The Burning Fame of Jealousy

“You wanna do something fun?”

I turned my head toward Marina’s voice, my eyes still closed to the sunshine. “No. Like what?”

I felt her roll closer, our sleeves brushing against each other and her book nudging against my ribs. “Let’s go to Kaz’s house and see if his dad will let him out early today.”

My heart fluttered. “Kaz’s dad never lets him out before 5 PM, you know that.”

“But maybe he will if we ask?”

I opened my eyes to give her a pointed look.

“You’re right,” she groaned, throwing an elbow over her eyes and nearly smacking my face with the book in the process. 

I closed my eyes again, taking in the reddish glow from behind my eyelids. It was just the right amount of warmth, and I dozed off for several minutes. A face danced across my mind, smiling a crooked smile and winking a beautiful brown eye. He was reaching his hand out to me, enticing me to grab it and entwine my fingers with his—

She shouldered me. “Let’s go back. The grass is starting to itch.”

“I thought we were trying to catch the sunset.”

“What if we went to the chandlery? There’s that book shop right by it, too. You’ve been wanting to go there.”

The neighboring window displays popped into my mind; a tower of candles, all sorts of shapes and sizes. They’d just introduced a candle that burned from the inside out, the melted wax changing color. I’d seen one shaped like a cliffside waterfall, the wax turning blue as it dripped. Another had been shaped like a mountain, though I hadn’t seen it burn.

It would be fun to browse, admittedly, and if Marina got too caught up I could always go check the new releases at the book store.

“Fine,” I assented. I reluctantly opened one eye, then the other, then sat up. “What is that?”

We’d been laid up on a hill just beyond the fence of my backyard, where the town reached its limits and opened up to the rocky grasslands, and the ocean beyond them. It was a rare shared day of leisure, and it felt nostalgic to return to this hill where we had spent so much time growing up. 

But we were grown now, and grown Marina didn’t want to spend all weekend on the hill with me anymore. She wanted to spend it with Kaz, the third of our trio-on-the-hill, who now made up the other half of her duo-on-evening-dates—which, of course, did not include me. That was a shame, considering I was hopelessly in love with him.

“What’s what?” She asked.

“That smoke, over there.” I pointed at the foothills on the opposite side of town, where a small plume of smoke obscured the lines of the horizon behind it.

She stood and held a hand over her eyes to block the sunlight. “No idea, but it looks more like steam. Smoke usually has that ugly brownish tint to it in the sunlight, doesn’t it?”

I shrugged and stood, grabbing our books. “Makes for good sunsets, though. Remember that grassfire out west summer before last? Those sunsets were—”

The ground trembled beneath my feet, making me stumble over a rock.

Marina caught me with a hand to the elbow. “Was that—”

It trembled again, harder this time. And it didn’t stop. 

Smaller rockers were shifting loose, and a spray of them splattered our ankles. 

In unison, we clambered down the hill, hopping over the larger boulders, until we’d reached my back gate. The latch clattered against itself, barely seeming to make a noise at all with the dull roar of the earth moving all around us.

I shoved the gate open and pivoted inside, the wall blocking the hailstorm of pebbles.

            We braced ourselves against it, trying to ignore the rattling as we caught our breath. “Earthquake?” She asked.

            “Since when do we get earthquakes in—”

            A loud cracking noise interrupted me, and the stones between my hands shifted. I pulled away, watching in horror as a crack began to spread, snaking between the stones and leaving little puffs of dust in its wake. 

            The shaking stopped. 

            Marina stared in shock.

            “That was… terrifyingly unusual,” I said hoarsely.

            “Unusual? If it starts back up again, Meg, your whole house is going to cave in!”

            I looked up to see an ugly crack spider web out from the corner of my window. 

            Oh, god, my parents.

            “I’m going to find Kaz!” Marina shouted toward my back as I ran inside.

            It was a mess. Some of the floorboards were popped up, bent nails sticking out at dangerous angles. The chandelier in the hallway (which hung low enough that my dad always needed to lean to the side as he walked past, lest he whack his forehead against it) was still swinging ominously from side to side.

            “Mom? Dad?”

            The hallway ran the length on the house, and I could see through the front door on the other side. It was open, one of the hinges hanging loose. As I rushed forward, calling out again, a photo on the wall crashed down, leaving a bright spot behind it that had been untouched by the sun for the past ten years, at least. I couldn’t help but look down at it as I passed. My own youthful face grinned up at me, my arms swung around the shoulders of bright-faced Marina and Kaz as they boosted me up in air to swing my legs forward at the person behind the camera.

Shards of glass littered my path, crunching beneath my shoes as I moved past it.

“Mom?” I shouted out again.

I heard a faint reply drift in through front door, and with one last look back, I ran out to greet her.

She was standing behind her car door like it was a shield, and my dad was at the wheel, his arm out the window as he waved me forward. I hopped over a large crack in the driveway, where the cement had lifted up to expose the sand underneath.

“We’re heading inland,” my dad said gruffly as I leaned down to look at them. “Get in. A quake like that, who knows what the water will do.”

A rumbling began to grow around us.

“Meg, now!” My mom shrieked, looking frantically from me to the house.

I reached for the passenger door, but pulled my hand back at the last moment.

“Marina, she—she took off on foot. I’ve got to—”

In a rush of impatience, my dad tossed me the keys to his motorbike and put the car in reverse. “Meet us at your grandmother’s as soon as you can.”

As he backed into the street, my mom’s eyes met mine through the windshield, and her hand shot forward as if to grab the sight of me and pull it in.

“I love you!” I yelled.

The rumbling got louder, and the driveway gave a big groan as another section popped up. My dad’s bike, parked on the gravel just beside it, tumbled onto its side, the kickstand having jiggled loose.

With a rush of adrenaline, I hauled it back up and slipped on, kicking it to a start and turning in a tight half circle, loose gravel ricocheting as I peeled out.

I knew which way Marina had gone. Kaz’s shop wasn’t far, and we’d been so often I could probably make my way blindfolded in the dark. But this was different. This urgency, this fear—it made me second guess each turn. She couldn’t be that far ahead of me, and the shop was only a few blocks away.

I gave a drawn out beep at each cross street, hoping it might alert her as well as warn the others.

Many of our neighbors seemed to have the same idea as my parents, and were traveling the same direction—perpendicular to my own path. The bike swerved deftly between them, following my every command like we were one.

As I took my final turn, the trembling returned tenfold. The road splintered apart, asphalt mixing with grass and soil as the corner landscaping collapsed in on itself. I paused for a moment at the sight; a red glow emanated from the depths of the hole. 

But I didn’t have time to investigate. I pulled the bike to a halt, stomped down on the kickstand, and stumbled through the front door of Kaz’s shop.

“Kaz!” I screamed, shielding my head with my arms as I entered the shop. Bits of drywall showered down from the ceiling.

“Here!” He shouted from beneath the counter.

I was at his side with seconds. “Where’s Marina?”

“I haven’t seen her,” he replied, glancing darkly toward the door to the backroom. Sunlight shone through it, like it was going right through the second floor. A dirtied shoe propped it open. “Meg, my dad—he… he—”

I didn’t hear what he said next, as Marina rocketed into the room, a flurry of heat behind her.

Kaz rose to his feet as she launched at him. Her arms entwined around his neck, wrapping him in a tight embrace. 

I looked again toward the shoe.

“Something is burning out there,” Marina rasped. “The ground--it’s like lava!”

            The light leaking through the front windows had a red tint to it that danced on the floor. 

            With another rumble, the front door swung open. A wave of heat rushed in, blowing my hair back. It was so hot it scorched my throat. We had to keep moving.

            Together, we retreated out the back. I tried not to look as we stepped over the collapsed ceiling, and the other shoe still attached to a foot sticking out from beneath a tower of clay shingles. It didn’t move, except from the shifting of the shingles with the shaking of the ground. 

            The buildings in the row behind the shop were still mostly intact. Kaz tried three doors before he found one unlocked and pushed us inside before yanking it shut. Candles towered over us on either side. Some were beginning to lean this way and that, beads of condensation collecting on the sides.

            They were melting.

            And then I saw it. There, at the front of the chandlery, was the display. The waterfall candle was practically a glob of wax now, but the mountain remained. It burned bright, with red wax dripping in rivers down crevices along the sides, almost a volcano but not quite.

            I had the sudden urge to destroy it, to snuff it out and shove it in the freezer.

            Marina and Kaz were murmuring back and forth, their hands grasped together. I didn’t hear anything that they said. All I could see was the candle. Even when Kaz pushed through the doors and Marina cried quietly beside me, all I heard was the crackling of that small flame.

            Each step forward felt like a leap, landing me closer and closer until—

            Another rush of heat, and the tiles beneath our feet crumbled away with a jolt. I was left with nothing but a wooden beam beneath my feet, its shape imprinted in my mind’s eye by the cursed flames beneath.

            Just out of reach, Marina screamed. Her elbows perched precariously on the same beam. One of her shoes dangled off her toes as she kicked, then plummeted into the heat below and disintegrated into the smolder.

            “Meg!” She cried. “Help! Help me!”

            That damnable candle crackled menacingly in time with the roar of the heat beneath us, menacing me. I needed to extinguish it—it was the only thing I could think to do.

            But Marina needed me, and she couldn’t wait. 

            Carefully, arms outstretched, I toed my way across the beam. It rocked as I reached her, and with a loud creak, it bucked me off until I was hanging by an arm and a leg beside her.

            But there, with the sunlight at his back, was Kaz. He’d come back. He hugged the beam, scooting forward with three points of contact. Then, he stretched out an arm, his fingers grazing mine. I stared into his brown eyes, my index finger stretching out toward his. I felt pulled to him, positively magnetized.

            Marina whimpered.

            Guiltily, my focus returned to her.

            The surrounding beams has succumbed to the fire. The three of us were clinging to the only support that remained. We were in a straight line, Marina, Kaz, and I. And there, at the end, like an arrow to the sunlight, was the candle.

            Kaz’s hand brushed against mine again.

It was never my dream; he was never my dream guy. He was hers, all along. I’d known that, and I knew that it was my destiny to do whatever I needed to keep that dream alive. And if my time was up, I could help her.

“Grab his hand!” I screamed, my shoulder aching. 

“No!” She screamed back. “No! We’ll fall!”

I looked at Kaz, then back at her. She could use me as leverage to swing over. “We won’t!” I yelled back.

Marina looked into my eyes again, her gaze searching as her hand slipped the slightest bit. Finally, with one big jerk, her fingers wrapped around my wrist. I let go with my other hand and grasped her, hanging by only my legs. I swung her once, twice, and a third time before her other hand grasped the beam behind me. I watched as she pulled herself up, Kaz’s hands lifting her beneath the shoulders. They turned toward me. “Your turn!” Marina yelled.

I shook my head. The heat was burning my eyes and flushing my cheeks. I wrapped a arm around the beam, warm against me, right as one leg slipped free. “Go!” But it didn’t sound right in the heat. It was muffled, heavy.

            “I can’t leave you!” She screamed. “It’s not right!”

            “But now you’re safe, now you can—” I cried.

            She crashed down suddenly, the beam beneath her cracking apart in a smoldering heat. I couldn’t bear to watch as she fell. There was only smoldering lava beneath us now, an acrid, bewitched smell rising from it. 

            My side of the beam sank down, approaching the heat.

            Kaz, his end much shorter, sat up in shock.

            We heard Marina’s scream.

            It jolted him into action, and he reached to his side and pulled a floorboard from the debris. His brow furrowed in concentration as he maneuvered it across the room. I watched his forearms shake as he angled it up enough to prop it on the foundation behind me.

            A bridge.

            In a blur, I hauled myself onto it. It bent beneath the weight of me, but I didn’t have time to panic. Instead, I bounded across it and into Kaz’s waiting arms.

            I pivoted around him, my heel finding the hollow ground where the cellar ceiling ended and the display case began. And there, the candle, red wax collected around the bottom like a mote. I blew on it, and with a gust of wind, the trembling and groaning of the earth around us stopped.

            The red glow faded with the sunlight. The sun had set, and as darkness took over, Kaz and I looked over the edge of edge of the floor. There, amongst the charred remains of what had been in storage, laid Marina, her chest rising and falling.

            The wood scraped my sides as I slid down to her, but I hardly felt it. Thought the blaze was gone, the heat remained, but I hardly felt that either. The pounding in my chest overpowered every other sense. Marina, Marina, Marina, it whispered. Breathe, Marina. Live, Marina.

            I was at her side then, relief flooding me as I saw the steady rise and fall of her chest and the fluttering of her eyelids. Kaz huddled on her other side, her head cradled in his hand. His tears left clean circles on her cheeks, washing away the ash and rising back towards the moon as steam.

            Whatever that had been, whoever had cursed our town, it was over now… but it was just the beginning for us. The three of us, huddled in exhaustion, would emerge with the morning sun, like a phoenix rising from the embers.