The Burn
by Casey Lawrence
Niamh Kelly sure knew how to throw a party. Any occasion, any time of year: she was the one to call if you wanted to throw a rager. If Niamh was at your party, everyone was going to have fun, no matter what the mood was like before she got there. She was the only girl I knew who could turn a funeral into an excuse to get wasted in somebody’s basement. I watched her curiously, like a wildlife photographer lining up the perfect shot.
Observe, in her natural habitat,
the Domestic Red-Crested Extrovert.
Already tipsy, she was filling a line of solo cups for the first round of beer pong and explaining the rules loudly to a beefy dude in a hockey jersey. Brian, was it? We’d been introduced before, but Niamh’s friends were like migratory birds—they went their separate ways for months at a time before flocking together again for the next party, with never quite the same arrangement of people. Brian or whateverhisnamewas would be around for a weekend or a semester before flying the coop, like most of her admirers.
Boys can come and go but I would still be here, outlasting them all.
I’d known Niamh since Kindergarten. Our older siblings—Niamh’s sister and my brother—had dated on and off from eighth grade through college. Their breakups and makeups were the stuff of legend, and one or both of us was often enlisted in the revenge plot or the win-her-back grand gesture. Our friendship was inevitable, like a wave crashing into the beach. We fell into each other again and again, every time Erin and Dan split “for good this time,” until it really was for good. But by then, we were us, me and Niamh, in perfect symbiosis.
And then we got older, and I became that weird tagalong, following Niamh to parties and concerts and the mall when she hung out with the popular kids. I was the barnacle to her cruise ship, along for the ride. Although I sometimes felt invisible to everyone else, Niamh saw me; she understood me in a way no one else did. I liked to think I understood her too, though some things about her still mystified me after all these years.
I slumped against the wall, holding my untouched drink to my lips every so often so as not to appear prudish. Tonight’s party was courtesy of a Samhain—an ancient Irish tradition, Niamh assured me as we stood in line to pay for the beer. She was fond of proclaiming her pagan Celtic roots.
“It’s an ancient custom of the tribe of Kelly,” she had explained under the sterile fluorescent lights of the LCBO. One bulb stuttered and buzzed as she filled the basket with bottles of beer. “When the boundary between our world and the next grows thinnest, we must appease the fairies with offerings of food, drink, and hospitality. We light a bonfire to cleanse the world and send the fairies on their way.”
“And wear costumes and go door to door asking for treats—” I interrupted, suppressing a smile. She could call it Samhain all she wanted, but there was no denying the occasion.
Niamh had never been to Ireland.
She rolled her eyes but smirked. Her eyes sparkled with mischief and Nyx glitter eyeshadow. “Pssh,” she said. “It’s booze and a bonfire, need I say more?”
She paid for the beer with her dad’s credit card.
So here I was, babysitting yet another party. It was only nine o’clock, and the crowd was already growing restless and rowdy. New people arrived in droves. Some were costumed, others casual. Most carried paper LCBO bags or open containers of alcohol.
My nose twitched and I narrowed my eyes. Someone was passing around a blunt. I hated to think what the furniture would smell like tomorrow if these animals were left unchecked.
Taking my role of co-host very seriously—though no one had appointed me—I asked the smoker to please step outside with his contraband. For my trouble, I got a smoke ring blown in my face, but he did climb the stairs and let himself out back, which I considered a win as I pawed the smoke from my eyes.
“You’ll never have any fun with that sort of mentality,” someone close to my shoulder said. I jumped, feeling sticky breath on the back of my neck.
For a moment, I thought it was Niamh creeping up on me. Niamh lacked boundaries. She had always liked to startle me when we were kids. It had escalated over the years from jumping out selling “boo!” to a fly-by slap on the ass or even her hot, wet tongue invading my ear during a whisper, if she was drunk enough. Instinctively, I covered my ear with my shoulder.
The person who had spoken wasn’t Niamh, but one of her flock. She had blonde hair with pink tips and was wearing bright red lipstick that had smeared a little on one side. Her pupils were dilated. I raised my eyebrows at her and hmmed noncommittally, wondering what she had ingested to give her that unnaturally bright-eyed, but somewhat vacant, stare.
“Let me enlighten you,” she said, speaking far more articulately than I expected from someone in her condition. “When at a party, it is customary to consume the alcohol in one’s cup, rather than just pretending to.”
I felt the back of my neck flushing, unaccustomed to being called out so directly. Nobody noticed me at Niamh’s parties. I was a wallflower, silently observing, participating only when asked by the host herself. I liked to narrate the events unfolding as though doing a voice-over for a nature documentary.
And now the young females are forming a dance circle,
the opening moves of a complex mating ritual in which
they must attract the attention of the fittest male.
To be looked at, rather than doing the looking, was a new one for me. I instinctively glanced across the room in search of Niamh, feeling a jolt of panic. She was laughing, touching Brian’s arm. His competitor sunk a ping pong ball into one of Brian’s cups and let out a drunken, victorious cheer. Brian maintained eye contact with Niamh as he tossed his next shot, which went wide and nearly hit the dance circle across the room. She didn’t have to do anything to hold his attention.
“I don’t come to parties to get drunk,” I said lamely as I lowered my gaze.
“No, I don’t suppose you do.”
I gave this girl a sharp look, then. She was wearing a mix of styles that clashed: a ratty vintage jean jacket over a shiny crop top, wide-legged plaid pants cinched with a chunky studded belt, and a glossy leather bag that, if I had to guess, looked like it cost more than my car.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
Someone turned the music up and I felt my voice getting lost under the bassline. She shrugged and took a sip from her cup, further smearing her lipstick. My automatic response was to reach out and correct the smudge with my thumb, as if she were Niamh, my closest friend, rather than some stranger.
I pulled my hand away quickly. “Your lipstick—” I explained, but she just laughed.
“Maternal instinct!” she said, getting close to my face, to be heard over the music. “You’re the mom-friend!”
I frowned. “I’m not the mom-friend,” I said.
“You are, though!” she said, gesturing to my full cup. “You won’t let loose and have fun because you’re too busy taking care of everybody and worrying about the furniture!”
I hated that she was right. She’d known me for all of a minute and had me completely figured out. My gaze strayed to Niamh involuntarily, to check that Brian wasn’t misbehaving. I was worried about the furniture. I did periodically check the bathrooms in case someone was throwing up or OD’ing in there. My nose was on high alert, waiting for someone to light up a joint so that I could tell them to take it outside.
Had I been Niamh’s uptight wallflower friend for too long? Was being the ‘responsible one’ holding me back from having a good time? I resolved at that moment to let go, at least a little. I would be a senior in college next semester, and I’d never gotten shitfaced at one of Niamh’s parties—it was a travesty.
Steeling my resolve like a soldier going off to war, I downed my warm drink in three quick gulps. I thought I heard the girl whistle, but it was hard to know for sure over the remixed pop song thrumming in my teeth.
“I’m not the mom-friend tonight!” I told her, as if I had something to prove. “I’m just Alex!”
“To ‘Just Alex’!” she said, raising her own cup to her lips and draining it. “Let’s get another drink!”
One more drink turned into three as we scavenged some beers from Niamh’s hoard behind the sofa. She told me her name was Clementine, then Sage, then Juniper. With every drink her name changed. Mine was always Just Alex.
When the song changed to something she found amusing, she pulled me away from the wall to dance with her. I met Niamh’s eyes near the bottom of my fourth drink. She seemed surprised to see me dancing and drinking. The emergence of this New Alex seemed to intrigue her—or perhaps annoy her. Even after all this time, I could never quite read her expression.
I turned away from Niamh’s probing gaze, burying my flushed face into Juniper’s neck. One hand holding a half-full beer (my fourth? fifth?), I pulled Juniper closer to me and began to sway unsteadily, completely off-beat with the music. Juniper laughed: I felt it in my sternum and throat. Being this close to her felt like indulging in a decadent dessert; the smell of her skin was sweet and made me feel intoxicated. Or maybe that was the alcohol.
Niamh announced that it was time to light the bonfire. The party began to migrate toward the backyard in anticipation, the current round of beer pong abandoned for the promise of fire and sparklers.
The flock moves as one, a coordinated murmuration
following the flight plan arranged by their leader.
Normally, I’d be the one filling a bucket with water, assembling a teepee of dry branches and wood from the pile behind the shed, adding a layer of dryer lint or newspaper for kindling, lighting the match, cupping my hands over my mouth to blow on a glowing ember, coaxing the fire to grow, gently but surely, into a size and shape safe for roasting marshmallows.
Not tonight. Tonight, my heart was leaping in my throat as Juniper’s fingers grazed the skin where the waist of my jeans met my t-shirt. Her touch was electric. Somebody else could light the fire. Somebody sober, preferably.
Eventually, the pull of peer pressure moved us toward the stairs. Juniper kept hold of my wrist as we moved among the last few partygoers in the migration from the basement to the backyard. Through the glass patio doors, I saw that someone had already set up the fire; it was burning low and slow, just as I would have done. Niamh was twirling a sparkler like a magic wand. Brian caught her waist and she shrieked with laughter.
I moved toward the door, but Juniper’s hand on my wrist pulled me in the other direction. I followed her lead without question, downing the rest of my drink and depositing my cup on top of the piano as we passed through the living room. The sounds of the party faded as Juniper walked purposefully through the house with me on her heels like an obedient dog.
We walked upstairs, the one area of the house completely untouched by the party. I trailed my fingers along the wall under the line of family photos, catching the corner of a frame as I stumbled up the stairs. The photo of Niamh and Erin swung slightly, hanging crooked as Juniper gave my hand a tug. I didn’t question it when she opened the door to Niamh’s bedroom and led me inside. Only when she had closed the door behind us did I stop to wonder what we were doing here; it occurred to me only vaguely that Niamh wouldn’t want us in her room.
“C’mere,” Juniper said, dropping my wrist in favor of grabbing the back of my neck with both hands. She pulled me into a kiss that tasted the way a distillery smells, like alcohol fumes and burnt sugar. My hands remained awkwardly at my sides as she pushed her body against mine, backing me up against the door.
Once my brain kicked into gear, I kissed her back. I resurfaced with a new clarity of mind. A girl was kissing me. A very pretty girl. A very pretty girl who smelled good.
The world fell away. Juniper kissed the corner of my mouth, dragged her lower lip across my cheek, and then latched onto my earlobe with her teeth. Her hands wandered all over me. There was no rhyme or reason to her movements. I tried to follow her lead, but I felt like she was following a script and I was a clueless understudy, thrown on stage without my lines.
I stumbled as she pulled me without warning away from the door and toward Niamh’s bed. I was a jumble of limbs, awkwardly flailing as she pulled me down on top of her. Our teeth clashed together. I winced. She laughed and wiped my cheek with her hand where what was left of her lipstick had been deposited.
She kissed me again, breathlessly and softly, before pulling away again the next second.
“You wanna…?” she asked, bumping her nose against mine.
“Want to?” I asked, trying to keep up.
She sighed dramatically and took my hand, moving it to her belt. “Sample the local cuisine?”
“Oh? Ohh. Um.” I fumbled at her belt for a second, feeling a rushing in my ears and blood rising to my cheeks. “Yeah. Yes. I haven’t—but yeah, sure.”
She grabbed my hands, which had just made it to the button of her fly, and looked at me seriously. “You haven’t done this before?”
“No.”
“With a girl?”
“With anyone.”
It didn’t occur to me to lie. Juniper let loose a short bark of laughter, and then covered her mouth with both hands. “Sorry! Sorry. I just—a virgin friend of Niamh’s? You’re an endangered species.”
Trying to be suave, I raised an eyebrow at her in what I hoped was a seductive way. “Well then, put me out of my misery, Juniper.”
“Shannon,” she said. “It’s Shannon, actually. We shouldn’t—I mean, this isn’t really—and you should know my name if we—”
I kissed her, taking the lead. My head was spinning, but all I kept thinking was: if not tonight, when? The fact that we were in Niamh’s room—on her bed—didn’t occur to me. The sounds of the party in the backyard were distant.
Here we can see the Flightless Smallbreasted Virgin,
a rare sight in these parts,
as she leaves the nest for the first time.
There are moments in your life that you remember with the kind of clarity that makes all your other memories seem unreal and pixelated. I remember undoing Shannon’s leather belt with silver studs. I remember the way she shimmied out of her pants. I remember the smell and taste of her, the warmth of her skin, the pinpricks of pain in my scalp as she pulled on my hair.
Dizzy from the alcohol and excitement, I remember bumping my head against her knee as she slung her leg over my shoulder. The rushing in my ears dissipated, leaving in its wake the thrumming of my own heart, synched to match the beat of the music from the party below.
I remember her pulling me up by my hair to kiss her again. I remember her hand undoing my fly deftly, reaching her hand inside my pants and touching me with confident fingers.
I remember the word “oh,” leaving my mouth against her mouth, and then the wrong name coming to my lips: not Shannon or even Juniper, Sage, or Clementine…
So softly I hoped she hadn’t heard it, I said the name “Niamh.”
There was a flash from the window. It wasn’t like a camera flash, but a sudden warm glow and cascade of sparks against the black sky.
I remember that rush of pure adrenaline when I heard the first scream: not the woo of an excited girl when her song comes on, but a scream of real terror. The deep bellow of a man joined her voice. Others, yelling.
For a moment my body froze. Shannon’s grip on my hair slackened as she turned to the window, aglow with firelight.
We sprung apart. I stumbled to the window and looked down on the backyard. A column of smoke obscured the scene, but through the smoke, I saw a figure moving, robed in heat and light—
Someone was on fire.
With my heart in my throat, I backed away from the window.
No, I thought. That can’t be right. The fire was small. It was small and contained and someone sober was watching it—someone had to be in charge. Somebody had to—
Shannon had her pants back on before my body began to move again, to the door, down the stairs, into the kitchen. Robotically, I located the fire extinguisher in the pantry and followed the sound of screaming.
It had to have been only a minute, but felt longer, time crawling as I shouldered my way past the frantic, panicking bodies pouring into the living room, and out the glass door.
I pulled the pin and squeezed the trigger as I broke through the line and felt the heat on my face. A spray of white—what is it in a fire extinguisher, anyway? Foam? Carbon dioxide?
There were two writhing shapes on the ground, moaning. Who was it? Who?
Someone had grabbed a blanket off the couch and threw it over one of them. The flames were out but the air was so thick with smoke I couldn’t see. I remember the dull thud of the spent extinguisher hitting the grass as I let it go.
What do you do for burns once the fire is out? Why were there no sirens?
Clarity: the smoke cleared and I could see. What I could see, then, was that Brian had gotten the worst of it. I wondered, vaguely, if they’d be able to save his hands. He lay crumpled and whimpering, still conscious, holding out his hands. I turned away, unable to look.
“Call 911,” I said, but the smoke caught my voice. The music, which had somehow still been playing, suddenly cut out. I pointed to someone and repeated in a louder voice, “Call 911.”
Someone had already called: Shannon was on the phone with them on the landing by the crooked photo, not daring to come closer. Someone in the kitchen was sobbing into her iPhone. The boy I pointed to fumbled for his phone and began babbling.
I heard the words but only processed perhaps one in five: Bonfire. Gasoline. Explosion. Lakeshore Drive. Ambulance. Hurry.
I saw a few girls sitting against the fence, marveling at bright red patches on their hands and arms as I moved toward the second shape in the grass, a crumpled ghost. She was wrapped in a sheet, shivering, her eyes closed. Her lips were moving but no sound came out.
“I’m here,” I said, crouching beside her. I dare not touch her. “It’s Alex. I’m here.”
I almost said the words, ‘You’re okay,’ and ‘It’ll be okay,’ but they died in my throat. This wasn’t okay. She wasn’t okay.
I sat with Niamh until the ambulance arrived. Those three or four minutes passed the slowest in my life. Brian was unconscious by then: a blessing. His burns were significant. His hands and arms took the brunt of it, but his chest and one side of his face were hit too. Niamh had been luckier, had had a split second to turn away from the explosion and shield her face with her arms.
I sat in the grass until well after the ambulances had gone to the hospital with Niamh and Brian. A few other girls, with less severe burns, were driven to urgent care by a neighbour. The entire neighbourhood was lit up, craning their necks from the street to see the carnage.
I sat there in the backyard for a long time after they took her away from me. That was where we used to build blanket-forts, I thought hysterically, looking at the blackened grass. We used to sleep side-by-side under the stars here. It was now a crater of smoke and scorched earth. The smell of melted plastic, burnt flesh, and fear clung to my skin.
Shannon found me and lowered herself beside me. The warmth of her bare arm against my bare arm seemed to burn, and I flinched away from her touch.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she said, as though reading my mind.
“No,” I said, not looking at her. “It was yours.”
I remember the sound she made. It was something between a sob and a laugh, a confusingly human sound. I would later regret saying that to her, when sobriety had cleared the cobwebs and I made sense of what had led us here. I had made my own choices. I had chosen to abandon the party to follow Shannon. It had been my decision too.
Brian had chosen to siphon gas from his car to make the fire bigger. He had chosen to pour the gasoline onto the fire, with the fumes of it in his mouth and on his hands.
His choices led to the explosion, not mine or Shannon’s. But I felt responsible. In my heart, I had always felt responsible for Niamh. At five years old, we’d held hands to cross the street when we walked to school.
Her scars would forever remind me of a broken promise. She would never blame me, of course. Niamh had never asked me to be the fire marshal or to stay sober to supervise. She never assumed that I would. She had been happy to see me enjoying the party.
But I would know.
I would know that her name had come to my lips with another woman’s hand in my pants. I would know that, deep down, part of me had wished it were Niamh that led me upstairs to her bedroom. I would know that the drinking and the dancing had been for her benefit, not mine, or even Shannon’s.
Notice me, my soul had screamed.
And when her eyes turned away and her hand reached for Brian—well. I would know that my judgement had been clouded. That I should have been there, as her friend, to have a water bucket beside the fire and to tell Brian not to fuck with gasoline.
If I had been braver…
Shannon stood and left without a word. I closed my eyes and felt the cool night air on my hot skin, burning with shame.
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