The Roof Is On Fire (Part 1: Backstory)

 The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.

These were the lyrics from the song he showed me upon dubbing me "Fire King." A crudely-photoshopped image of my face superimposed onto the profile of Fire Lord Ozai became my contact photo in his phone. The nickname came after my best friend Andy and I spent a weekend up in a rural woodland cabin. After assuring me he'd be able to start the woodstove fire-- after all, hadn't our families first bonded over a shared Boy Scouts troop?-- it started to seem as though we were fated to spend the weekend shivering. "Let me try," I said.

Begrudgingly, he offered me the lighter and wad of newspaper kindling, scooting aside to give me access to the stove. It took me a while, and for a few minutes there, his smug look told me that he'd doubted my ability to do what he couldn't from the beginning. But then, I figured it out. The trick was to keep at it, starting small with sticks and brush, before easing the heavier logs into the flame and allowing them to take gradually to the flame. "Hail, the Fire King!" Andy cried, feigning a royal bow. 

The fire seemed to catch so slowly, I couldn't imagine how things like house fires got to be so out of control. After all, if I couldn't WILL the logs to catch, what did a modern house made to resist conflagration have to worry about?

I wouldn't find out for another few months.

It was a Thursday in early May. I had been hired at the Deaf school two weeks ago, and I was just starting to settle into the job. It wasn't what I wanted to be doing, but it was a job, and since I was living rent-free with my parents, I could put all of my money towards those pesky student loans. One of the perks of living at home was my dad's willingness to occasionally trade cars with me, bringing mine to the mechanic for me so I didn't get ripped off. 

That's why I didn't answer the first time my little brother called me. Or the second. I figured, he's mad because I have Dad's car. I knew he wanted to buy it off of our father, and he probably had scheduled some preemptive appointment to tint the windows or have some other modification done. But by the fifth or sixth consecutive call, I figured I'd have to address him eventually. When my coworker came  back into the room, I asked if she could handle the class for a minute. 

"My brother is spam calling," I told her. In sign language, this looked like "MY BROTHER / CALL / CALL / CALL / (eyeroll)". As I slipped out I told her: "I've just gotta make sure it's not an emergency."

In the nearly deserted hallway, I didn't worry too much about letting some irritation creep into my tone when I answered. "This better be goddamn important," I told him. "I'm at work."

"It is," he responded, just as rudely. "The house is on fire, and your cat is probably dead."

My first impulse was to laugh. "Very funny," I told him. "What's really going on?"

I felt the buzz of my phone and saw that he was trying to FaceTime me. That's when it hit me that he wasn't kidding. With trembling fingers, I accepted the request, and the first thing I saw was the blurry feed of our house, and a big red firetruck in front. 

Dazed, I sank to the ground in the middle of the school hallway. I opened my mouth but nothing came out at first, so I tried again. This time, my scratchy, dry voice made out, "Is... is everyone out?"

"The family is safe," he assured me. "Mom was at work, Dad's here with me." (And of course, the other brother was out of state for college.) "It's only Tilly they can't find."

Tilly.

I took a shaky breath and cleared my face. It was imperative that my students never see me as anything but happy or neutral.

 "Everything okay?" my coworker asked as I reentered the classroom, face a blank slate.

I shook my head imperceptivity. 

She gave me an inquisitive look. I glanced at the students, none of whom were looking my direction. Still, I shielded my hand with the other as I signed two words: HOUSE, and FIRE. Her eyes widened, and she shooed me away, silently telling me to take care of myself and leave the classroom to her. 

I nodded once and left the room. I was going to cry; that much I could feel in my gut. I sought out the office once dubbed our team's "designated cry room." But when I slipped around the corner, I was brought up short by the sight of a closed door. This meant Jen was either interviewing a new applicant, or meeting with a prospective family. Next door to her, however, the program director for the hearing program also housed at the school seemed to have an empty office.

“Hi,” I said, poking my head through the open door. “Are you busy?”

She looked up, surprised. “Not really,” she admitted, her brows furrowing.

“No meetings scheduled--” I checked my watch, "--in the last two hours or so of the school day?”

“No…” I could tell she was wondering why someone from the other program was looking to speak to her, but before she had the chance to ask, I closed the door behind me. 

“Great,” I said, collapsing into her chair. “I need a place to cry.” 

Out from under the prying eyes of students and curious TAs, I could’ve let the floodgates open, but some latent instinct allowed me to first dial the first emergency contact on my phone. 

Andy picked up before the first ring ended. “I heard,” he said. 

A silent gratitude welled up inside of me, in spite of everything. I melted like hot wax, and the tears came silently as I curled up on this strange woman’s office chair. 

“Tilly,” I whimpered. 

“I know,” he said. “We’re going to find her. Do you need me to come get you?” 

I shook my head, which of course he couldn’t hear. The voice I was able to manage was hardly more than a croak. “No.” 

Not-Jen looked at me, bewildered. She asked me the question, what is going on? without words. Her eyes searched my face, and I imagined she was wondering if either program had ever had to section a new hire so quickly. Mental breakdowns were common enough in a place like this, but only a few ended in institutionalization. I pictured, hysterically, this woman slowly reaching under her desk for a secret button, like a bank teller in a robbery, alerting squads of uniformed people armed not with police-issue .45s but straightjackets and tranq darts. The idea was so comically ridiculous that I found myself laughing through the tears, surely only reinforcing her notions regarding my sanity. 

I told her simply, “My house is on fire.” 

This broke her frozen expression, and her face melted into one of sympathy and concern. “Is everyone okay?”

Lifting the phone again, I said to both her and Andy, “My family is all accounted for. The only one missing is my cat, Tilly.” 

She made a sound like a squeaky toy being stepped on, and stepped around her desk to sit in the chair beside mine. Her hand was steady on my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. 

The sob was loud and choked, and I stifled the next one, concerned the occupants of the adjacent office might overhear. Not-Jen introduced herself as Cheryl, and I let her put her skinny arms around my shoulders as I continued to weep. Andy spoke soothingly from somewhere far away, giving me updates as he got them through the steady, reliable grapevine that interlaced our families. My family was in the care of the Red Cross. The fire department had gone to a second alarm.

Cheryl tried to console me, too, telling me, “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Cats are incredible hiders."

But they didn't find Tilly until the fire had been extinguished.

Tilly, my cat, the first pet that was ever only mine.

It was my mom called me next. I was in my dad's car, sitting in the back parking lot, trying to decide where to go. Home? What would even be left of it? They wouldn't have put my parents up in a hotel yet. It was too soon. I was just settling on calling Andy when my phone rang.

"Mom?"

I could hear her tears when she spoke in a broken, tiny voice: "They found Tilly."

My heart sank into my stomach. "And-- I mean, is she--"

"I'm so sorry, honey."

I don't remember what I said. Maybe I didn't say anything, and just hung up. The next thing I remember is crying harder than I can remember crying in my adult life. The catharsis was immediate and relieving, and I knew as the weeping spell wound down that I would call Andy.

When I arrived at his place, Andy's mom greeted me with a hug that seemed to last eternity. Whitney is a short, plump woman from whom Andy had inherited his ocean-blue eyes, and in her arms I felt small in spite of the six inches of height I have on her. Like a little kid whose auntie took on the roll of secondary mother without needing to be asked. She didn't make me talk, and I found it comforting to remain in my silence, a state uncommon to one as loquacious as I am. I curled up in a ball on the corner of their brown leather couch, sinking endlessly into the deep cushions as though it could swallow me whole.

I stayed there, practically comatose, until Whitney insisted I let her buy me some essentials. She handed Andy her credit card and told him not to think twice about the expense, and soon enough we were on the way to Walmart.

I picked out a toothbrush, some travel hygiene essentials, some sweats to sleep in tonight and a set of fresh work-appropriate clothes for the next day. I didn't bother to style the outfit to match my usual pseudo-gothic preferences, but simply tossed some clothes that seemed close to my size into the cart. Andy added some snacks and a gluten-free frozen dinner for that night, and a bandana. Black, with red roses, matching my aesthetic perfectly. I hadn't even thought about my bandana collection, but Andy, my best friend since the first grade, knew me better than anyone. To this day I have that bandana, the first in my new collection.

On the way home, I fiddled with the music. Usually, Andy and I would bicker about what to play in the car, but I guess having your house burn down wins you some privileges because he let me have full control of the aux.

The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire.

"Wow," Andy remarked. "Your Spotify algorithm is really insensitive, huh?"

"No," I said. "I picked it. I made a playlist."

His brow furrowed, and he leaned over to look, but I smacked him away and snipped something about watching the road. "The last thing my family needs is for all of us to survive a housefire only to have one of us die in a car crash," I remarked.

His eyes bugged for a second, and then we were both laughing. At the next red light, I showed him the playlist, comprised solely of fire-related songs. "If you read the titles in order, they kind of tell a story," I said. "See? Lithium and Battery, because it was a lithium-ion battery that started it. Lady Gaga's 911, because the first thing you do is call 9-1-1, and Get Low because they tell you--"

"I get it," Andy said, chuckling darkly. "This is so morbid."

"I think it's funny."

He looked at me for a moment before informing me, "Your sense of humor is broken."

I thought about that for a long time, and then suddenly I was laughing. I couldn't stop laughing. I tried to answer his demanding gaze, but I got as far as "What do you call--" before I burst out again. Andy laughed with me, puzzled, but content that I didn't seem so miserable anymore. Finally, after several false starts that dissolved into hopeless giggles, I got the set up of the joke out.

"What do you call an elusive psychic who survives a house fire?"

Andy, already groaning, generously humored me. "What?"

"A rare medium well-done," I choked out, and then we were both howling. It's probably sheer luck that we didn't crash on the way home, because the rest of the drive was spent in hysterics, the two of us taking turns volleying all of the fire-related jokes...

"Did you hear about the fire in the shoe factory? Many soles were lost."

"My grandfather always said, “Fight fire with fire.” He was a great man, but a terrible firefighter."

"Why do ducks have flat feet? To stomp out forest fires. Why do elephants have flat feet? To stomp out flaming ducks!"

...while the stereo played that old familiar song, and we laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. The roof. The roof. The roof is on fire...

And that's when I knew I'd be okay.

The Tower

There's something ominous about cell towers. 

They stand on hills or in clearings beyond forested acres, huge and unsettling, with their mysterious bracketing and wide panels that blot out the sun, the discs that stand in what almost seems a defiant opposition to the light of the sky. 

They hide in plain sight, disguised under cathedral belfries and standing alongside the church bells that, long before telephone came along to usurp the role of mass communication, would ring out in code when something was wrong.

The day I took the CritiCall, I sat alone in a tiny room with one small window overlooking the county jail, visible through the trees only because of how starkly contrasted its rigid cinderblock construction was against the disorder of the natural world. 

A fish tank bubbled softly from somewhere behind my chair, its sole occupant gazing at me with the indifference of a long-forgotten eldritch god. For a moment I imagined the fish had human teeth, teeth that were grinning at me, or perhaps through me, as it contemplated my inconsequence. I imagined its penetrating awareness of me filling that hour in which I took the exam, a frame of time that might have seemed as long as decades to me but was, for the fish, but a drop in an endless tank. 

The fish itself would live a short life, meaningless when stacked against the century a human may live to see pass if cared for properly. But it would be replaced by another, as this had replaced the one before, and on and on until the end of time. I would later learn that his name was Echo. Fitting, for the creature whose existence was a mere echo of whatever paradigm he exists to facsimile. How many Echos had there been, and how many were still yet to come... come... come...? 

Standing adjacent to the jail out my window was a communications tower that seemed to rise from deep within the earth, or perhaps from whatever lies beneath. The tower leaned down to where I could hear its voice, and whispered in magnificent bellows just two words: Brace yourself.

There was an echo to its endless voice, which had not the capacity for gentleness. Echo stirred in his tank, caught up in the resonance that disturbed his shallow water.

Once upon a time, the Tower was a symbol of destruction, a harbinger of change. Upright, it meant disaster, upheaval, unrest. Inversion meant delay of the inevitable, resistance to changes deemed necessary by fate. The Tower was feared not for its intrinsic danger, but of what it foretold. Destruction. Suffering.

The day I went in for my test, I had drawn from the tarot deck the Tower. Something was coming, and at the time of the omen I was not yet sure what it would be. 

But then the call, the invitation to try my hand at the career of my dreams. Maybe this was what it had promised. I was heading into a great unknown, and the reminder of the draw, one that foretold a painful transition drawing nearer on my horizon, echoed in my mind as I stood beneath that cell tower and looked up into the expanse of the future. 

Learning more of how they work, the cell phone towers dotting the expanses became less mysterious. A feat of engineering to stand almost a mile high in stature, and a medal upon the lapel of human ingenuity that they were able to broadcast the signals that keep us connected in spite of miles in between. As I came to appreciate the beauty of our condition, tied together by telephone wires even as we drift further and further apart, I began to see the Tower in a new light, too. 

In burning can be found a catharsis. In the aftermath of an upheaval, be it a political revolution of millions or the change in career of just one, change was a force neutral by default. Change is made beautiful or devastating or both all at once by the perceptions of those who stand at the tower's base, looking up, as I once did in the parking lot of my new job, at the start of something new.