Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock (general ebook reader .TXT) 📗

ever slept in was hers. When she looked in her sister’s closet she was surprised to see the tiny umbrella Jade had bought with the stranger’s money stashed in the corner. Why did Jade still have it? Why did her parents—especially her mother?—let her keep money that could have easily led to something sinister?

Why was she just now wondering this?

“Any sign of him?” said her father, sticking his head in the door.

“Nope, just this.” She held up the stupid umbrella.

“That probably won’t do much against the fire,” said her dad.

“Why does everyone think it’s okay to make jokes?” Jenny tried to keep her voice down but failed. “You know, you almost lost your daughter to a psychopath.”

She had never said that out loud before. Her father instantly looked hurt.

“Sorry, Jenny. Would you rather we just focus on all the ways we’ve barely managed to escape tragedy?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. Forget it,” she said, throwing the umbrella back into the closet. “Let’s just find Colonel Mustard.”

He was nowhere. Outside, fire crews were spraying down all the houses, keeping them wet. Jenny got up the nerve to ask someone if he’d seen a cat with a broken tail. She was disappointed that it wasn’t the same guy who had grabbed her arm when they’d evacuated and then was taken aback by her own disappointment.

“Are you Miss Scarlet?” he asked her, flashing a mouthful of overlapping teeth.

“Excuse me?”

“Nate said if you came back to let you know.”

“Nate?”

“He found your cat. Relish or Ketchup or something?”

“He found Colonel Mustard?”

“Ah, that’s it. He was getting off a sixteen-hour shift, so he said he’d take your cat to the shelter.”

“Oh, that’s great. That’s wonderful. Thank you. Thanks.” She didn’t know what else to say and was afraid she’d start bawling with relief. So she extended a hand, which he looked at skeptically. He held up a glove covered in black smudge that appeared to be smoking.

“High five from afar. Glad your cat is okay. You know, except the tail, I guess.”

Then he shouldered a chain saw and moved past her, toward the crackling fire in the forest beyond.

—

Her father was quiet all the way back to the high school. Jenny was sick of calling it a shelter: it was a high school, with cots laid out in the gym underneath banners proclaiming their team’s cross country and volleyball state titles. The evacuees were all showering in the locker rooms, where the girls usually refused to get naked in front of their classmates and now had to shower with the whole town.

Jenny had pointed this out to Jade, who said, “That’s what a disaster will do,” as if she were an expert on the matter. “Provide a whole new perspective.”

Right, Jenny had thought, because the worldly one is so wise. But of course, she said nothing. Just chewed on her cheek again, the familiar taste of blood reminding her that perspective was something she had a hard time holding on to around Jade.

“Now,” her father said, “before you go look for Colonel Mustard, you might want to shower. I think we both smell a bit smoky. It might unnerve him.”

“I really want to see him first,” said Jenny. “I’ll shower right after, I promise.”

But when she found him, Colonel Mustard was so freaked out, Jenny realized it had been a mistake to say hi and then leave right away. His broken tail was smudged black on the end, and he wouldn’t come out from under the blanket in his crate. There were so many dog carriers filled with stray pets—one even held a ferret—that Jenny worried her cat might have been happier wherever he’d been hiding before he got rescued.

“It’s okay, buddy. You’re safe now. I’ll be right back.”

Because the fire crews also showered at the school, Jenny’s father said the men’s locker room smelled like hundreds of blackened hot dogs. As Jenny walked to the women’s side, wrapped in her towel, she noticed a woman who had just emerged from a shower stall and was toweling off a blue-and-green tattoo of a dragon across her left butt cheek. When she pulled on her thong underwear, the dragon’s tail whipped like it was alive, its claws creeping under the thin waistband.

The woman caught Jenny staring and smiled at her, but Jenny, flustered, just pulled her towel tighter and stepped into a stall. She hadn’t thought that a woman could be feminine, wear a thong, and work alongside men fighting fires. But why not? Although she never would have guessed such a tattoo existed under the hunter-green uniform pants.

She soaped up quickly, washed her hair, rinsed, and then got back into the safety of her towel as fast as she could. Jade was wrong: the disaster did not make Jenny feel any differently about showering in public.

When she walked back out to the lockers, the woman was loading her many pockets with radios and tightening her belt.

Jade cleared her throat.

“Do you know a firefighter named Nate?” she asked.

The woman tilted her head. “Nate?” She had curly jet-black hair that glistened all around her face, which was tanned from working outside. “There’s about four hundred people working this blaze now, so I’m not sure. I might know him, but he’s not in my crew.”

“Oh, of course. That makes sense,” said Jenny.

“A crush?”

“Oh God, no. He just found my cat, so I was hoping to thank him.”

Jenny was getting cold standing there in her towel and wished she hadn’t said anything.

“I can call on my radio,” said the woman, holding it up.

“No, no, that’s not necessary.”

“Okay, if you’re sure?”

“Yes, definitely. So do you think we’ll get to go back home soon?” She didn’t want to leave the woman with the impression that she was looking for Nate like some kind of stalker.

“Depends on when we can get solid containment. You don’t live in the Canyon, do you?”

“No, we’re on the east side of town, actually.”

“Oh, you’re lucky. We lost forty houses in the Canyon. There was just