There was no denying it anymore.
The building was filling with thick, acrid smoke.
Something instinctual pushed me forward, and my feet went with it, instead of listening to the panicked voice in my head screaming to turn and run in the opposite direction. I fumbled for my phone, pulled it out, and dialed nine-one-one. Smoke invaded my chest and eyes. I coughed, trying to clear it while fear clawed its way up my spine.
“Fire!” I gasped when the operator answered. “Providence School for Girls.” Racking coughs took over. I hung up, but the farther I got, the thicker the smoke became, until it didn’t matter if I spoke or not. I held my arm over my mouth and nose, trying to keep it out, but it was a losing battle. My lungs protested, but I moved on, my pace increasing until I was running. I skidded around the corner, bashing my hipbone on the wall. The darkness was disorienting. The visibility next to nothing. I couldn’t see farther than a few steps ahead of me.
“Lawson!” I yelled, immediately regretting it when smoke filled my mouth and nose. It got thicker with every step. I coughed again and ran my hands over the wall where I thought the light switch should be. I came up empty, my nails scratching over nothing but drywall.
I spun around, confused now at exactly where I was. I needed to get to my uncle. I knew, that if there was a fire, he would have come for me. Called me. He knew where I was. And there was only one way to get there. We couldn’t have missed each other. I pushed my legs harder, not certain that I was even heading in the right direction, but I had to try.
Suddenly, the room around me opened up, and I nearly wept with relief as I recognized the foyer. But there was no time for that.
I’d found the source of the smoke.
Flames licked the walls.
“Lawson!” I yelled again, tasting ash. Panic surged, adrenaline kicking in and powering my movements. My brain short-circuited, whether from lack of air or fear, I didn’t know. The one thing I was certain of was that I couldn’t lose another parent. I couldn’t add my uncle to the broken part of me that had existed ever since my birth parents’ disappearance. He was the only father I really remembered. And he wouldn’t have left without me. I knew that without a doubt. He wouldn’t have left me there to die.
Which meant he was still inside.
I ran in a crouch toward the flames. They grew with every second that passed. “Laws—” I couldn’t even get his name out this time before the lack of air stole my voice. I held my breath and rushed toward his office, throwing open doors as I went and dodging the deadly heat.
I skidded to a stop at the glass window of the principal’s office. A scream curled up my throat but came out silently.
Lawson’s still form lay facedown on the floorboards.
Flames billowed up around him, higher in here than anywhere else. They crawled across the ceiling, like slithering beasts of orange fury. I bashed on the window so hard it should have broken, desperately yelping my uncle’s name between racking bouts of coughing.
Overhead, a beam cracked.
Sparks flew and I flinched away. I tried again, lunging for the door, but the heat drove me back. Tears streamed down my face. “Help,” I croaked.
I couldn’t save him alone. He was right there, the flames getting ever closer, and I couldn’t reach him. I stumbled back the way I’d come, dropping to my knees and crawling when my feet wouldn’t take another step. My eyes stung. My gaze flitted around the smoke-filled room, but my head grew cloudy.
With a sudden certainty, I realized we were both going to die.
There was no way out.
I closed my eyes. At least the last thing I’d done was something I loved. I remembered the way it felt to have my fingers flying over the piano keys, the song soaring, not only in my ears but in my heart. When the flames took me, that’s where I’d be in my head. In the place I was happiest. The only place I had true peace.
Something grabbed me.
Not something, someone.
I dragged myself back into the present. There was somebody else here. Someone who could help. Hope surged within me.
“My uncle,” I choked out.
Startled by hands on my bare skin, and my body being lifted from the floor, I tried to force my stinging eyes open. But my vision was so blurred I couldn’t make out a face. I turned into the person’s chest, and my gaze focused instead on the thing closest to me. Letters floated across my vision, a mere inch from my nose.
The man—it had to be a man, his body had none of the softer curves of a woman—didn’t say anything, but gripped me tighter while he moved through the crumbling building. Heat seared at my legs, my arms, my face. I couldn’t do a thing but fist my fingers into the material of his shirt and hold on. The embroidered feel of the letters scratched, in contrast with the softness of the fabric.