IF YOU'D'VE ASKED me where I was going that night, I would've guessed the now empty scorched lot. I imagine that's where Gina'd gone to look for me, if she'd gone after me at all, but I didn't go to the ghost of the house on Cornwall Drive. At least, I didn't go there at first.
My mind was in a fog, so I just drove. I drove endlessly, burning gallons of gasoline as I cruised down random streets throughout town. I drove past the Burger King and the dentist. I drove past the hardware store. I drove past the school. I drove around the edge of town, and to the center of Main Street. I drove, and I drove, and I drove, and finally when I parked the car, I wasn't in front of the lot on Cornwall Drive.
I was at the house where I grew up.
I stared up at it from the col-de-sac at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The moonlight cast the house in a haunting hue. It still had the same baby blue shingled sides and hideous yellow roof, but that night it was menacing. I feared the windows might suddenly light up like eyes, and the entire house might rise on feet like the roots of trees and come after me, chasing me off into the darkness of the night.
One car was parked in the driveway—a green Volkswagen hatchback. The wind rushed through the yard, shaking the leafless limbs on the maple tree and tearing at the dry and dead grass in the lawn.
I looked up at the dark window on the second floor—at the room that had been mine. It was directly above the living room. There was a small vent in the corner by the closet, covered by an ornate brushed brass grate. As a kid, I'd laid on the oiled wood floor and traced the tiny intricate metal patterns with my finger—leaves and branches and spiraling vines. Like clouds they were nothing specific, so as a kid they became anything.
I could hear every conversation that went on in the living room through that vent. I'd always liked to listen in, just to hear what my parents were talking about when they thought I was far away in my room.
When I was about fourteen or fifteen, I'd covered the vent with a box of old books. I'd started listening to a lot of loud music, and I didn't want the noise passing through. I'd also started smoking pot in my room occasionally—mostly when it was raining and I didn't want to sit outside. I was concerned about the smell, although I'm sure my parents knew regardless.
The last conversation I'd overheard through that vent took place about a month before my parents sold the house and moved away. I'd been rearranging my room, trying to tidy up a bit, and finally decided to move the box that had been collecting dust in the corner for the past seven or so years. I'd completely forgotten about the vent, and when I shoved the box out of the way, voices drifted up from below. Out of curiosity, I got down on my hands and knees, pressed my ear to the floor and listened.
"But what about Harper?" my mother's voice asked. I imagined her sitting on the worn tan leather couch in the living room.
"What about him?" My father was probably standing in the center of the room, between my mom and the TV, with his arms crossed in front of his chest.
"We can't just leave him here."
"He can't keep living with us forever," my father said sternly. "He's going to be twenty two in a couple of weeks for crying out loud."
"Well what do you want him to do then? What's he supposed to do if he doesn't come with us?"
"Anything," my father raised his voice. "Anything. I wanted him to do anything years ago, but he never did."
"He has a job."
"At the gas station? So he's just going to work there forever? Live with his parents, smoke pot in his room and hold a minimum wage job for the rest of his life? That's a grand fucking plan, isn't it?"
"College isn't for everyone, Jake."
"Trade school, something, Grace. I don't care. He could have done something..."
I shoved the box back over the grate and got up. The voices disappeared, and my room was quiet once again. I stood there, staring down at the box of books and not moving for ten whole minutes. At one point, I realized I'd been holding my breath, so I let it out in a gust. Finally, I moved my arm. I picked up the book at the top of the box, and then I walked over and sat down on my bed.
It was a book about the solar system. I turned to the page about the sun. It's surface can reach ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but the core can burn at twenty-seven million.
A few days later at dinner, while I pushed overdone peas around my plate pretending to eat, I told my parents I'd decided to move out and get an apartment.
My mom believed me because she wanted it to be true. My dad believed me because he wanted my mom to believe me.
A month later, I helped my parents pack the last of their things into the Hyundai Sonata. They'd finally closed on the house and bought a place up in Syracuse. With the exception of the farmhouse, my parent's property was the last to be sold in Millstone.
As they drove away for the last time, I stood alone in the driveway, leaning against my Camry and shivering in the cold, late autumn air. The wind kicked up and knocked a limb off the maple tree in the front yard. It gave out a sickening groan as it cracked and fell to the ground.
I couldn't tell you exactly which day it was that the wind started, but for all I know, it might have been that day—the first windy day in a series of many, many, many windy days.
The streetlight flickered on Pennsylvania Avenue, and the wind whistled through the cracks in the seal of my car, pulling me back to the present. My breath condensed in front of me. I felt ice on my teeth, and a hollow numbness inside of me. I didn't know how long I'd been parked in front of my old house, but it was long enough that the interior of the car had cooled off to a chilling forty degrees.
Shivering, I started the engine. It rumbled to life with a groan. The heat from the vents came out cold. With one last glance at the house, I drove off.
It was a three minute drive to where I went next, and one I'd made many times. I could have driven it with my eyes closed, and I might as well have that night with the way my mind was running.
At 4:07 in the morning, I found myself parked outside of Lydia's parents' house. Both of their cars were in the driveway. I hadn't been considering the idea of ringing the doorbell or anything, but there must have been some reason why I went there.
Maybe I just missed her.
I knew she was no longer my girlfriend, and I didn't love her anymore, but she'd been the person I'd gone to for comfort for the past six years. She'd been the one I'd confided in, and the one who'd held me when I was upset. Simply, she was important to me.
But Lydia wasn't home. She was in New York, and she wasn't coming back, and I knew it. There was nothing there for me now.
I put the car back in drive and continued on.
After another lost half hour of aimless driving down indistinct streets and roads, I finally found myself at the place I'd probably been going all along—Cornwall Drive.
I crept up on the street slowly. I wasn't sure if I could handle what I was about to see. Half of me wanted to turn the car around and drive away and never look back, but the stronger half needed to see. I needed to see.
The town's only fire truck and the police cruiser were still parked by the curb. The lots looked like rubble at a construction site in the flashing lights, burnt like they had been scorched by the ten thousand degree surface of the sun. I stopped the car at the corner, refusing to turn onto the street and confront everything. I didn't want to see anyone. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I pressed the gas, and I drove on.
My mind went into a haze again as I drove, and finally, I pulled into a parking spot in front of the post office. The lot was empty. I got out, locking the car behind myself. Wind tore around the building, pulling at my clothes and knocking my hair around, but I didn't care. I pulled up the hood of my sweatshirt and walked back behind the building. Dead branches and pine needles crinkled under my feet as I slowly descended into the ravine. I crouched down as I walked, running my hand along the ground for balance to compensate for my injured leg.
When I neared the bottom, I found a clear spot on the ground and sat in the dirt. I stared into the red water running through the ravine. Sticks and branches blocked it's path, and the stream struggled to maneuver its way around them. I knew it was just tannins that made the water so dark, but that night, I would have believed it was blood.
I clenched pine needles and dirt in my fist, grinding my teeth together. I thought about all the rubble and wreckage at the house on Cornwall Drive. There was nothing left of it now. The walls were gone, the porch was gone, every single room was gone. A bit of the foundation was left behind, but nothing to make it distinct. It could have been anybody's house.
But it wasn't anybody's house.
I wondered if Jeremey had died in his sleep. I wondered if he'd woken up when the fire began to burn. I wondered if he'd tried to get out. I wondered how much it'd hurt.
I didn't want to wonder anymore. I couldn't feel my body. I picked up the dirt and pine needles from the bank of the ravine, and I threw them as hard as I could at the stream. Immediately after they left my hand, the wind gusted, knocking them back in my face. My eyes stung and burned.
"Fuck you!" I jumped to my feet, screaming at the wind. Tears soaked my face, but I wasn't sure when I had started crying. My entire body was numb. I crouched down on the ground. My leg throbbed in pain, so I grasped onto it and ground my teeth inside my skull. I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood.
I sat there in the ravine, not thinking about anything and letting the wind slam against me for fifteen minutes, hoping it would blow me away too. Finally, once the numbness and emptiness inside me replaced the pain in my ankle, I stood up. Slowly and carefully, I climbed out of the ravine and went back to my car.
The dashboard clock read 5:03 in the morning. The sun wouldn't rise for another two hours, but already the sky was starting to glow from the heat of the six hundred million ton fireball floating ninety three million miles away somewhere in the deep and empty void of space.
I lay down in the backseat of my car, and I pretended I was asleep as I waited for fire to rise on the horizon.
It was the coldest night of my life.