It happened because of the cat. Well, no, that's not entirely true; if you were going to blame the cat, then you might as well blame the cat's parents or the weather that week or the universe itself for choosing to explode into existence one day, because the cat was guilty for what happened only in the sense that it happened to be in the kitchen when Teddy Walker killed Andrea Black.
It had been a hot week. Nothing record-breaking, just normal late-summer Florida, but Teddy was from northern Colorado and hadn't figured out the humidity yet, so he steamed like a Georgia peach in a sauna. On Tuesday, which they said would be the hottest day that week, he carried a bucket full of ice water outside and dumped it over his head. On Wednesday, which was somehow still even hotter, he carried a bucket full of boiling water outside and did the same.
His skin blistered and burned into something gruesome, but at least he wasn't thinking about the weather any more.
Andrea wasn't thinking about the weather either. She didn't think about much at all, in fact. When she was 12, a plastic cat carrier that was strapped to the roof of a speeding car fell off and hit her square in the head. She was medically dead for 2 minutes, and then in a coma for two months.
(The cats inside were the parents of the cat that later killed her, not that it made any difference to Andrea's skull or fine motor skills.)
When she'd woken up, she'd smiled at her parents, smiled at her step-brother Teddy, smiled at the doctor, and then meowed.
Now they were living together in a trailer park in Florida. It was Thursday, 90 degrees Fahrenheit, with 100% humidity. Teddy's skin was red and scabby and raw and his brain was steaming extra, and he thought if he was going to die in this heat, he might as well do it on his own terms.
So he took one part orange juice and two parts gasoline and mixed it all in a bucket, then dropped in a match and picked it up to carry outside.
But then Andrea, who was sitting at the kitchen table, let out a fearsome howl because the bucket had started to smoke and she was afraid of fire. Teddy turned around to yell at her to shut up and took a few steps forward to let her know he meant business, and then tripped over the cat, who was napping in the ray of sunshine that the window on the front door let through. The bucket flew from his hands and spilled its contents all over Andrea, whose eyes and mouth opened far too wide as she screamed a very human scream.
The scream seemed to last forever, seemed to linger in the air, even as her skin boiled up into nothing but ash and her lungs choked on smoke and pulp and her lips withered away, leaving nothing but blackened teeth and gums.
The cat was gone. It had bolted when the screaming started. Teddy was on his knees, right hand smoking where the napalm had splashed on him. He was staring at what remained of Andrea and could not look away.
The phone rang, and then stopped ringing. The light slowly seeped from the room. Outside, there was a heavy rumble, and then the gentle thudding of rain.
The cat came back when the rain started, and nipped at Teddy's right hand, which was no longer smoking. Teddy's eyes creaked, dry and specked with flakes of his step-sister's skin, and looked down at the cat.
He reached out with his right arm, but the skin and nerves were blackened and dead, and there wasn't much he could do with that hand. So he reached out with his left, grasped the cat by its fragile neck, and squeezed.
The next day it was Friday. It was 86 degrees Fahrenheit and 80% humidity, and there were two mounds of dirt in the front yard of Teddy Walker's trailer home.
