Blaze (another installment brought to you by twelve and seventeen).

Do I need a ticket
To buy this ride?
Convenient it appears in front of me
The expression on your face gives a sign
And I don't like it

Wait, he said and he staggered toward me, his eyes locked on mine. Then he veered off around the corner and I figured maybe he's had enough alcohol and he has to go to the bathroom. He comes back around the corner holding the hose. Oh. He needs some water, I think and then I remind myself of what he's doing and mentally breathe a sigh of relief because the water bucket is only going to help so much in an emergency. An endless supply is a much better idea.

And then he turns it on me and I shriek. It's ice cold. I put my hands up and turn around, shouting his name but he doesn't stop. He walks closer and raises the hose up over my head, making sure to soak me good. Making sure my hair is wet, my shoes, and a four foot circle on the ground around me.

He drops the hose on the ground at my feet and nods. You're safer now. Don't you move, Peanut. I swear to God, if you move- He loses his train of thought and returns to the unplanted garden, the turned earth where he is learning to manipulate the flames. He can already throw fire, juggling so many torches I have a hard time keeping count, but he wants it all. Tonight he's eating it. Fire is cake to him.

Lochlan's so smashed right now I have my doubts that he should even continue. They're teaching him fire-eating out behind the utility buildings at the end of the road where the parking lot is, jammed full of our campers where we sleep between days spent working the midway. He wanted me to be there to watch his evolution and learn a few things too, he said and so he woke me up in the middle of the night, helping me dress, chattering quietly about securing our future. Taking things higher, burning up like a comet in the sky. I nodded sleepily. Future. Sky. Fire. What does he think my dreams are at night?

They're not this, standing dripping and shivering in the middle of the night in late August watching him learn he has more than a natural affinity for this. Don't inhale. Don't spill. Don't swallow. Pay attention because this can kill you but you know, it will also render you blind drunk in the space of the first twenty minutes so good luck remembering your techniques at that point. Good luck indeed.

Every time he puts flames on his tongue I hold my breath along with him. Every time he shoots fuel out between his teeth and lights it on the upswing with the torch I force myself to keep my eyes open in case I need to drop, grab the hose and save his life.

But at the same time I'm rapt. The flames dance white-hot in his eyes. He is visceral and alive and excited. He's a natural, they tell him and he's proud. Chest-thrust out, ego-soaring proud. Stumbling-drunk proud. Pretty sure of himself and finally when I realize he's having trouble holding still when he should I ask him to stop.

Loch, please! Enough for tonight. 

No, Peanut, I'm just getting the...hang of things...just a little longer.

Please?

He stops and stares at me. He rocks slightly. Then he smiles crookedly and nods. Yeah. Okay. He points his finger and staggers backwards two steps. Admit it. Your blood is thrumming. I can feel it from here. I just want to get this right and then I'll teach you. We'll do it together and then we can buy that land up on the Cape and we can have everything we've talked about. 

Right so pack it in before you have an accident. Your luck has run out for the night, Mister. I give him my caller voice and he grins.

Yeah, okay.

The gear is packed up and the others drift away into the darkness at the edges of the night. Lochlan puts his arm around me and apologizes into my hair for getting unintentionally drunk off the grain alcohol they were using for fuel, for soaking me in cold water, for waking me up, for keeping me a captive audience, and for being so thorough in planning our future. Ours, together. All of this is for me, although after tonight I'm thinking maybe he should be a house painter or something and I'll work in a bakery. Safe things. Easier things with regular pay. Nothing that devalues his efforts, with half his talent given away for free when people don't pay for the entertainment, instead disappearing into the crowd, forcing him to return to the back end of the lot and run rides. Forcing me to want to steal just to help out.

But Lochlan reads my mind. Naw, Bridget, the plan now is to make them pay up front. Spread the word, create an irresistible show, maybe on the sideshow circuit down south and then negotiate the profits from admittance fees and concession. I have it all figured out. We'll be world famous. 

We? 

You'll be incredible.  I'll eat fire off your skin. We can kiss, exchange flames. You can mimic me behind my back and make them laugh-

He stops and grabs my head in both hands. He brings his forehead down and presses it hard against mine. Shared brains. We both waver now because he's controlling my movements. I laugh as I keel crazily to the right and then overcorrect and veer far down to the left but then he gets us under control.

Listen to me. You're so brave. You were brave to come with me and braver still to stay. If I can do anything you can do it twice as well. Matt says he's going to pass my name along, that it's a..what's the word? Attrition! Attrition kind of thing where you have to wait for a space or be that good that they make a space and acquire your act, but he knows enough people. So we develop this and make it different and then word will get around. Let's do this. Let's live off this magic we found. Let's keep it unreal, let's...oh fuck, I'll be right back. 

He took off running out into the middle of the field, and stopped, bending over, hands on his knees, bringing up all of the fuel that found its way into his stomach. Hopefully none of it went into his lungs because I don't think he could expel that. He remained swaying crazily in that position forever while I shivered and plotted and twisted and planned and by the time he made his way slowly back to me, a new clarity on his face, we had it figured out without saying a word. Our take on on the traditional act of fire-eating. It hasn't been done before. Or maybe it has but we don't know yet, we'll have to wait and see. The only thing we know is that even if it's been done before, it will have never been done like this.

We make our way back to the camper and clean up best we can. As we settle back in under the blanket, my hair freshly towel-dried, detangled and loosely braided, my limbs safely ensconced in his hundred-and-ten-degree clutch, he tells me that the beauty of the next five or six years, until I am an adult, is the time we will have to learn and practice, to plan our future together, and to further perfect our mind-reading. He lies there smiling at me, this terribly drunk magnificently affectionate flame-haired teenage boy taking back over from the winsome, inherent showman I watched earlier in my sleep.

I drift off with the taste of alcohol on my lips, his I love you promise ringing in my ears. I burn without fire. I feel dizzy. I have that weird hyperventilaty-scary-happy feeling that only comes from Lochlan. Like I can't breathe when I'm around him but I can't breathe without him either.

Alright Friday.

I'm thinking it's like a whole nother week where I should just not write.

I'm in a positivity race, running down the track full steam when BOOM, out of nowhere it hits. A rock, right in the side of my head. I waver and stumble but I don't stop running. More rocks come from somewhere just outside my peripheral vision, pelting me, bruising my skin, causing me to weave but I keep on running, dodging the larger ones if I can, ducking and bobbing along like an idiot but...

You know something?

Fuck it. I drop my hands, slow to a stop and turn and walk back to the starting line. This race isn't going to happen today. They won't let me run it.

There were a few good things about today. Lochlan coming home with good news. Caleb and Lochlan both loosening their helicopter grips enough to let both kids wander around the neighborhood together even. Sunshine and a cool breeze. Sam calling in between services telling me people are funny when they only show up twice a year for church and expect him to remember every little detail of their lives. August sending an email thanking me for not crucifying him (yeah, he made an Easter pun) in print, that he's been waiting weeks on pins and needles for the inevitable entry and it wasn't what he expected so he wished us a happy weekend and told me all about his job interviews 'in town' this week. I called him.

In town? You mean near where the gas station and the flag are?

The very same. As many amenities as you have on Point Redemption there. 

I have an army. Who needs amenities? 

You do, Bridget. 

Toushaaaaaay, August.  I'll dispatch the army to get them for me. 

It doesn't work like that. 

Dammit. It should.

Newfie Donuts (Front-wheel drive only).

August left the point just before Valentine's Day. For good. He went home to Newfoundland and he isn't coming back here unless it's for a visit. I said sometimes people come and sometimes they go but it took me until now to get through transcribing his departure without going to pieces.

Oh..

I take that back.

***

 ...Like, whole decades of mixed messages, conflicting orders and inconsistent patterns of rewards and punishments that have left her confused and emotionally stunted by the lot of you. 

Years ago when she made such self-deprecating comments about being feral I dismissed it as a mild lack of confidence but now I see. She was pointing out her own awareness of this. She can't cope properly because you all keep changing the rules. It would destroy anyone, let alone a suggestible child and let alone to continue for as long as it has.

I had a responsibility to my best friend to see that she was taken care of. And I have tried. But certain things have happened in my own life and years have passed and I'm not seeing enough change here. It's one thing to say her grief is ebbing significantly, and it's a whole other thing to see her sabotaged on a daily, even hourly basis with your wants and inadequacies. 

And with that, I'm out of here. Going home. I have a full plate to deal with and I can't watch this anymore. She's such a beautiful girl. It's a shame she's been destroyed first by them and now by the selfishness of the rest of us.

I was standing behind the door in the alcove that becomes the library, tucked in on the north side of the main level, quietly set apart from the rest of the house. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I know what it means when there's a family meeting and I'm not invited.
I know what it sounds like when someone's leaving and they're not coming back.


***

Late that night he comes to find me. He takes my hand, leading me into the living room by the fire. We settle into the big couch and he throws an arm around me, pulling me close.

I haven't been here for you much the past few months. 

You've had your own issues, I don't expect you to drop everything and look after me. I do okay. 

Yeah, you do better than okay. He smiles ruefully and I am about to burst. Bridget-

I know you're leaving. Oh God, I hate that feeling right before crying. I hate the fear of being without anyone. I'm afraid of the homesickness. Afraid of being alone. Afraid of going to find him and not finding him there. Like Cole. Like Jacob. Like me.

I gotta go home, Bridge. I have to look after my folks. Jake's folks too. I need to figure out what I'm doing before I get any older. I think you have enough support here. I think they're competent enough. I think maybe I don't help as much as you tell me I did.

He's referring to the months in between Jake flying and when I let Ben hold my heart. I went to August. I called him Jacob in the dark and he put his arms around me and held me against his warm skin. He sounded just like Jake. He tasted just like Jacob and he gave me nights to fall asleep in that hurt so much less than they would have otherwise and then it became an albatross for him and he had to pull away again, but only a little. Enough to make room for Ben. But he gave up more for me than I could have ever asked him for, five years of his life watching, evaluating, making quiet suggestions that more often than not were hurled back into his face. He had guts. He never minced words with me.

But we had fun too. It wasn't all work. It wasn't all pain. He is a part of this family and he always will be but I know he won't ever come back and live here again. It won't be the same. If only I could force things to be the same but I also want him to go back and settle down properly, find love that will last and be true and have children if he wants them and be happy. Use his education doing social work again, instead of fly-by-night psychoanalysis. Maybe we can visit. Or maybe we can just talk on the phone.

You did. You were there from the beginning and you've never judged me. I love you. 

I love you too, Bridget. Jesus, you change people. I didn't believe Jake when he said you were a walking breathing heart. He said you were the definition of his love. He was right.

(Right there marks the moment I was given the best gift I could ever have asked for. Right there. The definition of Jacob's love. I need no more than this.)

But of course God never listens to me so I keep listening to August as he talks and I make that stupid, heartbreaking attempt to drink in every detail. His blonde/red eyebrows, his long curls, the hemp bracelet that has been reduced to fuzz around his right wrist. His worn jeans and freckled hands. His short eyelashes and tall frame. His hard jawline and threadbare watchstrap. His slender fingers that touched me in the dark when it was so wrong but so needed.

Past tense but he's still alive. I wish my brain would bluescreen so I could send it back under warranty and sync up a new one.

Five years is a long time to give up your own life for a friend who took his own. Why do you owe anyone anything after that? Why would you do that?

August is a good human, that's why. One of the best I've ever met.

Will you visit, August?

Maybe, Bridge. I don't know. I imagine in a bit I'll come back out and see everyone. Once I'm settled again.

Or we'll come to the Bay. 

That would be so great, Bridget. If you can manage it. I know it's not an easy place to go.

I throw myself in his arms. The sobs are just pouring out now.  And then suddenly Ben is lifting me up, away from August and he turns me around and holds me tightly. August stands up and kisses my head. I love you, little princess. Thank you for making my best friend the happiest I ever saw him. He loved you so, Bridget. Don't you ever doubt that. We all do. Every last one of us and we'd go to the ends of the earth for you so if you ever need me you call and I'll be on a plane. You promise me. 

I am spun back around for a response. No, I can't do that to you. Go and live your life. I don't know how to thank you. I don't even know where I would start. 

Hey, I needed to be here just as much as you needed me to be here. Don't think this isn't an escape from everything else too. It's a dream, princess. So are you. 

But I'm a nightmare, August. 

Not even close. Jacob wasn't someone who had any patience for put-ons or nonsense. I think you bought him time. He never planned on you. I don't think any of us did, Bridget, Jesus. You're just a tiny little planet and we're all rotating around and around you and I gotta go back to my own solar system. Don't you cry, you hear me? And don't write me off as a bastard or a coward or a jerk. I don't mean to make things harder, I promise you. That's the last thing I would want for you.

August, if you say one more word I'm going to keep you. I choked it out slowly. It wasn't a promise, it was a threat.

He opened his mouth and then thought better of it and smiled sadly. Instead he just held out his arms.

Envelope, the verb.

The best thing about the internet today?

Randy Blythe's Instagram. Now with devil horns.

***

In other news, also with Devil horns (because that envelope I found yesterday curiously hasn't moved), I'm sort of suffering again. I pushed a little too hard at yesterday and moved it a little too far and it slid back and crushed me like a bug.

But I'm a ladybug, so I have wings AND a hard shell and I pushed back and we're pretty much in a holding pattern at wherever I was around noonish yesterday when I had all KINDS of great ideas on how to wear myself to smithereens instead of taking it a little bit easy because of being so sick on the weekend.

Sam and Henry are playing a game together, Lochlan is away-away in the City of Angels delivering a work of utmost importance. He called a little while ago and after we talked he wanted to talk to Ruth. I told him she wasn't here.

Where is she?

I don't know. 

What do you mean, you don't know?

I mean, she's somewhere between here and _______'s house (Best friend). I imagine they're wandering the streets. She has the phone with her.

Wandering the streets? She's thirteen, for chrissakes. 

Right. Thirteen..

Okay. I get it. Just keep tabs, would you?

Loch-

Bridget. I worry. I'd feel the same way if I called and PJ said you were out wandering the streets. 

Well, that would be a whole different scenario if I was, wouldn't it? 

True.

Relax. Please, Loch.

How, Peanut? 

You just remember that she's half you and half me and so you can have confidence in her value judgements and her problem-solving skills. 

Knowing that she's half me and half you only guarantees to me that she'll definitely be far weirder than the average kid. 

Jesus, take the wheel.

(The title is completely unrelated today. Some days the day is completely unrelated to the day, here. In other words, I'm feeling better so you get the Necro-gnome-icon girl. Enjoy her while she lasts, for I'm sure it won't be long.)

Batman asked me this morning why I cause him so much misery without even being an active part of his life. I shrugged. I'm not actually going to let him put that on me because I didn't ask for his continued presence. I keep trying to get rid of him. He just won't leave.

I don't think it's my fault. I've been fending off his advances for a few years now.

I say now because there was a time when I didn't fend them off. He was a nice reprieve. Actually, I don't think that's it at all. He's always been patient and disapproving and difficult to read and closed and stunningly attentive.

And gosh. He's handsome. And rich too. And he has manners we don't even know yet.

But he won't leave.

I wish I could make him go but he and Ben are up to something and he's doing a little more due diligence with Ben this time so that Ben doesn't wind up leaving part of his soul behind on any more projects. They sort of ruin him. He can't set boundaries (I KNEW THIS PART) and then he just gives all of himself to something and doesn't know what to do with the empty hole when he sends his work out into the universes.

But pshaw, we all knew about the boundaries thing. Right? Right?

Right. Because I saw the silver envelope under Ben's ipad. I saw it but I didn't touch it. And  I don't want to know what it says or when it's for or any of that. Nope. I don't. And I didn't say a thing when the first words out of the client's mouth on the monitor as I left the room were the wish that they could have done this in person, because it would have been so much easier.

I don't agree with that.

I'd rather have Ben here, even if I have to start from scratch to teach him the difference between right and wrong. I don't think he's ever known, frankly.

I don't think I do either.

I'll just call it FacePalm.

Hearing aids. Now. 

Yessir. (I run and fetch them and put them in.)

Wow, you're fast. Now turn them on. 

ARGHHHH. Fine. Just a minute. (I turn them on).

Ready?

Yup. 

How are you feeling, my tiny beelet?

Like shit on a shingle, Benny. I wish you were here. 

I know. I like to argue in person as well. 

I wouldn't fight with you if you wouldn't keep flying off to places I can't go. 

Is that what this is?

Maybe. 

You miss me?

Cleverness really isn't your strong suit, is it?

No, we established that, Bridget. My strong suit is Hearts. 

That was the best comeback ever, Ben.

No, this is: I'm in the driveway. In case you didn't notice your FRONT YARD behind me on the screen. Cleverness isn't your strong suit either. But I knew that already. 

(At least that's what I think he said. I dropped the phone on the carpet and ran right out the front door.).

Still sick. Fever broke yesterday finally. Well, maybe. I hope it stays away. Doritos are good again and I crashed out hard on the living room couch at four yesterday thinking I would close my eyes for twenty minutes and work on my headache and it was so noisy and no one really noticed until BOOM, I woke up and it was almost six and we hadn't even planned dinner and Ben had to leave at seven to catch his plane and I pretty much railed at him for thirty minutes straight, made him a sandwich and refused to end the argument as he was walking out the door. 

Just like Tour! Only for a shorter time period. In other words, I'm still going to remember what I was mad about when he comes back. I'm not sure how that will go exactly but let's hope for the best. After all, he could have done this on a conference call. He could have stayed home to look after me and then he wouldn't a reason to complain that I don't "need" him.

I do. He just is very hard-headed and won't LISTEN.

In other news, my throat now hurts worse than my nose (which is always bad but good, I think) and my head feels like a freight train stopped on it and has no plans of moving forward. Every time I cough it's like being punched right behind the eyes.

So excuse me if I'm a wee little bit crabby today. I have just about reached the point where I'm prepared to auction off another little piece of my highly-mortgaged soul to the Devil so I can feel like a million dollars again.

(That's a figure of speech.)

Back to death I go. Let's try again tomorrow?

Death's Door.

The world is still coming to a rapid end here. I can't breathe at all but the game has just been upped with the most amazing Feel Better present in the universe:

It weighs fifteen pounds at least. It covers the 1870s to 1950s! It's the most beautiful book in the world. I had to put it up at the kitchen counter because it's too big and heavy to rest on my legs to look at in the big chair in the library.

Thank you, Locket. I love it. I love you.

Buckethead.

Benjamin's home. He brought Nyquil from the airport. It had already expired. I didn't say anything. YOLO and all that. I took it anyway. I gather I have fifteen or twenty minutes tops before I'm down for the count or I am fatally poisoned.

Your random email questions today, answered:

1) Yes, I realize 102 degrees isn't death's door. But it's higher than usual and I'm enjoying the hallucinations immensely.

2) PJ's jokes involved indignities to dead bodies. Okay? Happy now? GROSS. I can never ever die. Ever. Ergo, I hope the Nyquil was still good.

3) Loch sang this song on a loop for me and I don't think I realized it for the first three or four renditions:

And if I told you that I loved you
You'd maybe think there's something wrong
I'm not a man of too many faces
The mask I wear is one
Those who speak know nothing
And find out to their cost
Like those who curse their luck in too many places
And those who fear are lost

He did a good job. He is very tired now and asleep on the floor in the library.

4) Where is Duncan? Oh, dear Internet, you have a crush too. It's okay. We all think he's just the cat's meow. He is also sleeping (not on the floor but on the couch in the theatre room) because he took an additional late evening torture shift and spent five hours listening to me complain. This after spending most of yesterday afternoon listening to me complain.

5) Where is the Devil? Entertaining the children, thankfully. Finally he's doing something HELPFUL.

6) Ben is not in trouble. There's just no point in him sitting around in NYC until Tuesday so he came home for the weekend.  He seems to be convinced that sex, movies and Ketucky Fried Chicken are totally going to fix everything.

I hope he's right.

Oh. Lights out. Holy. 

Worse.

102 degrees (and still far below what everyone's favorite fire eater runs at).

Saw rainbow hedgehogs on the lawn.

Coughed up so much snot I made a very bad joke about snotnauts. Oxygen seems so scarce and I got scared. It took a long time to soothe the panic from coughing so hard you think you'll find a lung in your lap eventually but Lochlan sang and sang and sat up and rocked me like a child and PJ sat on the floor and made bad jokes about things I can't repeat here. Because no one gets how sick we can be and I don't mean snotty-sick.

Dalton brought in juice but I couldn't drink it and basically everyone over twenty has been awake since four this morning.

And Ben too, who got on a plane and will be home any minute now.

Yay!