Chapter Five
Zoe
The walk home takes eleven minutes. I know because I’ve been walking these streets since I was old enough to walk them alone, and I can tell you exactly how long it takes to get from any point in this neighborhood to any other point.
Anthem to home is eleven minutes if I take Haverford, thirteen if I cut through the park, fifteen if I go the long way past the school.
I take Haverford.
The air is warm and the street is quiet in that late-Tuesday way where the restaurants have closed but the porch lights are still on and you can hear someone’s TV through an open window.
Mrs. Petrosian’s cat is sitting on the front steps of her building, judging me with his whole face.
I click my tongue at him and he blinks once, slowly, and goes back to being unimpressed.
My phone buzzes. Keely, my best friend since seventh grade.
How was today??? Did you celebrate? Tell me everything.
I look at the screen for a long time. Keely doesn’t know about Station 11.
Nobody knows about Station 11, not really, not in a way that includes the going-there-and-begging part.
Keely knows I graduated and got assigned and that my parents are proud and that we had dinner at Lorraine’s.
That’s the version. The good version. The version where everything went right.
It was great. Dinner was fun. Tired now. Call you tomorrow?
YES. So proud of you babe!!!
Three exclamation points. Keely does everything in threes.
Three exclamation points, three emojis, three attempts at parallel parking before she gives up and finds a different spot.
I love her. She would listen if I told her the whole story.
She’d sit on FaceTime with me for two hours and say all the right things and mean every one of them.
But I don’t want the right things tonight.
I don’t want someone agreeing with me or feeling sorry for me or telling me it’ll work out.
I just want to walk home and be quiet about it.
I pass the laundromat with the blue sign.
Someone left a dryer running and I can hear it through the wall, the low thump of wet clothes turning over.
I pass the bodega where Mr. Reeves sells loosies out the back door and pretends he doesn’t.
I pass the mural on the side of the community center, the one that’s been there since I was in middle school, faded now, the colors gone soft at the edges.
Station 11’s siren starts when I’m two blocks from home.
South, building, swinging east onto Haverford.
I stop on the sidewalk and track it. Engine and ladder, both, which means it’s something big.
The sound peaks at the intersection and then stretches north, thinning as it goes, and I stand there and listen until it’s gone and the street is just the street again.
Forty-three calls a month. That’s one of those calls. Someone is having the worst night of their life right now and Station 11 is on its way, and I’m standing on the sidewalk in my clean sneakers listening to them go.
Come back. Bring food. I know what I need to do.
I start walking again.
Home is dark except for the porch light and the glow from the kitchen window, which means Mom left the stove light on the way she always does because she read somewhere that burglars avoid houses that look occupied and she’s been running a one-woman crime prevention program through strategic lighting ever since.
Dad’s truck is in the driveway. The garden hose is coiled by the steps because Dad coils it every night even though no one uses it except for maybe a few times a year.
I let myself in quiet. Shoes off at the door.
The house smells like the candle Mom burns after dinner, vanilla and sandalwood, and the faint ghost of whatever she cooked.
My graduation photos are already on the kitchen counter in a stack, waiting to be sorted into frames.
I can see the top one in the stove light.
Me and Dad. His arm around my shoulders. Both of us beaming.
I pick it up and look at it for a second. We look happy. We were happy. He cried and I smiled and it was real, every part of it, and the fact that I spent the rest of the day being miserable doesn’t undo the part where my dad pinned a badge on my chest and his hands shook.
I put the photo down and go upstairs.
My room is exactly how I left it this morning, which is exactly how it’s looked since high school, which is maybe a problem I should address at some point but not tonight.
The glow-in-the-dark stars. The ceiling fan.
The window that faces the street. My dress uniform is still hanging on the back of the door and my badge is still on the dresser and the CVS receipt with the first draft of my speech is in the trash can where I threw it at two in the morning.
I fish it out. Smooth it on my knee. Read it.
Captain Donnelly, my name is Zoe Kimball. I recently graduated from the academy, class fourteen, and I’ve been assigned to Station 24. I’m reaching out because Station 11 has been my goal since I decided to pursue firefighting, and I want to respectfully request…
Respectfully request. I’d crossed that out and written ask for a chance. Then crossed that out and written discuss the possibility. The receipt is covered in scratched-out phrases, each one trying to sound less desperate than the last.
She said no. Clean and clear and kind. Medina runs a good house. What you want and what you get are two different conversations.
I fold the receipt and put it on the dresser next to my badge. Then I change into pajamas and get into bed and pull the covers up and lie there.
The house settles around me. Dad’s snoring, faint through the wall, the steady rhythm I’ve been falling asleep to my entire life. The fridge hums downstairs. A car passes on the street, headlights sliding across the ceiling, and then it’s gone and the stars come out, pale green and crooked.
Torres said don’t come back tomorrow, and I trust Torres even though I met her for six minutes, because she gave me something when she didn’t have to and I’m not going to waste it by showing up too soon.
Two days. I’ll bake cookies tomorrow. Not from a box. Real ones, from the recipe Grandma Eloise used for church bake sales, the brown butter chocolate chip ones that made Pastor Williams propose to her in front of the whole congregation as a joke except everyone knew it wasn’t entirely a joke.
I close my eyes. The day replays behind my eyelids in pieces. The auditorium. Station 24. Dad’s hands on my badge. Cap’s voice. Torres and her clipboard. The bar with the neon sign. Ginger ale and grenadine and a woman who said no before she said anything else.
The Clash was still playing when I left. I don’t remember the song but I remember the sound of it, guitar and bass and a voice that didn’t care if you liked it, and the room felt like it belonged to someone even though the liquor license said a different name.
I’m going to look up the Pretenders tomorrow. And the Buzzcocks. And whatever else was playing. Not because the bartender told me to but because I heard it and it sounded like something I should have known about already, and I don’t like not knowing things.
The siren is gone. The street is quiet. Dad snores. The stars glow.
I sleep.