Chapter 2

2

I don't like to lie. No one would have believed me, anyway. That's the thing about lies—they are a temporary measure at best. The truth is always there at the bottom. The fire didn't sneak in. I brought it in the form of a candle.

There was some confusion at first as to what we two were doing in the house, as we were not Professors Juan and Carlita Manzano-Solis of NYU and were instead two weeping teenagers with Guffy's Ice Cream napkins pressed to our noses. I explained, through increasingly winded sobs, that I took care of the place for them and had taken Akilah there on a date and gotten her this special candle and I was really, really, really sorry. They got us both blankets while they called Juan and Carlita. My parents came. Her parents came. Everyone came—fire and rescue, police, EMTs, neighbors, complete strangers who just wanted to film a house burn down and post the video. It was the event of the summer. You should have been there.

The fire investigators confirmed, based on our information and what they found, that the candle exploded. This, I know from the thousand Google searches I've done since, is something candles do sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. This was why I wanted you to know that I spent thirty dollars. I expected a good product with a nice smell. And to be fair, it had a great smell until it blew up.

The fire gutted one side of the house. What was still standing had smoke and water damage. If it hadn't been raining, they said the whole thing would probably be gone. Juan and Carlita came up from New York City to survey the charred remains of their happiness. I've known them most of my life—my dad met them when I was three or four. They're sort of like an aunt and uncle to me, so they were shockingly nice about it. It was an accident, they said. We're just glad you're okay, they said. Houses can be replaced but people can't, they said.

But it wasn't that they were saying, "Great job, Marlowe! You did it! You really burned that house down !" Juan and Carlita were clearly sad that their house was gone. Their tone was flat. They had come to make sure I was generally all right and to let us know that the fire department said this was an accident. I assumed that meant they blamed me, but they'd had so much therapy that they ascribed all bad tidings to the whims of the universe. (Is that how therapy works?) They didn't stay long, and I didn't have the courage to lift my head and fully look at them, because we all knew that while I was technically allowed to be in the house, I should not have been there. It wasn't okay, what I had done. I had taken advantage of the situation, and now their house was gone.

After two days off, I turned up for my shift at Guffy's with Akilah. I wore one of my dad's old hoodies, which gave off Unabomber vibes, but at least I could hide my face. I put in earbuds and went into the back and did the jobs we always avoided, like taking inventory of the toppings bar supplies. I ran through this quickly, so I started making up new jobs for myself. I organized containers by size, wiped the shelves and walls down with bleach solution, and went berserk with the label maker. I was relatively safe in the closet of bleach, labels, and pain, coming out only when we had a line and lurking in my hoodie like a ghoul.

Akilah handled the public. I couldn't speak to her. The few times I came out from the back to help, someone would notice me and say something to the person they were with in a low voice. It was all looks and whispers, the frantic sounds of tapping on phones. Messages spread around town that the firebug was back at Guffy's. How the story had spread that soon, I have no real idea, but stories always do, don't they? At least everyone knew it was my fault, not Akilah's. I had the keys. I brought the candle.

The requests for hot bottoms were endless, usually punctuated by a muffled fart of a laugh. When I checked my phone, I noticed that random people started leaving fire emojis in the comments of my posts, or GIFs from Firestarter , or that one of the creepily smiling little girl with the house burning down around her.

I took my socials to private.

At the end of the shift, we silently dished up our free employee scoops (we were entitled to one medium cup per shift, arguably the best perk that exists). Akilah had mint chocolate chip with malt powder and I had rocky road as a symbolic gesture, even though my favorite flavor is Moose Tracks.

"So, um..." she began as we closed and locked the door. "Are you..."

I pulled on the hoodie strings and vanished into my cave a bit.

"Okay? Okay, um... I... the other night when we were at the Cheesecake Factory I noticed that they were hiring. I applied, and they called this morning. I'm going in for an interview. The tips... they're more than here. And I'm saving up to buy a new keyboard...."

The world seemed to be spinning into the empty depths of my cup. I understood. We'd had one date and I'd burned a house down. Why would she—the most beautiful girl I had ever seen—want to tie herself to a quasi-arsonist girlfriend?

"That's great," I said. "Good luck."

Then I got into my tiny car and drove home at twenty-one miles an hour and I stayed there.

I called in sick to work the next day, and the day after that. I went into my room, shut the door, and ghosted the world. Somewhere in there Guffy's fired me for not showing up. Guilt piled on guilt. Guilt about taking advantage of Juan and Carlita. Guilt about the fire, no matter how accidental. Guilt about not responding to messages. Guilt about not going in to Guffy's. Guilt about being a loser daughter. Guilt for having guilt. It got heavier and heavier, and yet, I seemed to summon more. I was like that guy in the witch trials who they accused of being a witch and pressed under heavy rocks to force him to confess, and the only thing that guy ever said was "More weight." Like that, but for pathetic people. I was a guilt collector.

My lifeline came from an unexpected place. Several days into my self-imposed exile, my mom extracted me from my room. We had a visitor in the form of my history teacher, Mx. Gibson. They were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking apple tea. I was friendly with Mx. Gibson—they lived a few doors down from us and let me choose some side reading for extra credit. I liked Mx. Gibson, but I had no idea why they were in our kitchen.

(I want to note here that I have friends aside from my history teacher . But I came here to tell you what happened at Morning House and my friends don't really factor into it. Suffice it to say they exist; they had been listening to me talk about Akilah for three entire years and now I was ghosting them too. This is the hard part about telling stories—you can't tell everything. You have to select what's relevant and shape the story around the facts, or at least around the facts as you want them to be. Now back to my history teacher, at the table with the tea.)

There was a round of "how are you doing?" which I answered in mumbles. Then they got right down to it.

"Listen," they said, "what if you could get out of here for a bit?"

Getting out of here for a bit sounded like a good start, especially if they meant sending me on an exploratory mission to Mars with a single potato and a note of farewell.

"A friend of mine is a professor of history at Syracuse and lives upstate in Clement Bay. She's working on a history of a place called Morning House. Have you heard of it?"

It sounded only vaguely familiar, so I shook my head.

"It's a mansion built on one of the Thousand Islands, a place called Ralston Island. There was a tragedy in the family that owned it, so they abandoned it back in the 1930s and it's been empty ever since. It's just been sold to some company, but Belinda managed to get them to agree to let the public in for one summer. There's a group of local teenagers that live and work there as guides. She's down one person and needed someone who can learn things quickly. I thought of you. And I thought you might like to..."

"Leave town?" I said.

"Spend the rest of the summer on a beautiful island giving tours of a mansion. There's a swimming lagoon; the meals are included. The pay is... okay. Probably what you were making at Guffy's. But it's a good opportunity, and it would be helping out a friend of mine. If you're up for it, she can use you immediately. You'd have to read and learn the materials kind of quickly, but I think you might really enjoy it."

This conflicted heavily with my new plans for the summer, which were: one, hiding in my house; two, evaporating.

But what else was I going to do? I'd lost the girl of my dreams. I had no job. Who was going to hire me now? My parents were going to let me wallow for three more days, max, before they demanded that I get out and do something. Something far away was about the best offer I was going to get.

"Sure," I said, forcing a smile. "Sounds great."