Page 129 of Burning Skies
He’sthe one who’s always around after school.
He’sthe one who wants juicy news stories.
He’sthe one who has the most motive.
The newspaper kids aren’t responsible for the fires.
Adrian is.
“That’s why you have the cigarettes.” I yank the pack out from between the console and throw it at him. “You could have burned down my house, asshole.”
He cringes and hits the gas as we squeal around a bend inthe road. I slam my hand against the window to stop myself from hitting it with my head.
“Like I said, it got out of control. You don’t understand the pressure I’m under to find good stories. You don’t understand what it felt like growing up in my father’s shadow. Him and all his damn journalism awards. If we didn’t have those fires, what were my kids going to write about? How Bessie the cow got loose? How some mule destroyed a flower garden? How some stupid firefighter rescued kittens?”
“Listen to yourself. You almost burned down the school on Halloween. What if you’d killed some kids? Would that have been worth a dumb news article or journalism award?” When I think about all the crap that happened this semester, I shake my head. “Did you really poop around the school? What about that snake? Did you dump it in our office?”
Laughing maniacally, he grips the steering wheel with both hands, his knuckles bone white. “It’s this fucking town. There’s never anything interesting going on. Taking a dump in the hallway was better than lighting the building on fire, right? And that snake was supposed to stay in a box on the bookshelf. It was just supposed to rattle around and scare people, not trap us in the office.”
“Stop the car. Let me out and you can go on your merry way.”
Just then, a police siren flashes behind us, and Adrian curses. “Sorry, Honey. I can’t stop.” Son of a bitch. I reach down to grab my phone, and he slams his hand on the dash. “Don’t do that!”
I flinch. “I used to think you were a really good guy.”
He wipes his face. “Not after this.”
No. Not after this.
As we reach the Eden River bridge, I start to panic. “Don’t do anything stupid. We can figure something out. At the end of the day, you didn’t hurt anyone.”
“My career is over. Don’t you see that? I’m gonna go to jail.” He hits the gas, and I scream as we barely miss another car merging with our lane.
He jerks the wheel to avoid it.
But the sharp motion flips Adrian’s truck.
The ground shifting around us as a terrible metal crunch engulfs us.
As those few seconds stretch out before me, the regret hits me.
I never told Beau how much I love him.
Now I might never get that chance.
51
BEAU
Our sirens blareas I swerve the fire truck through traffic. Next to me, Coop yells, “You shouldn’t be on this call.”
The fuck I shouldn’t. “Honey needs me.”
If this means I lose my job, so be it. I’ll give up anything for this woman.
As I make a hairpin turn, Coop shouts, “Don’t get us killed.”
“If your girlfriend was on the other end of this call, you’d want me to drive like a bat out of hell too.”
