Page 3 of Haunted

“Laptop, charger, phone, backpack, everything in the top drawer.”

I go into his bedroom. It’s tiny. The bed is on stilts with a dresser and a child-sized table underneath. There’s one single bookcase that looks like it’s double- or even triple-stacked with books.

There’s no room for anything else—even the closet door doesn’t open completely without banging into the loft bed, and there is a deep groove on the wood from years of Parker opening that door only to realize too late that it didn’t open. I grab his things and an armful of clothes to take out to my truck. We come into the hallway at the same time, and he won’t meet my eye. For a second, he looks like he’s going to say something, but then his mother calls his name sharply.

“Yes, Mom!” he says, straightening, like he’s been trained to respond immediately to that tone of voice.

“In your car,” she directs him. She narrows her eyes at me as we leave.

I get into my truck and crank up the engine, then roll down my window. The sky has turned yellow and cinders are floating everywhere. The way I came looks ominous. Before I was just scared, but now I’m terrified. “Follow me,” I shout out the window at them. “We should take Brendon Farm Road out.” It’s a meandering back road, but at least there’s a lake out there we can jump into if things get bad enough.

“Mom, I need a jump! My car’s dead!” Parker calls out. His car, an old gray beater, makes a coughing sound but the engine doesn’t turn over. He stares up the hill in terror.

I hurtle out of my truck. “There’s no time!” I wrench open Parker’s door. “Out!” I command, using the same tone his mother did. Amazingly, he doesn’t fight me on it. He stumbles out. I grab some things from his back seat—a handful of clothes and a box from the footwell—and chuck them behind the driver’s seat. His car is going nowhere, and anything in it will be lost. It’s not the only one that’s been left behind: another car sits abandoned next door with the trunk still open. I know exactly the level of panic that made them leave it behind. I’m feeling it right now.

I push open the passenger door. “Get in!”

“Parker!” his mother calls. “Try it again. I want you to follow me.”

Parker hesitates with the seat belt. He looks at me and looks at the sky.

I grab him by the arm to prevent him from getting out. “Don’t you dare.” I pull him toward me just a little bit. He feels insubstantial under my fingertips and it makes me angry. Hasn’t she noticed his recurring cough?

“But—”

“No.”

“Where do we go?” Parker asks.

I fish my dad’s CB radio out of the footwell and push the button to engage it.

“Breaker, breaker, 1-9. Evacuees en route westbound on Hemingway toward Brendon Farm. Please advise. Over.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then a crackle. “Copy that. Underpass is no longer safe. Brendon Farm Road is iffy. Blocked at the intersection with Union. I’ve been on police band radio all day.”

Fuck. There are only three ways out of this area, and two of them we can’t use. Mrs. Bishop has already started her car. I get out of the truck and race to her door. She rolls down her window. “I’ve just got word that we have to take Brendon Farm Road. Don’t go back down Hemingway.”

Grandma Bishop leans over her daughter and smiles up at me. “I smell smoke,” she says. “Are we going to a bonfire? I’m not dressed for a bonfire. I have a lovely cardigan for the fall.”

“Mom, we’re going on a trip. Just for a little while,” Mrs. Bishop says.

Cinders are floating around us, and they are already starting to smoke where they land in the leaves banked along the fence line. Parker’s mom turns to me. “Hemingway is faster,” she says. “It’s two minutes to the T intersection with Morris Mountain Road, and maybe another minute to Union Road.” She turns up the radio. The voice of the emergency announcer fills the car. “…Hemingway Road is still open to evacuees at last notice.”

“Follow us,” she says.

“The guy on the CB radio said it’s blocked.”

She looks annoyed at me. “Of course it’s blocked. It’s so idiots like you won’t come in and start looting our houses. Being blocked doesn’t mean it’s impassable.”

“I don’t think that’s what—” I start, but she’s already rolling up her window.

She throws it in reverse and starts to back up the driveway toward the street level. I race to the truck.

“What’s going on?” Parker asks.

“We’re getting out of here,” I tell him. I take the truck out of park and hit the gas. The truck lurches across the grass. We’re closer to the street level and I’m angry enough to be reckless. I pull us in front of the sedan, roll down my window, and gesture to her to follow us. In the mirror, I can see Parker’s mom’s sedan backing out behind us. Good. At the top of Denning Court, I take the left onto Hemingway, headed toward Brendon Farm Road.

“Lance. Lance!” Parker’s voice is tight. “They’re going the other way.”