Chapter Seven
Zoe
The cookies are perfect.
I’m not being arrogant. I’m being accurate.
Grandma Eloise’s brown butter chocolate chip cookies have a documented success rate that spans three decades of church bake sales, two marriage proposals (one joke, one real, both accepted), and one incident where Pastor Williams ate six in a row and had to sit down in the fellowship hall because he said his heart was too full but actually he was having a sugar crash.
I baked two batches last night after baking more earlier in the week for practice.
The first batch I ate four of while they were still warm because quality control is important and also because I have no self-discipline.
The second batch is in a Tupperware container that Mom thinks I’m bringing to a friend, which is sort of true if you consider Captain Vera Donnelly a friend, which she does not consider me.
I waited. I didn’t go Monday. I didn’t go Tuesday, even though Tuesday I was at Anthem and it was three blocks from the station and my feet almost turned the wrong direction on the walk home. I waited because Torres told me to wait and Torres knows things I don’t.
The walk to Station 11 feels different today.
Last time I was running on adrenaline and a speech.
Today I’m running on butter and chocolate and a plan that is admittedly just “bring cookies and see what happens,” which is less of a plan and more of a prayer, but Grandma Eloise always said prayer works best when you bring snacks.
The bay doors are open again. The engine is there, same as before, and I can hear music from inside the station, something muffled and bass-heavy.
There’s a different energy today. More people.
I can see someone moving in the kitchen through the window, and there’s a pair of boots by the side entrance that are different from the ones that were there last time.
I walk up to the bay door with the Tupperware in front of me like a shield.
Torres sees me first. She’s at the engine again, clipboard in hand, and when she spots me she does this thing with her eyebrows that’s halfway between recognition and amusement.
I hold up the Tupperware. “I brought cookies.”
“What kind?”
“Brown butter chocolate chip.”
She sets the clipboard on the wheel well, walks over, and takes the container from me. Opens it. Looks inside. Takes a cookie. Bites it. Chews slowly, deliberately, like she’s scoring it.
“These are good,” she says, in a tone that suggests good is an understatement she’s choosing on purpose. “Where’d you get the recipe?”
“My grandma.”
“Your grandma knows what she’s doing.” She takes another cookie. “Cap’s in her office. You want me to get her?”
“If that’s okay.”
Torres tucks the Tupperware under her arm. “Stay here. Don’t touch anything.”
She disappears inside. I stand in the bay and don’t touch anything, even though the engine is right there and it’s beautiful and I want to look at every inch of it.
A woman comes out of the hallway carrying a coffee mug and almost walks into the wall when she sees me standing in the bay. She’s compact and she’s got the slightly startled expression of someone who wasn’t expecting a stranger in her living room.
“Hi,” she says. “Are you lost?”
“No, I’m waiting for Captain Donnelly. I’m Zoe.”
“Walsh.” She takes a sip of coffee. “Are you the cookie girl?”
Word travels fast. “Torres told you?”
“Torres texted the group chat forty-five seconds ago.” Walsh holds up her phone. I can’t read the screen from here but I can see a flurry of messages. “You’re famous.”
“I’m persistent.”
“Same thing around here.” Walsh leans against the wall. She’s studying me, but it’s different from Torres’s assessment. Less strategic, more curious. “You really want to be here that bad?”
“More than anything.”
She nods. Takes another sip of coffee. “Cap’s tough. You know that, right? She’s fair, but she’s tough. She doesn’t bend on things.”
“I know.”
“So what’s your plan? Just keep showing up?”
“Pretty much.”
Walsh almost smiles. “That’s either very brave or very stupid.”
“My grandma used to say those are the same thing.”
Now she does smile. It’s small and quick and she hides it behind her mug, and then Torres is back, walking down the hallway with the Tupperware still under her arm and Cap behind her.
Captain Donnelly looks the same. Tall, bun, scar, coffee. She sees me and her expression does a thing I’m learning to read, which is that it does nothing at all. She has the most controlled face of any human being I’ve ever met. She should play poker. She would destroy people.
“Kimball.”
“Captain.”
“Torres says you brought cookies.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Torres also ate three of them in the time it took her to walk to my office.”
I glance at Torres, who shrugs without apology.
Cap looks at me. That same steady look from last time, the one that feels like being evaluated by someone who’s already made a decision but is too professional to say so in front of people.
“My answer hasn’t changed.”
I nod. She knows I know. That’s not the point.
“Then why are you here?”
Because I can hear your sirens from my bedroom.
Because I’ve been walking these streets my whole life and your crew runs them and I want to run them too.
Because I looked up Station 24 on Greystone Road and it’s fine, it’s a perfectly fine station with a perfectly fine captain, and I don’t want fine. I want this.
“Because you said I could apply through channels if a spot opens. I’m just making sure you know I’m interested. In case a spot opens.”
“A spot hasn’t opened.”
“I understand. But if one does. I’m interested.”
Cap takes a breath. Not a sigh, she’s too controlled for sighing, but a breath that carries weight.
“Kimball. You seem like a good kid.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m a firefighter.” It comes out sharper than I intend. Walsh makes a sound behind me that she covers with a cough. Torres goes very still.
Cap’s eyes narrow. Not angry. Assessing. She looks at me for a long time, long enough that I start to feel every inch of the gap between twenty-two and whatever she is, which is old enough to have earned every scar on her face and the right to call me whatever she wants.
“Fair enough,” she says. “You’re a firefighter who hasn’t started her first shift yet. My answer is the same. Report to Medina. Put in your time.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And stop bringing cookies.”
“No, ma’am.”
It’s out before my brain checks with my mouth. Walsh’s cough turns into something that is definitely not a cough. Torres looks at the ceiling. Cap stares at me.
Then, so fast I almost miss it, the corner of her mouth moves. Not a smile. Not even close to a smile. A tectonic event, something geological and barely perceptible, and then it’s gone and she’s turning and walking back into the station with her coffee.
“See you next week, Kimball,” Torres says, tucking the Tupperware more firmly under her arm.
“Those are for the whole crew.”
“I am the whole crew. The crew is me.” She pats the container. “Your grandma’s a genius. Tell her I said that.”
She follows Cap inside. Walsh lingers for a second, looking at me with an expression I’m starting to recognize from the people in this station, the expression that says I can’t help you but I’m not not rooting for you.
“For what it’s worth,” Walsh says, “she didn’t say no as fast this time.”
Then she’s gone too, and I’m standing in the bay alone with the engine and the clean concrete and the sound of Torres’s voice inside, probably announcing to everyone that the cookies are hers and no one else can have any.
I walk out. I don't sit on the bench. I don't linger. I did what I came to do and I'll do it again next week and the week after that if I have to, and every week I'll bring Grandma Eloise's cookies and every Wednesday Cap will say no and every Wednesday the no will get a little slower.
Walsh noticed. She said Cap didn't say no as fast this time.
I pull out my phone. I want to tell someone. Not Keely, because Keely doesn't know the whole story. Not my parents, because they'd tell me to stop.
I open a new message and type Teague's name and my thumb hovers there and then I realize I don't have her number.
I've been to Anthem three times. I've sat at her bar and told her things I haven't told my best friend and she gave me a Shirley Temple instead of oblivion and I don't have her number because I never asked because it didn't occur to me that I'd need it, and now I'm standing on the sidewalk two blocks from Station 11 wanting to tell a bartender about cookies and I can't.
I start walking toward home. Then I stop. Turn around. Walk to Anthem instead.
The closed sign is up but I can see her through the window, wiping down the bar. I knock. She looks up. Holds up a finger — one minute. Comes to the door.
"Cookies didn't work," I say.
"Shocking."
"She said no slower, though. That's progress."
"Sure."
I'm standing on the wrong side of a locked door and she's got a rag in her hand and the neon is off, which means I should go home.
"Can I have your number?" I say. "I was going to text you about the cookies and I realized I couldn't and then I walked here instead, which is probably weirder than texting."
She looks at me for a second. Then she opens the door and holds out her hand. I give her my phone. She types, gives it back.
"Don't text me before noon," she says. "I'm not a person before noon."
"Noted."
I walk home. Three blocks in, I send it.
cookie campaign: day one. she said no but slower this time. your girl patti smith would be proud.
My phone buzzes three minutes later.
patti smith would have set the cookies on fire and walked in like she owned the place
I laugh on the sidewalk. Tupperware-less, still not on the roster. But closer than I was last time.
It’s the middle of the afternoon and the bar is closed and Teague isn’t there, obviously. But I stand on the sidewalk and look at the sign, the neon A that flickers even when it’s off, and I think about Patti Smith walking into CBGB with nothing but a voice and something to say.
I’ve got cookies and a speech that didn’t work and sneakers that know every block in this neighborhood. It’s not nothing. It’s not poetry over electric guitar. But it’s mine.
I turn around again and walk home. Mom asks how my day was. I tell her it was great.