Chapter 16
Maya
I couldn't be in that apartment anymore.
Everything there reminded me of him. The couch where we'd watched terrible movies, his arm around my shoulders. The kitchen where he'd made pancakes, flour on his nose, grinning at me like I was something worth waking up for. The door I'd closed in his face while he begged me to let him explain.
The door I hadn’t opened since then.
Zoe had been careful around me all week. Quiet. Watching me with those too-old eyes, asking questions I couldn’t answer.
‘Where’s Shane?’
‘What happened?’
‘Why won’t you talk about it?’
I didn't have answers. Not ones that made sense. Not ones that didn't make me sound like exactly what the article said I was: desperate, clingy, too much.
So I was here. At school. Grading papers at seven PM in an empty building because at least my students' research reports about their neighborhoods didn't make me cry.
Except I was crying anyway.
Silent tears dripped onto Marcus's paper about his apartment building. My neighborhood has a laundromat, a bodega, and a park with no swings. My mom says it used to have a bookstore but it closed. Eleven families live in my building. I know because I counted the mailboxes.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Smeared the ink. Had to start over.
‘You're too much work. No one's going to want your mess.’
David was right.
He’d always been right.
I ruined everything. I'd ruined my marriage. I'd ruined whatever I had with Shane. I'd seen a photo and hadn't even let him explain.
I shut the door like I’d been waiting for an excuse.
Maybe I had been all along.
Maybe I'd spent our entire relationship waiting for proof that he'd leave, and when something that looked like proof appeared, I'd grabbed it with both hands. It was easier to end it myself than to wait for him to figure out what everyone else already knew.
Teen mom energy, desperate to lock him down.
He'll be gone in a month.
I set down my pen and pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw stars.
Then I heard my phone buzz. It was a text from Officer Delgado.
Officer Delgado
Another school fire. PS 112 in Astoria. All units responding. Leaving post.
My stomach dropped.
Another fire. Tommy really hadn't moved on. He was still out there, still burning, still angry.
I grabbed my bag, my keys, my phone. I wasn't staying here alone. Not tonight. I'd go home, lock the doors, hold Zoe, and wait for this nightmare to be over.
I was halfway to the classroom door when the smell hit me.
Sharp. Chemical. Wrong.
Gasoline.
My brain caught up. P.S. 112 wasn't the target. P.S. 112 was the distraction.
I fumbled for my phone and tried to call 911. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely hit the numbers. The call connected, a voice on the other end asked what my emergency was, and I stammered out the address, the smell, the potential danger.
"Stay on the line, ma'am. Help is on the way."
I shoved the phone in my pocket, grabbed my bag, and ran for the exit.
The hallway was hazy but not yet filled with smoke. The fire alarm shrieked, but I couldn't see flames. I couldn't feel the heat. Just the sharp, overwhelming smell of gasoline.
Then someone stepped out of the haze.
I could only make out his shape at first, but I knew. Even before I saw his face, I knew.
Tommy.
He was tall now. Thin. Nineteen years old—but he looked older. Hollowed out, like something had been eating him from the inside for years. A gasoline can in one hand. A lighter in the other.
The floor around him glistened wet.
He hadn't lit it yet.
"Ms. Cummins." His voice cracked. "I was hoping you'd still be here."
My heart stopped.
Started again.
"Tommy."
"You remember me." It wasn't a question. There was something bitter underneath it, something that had been fermenting for nearly a decade. "I wasn't sure you would. I was just another kid, right? Another file. Another problem you handed off to someone else."
"I remember you staying after class to help me clean the boards. I remember you wrote a poem about fire for the class anthology. You talked about how it could destroy things, but also keep people warm. I remember you always made sure the classroom fish got fed, even when it wasn't your job."
Something flickered across his face. Pain. Memory. The ghost of the boy who’d once trusted me.
"Do you remember what you said?" He stepped closer. The lighter glinted in the emergency lighting. "When they took me away? Do you remember what you promised?"
‘I'll make sure you're okay.’
I’d said exactly that. And then I'd moved on to the next struggling kid and forgotten about him.
"You ruined my life."
Tommy's voice shook. The lighter trembled in his grip.
"You saw me. You made me trust you. And then you called them, and they took me away, and my mom..." He broke off. Swallowed hard. "My mom died alone. In our apartment. Because I wasn't there. Because you took me away from her."
My stomach dropped.
"Tommy, I didn't know—"
"Of course you didn't know!" He was crying now, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "You didn't know because you didn't care! You made your phone call and moved on. Went home to your own kid. Forgot I existed."
The words hit like blows. I let them land. He needed to say this, needed someone to hear it, and the least I could do was stand here and take it.
"Seven foster homes." His voice rose, cracking on the numbers. "Seven. The first one, they only wanted the check. Barely fed me and locked me in my room when their real kids had friends over. The second one, the dad hit harder than mine did."
I flinched.
"The Hendersons." His face twisted. "They were good. They actually wanted me. For two years, I thought maybe..." He laughed, hollow and broken. "Then Mrs. Henderson got pregnant. Suddenly, they couldn't afford me anymore. I got sent back like a defective product."
The smoke was getting thicker. My eyes burned.
"Group homes after that. Aged out at eighteen with a garbage bag of clothes and sixty-three dollars." Tommy stepped closer. "Nine years, Ms. Cummins. Nine years of being invisible. Of being shuffled. Of being forgotten by everyone who ever promised to help."
His eyes met mine.
"You were the first," he said. "The first person who made me think someone might actually give a damn. And then you proved that no one does. Not really. Not when it matters."
I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
This was my fault.
Not the fire. Not the gasoline. But the boy who was holding the lighter. The rage that had hollowed him out. The nine years of suffering that had led him here, to this hallway, to this moment.
I’d started this—
One phone call, nine years ago. I'd told myself I was saving him. I'd told myself the system would take care of him.
Tommy was still talking, still crying, still listing every way the world had failed him. But all I could hear was the echo of my own voice from nine years ago.
‘I'll make sure you're okay.’
I'd been the one to teach him that promises meant nothing.
Instead of running, I stepped toward him.
"You're right."
Tommy blinked. Whatever he'd expected, it wasn't that.
"I made you a promise," I said. "And I broke it. I reported the abuse, and I'd do that again, Tommy. I would. Because those burns on your arms, what your father was doing to you..." My voice cracked. "You deserved to be safe. You deserved better than what you had."
"Then why didn't you make sure I got it?"
The question hung in the smoke between us.
"Because I failed you." The words scraped out of my throat. "I told myself I couldn't save everyone. That I had other students, other problems, my own daughter to worry about." I took another step toward him.
"I tried, Tommy. I called CPS a few weeks after they took you. Asked how you were doing, where they'd placed you." My voice cracked. "They wouldn't tell me anything. Said it was confidential. Said I wasn't family."
His jaw tightened. "So you just gave up."
"Yes." The word scraped out of me. "I told myself I'd done everything I could.
That the system would take care of you. That once I made the call, my part was done.
" I shook my head. "But I should have tried harder.
I should have found another way. I should have shown up at every office, made a nuisance of myself, refused to leave until someone told me you were okay. "
Tommy was crying harder now. The anger was draining out of him, leaving something raw and wounded underneath.
"You were the only one who was ever nice to me." His voice broke like a child's. "And you just... You left. Like everyone else. Like the Hendersons. Like my mom."
"I know." I was close enough to touch him.
I didn’t. Not yet
"I know I left. I know the system failed you. I know everyone who was supposed to help you didn't."
The fire crackled somewhere below us. The building groaned.
"But burning schools down won't bring your mom back." I kept my voice steady, even as the smoke burned my lungs. "It won't undo what happened. It'll just make sure you spend the rest of your life in a cell, alone. And you've been alone long enough, Tommy."
The lighter wavered.
"I don't know how to stop." His whisper was barely audible over the alarm still shrieking. "I've been so angry for so long. I don't know how to be anything else."
I thought about Shane. About running. About spending my whole life bracing for people to leave and pushing them away before they could.
About closing doors on people who were trying to stay.
I reached out my hand.
"Let me help," I said. "For real this time. Not a phone call. Not a promise I don’t keep. Actual help."
Tommy stared at my hand.
The fire crackled.
The smoke thickened.
"Why?" His voice was raw. "Why do you care now?"
I held his gaze.
"Because I know what it's like to think no one's coming back for you," I said."And I know what it’s like to be wrong about that."
Something in his face gave way. The last wall, the last defense, the anger he’d used to hold himself together for nine years.
Before he could collapse, I caught his hand.
The building groaned. The smoke burned my lungs.
And Tommy Vickers, the boy I'd failed, the man who'd wanted to burn everything down, looked at me with the same scared eyes I'd seen in my classroom nine years ago.
Not a monster.
A child who'd been waiting for someone to come back for him.
I took his hand.
I wasn’t going to let go again.