Cam
NINE
I got as far as the gas station before my hands quit working.
I didn’t remember how I got here. One minute I was watching a man breathe fire, and the next I was parked crooked across two spaces with the engine idling and my body shaking.
Perhaps I was going into shock, and I reached into the back seat for the blanket I’d used when the car was my office and home.
The man I cared about—my mind wouldn’t describe in detail how I felt about him, it couldn’t, not now—had the ability to breathe fire.
In that first instant, I thought Price had a part-time job as a carnival fire breather.
I’d seen one at a fair once. That guy had a mouthful of fuel that he’d sprayed over a torch held at arm’s length, resulting in a plume of fire.
But the heat, the strength of the flame, and how it dribbled from Price’s lips when he spied me, that was no act.
And the flames were not just reflected in his eyes, the fire in his gaze was paired with what appeared on his lips.
And there was the scaly appearance of his forearms and chest. That man wasn’t human, or if he was, he needed a ton of moisturizer.
The ability to produce fire coupled with scales led my mind to fairy tales or myths, but they weren’t real, so I pressed my forehead to the wheel and tried to shut the world out.
It didn’t work. I flung myself back in the seat and pummeled the wheel.
“What world?” Mine had been shattered, and I no longer knew which way was up.
I peered outside as people drove in to get gas.
If any of those breathed fire here, we’d be blown to bits.
I wanted out, out of what though, I wasn’t sure. Maybe if I could rewind time to this morning, I’d ignore Price’s phone and remain ignorant of his special abilities.
But the phone rang and jolted me out of my misery and confusion. It wasn’t his number, thank gods, but the kids’ school. I couldn’t take it. Price would have received a call. Why were they phoning me? But I picked it up in case the kids had left their homework or an assignment at home.
“We can’t reach their dad,” a frantic voice informed me. “You’re listed as the second contact.”
My mind went to Jack. Maybe he’d snuck those damned wings in his backpack and jumped off the roof. Or Bea had smacked the recorder licker with her laptop, or Isla had sketched an unflattering picture of someone.
“There’s a burst water main on the second floor and water’s coming through the ceiling. We’re sending everyone home.”
But as her words filtered into my head, I thought back to Price’s phone smashing on the studio floor after I tossed it there.
“I’m coming.” That was my voice, though I wasn’t aware I’d spoken.
There were three children waiting, and no one was coming for them except me. Bea who still had memories of her biological father, Isla who’d talked me into playing a sport I was bad at, and Jack whose hot little hand often found mine.
Wait, his hand. His skin was hot like Price’s and his sisters’.
My boss was their adoptive dad, but the man who’d given birth to them was his brother.
Shoot, were they like him? And if they were, how come they hadn’t scorched my butt when I’d made them do their homework or told them they had to clean their teeth again?
That was what I would have done if I could produce fire.
My mind went off on a tangent, thinking of people who deserved a lick of flames on their behind.
“Stop.” I tugged at my hair. None of that mattered because they needed me.
I had to collect them, take them home, and wait for their father.
I couldn’t skedaddle out of their lives without an explanation.
Shit, now I was howling with hot salty tears staining my shirt and pants because how could I leave them?
The children weren’t mine, I didn’t have any claim to them, but I wanted them huddled near me, like a duck protecting her little ones with her wings.
When I arrived at the school, the usual orderly pickup line was bedlam. Kids were bunched under the awning and teachers in rain boots were trying to corral everyone. Water was sheeting down the inside of the front doors as if the building were crying. You and me both, I told them.
I found my kids against the wall. Bea had Jack by the hand, and her other arm was around Isla. But Jack was stomping on puddles, and Isla had her hand out, catching the water. Cranking down the window, I yelled and waved, and they clamored into the back seat.
“We got wet. It was so fun.” Jack was treating the experience as an adventure as I jumped out of Berty and buckled him in. “Why are your hands wobbly?”
“I’m cold.”
I cranked up the heating. Price had paid to fix the fuel leak and had the car serviced and inspected, saying he refused to have his children transported in a car that wasn’t safe and smelling of gas fumes.
“Your eyes are different.” Isla studied me in the rearview mirror.
“I’ve been working on a new logo.”
“Can we see when we get home?” Bea asked.
I had plenty of half-assed attempts at design that I could pretend were from today.
At home, the girls showered while I manhandled Jack under warm water. I prepared snacks and told the kids they could have screen time or watch TV for thirty minutes. They stared at me because snacks were always followed by homework and then free time.
“That’s mean.” Isla was on a beanbag eating crackers with peanut butter and watching TV. “Those kids are telling that purple alien that he doesn’t belong because he doesn’t look like them.”
I agreed as I peeled an apple because I needed to occupy my hands.
“I like him. Why does he have to go?” Jack had crawled under the coffee table.
“People do that to others that are different.” Bea was on the sofa reading. “There's a boy at school who can't hear, and some kids refused to play with him, so me and my friends did.”
“We're different,” Jack announced from the fort he'd built out of couch cushions.
I sensed rather than heard the intake of breath from the girls.
“Everybody's a bit different, buddy.”
“No, but we're—”
“Jack.” Bea was using the voice she kept for when her brother said something she didn’t want the world to hear. Or perhaps it was just me who had to be kept in the dark.
The apple fell into the sink. Were they hiding part of themselves because of me?
Had they been making themselves small in case I discovered who they really were?
Not because they’d done anything wrong but because they were different and they’d learned that made them less safe.
And they couldn’t be themselves with me here.
Gods, no, that yellow flame that I’d imagined. What if it was real, and after today, I was convinced it was.
Price had stepped in when his brother died. He loved and nurtured the kids, but he’d had to protect them, not only from outsiders but from me. I was also an outsider.
Jack and I spent an hour building a gigantic fort with an old mattress and blankets, and the four of us crawled in. As we lay on pillows and made shapes on the blanket ceiling with flashlights, a car pulled into the driveway.
It was his car. Price was home.