Chapter Thirteen
Zoe
The bay doors are open. The sun is sharp and the concrete is warm and the folding chair is there, my folding chair, the one with the wobble in the left front leg.
I don’t sit in it. I just stand in the bay and look around and try to memorize it.
The hose hooks. The whiteboard. The tool wall.
The way the light comes in through the open doors and makes the chrome on the engine glow.
Voices inside. More than usual. I can hear laughter, someone’s music playing low, the clink of dishes being washed.
Torres comes out. She sees me and stops.
“No cookies?”
“No cookies.”
She reads my face. Torres is good at reading faces. She’s been reading mine for weeks and she knows the difference between my determined face and my defeated face and whatever this face is, which is something in between.
“Come in,” she says.
I blink. “What?”
“Come inside. You’ve been standing in the bay for weeks. You can see the kitchen.”
She turns and walks inside and I follow her because what else am I going to do.
The hallway is narrow, painted cream, boots lined up along one wall.
Photos on the other wall, crew photos going back years.
I want to stop and look at every single one but Torres is moving and I’m following and then we’re in the kitchen.
It’s bigger than I expected. Long table, eight chairs, a counter with a coffee maker and a stack of mugs.
The window faces the side yard. There’s a whiteboard on the wall with a chore rotation and someone has drawn a small cartoon firefighter in the corner that I’m ninety percent sure is Torres based on the exaggerated ponytail.
Rivera is at the table with a laptop. Walsh is in the corner chair reading a book, something thick with a dark cover. Hayes is doing something at the counter that involves a knife and vegetables.
And at the head of the table, Captain Donnelly is sitting with her coffee. Next to her, in a chair pulled close enough that their knees are touching, is a woman I’ve never seen at the station before.
She’s striking. Messy hair pushed back from her face.
Paint under her fingernails. She’s wearing overalls and no shoes, like she walked in from somewhere creative and forgot to finish getting dressed, and she’s got a coffee mug in one hand and the other hand is resting on Cap’s forearm like it lives there.
Cap looks up when I walk in. Her expression does the controlled-nothing thing.
“Kimball.”
“Captain. I know you didn’t invite me in. Torres—”
“I know.” She glances at Torres, who is suddenly very interested in the coffee maker. “Kimball, this is Iris.”
“Hi.” The woman with the paint under her nails smiles at me. It’s a wide, warm smile, the kind that makes you feel like you’ve been welcomed into something before you even know what it is. “You’re the cookie girl.”
“My reputation precedes me.”
“Your cookies precede you. Vera brought some home last week and ate three when she thought I wasn’t looking.” Iris glances at Cap, who takes a very deliberate sip of coffee and doesn’t respond. “I’m Iris Cole. Vera’s partner.”
“Zoe Kimball.”
“I know. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“You have?”
“Vera comes home and says ‘that girl was at the station again’ and then describes everything you did in detail while pretending she doesn’t care.” Iris squeezes Cap’s forearm. “It’s very endearing.”
“Iris.” Cap’s voice is level but there’s the thin patience of a woman who is being gently and publicly undermined by the person she loves.
“What? It is.” Iris turns back to me. “So. You want to be here.”
“More than anything.”
“Why?”
Everyone else in the kitchen has gone still.
Rivera’s laptop is forgotten. Walsh’s book is down.
Hayes has stopped cutting vegetables. Torres is holding a coffee mug she hasn’t poured yet.
They’re all watching, and I realize this is it.
This is the last time I get to say this.
Not the rehearsed speech, not the ninety seconds I timed in the mirror. Just the truth.
“Because I grew up here,” I say. “Not in this station. In this neighborhood. Eight blocks that direction." I point. "I’ve been hearing these sirens since I was born. I used to count them from my bed at night and guess where the calls were. House fire or medical. Close or far.” My voice is steady, which surprises me. “I went to the academy because of this station. Not because of firefighting, even though I love firefighting. Because of this crew. Because I watched you all from the outside my whole life and I knew, before I knew the word for it, that this is where I’m supposed to be.”
The kitchen is quiet. Cap is looking at me with her coffee halfway to her mouth.
“I know you don’t have a spot,” I say. “I know the process takes months. I know I’m twenty-two and I haven’t worked a single shift and I have no right to stand in your kitchen and tell you where I belong.
But I’ve been at your door for weeks and I washed your rig and I brought you my grandmother’s cookies and I listened to your entire crew run a two-alarm call from the dispatch radio while I sat alone in your bay, and I’m telling you that I will do whatever it takes.
Any shift. Any position. Probationary, temporary, whatever you need. I just want a chance.”
The silence stretches. Cap sets her coffee down. She opens her mouth.
Iris puts her hand on Cap’s arm.
Not dramatically. Not with any visible pressure. She just rests her hand there, the same hand with paint under the nails that was on Cap’s forearm a minute ago, and she looks at Vera. Not at me. At Vera.
It’s not a word. It’s not a request. It’s just a look. The kind of look that only works between people who’ve built something deep enough that whole conversations happen without sound. I’ve never been looked at like that. I’ve never seen anyone look at anyone like that.
Cap looks at Iris. Iris holds it. A conversation happens without sound, one I can’t read and don’t need to, because whatever Iris says with her eyes changes the shape of Cap’s jaw. The tension around her eyes loosens. Her shoulders drop a quarter of an inch.
She turns back to me.
“There’s a probationary rotation,” she says. “Three months. You train with Hayes. You do everything she says. You’re the first one in and the last one out and you don’t complain and you don’t slack and if at the end of three months I decide you’re not ready, you go to 24 with no argument.”
My brain stops working.
“Captain?”
“Probationary. Three months. Report Monday.” She picks up her coffee. “Do you understand?”
“Yes. Yes, ma’am. Yes, I understand. I—”
“Don’t hug me.”
I was absolutely about to hug her. I catch myself with my arms half-raised and bring them back down and stand there vibrating because every cell in my body is trying to explode and I’m holding it together through sheer force of will and the awareness that I’m standing in front of six women who are all watching me not lose it.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you, Captain. I won’t let you down.”
“You’re welcome. Now go home and tell your parents. I'll handle the higher ups.” She takes a sip of coffee. “And Kimball?”
“Yes?”
“Monday. Six AM. If you’re late, I’ll reassign you myself.”
“I’ll be early.”
“I know you will.” And then, so small I almost miss it, Cap’s mouth does the thing.
The tectonic shift. The geological event.
Except this time it lasts a full second and I realize it’s a smile, an actual smile, and then it’s gone and she’s drinking her coffee and Iris is grinning at me like she just pulled off a magic trick, which she did.
Torres appears next to me. “Congratulations, probie. I expect cookies on Monday. Double batch.”
“Triple,” I say.
Rivera closes her laptop. “Welcome to 11, Kimball. Don’t touch my locker.”
Walsh picks up her book. “I’d say something profound but Torres already used the good lines. Welcome.”
Hayes sets down her knife. Wipes her hands on a towel. Walks over to me and extends her hand. I shake it. Her grip is firm and steady.
“Six AM Monday,” she says. “Bring clothes you don’t care about. We start with drills.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Kimball?” Hayes holds my hand for an extra beat. “Don’t call me ma’am. Call me Hayes.”
I nod. I can’t speak because if I open my mouth I’m going to cry and I am not going to cry in the Station 11 kitchen on the day I got in.
I nod and I squeeze Hayes’s hand and I turn around and I walk out through the hallway with the crew photos and through the bay with my folding chair and onto the sidewalk on Haverford Avenue.
I make it one block before the tears come.
They’re not sad tears. They’re the kind that happen when your body can’t hold what it’s feeling and it has to go somewhere. I’m crying and laughing and walking and my phone is in my hand and I’m not calling my parents and I’m not calling Keely.
I'm going to Teague.