“Thanks for coming for me, Nance, and keeping this under your hat.”
   “Just text me next time so I know where you are.”
   Allison pledges, “I will.”
   “You’re lucky there’s no damage on the rental.”
   “Tell me about it.”
   “And that tow truck driver let you off cheap. Ten bucks to pull you out of the ditch?” Nancy clowns, “He had the hots for youuu.”
   Behind them, the rental car honks. “Nancy, come on!” Jason moans, “Let’s at least go the speed limit.”
   Nancy opens her window, yelling with finality, “The speed limit is for ideal conditions!”
   Allison’s phone rings. “What, Jason?”
   “Make her go the speed limit, Allison. I know how to drive.”
   “You don’t have a permit yet. Let’s try to go unnoticed. You’re lucky that deputy even believed you’re sixteen.”
   “If we’re trying to be so sneaky about it, shouldn’t we drive like we live here, not like some grandmas from Florida? The snow’s already melted off the streets!”
   “He’s got ya there, Nance.”
   Pestered to bend, “We’ll go the speed limit, but that’s it!”
   “You got that, J?”
   “Roger!”
   Allison pats her bruise again, wincing. A red contusion is fading to pink on her brow.
   Nancy says, “That nice deputy was worried about your head and now I am too. You don’t want to swing by the clinic? LaRhonda’ll check you for free.”
   “Why do I remember LaRhonda?”
   “She markered a cat face on you at the slumber party for your eleventh birthday.”
   Allison bristles, “And when I woke up, all the other girls were calling me ‘Allie-Kat! Allie-Kat!’”
   “It washed right off!” Nancy smiles, “LaRhonda only did it cause you were such a brat about being smelly. You came back from a horse ride at Stubbs and you stunk something awful of the stables.”
   “They didn’t have to be so mean about it. You were teasing me with them!”
   “Aww. You did smell pretty feral.” Nancy chortles, “And I thought you looked adorable with whiskers!”
   Allison suspects a trick to get her to smile and locks in her sullen demeanor. But Nancy can’t stem her giggles. The corner of Allison’s mouth quirks and a spit of air escapes. Eventually, more pitiful than hearty, she titters along.
   Jason appears at the driver side, jolting the girls.
   Nancy asks, “Aren’t you supposed to be driving?”
   “I was, but you haven’t moved from this stop sign in like, five minutes! What’s so funny?”
   Again trying to be serious, Allison warns Nancy, “Don’t you dare!”
   Nancy, between snickers, “Sorry, Jason. Slumber party oath.”
   With a derisive wave, “Yeah, yeah, just like Vegas, whatever. Can we go?”
   Twin booms, one after another, go off to the south. All three stare rigidly toward the sound. Allison has déjà vu again.
   Jason is the first to find words. “What the fuck was that?”
   “Jason!”
   “I’m with him, Nance. What the fuck was that?”
   “Allison, don’t encourage him! Jason, where –” As a third blast goes off, he’s already in the rental and squealing past the minivan.
   
   The pre-dawn darkness is lost on the scene. The house is an inferno. A police cruiser blocks the intersection and another sits up the street. Fire trucks are still pulling in as the first crews roll out the hoses. Frenzied, their action is calm compared to the drama of fire.
   The fire. The tall blaze against the night. Accented by red emergency lights, the flame-flowered carbonizing of the house is reducing it promptly to a black frame. The snow on the homes and yards shows orange through flicker-fan shadows and silhouettes.
   Allison is entranced by the duochromatic spectacle, the burning house her axis of gravity. In it there seem to be devilish creatures – no, it’s angry ghosts, tearing down the house with the flames – or a romping dog-man, laughing in the demolition – or is it all in her mind, a figment of flashing light?
   Seeking solid reality away from the fire, Allison sees a face in the distant cop car. “Drive around the block!”
   “What for?”
   “I want to see who’s in that car – forget it, I’ll walk!”
   “No! No, I’ll drive. I don’t want to leave you alone again.” Nancy calls out the window to her cousin, stopped in front of them, “Jason, c’mon!”
   “I wanna watch!”
   “We are! But stay with us.”
   As they circle the block, an ambulance and two more police cruisers arrive. They can hear the neighbors talking about it as they pass slowly by. The fire casts its light between the homes, coyly fanciful shafts that animate with their bleak devastation as the cousins coast closer to the source.
   From here, the glare of emergency lights cannot compete with the intensity of thousands of cubic feet of flame, almost blinding but for the shadows thrown. The patterns rollick over the melting snow, and to Allison they again take otherworldly shape. Now they’re a party of spirits. Not malevolent, they’re free, ultimately free. And not merely humans, but animals and even beasts from mythology are dancing the shades.
   On this end of the street, there’s a third squad car in the road. A dozen or so gawkers are gathered behind it, parsing their half-knowledge. Nancy parks as close as possible. Allison glimpses the man in the back seat of the central cruiser. It’s Kevin.
   “Huh.”
   Nancy follows her cousin’s line. “Who is it?”
   Dispassionately, “The scary guy from the bus depot.”
   “That’s him?” With gossip’s glee, “I’ll bet he started the fire! He is bad news.”
   Allison, from inner sight. “No, he’s not.”
   “What do you mean?”
   “He’s not the bad guy here.”
   “Don’t you get what that house is?”
   Impassive, “No.”
   “That place is –” Her hushed intensity cuts through the din, “LaRhonda heard down at the clinic that the biggest drug lab in Fairfield is supposed to be somewhere around here.”
   Not taking her gaze off Kevin, “And this is it?”
   “Yeah, it must be.” Nancy turns from the fire. “They make speed or methadone or whatever it’s called. Can’t you smell the chemicals?”
   Still emotionless, “It does smell bad.”
   “They got the guy!” Jason scoops as he walks up. “That dirty homeless dude in the middle cop car? He did it!”
   Nancy flaunts, “I knew it! Who told you?”
   “That’s what everyone in the crowd was saying.”
   “You still think he’s not a bad guy, Allie?”
   The nearest cruiser backs up and the one carrying Kevin passes through the thicket of onlookers. It speeds toward the police station.
   Allison takes a last glance at the blaze. “I know he’s not. Let’s go home.”

   ‘A stab in the light at fire’s delights. Divining from the rite of a new life’s founding. Called out by my hail, chasing hope’s tail, under the gale of all the hells hounding. Though you always yearn, you never learn, how I burn for your astounding.’