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

Suspicious or not, Joe thought, she feels safe enough up here.

But Rachel suffered a moment’s unease as she opened her door to this stranger—for despite knowing a thing or two about him, that’s still what he was—yet the hair on her neck refused to rise, and any second sense she possessed seemed content to trust her first, more experienced instinct.

“Come on in,” she said.

As he followed her into the house he was tempted to ask why she was living alone, at her age, in a house so clearly meant for a family. But he had only just met this girl and had no more intention of asking questions than of answering them. Instead, he said, “I got the impression from the signs on the road into town that this whole place was on the verge of going up in smoke, but all I’ve seen so far is a couple of hot spots way out in the middle of fields.”

“The fire’s not a problem in this part of town,” she said, leaving him at the kitchen door as she pulled two jelly jars out of a cupboard, filled them with tap water, and drank one down. She held the other out in his direction. He had not realized he was thirsty until he began to drink. It was well water. Cold and somehow thicker than city water, with a taste like stone.

“It’s not really a problem anywhere,” Rachel was saying about the fire. “Once in a while a basement heats up, out at the far end of town where the tunnels are. Or a tree suddenly begins to die.” She paused, took a sharp breath. “A church out that way has a hot graveyard, and there’s talk about the coffins breaking up. Maybe sinking a little deeper than they ought to be.” She glared at the back of her hand, used the pad of her thumb to massage a smudge of paint from the cleft of a knuckle. “Some people are thinking about moving the bodies somewhere else, but no one really wants to mess around with them unless they have to. So they keep on burying people out there and hope they’ll stay put.” Rachel gave herself a little shake and turned on the taps again, ran the water warm, fetched a bar of hard yellow soap from under the sink. “I’ll bet you don’t especially want to hear about all that.”

It was true. Joe didn’t really want to hear such things. Not on a full stomach. But he found himself fascinated by this strange fire, and he was curious about the kind of people who lived with it, cheek by jowl.

“No, I’m very interested,” he said. “I’d never heard of any such thing as a mine fire before yesterday.”

Rachel turned from the sink to look at him. “Where are you from?”

He had anticipated this question but had not settled on an answer. “The East Coast,” he replied.

If Rachel found his answer vague, she did not say so. Turning back to the sink, she beckoned with an elbow. “Come get cleaned up,” she said, making room.

Feeling a bit like a surgeon, Joe scrubbed the paint from his hands, now and then casting sidelong glances at the girl by his side. Her face, in profile, had a deliberate, pleasing topography of smooth lines, of features that suited one another like mountains suited their valleys, oceans their shores. Her hands, under their lather, were long and graceful with short, orderly nails. Both elegant and capable.

“Nobody’s too worried about this fire,” she said, as if she’d been chosen to speak for every man, woman, and child in Belle Haven. “Even before it started we sometimes had trouble with the ground giving way a bit from all the mining.”

“Giving way?”

“Every mining town in America has some lousy soil. Loose, from the coal underground being removed.”

“Anybody ever get buried?”

“Alive?” Rachel laughed. Shook the water from her hands. “Not even close. And no one’s been burned either.” She took a clean towel from a drawer by the sink, dried her hands, offered it to Joe. “As long as you aren’t sitting right above a mine tunnel, you’re as good as gold. And even then, you’re safer than you would be living in the city.” The more she talked about the fire, about her town, the more her slight accent strengthened. Her speech lost some of its edge. The tips of her words nudged one another, like beads in a necklace.

His hands tingling, Joe pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. He sat so that he could watch her as she hung the towel to dry and watered a primrose that was showing off on the windowsill.

“You must be used to it by now,” he said.

“I am,” Rachel said. “It’s no big deal. Really,” she added, as if he needed convincing. “Although …” She stretched the word out, tipping her head and appraising him with a long look. “I could tell you some stories …”

Joe appraised her right back. “Such as?”

She closed one eye, considered him soberly through the other. “I don’t want to give you nightmares.”

Joe grinned at her. “Don’t worry about me. I’m a big boy.”

Rachel smiled like a cat. “It’s not a very nice story.”

But Joe could not imagine that she knew any stories to compare to the ones that had sent him to Belle Haven in the first place.

“Shoot,” he said.

Rachel pulled out a chair at the table. Sat down across from Joe. “When I was eleven years old,” she said and was momentarily silenced by the look on Joe’s face. “Is something the matter?”

She had sounded so much like Holly. When I was eleven years old …

“Go on,” he said. “Nothing’s the matter.”

Which Rachel did not believe for a second. She watched him rearrange his face, fold his hands on the table in front of him. “Do you want some coffee?” she asked, more to give him a moment than anything else.

“Sure. If it’s no trouble.” He was startled by his own good