Chapter Three
Zoe
I practice the speech in the shower.
It’s a good speech. I wrote it on the back of a CVS receipt at two in the morning and then rewrote it on actual paper and then rewrote it again when I decided the second version sounded too desperate.
The final version is confident but respectful, specific but not presumptuous, and clocks in at exactly ninety seconds because I timed it against the stopwatch on my phone while standing in front of the bathroom mirror in my underwear.
I wear jeans and a clean t-shirt and sneakers that aren’t too new.
I thought about wearing something more professional, but showing up at a firehouse in business casual would be weird and showing up in my dress uniform would be psychotic, so jeans it is.
Normal. Casual. Just a person, walking into a fire station, totally chill, no big deal.
My hands are shaking when I turn onto Haverford.
Station 11 looks different when you’re walking toward it with a plan.
I’ve seen it a thousand times from the car, from the bus, from the sidewalk on the other side of the street, and it always looked like the firehouse.
Part of the block. Brick and bay doors and a flag.
But today it looks like something I’m about to ask for, and asking makes it bigger.
The bay doors are open. One engine is visible inside, Engine 11, red and chrome and clean in a way that means someone maintains it with intention.
There’s a folding chair near the side entrance, same as always, and a pair of boots drying on the concrete and a clipboard hanging from a hook on the wall.
I walk up to the open bay door and stop.
A woman is crouched near the front wheel of the engine, doing something with a gauge.
Dark hair in a ponytail, work shirt, clipboard balanced on the wheel well.
She hears me before she sees me, glances up, and gives me the kind of look you give a stranger standing in your workplace doorway at ten in the morning.
“Help you?”
“Hi.” My voice comes out about half an octave higher than normal. I clear my throat. “I’m looking for Captain Donnelly. Is she available?”
The woman stands up. She’s got a pen behind her ear and an expression that’s halfway between curious and amused, like she’s already decided this is going to be interesting.
“You a reporter?”
“No.”
“Inspector?”
“No, I’m a firefighter. I just graduated. I was hoping to talk to the captain about a position.”
Both eyebrows go up. She looks at me for a long second, and I can feel her doing math. The age, the civilian clothes, the nervous energy coming off me like steam. She’s cataloging.
“You got assigned somewhere else.”
It’s not a question. I nod anyway.
“Station 24. But I wanted to talk to Captain Donnelly about the possibility of—”
“Wait here.” She disappears into the station, clipboard under her arm, and I’m left standing in the bay with the engine and the smell of diesel and cleaned concrete and my heart going so fast I can hear it in my ears.
I look around while I wait. The bay is immaculate. Tools on hooks, hoses coiled, everything labeled and organized. There’s a whiteboard on the wall with the shift schedule in neat handwriting, names I recognize from the department registry. Rivera. Torres. Hayes. Walsh. Ariake. Pratt.
Torres. That was her. The woman with the clipboard. Maria Torres, driver-engineer, known in the department for running the tightest equipment checks in the city. I read about her in an article last year about Station 11’s response times. She’s been here for years.
She knew I’d been assigned somewhere else before I said it. She looked at me and just knew.
Footsteps in the hallway. Torres comes back first, and behind her is a woman I recognize from every department photo and news clip I’ve studied for the last four years of my life.
Captain Vera Donnelly is tall. Taller than I expected, broad-shouldered, dark hair pulled back in a bun so precise it looks structural.
There’s a scar along her jaw and another through her left eyebrow and she carries herself with the kind of authority that doesn’t need volume.
She’s wearing department blues and she has a coffee mug in one hand and she looks at me the same way Torres did, except without the amusement.
“Captain Donnelly. I’m Zoe Kimball.” I extend my hand. She shakes it. Firm, brief. “I just graduated from the academy, class fourteen, and I’ve been assigned to Station 24 under Captain Medina.”
“Congratulations,” she says. “Medina runs a good house.”
“Thank you. I’m sure he does.” I take a breath.
This is where the speech starts. Ninety seconds.
I practiced. “Captain, I grew up just blocks from this station. I’ve lived in this neighborhood my entire life.
I know your coverage area, your response routes, your call volume.
I know Station 11 has the best response times in the department and the lowest crew turnover, and I know that’s because of how you run this house.
I’m requesting an informal meeting to discuss whether there’s any possibility of a transfer or placement on your crew. ”
She listens. I’ll give her that. She doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t check her phone, doesn’t look at Torres. She just stands there with her coffee and lets me talk, and when I’m done she takes a sip and then sets the mug down on the edge of the engine.
“Kimball.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“When do you report to 24?”
“First of the month.”
She nods. Not a yes nod, a processing nod.
“Assignments go through the department. I don’t have an open spot on my rotation, and I didn’t request a transfer.
Even if I wanted to bring someone new on, which I’m not saying I do, the process takes months and goes through channels that are above both of us. ”
“I understand that. But if there were a way to—”
“There isn’t.” She says it clean. No cruelty in it, just fact. “You’ve been assigned. You report to Medina. That’s how this works.”
My lungs forget their job for about two seconds, but I keep my face steady because I practiced that too. I practiced hearing no and not falling apart. I just didn’t practice it working this well on the other end.
“Captain, if I could just—”
“Kimball.” She picks up her coffee again. “You seem motivated. That’s good. Bring that energy to 24. Medina could use it.”
“But I don’t want to be at 24.”
It comes out before I can stop it. Too raw, too young, too much like the kid I’m trying not to be. Torres makes a small sound behind us that could be a cough or could be a suppressed laugh. Cap’s expression doesn’t change.
“What you want and what you get are two different conversations in this department.” Her voice is still level. Still kind, in its own way. “Go to 24. Learn from Medina. Put in your time. If a spot opens here, you can apply through channels like everybody else.”
“How long would that take?”
“Could be a year. Could be five. Could be never.” She picks up the mug. “Depends on what opens.”
Never. The word sits in my stomach like a stone.
“Thank you for your time, Captain.”
She nods. Then she turns and walks back into the station, coffee in hand, and I’m standing in the bay with Torres and the engine and the sound of my speech dissolving into nothing.
Torres is leaning against the rig, arms crossed. She’s looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. Not pity. Not dismissal. Warmer than either of those.
“For what it’s worth,” she says, “most people who want to be here never walk through that door and ask.”
“But she said no.”
“She said no today.” Torres pushes off the engine, picks up her clipboard. “You want some advice?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t come back tomorrow.”
I blink. “What?”
“Give it a couple days. Let her forget your face. Then come back.” She glances toward the hallway where Cap disappeared. “She respects persistence, but she hates being crowded. There’s a difference.”
“What’s the difference?”
Torres thinks about it. “Persistence is showing up again. Crowding is showing up again too soon.” She taps her clipboard against her thigh. “Come back soon, but not too soon, and bring food. The crew is always hungry.”
She walks back to the engine, crouches by the wheel, and goes back to whatever she was doing before I showed up. Conversation over. I’ve been dismissed, but gently, by someone who gave me more than she had to.
I walk out of the bay and down the sidewalk and make it three blocks before my eyes start burning.
I don’t cry. I refuse to cry on Haverford Avenue at ten-thirty in the morning because a woman I’ve never met told me no.
But my eyes burn and my throat is tight and the speech is still sitting in my chest, all ninety seconds of it, perfectly rehearsed and completely useless.
Come back soon. Bring food.
I pass the corner store where I used to buy popsicles after school.
I pass the laundromat with the blue sign.
I pass the little park where Jaylen fell off the monkey bars and needed four stitches and my uncle had to leave work early because Aunt Denise was at a conference and my mom drove because my dad was on shift at the post office and the whole family showed up at the ER like Jaylen had been airlifted when really he just needed a butterfly bandage and was fine.
This is my neighborhood. These are my streets.
Station 11 runs these streets. And Captain Donnelly told me no and Torres told me soon and I’m going to show up with food and I’m going to keep showing up until Captain Donnelly runs out of ways to say no or I run out of days before the first of the month.
Whichever comes first.
I pull out my phone and look up cookie recipes.