Wildfire

Mina collapsed, her knees burning. She grasped her neck, feeling the cool sensation of her chain. She tore at it, gasping for air, and threw it on the ground before she could disappear again.

********************************

When the wildfire died around our home, all that was left was her heart-shaped locket. The leftover heat still hummed off of it, still vibrating in my pocket.

It was the fifth wildfire that June, or maybe the sixth. I lost count. Nan was good at keeping track. We weren’t the only community that summer - and bracketing showed it would go on for months, maybe even longer. But I haven’t woken up that far ahead.

Oh, bracketing. I am not an expert, but it is when you wake up in the future, the past, or your present—if you’re lucky.

Every day I woke up, I really hoped it would be last year, or even further back. Before the wildfires. Before Nan...left.

I hope she was sent forward and I’ll see her someday. But I’ve been waking up every day, still here. Still after the collapse.

Losing it all isn’t what I thought it might be.

I thought I would be more upset. But material things don’t matter when your own flesh and blood can’t be found.

I felt a sob wanting to come out, but my throat was too dry. My lips are too chapped. My -

“Clove,” a voice from behind me said, clearly concerned.

I whipped around. Every movement felt like it might be my last.

It was Tal, our neighbor. I could see for miles, everything burnt, but I couldn’t see them coming.

I caught their eyes with mine. “How did you-”

“I’ve been in and out of my childhood and in the now for a couple days now,” Tal said, jumping right in. “Where’s your grandma?”

Tal wasn’t the only one trying to keep tabs on who was able to leap ahead, backward, or who was stuck here. But I hadn’t been so lucky to find someone else, not until now.

“I hope she is forward, or back,” I stumbled over my words. I craved water. “I found her necklace, so I am hoping she found a way.”

Tal shuffled their feet in the burnt grass, looking down. “I think my brother burned.”

I didn’t want to touch them, in fear that I would make it about me and break down.

“Does he have a way back or forward?” A way, in my own words, is an object, or a mark, that anchors someone when they move in their sleep. By move, I mean, wake up either in the past, present, or future.

The problem with bracketing, and those who can do it, is you never know what to expect when you wake up, and you really hope you get to “move along” each day, one after another.

I found out that I could when I woke up in my dad’s arms. I think I must have been three, but my mind was still fifteen.

I remember thinking I must be lucid dreaming. I missed my dad, but in a climate crisis, people didn’t stick around long.

But this was my first time truly alone. With Nan gone.

*********************************

Arbor Springs Motel’s sign glowed in the distance, the “sp” in springs burnt out. What used to be an interstate was now crackled, spread apart throughout the part I could see, vegetation now breaking through. An earthquake rattled our area when I was small, but all I remember was Cleo clutching me and telling me to stay still.

Cleo, my older sister, was the one who introduced me to bracketing. She introduced me to heartbreak- I didn’t know anything about our parents except when I sometimes got to wake up far back, but the more Cleo shared, the more I missed these people I never knew. She was my guidepost.

I remember an episode of “I Love Lucy,” when we got the generator running and a spare solar panel found in an abandoned warehouse Nan and Cleo scoured earlier that day. Somehow Lucy and her friend Ethel make a whole show about redecorating their homes. There was something soothing about them fussing over something we didn’t have time to worry about. I’d want wallpaper with moths and ferns dancing around each other.

Tal could be my Ethel. But there is no wallpaper, and really, we’re just searching for any indication that Nan or her brother escaped the fire.

“I think he would have come here,” Tal explained earlier, when I couldn’t even move an inch without dissociating. “We said if we were ever separated, and this still stood, this would be our spot.”

“I’m glad you had a plan. I really thought I’d always be with Nan,” I said. You know it is really messed up when you can’t really plan on a future. Living a life where you have to take it all day by day.

“Our community burned up last year, then we moved next to you,” Tal said. “I guess that makes us always on the run from fires. Or maybe this fire followed us.”

We approached some decommissioned electrical poles outside the motel’s entrance. “Millions of acres have burned around us just in this last year,” I said, exasperated at this point. “I doubt it was you.”

Tal glanced my way. “I could do this on my own,” their brittle voice on the edge of crying.

“I’m sorry, it is just…” I breathed in deeply, even though the thick air stung my throat. “I don’t think we can keep going in this area. There are too many disasters.”

“How did you escape this fire?” Tal pushed. I know they did it how I did it.

“I woke up three years ago,” I said. “School was still running.”

“Oh, school…” Tal sped up their walking. “I can’t remember the last day.”

School stopped meeting when the air quality was too dangerous. It wasn’t until a year ago that we had effective masks to go out, bits at a time.

By bracketing, I wasn’t here for the fire, but Nan must have been. I woke up, and she was gone.

I think I saw Tal’s brother first, slumped over a chair near the motel’s abandoned pool open door . I recognized him because his hair’s part felt like Tal’s, just in front of the forehead like a hook.

Tal rushed to his side and started to shake him.

“Can he bracket? What does he use?” I asked, tugging his leg to look for any object.

Tal made crying sounds without opening their mouth, patting down her brother’s clothes. A vial shattered after I made a tug at his pant’s pocket.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-” Before I could finish, Tal put a finger to their lips.

Her brother’s eyes opened slightly, only the whites of them showing.

“Is he, I mean, can he,” I collected what I wanted to say. Sometimes you can bracket but not make it to the final destination, and your body remains. It shouldn’t happen, but it can. “Tal, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen this happen before.”

Tal didn’t let go of him. “Foster, why did you do this to me,” They began rocking. “He came back home right before the fire, and we planned to vacate. We promised each other not to fall asleep until we moved together. I came back from the basement after grabbing extra filters and he was gone. I thought he might have fallen asleep.”

I wanted Nan to be here. She would know what to do.

I reached in my pocket and clasped her necklace.

“Nan left this behind,” I confessed to Tal. Without her necklace, I am not sure how Nan would have bracketed. When you go forward or backward in time after waking up, the one thing you have is your way. Your mark.

“How could Mina leave then?” Tal wouldn’t look at me, only Foster. “I don’t understand.”

“Her mark might not have made it,” I said. “I think it might be the same reason Foster is here but without his mark.”

Tal stood up and looked down at me. I felt small, helpless, and most of all, scared. But I wasn’t going to let it show. I quickly rose and adjusted my goggles and N95 mask.

“His heart condition…” Words are hard, let alone sentences. “I’m worried he fainted from the smoke. And I don’t even know where to start in finding his mark. It’s a shoelace.”

“A shoelace?” I said.

“My parents tied a shoelace around our wrists when we were young, living in a room at Arbor Springs,” Tal lifted up their left wrist and pushed down their sleeve. Suns, moons, stars, hearts, all scrawled in pen, decorated Tal’s makeshift bracelet.

My mark is a piece of obsidian I found near Castle Crags on a hike with Cleo and Nan. I kept it sewn in my undershirt. I’ve thought about throwing it off the Castle Crags. The monolith rock formation would make sure no one else would wear it.

Castle Crags. I remembered Nan’s heart locket, at the center, contained a piece of obsidian she collected as a girl. I wanted to be just like her.

“If Foster’s body is here still breathing, but no marker,” I collected all my ideas the best I could. “And Nan’s marker is here, but Nan is not…Do you think she could be where her marker was made?”

Tal locked eyes with mine.

“Why is bracketing not working?” They said, still trying to shake Foster awake.

“If we keep him here, and look for Nan on Castle Crags, she could help us wake him up,” I said.

If Nan went forward, maybe she’d know why she split from her locket.

************

Tal found a van outside the motel’s office. The smoked-filled sky, a violent shade of orange, kept the sun out of view.

“Do you know how to drive a stick?” Tal asked.

“What?” I said.

“They stopped making these 40 years ago,” Tal shook their head. “I’ve only seen them used in movies.”

Tal hopped behind the wheel. We left Foster in a room, on a bed that probably hadn’t been used since before the earthquake.

The clutch, if that is what it is called, made a horrible grinding sound. “What the hell,” I grabbed onto my seat, my nails digging into the fabric.

“Just a moment,” Tal said, as the van hurled forward.

The charred landscape fell behind us. I fought sleep as the passenger. I couldn’t afford to leave this day.

“Hey, I think I’ve got the hang of it,” Tal said. Their mask hid what sounded like there might be a smile behind there.

Castle Crags towers over the area like it could be a gateway out of this world. The summit hid behind the dust, ash, and smoke caught in the atmosphere.

Tal did the best they could to get us to the parking lot of an old parking lot that signaled the beginning of the trail to the top.

“Park here,” I said, recognizing an area I felt in my chest that I had been before.

********

The locket weighed heavier and heavier the further we walked up, the river appearing to snake across the valley below.

We can’t fall asleep. We can’t.

Tal grabbed my shoulder from behind me, and I pushed my goggles off.

She’s there at the top. We start to run. Tal sees her too. But what if we are hallucinating?

“Nan, I-” I held my hand out for hers.

She looked at me vacantly. She didn’t look like Nan. Her jacket torn, her face almost purple. She clawed at my pocket, and before I could push her away, she got a hold of the gold chain, and shoved it on the dirt.

Crunch.

“We don’t need this anymore,” she howled as her heel dug into the earth.