nothing at all.
She says the fires are still too hot to go any deeper down Hemingway Road.
Then she asks the cameraman to zoom in on something further along.
The camera zooms in on a blackened car. It had driven into a ditch in front of the church and I swallow hard.
It’s barely recognizable. It could be Mom’s car, or not.
It’s the right shape, yes, but I can’t tell anything else, not even what color it would have been. It could be any of a hundred cars.
Everything else she says is lost to my ears. When the anchor switches to lottery mania in New York, someone turns off the TV, and I still can’t peel my eyes from it.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Mrs. Broussard says.
“That was the national news. How did they get that picture? Where did they get that story from?” I ask.
Lance tightens his grip on my shoulder and hands me his phone. He looks grim.
It’s open to the website of the Fairhaven Excelsior. I read the words LIKE HELL ON EARTH: Governor declares state of emergency as over 50 still missing. And we’re the picture. The caption reads Lance Broussard, 17, comforts boyfriend Parker Bishop, 17, as they wait for word of the Bishop family.
I hand the phone back to him. “They outed me,” I say. I want to shout it, but my voice breaks and won’t let me. “I wasn’t ready for that.”
“They outed me, too,” Lance says. “We’ll deal with it. Together, okay?”
I want to tell him that he’s strong and handsome and people won’t be terrible to him, but it gets stuck in my throat.
“My mom is going to see this,” I say.
“Parker, do you think that you’ll be in trouble for this?” Mrs. Broussard asks. “Does she say bad things about gay people?”
“No! No. She loves gay people. She thinks they’re great and funny. It’s just—she has this idea of what they’re supposed to be. Like, florists and bakers and dress designers. She’d trust a gay hairdresser with her life, but she wouldn’t trust a gay surgeon unless he was a plastic surgeon.”
Lance bristles next to me. I look up at him, but his mouth is set into a grim line.
“She wouldn’t think bad things about Lance,” I hasten to add. “She doesn’t hate gay people. She just doesn’t think they’re serious.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mr. Broussard says. I’m clearly making this worse.
The doorbell rings and we all freeze. I can’t move. Mr. Broussard has to do it.
There’s a woman standing at the front door clutching a casserole dish. She has a helmet of set gray curls, and her eyes sweep the room before settling on me.
“Why, Ellie!” Mrs. Broussard says, standing up. “What brings you over here?”
“I was making a green bean casserole for those survivors, and then I heard the most upsetting thing on the news and I thought you would be in need of some moral support.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Broussard asks.
“Well, that terrible misunderstanding on the news. New York media. They just get everything wrong. Can I come in?”
“Of course. And thank you so much for this lovely casserole,” Mrs. Broussard says, accepting it. She turns her back on Ellie and I see her face crinkle in disgust.
“It was just such a crying shame. Did you hear what they’re saying about your son?
A young man and a hero with his whole life in front of him, who risks his life for his friend and…
” She shakes her head. “I think that those media types will stop at nothing to get higher ratings.” She turns to face me.
“You must be that Bishop boy. I’ve been on my knees all day just a-praying up a storm for the Lord to come and deliver you people.
Why don’t we pray for your family together? ”