Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

out through the back door in her bare feet and feeling the heat coming up through the ground as Rusty grabbed at Mary Beth’s hand, the hand all that was left showing, fingers stretched out taut like an exotic bloom, and then Rusty falling through the ground, the earth sinking away with him. And Judy stood there screaming, screaming while the soles of her feet began to scorch and the smoke coming up made it impossible for her to see if Rusty, too, had completely disappeared under the ground.

She lay down on solid earth where there was still grass showing, trying to lie flat on her big, hard belly, to reach her arms out and into the smoke, but she couldn’t do it, she was shaking all over and so terrified that she could no longer hear herself screaming. But she was aware, suddenly, that her neighbor, Farley, was scrambling through the huckleberry bushes that grew up between the yards, pulling her to her feet and away from the smoke and the soft ground. Farley was fat and he was getting old and he hardly ever left his house these days, or even the old chair in front of his television, but he threw himself flat along the ground and plunged his arms into the hole where the smoke was billowing, began to yell and roll frantically, trying to scramble up onto his knees without letting go of whatever he had in his hands. And then, suddenly, Angela was there and Rachel right behind her, and they grabbed Farley’s legs and pulled him away from the smoke as if he weighed nothing at all. And it seemed to Judy as if she were watching a birth, for as they pulled Farley away another figure slid up out of the ground as smoothly as a snake from its skin, covered with filth and spitting gobs from its mouth, and bawling and screaming, and choking there on the ground. And she could see that it was not her Mary Beth, that it was Rusty, that he was alive, and that he was alone.

“Get her out!” Judy screamed. “She’s still down there! Mary Beth!” she screamed at the hole in the ground, at the smoke, as if her daughter might answer, “I’m coming, Mom. My foot’s stuck, is all …” But although Farley plunged his arms back down into the ground until he, too, began to slide under and his arms came out bleeding, Mary Beth was gone. Rachel came running back then from the street where she’d gone for help, to fetch a bulldozer or some other almighty machine, but she was alone.

They took Judy inside and first called the fire department, then her husband, made sure the other children would stay wherever they were for a time. Then they tried to take her to the hospital, to make sure she was all right, but she would not go any farther from Mary Beth than her kitchen window.

Farley stayed with her, his sleeves in tatters, while Angela wrapped Rusty in a blanket, gently wiped the dirt from his eyes, and Rachel ran up the hill for her truck. She could hear the sirens as she ran.

Rusty fell asleep on the way to the hospital, but he never stopped crying even so.

“He’ll be all right,” the doctor in Randall said. “We’re doing a few more tests, but there doesn’t appear to be any real damage, although he must have breathed in an awful lot of carbon monoxide. But if he was only down there for a minute or two, well, I guess he was lucky.”

“Lucky,” Angela muttered, her face terrible, once the doctor had left. She began to pace back and forth along the hospital corridor, wringing her hands. “I almost lost my boy. I almost lost my boy.” She looked at Rachel, who stood watching. “You hear me, Rachel? I almost lost my Rusty. That good enough for you? You gonna go now? God almighty. I’m taking Rusty away as soon as I get him out of here. The very minute.”

“Of course you are,” Rachel said. “Of course you are. I understand.”

“Jesus Christ, Rachel, you don’t understand a thing. I’ve tried to be patient and open-minded, but enough is enough. You’re obsessed. I see you looking at what’s happening, but you don’t do a goddamned thing. You act like there’s still something in Belle Haven worth staying for. But I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s got such a hold on you.”

“I know,” Rachel said, leaning her back against the wall. “I know I must seem crazy to you. Joe thinks I’m out of my mind. Sometimes I lose sight of everything, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Everything’s all mixed up: things that happened years before the fire even started, things that happened hundreds of miles from here, things that happened this morning. But you’ve got to try to understand, Angela. Nothing seems important when I compare it to Belle Haven.” She put her head into her hands. “What’s so wrong with wanting to keep my home?”

“Nothing’s wrong with that. I want to keep my home too. But I can’t. It’s not up to me anymore. And I do have things that are a lot more important than Belle Haven. One of them is lying on a table down the hall.”

Rachel closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry this has happened,” she said. “I never thought it would get so bad.” She opened her eyes. “But I don’t have a little boy like Rusty or a mother like Dolly. All I have is my home.”

“Which you are clinging to like it’s some kind of paradise. Jesus, Rachel. What do you think it will be like when we’ve left? I always thought you loved Belle Haven because of the people who lived there. Me included. And my mother. And Rusty. And Joe, for that matter. But you’ve made it clear that when we leave, you’ll be staying on.”