The Night Oak Street Burned Down

The summer was dying a long death the night Oak Street burned down. School was starting in less than a week, and it was too hot, even at night, to be outside for more than a few hours. It hadn’t rained in almost a month, and the grass on the picturesque lawns of Oak Street was beginning to brown. The orange-pink glow of twilight painted the sky. The cicadas sang, the crickets harped, and the lightning bugs flickered as warm breezes rustled the deep green leaves of the oak trees that gave the street its name. But all this was drowned out by the roar of over a dozen air conditioners cooling the column of suburban houses. Every house had their AC cranked all the way up, except for one: the house at 14 Oak Street.

The house was newly built at the end of the cul-de-sac, and although it had an air conditioner, it was never on. The family that lived there didn’t need it. It was the only house on the street that had solar panels. For the most part, it looked like any other house on Oak Street but for the six-foot high chain link fence that wrapped itself around the entire property. This was for the safety of the family who lived inside. They were from somewhere far, far away, somewhere so hot that the depths of summer felt like a frozen winter’s day to them. That was the house where the Visitors lived.

A couple houses over at 8 Oak Street, Sarai Jackson stared down at her bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. She pushed the noodles back and forth with her fork.

“I’m telling you,” her brother, Brian Jackson II, known to his family as simply Junior or JB, said, “they eat brains. I saw a video someone posted about it.”

“Don’t believe everything you see online,” their mom said. 

“Mr. Burke across the street says so, too,” JB replied.

“What Edgar Burke doesn’t know could fill a library,” she said. “Besides, that new family, they’re nice people — ”

“They’re not people, Cynthia,” their dad said without looking up from his bowl.

“Oh, you know what I meant, Brian.” Cynthia rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, mom, they’re Aliens. Just because they can make themselves look like us doesn’t mean they’re people, too.”

“That’s enough, JB,” Brian said, finally looking up from his bowl. “Apologize to your mother.”

“They’re called Visitors,” Sarai said to no one in particular.

“Visitors implies they’re going home,” Brian scoffed, “and they only just moved in.”

“Honey, don’t be rude, you know Sarai is friends with their boy.” Cynthia tsked. “You two should have a little more sympathy. Do you remember what it was like when we first moved here?” 

Sarai remembered. Being the only Black family in the neighborhood was an adjustment. At first, the neighbors hardly spoke to them, didn’t invite them to any backyard barbecues or game nights. That friendly warmth of the neighborhood she had grown up in was gone, replaced with a keen feeling of self-awareness and divide. If it weren’t for her parents making the effort to get to know the people they lived next to, Sarai was sure that they probably would have remained strangers.

“Maybe he’ll eat Sarai’s brains,” JB teased.

“JB, I said that’s enough.” Brian sighed. “What’s your friend’s name again?”

“Max,” Sarai said, her fork clattering down into her bowl.

“That isn’t his real name, is it? I mean his parents call themselves Bob and Linda Jones, what kind of Alien name is Jones?”

Max’s parents were nice, although Sarai hardly ever saw them; they were picked up every morning by a black government SUV and brought home late in the evening. Max told her that after they landed almost two years ago, the government had agreed to resettle them, but only if they shared their technology with humans. His family was just one of many who had suddenly appeared that night. A thousand ships hovering above the Earth; the Moon had looked like someone had ground up a heap of fresh peppercorns on it. 

“Can I be excused?” Sarai said.

“You’ve hardly touched your dinner,” Cynthia replied.

“I’m not hungry.”

Cynthia nodded. “Alright.”

“Can I bring some leftovers to Max?” Sarai asked. “His parents are working late tonight.”

There was silence. JB looked at his dad, who opened his mouth to speak.

“Sure, sweetie.” Cynthia put her hand on her husband’s arm. “Bring him some garlic bread, too.”

Sarai left through the back door. There was a short wooded path below the hill that overlooked their street; it led to the rear of Max’s house where the fence had a large enough hole that Sarai could fit through. Much less hassle, she thought, than having Max come down to unlock the gate. 

The back door to Max’s house opened before she even knocked. Max stood there smiling.

“Were you waiting for me?” 

Max’s smile faded. “Yes, is that weird?”

Sarai laughed. “Eh, just a bit.” She handed him the food. “We need to work on your people skills a bit more.”

Max rolled his eyes, then paused, looking to her for approval. “Did I do it right? Did I use the roll-eye right this time?”

“Eye-roll,” Sarai corrected, “and yes, you did.”

Max was smiling again. He looked like any other boy her age, she thought, completely human. Max was just a little bit taller than her, with blonde hair and brown eyes. She would stare at him sometimes, cataloging the uneven curl of his smile, the bump on the bridge of his nose. He was perfectly imperfect. But the longer she’d look at him, the more he seemed to go translucent at his edges.

“Do you want some?” Max held up the food she had given him.

“Yeah, I guess I could eat some more.”

They ate outside at Max’s patio table, although he and his family never used it. Max was bundled up in a hat and gloves while Sarai was sweating into her food.

“You would think I would be used to the cold by now,” Max said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to eat inside, where you’d be warmer?” 

“But then you would be too warm. The Book says hosts should always treat guests well. Be a good host, it says.”

The Book was a five-hundred page tome that the Department of Extraterrestrial Affairs had given all the Visitors when they were resettled throughout the country. Max let Sarai look through it once. It had all sorts of instructions on how to act and behave and how to fit into society. It also had rules, lots of rules, that told the Visitors what they were and were not allowed to do. They couldn’t speak their own language or use their own technology, and most of all, they were never to reveal their true form. Max told her that last rule in confidence.

“Well, The Book seems a little unfair to me. There’s nothing in it about us having to be good hosts. Our government makes your parents work in a lab. They made you give them your technology. They make you live far away from the rest of your kind and — ” Sarai was interrupted by the buzzing of her phone. It was a text message from JB, a link. “Sorry, one sec.”

Max rolled his eyes. “How was that?”

“Better.” Sarai laughed and tapped the blue letters on her phone.

The link took her to some shaky cell phone footage someone had posted online. A group of men, including the cameraman, were attacking a man curled up on the ground, beating him with baseball bats and glass bottles. The video’s title “ALIEN MONSTER ATTACK!!!” made it clear: they were beating up a Visitor. But videos like this weren’t anything new, Sarai thought. There were plenty of people and organizations who hated the Visitors, radio talk show hosts and websites that spewed vile things about them, and videos of Visitors taking a beating popped up on social media all the time. But this video had been posted just a few hours ago and it already had 40 million views. 

“Is everything okay?” Max asked. Sarai nodded, but she got up from the table and walked a few paces away. 

The Visitor in the video climbed to his feet despite the beating. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, “please don’t make me hurt you.” The men kept swinging at him. It was only when the Visitor’s skin began to shimmer, like heat from a distant mirage, that the men dropped back. Police sirens could be heard, screaming in the background, growing closer and closer. The Visitor seemed to be growing taller. The mirage began to clear, and now the Visitor stood about nine feet tall, with scaly, wet dark-grey skin. His eyes were black and empty. His hands and feet were now clawed with talons. His skull resembled an alligator's with five eyes. His mouth looked like the beak of a giant squid, and he had a spiny, sharp tail. He made a bone-chilling, blood-curdling shriek. It was like nothing she’d ever heard before — it was alien. Sarai dropped the phone.

“What’s that?” Max asked. He rose from his seat and came toward her. 

Sarai didn’t respond; she stooped to retrieve her phone and backed away. There was another text sitting there. It was from her mom. Get home NOW!!! it said.

Max kept coming toward her. She looked at him and swore she could see those wet scales glistening under the surface, like a projector casting a separate image over a painting. She shuddered. 

“I, uh, I have to go. My mom needs me home.” And then, without waiting for a response, she rushed towards the hole in the fence before Max could do anything else.

Her parents were in the entryway when Sarai walked through the door. Both breathed visible sighs of relief. “You’re not to see that boy anymore,” her mom said. She stood there, almost in shock, as her parents made their way into the nearby living area where the footage she’d seen was looping on the news. Sarai could feel beads of sweat forming on her neck and brow. The rattling hum of the air conditioner churned beneath the shouts from the television. It was almost nine o’clock, and the heat was still ferocious. She listened to her parents debate it. Her dad argued that the man was just defending himself. Her mother didn’t care; she now knew what they were capable of. They were monsters in human clothing. 

Sarai sat heavily in the armchair beside her parents and checked her apps to see if her friends were talking about it. The video was everywhere. They’re going to kill us all unless we kill them first, one of her classmates said. He was just scared, another said. The video’s view count kept climbing. Another classmate posted another video. In it, a man talked about how the Visitors had been here for decades, and this was the beginning of their takeover of Earth. Her classmate had written Facts! as the caption. Sarai typed a response. This seems far-fetched. Where’s the proof? Within two minutes, she’d received a dozen replies: alien lover, one said; traitor, said another. I bet you’re one of them, said a friend she’d known since kindergarten; they used to play in the sandbox together. Sarai deleted her comment.

Sarai’s phone buzzed again. It was Max. Do you think I am a monster? 

Sarai didn’t respond — she didn’t know what to say. She looked up at the news; the anchors and pundits were shouting over each other. A wave of anger washed over her. He told her about The Book, but not this? She texted back: Why didn’t you tell me what you really look like?

JB came downstairs and they all sat in the living room staring at the TV screen.

“They’ve been keeping their true form secret for years. With help from the government, I’m sure. How can we ever trust them?” one of the pundits said. Others agreed with him; others argued against him.

Sarai’s phone buzzed again. I told you about the Book. Max added a smiley face. But before Sarai could respond, her mom caught her eye. 

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Cynthia asked. “Do not text him. You’re not going to talk to that — that Alien, anymore!”

“Isn’t that a little harsh?” her dad cut in.

Sarai went into the kitchen before her mom could stop her. 

“Don’t undermine me, Brian,” she could hear her mom saying from the other room. “They’re dangerous! You were saying so yourself at dinner.”

“I never said that,” her dad argued. “All I did was point out the fact that they are not human beings. That doesn’t mean they’re any more dangerous than we are.”

Her parents’ argument intensified, and Sarai sat down at the kitchen table. Everything seemed to grow louder: her parents, the TV, the hum of the AC. Her neck and forehead were damp with sweat. How is it so hot? Sarai thought. The roaring grew louder and louder. 

A loud bang shook the house, and everything went black. Quiet. All Sarai could hear was the cicadas in the trees and the crickets in the grass.

“What happened? What was that?” she shouted towards the living room.

“It’s a blackout,” her dad called back. “The transformer probably blew. The grid must’ve overloaded with everyone blasting their air conditioning.”

Sarai typed out another message to Max. Did you guys lose power too? She hit send but a red exclamation mark appeared next to it: Message Failed to Send. She didn’t have any cell service. That’s weird, she thought. 

Her family got up to walk outside. Begrudgingly, she followed them out onto the lawn. The street was dark, the lampposts extinguished.

“Did everyone else lose power?”

“Not everyone,” her mom said. “Look.” Her mom pointed down the street at Max’s house. The shades were drawn, but faint yellow light seeped from the corners of the windows. 

“They didn’t lose power? How come?” JB asked.

“I don’t know,” her dad said, “but I think we should find out.”

Sarai heard the doors of her neighbors’ houses open. Pretty soon, everyone was standing on their front lawns looking down at 14 Oak Street. The parents moved toward the middle of the street where they huddled in a circle. Mothers with crossed arms tapped their feet and fathers wiped the persistent sweat from their brows. 

Sarai looked around. JB had quickly joined the other boys in the neighborhood. She looked at her phone — still no service. And no answers from Max. Sarai decided that she was going to get them herself. She walked briskly towards Max’s house, avoiding the moonlight in the gaps between the oak trees. She was almost past the group of adults when she heard the snap of a twig beneath her foot. It sounded like a cannon in all that quiet. 

Cynthia spun around. “Sarai, come over here.”

Reluctantly, Sarai walked over to her mother and joined the circle of adults. Her mom pulled Sarai in close, the way she would do when Sarai was younger and scared. 

“Mom,” Sarai whispered in a harsh tone, “relax.” 

Lucy Burke was standing next to her father and snickered at Sarai. Sarai wriggled out of her mother’s grip. Lucy was a year older and had always picked on her, ever since Sarai and her family had moved to Oak Street. 

“We gotta go up to that house right now and get some answers from them,” Edgar Burke said. “For all we know, they caused this themselves. I’ve got a buddy who told me that blackouts have been happening all across the country around these types of houses in the last couple days. I’m telling you, they’re planning an attack. The first thing they’ll do is cut the power so we can’t communicate with each other. Why else would the cell service be down?”

The crowd murmured in agreement. 

“Oh, give it a break, Edgar,” Brian said. “I’m not crazy about sharing my street with them either, but look.” He pointed up at the hill overlooking Oak Street where the cell tower stood. “The lights have stopped blinking. It must just be connected to our power grid. That’s why we don’t have any service.”

“You’re just proving my point, Brian,” Edgar replied. “That there is the only cell tower in a ten mile radius; that’s why they chose our neighborhood.”

The crowd murmured in agreement again, and Cynthia elbowed Brian in the ribs. “We don’t need any of that right now,” she whispered.

“You all know my husband,” said Susan Landry, a mousy woman with a penchant for spreading gossip. “Well, as you know, he’s stationed overseas, and he said that the army has been running wargames on how to deal with the Aliens if — I’m sorry — when they turn on us.”

“Isn’t he the camp cook?” Sarai’s old science teacher, Ms. Reid, asked. Susan’s face flushed red.

“Well, what about the explosion?” someone chimed in. Several people muttered in agreement.

“It was just the transformer overloading,” Brian said.

“Didn’t realize you were an electrician,” Susan sniped, her earlier embarrassment having fermented into anger. 

“Brian may be right,” Edgar said, scratching at the thick grey stubble sprouting from his chin, “but it might also have been a bomb. A bomb that they planted.” He stuck his knobby pointer finger in the direction of Max’s house.

Sarai scoffed, unable to hold in her disgust any longer. No one paid her any mind except Lucy, who stared down Sarai with narrowed eyes.

“You know what, dad?” Lucy said, her focus never wavering from Sarai. “There’s no way that they’ll answer any of our questions if we all march down there in this mob.”

“S’pose you’re right, honey,” Edgar said, looking down at his daughter. “But we have to get some answers.”

“Why don’t we send that alien lover over to see what they’re up to?” Lucy didn’t have to point. The whole crowd looked at Sarai. Her mom wrapped her in her arms again, and this time Sarai didn’t protest.

“He’s just my friend,” Sarai snapped, “which you’d know if you ever had any.”

“That’s enough, girls,” Brian said. 

“Well, hold on now, I think she’s right,” Susan said. Several muttered in agreement with her. 

“You’re crazy if you think I’m sending my daughter into harm’s way just because you’re paranoid,” Brian said.

“Well, which is it, Brian?” Edgar stepped towards her father. “Am I paranoid? Or is your daughter in danger going down to their house? Because it can’t be both.”

Her father sighed, exasperated, and looked at Sarai. 

“No.” Her mom held her tighter. “She’s not going down there.”

“Max is my friend. He would never hurt me! He — ”

“No,” her mom cut her off. “Until we know what’s going on, you’re not leaving my side. You don’t need to be part of his twisted little game.” 

Just then, the door at 14 Oak Street opened. The crowd turned to see Max walking down towards the gate, his figure masked in shadow, outlined in light from the open doorway. He unlocked the gate and stepped out onto the street. 

“Everyone, get back!” Edgar shouted, hate and fear boiling in his eyes. 

They could see only his silhouette as Max moved towards them in the dark. The heat was unbearable. It was as if someone had cast a heavy blanket over them, and they were all struggling to get out from beneath it. Max loomed only a few yards away, and even the crickets and cicadas seemed to have stopped singing. Any second now, he could turn into the thing they had all seen in the video.

Max stepped into the moonlight, wrapped in a coat and scarf with a matching hat and gloves, smiling. Between his outfit and eerily calm demeanor, he seemed so — so alien.

“What do you want?” Edgar demanded. His words dripped like poison from his tongue.

“To be a good host,” Max said, holding out his hands as if to welcome them.

It did not have the desired effect. Max dropped his arms. 

“I have seen the video,” Max announced. His careful if sometimes clumsy way of speaking, which had once charmed Sarai, now sounded stilted and foreign. “I know what you must be thinking of me.”

In the crowd, Susan gasped. “They can read minds,” she whispered.

Max blinked, his focus narrowing in on Susan. She gasped again, stumbling back a step.

“No, I cannot read minds.”

“But you can shapeshift?” Ms. Reid inquired.

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“How do you do it, then? How do you look like us?” Brian asked suddenly.

“Dad!” Sarai looked at her father incredulously.

“It is okay,” Max said. “We are like the Earth’s cuttlefish. The ‘shapeshifting’ is a product of our evolution, like your ‘fight or flight’ response. Our skin can distort the light waves around us, like a funhouse mirror at a carnival, so your eyes see something different.”

“Sounds a lot like you’re messing with our minds,” seethed Edgar. “I’ll ask again. What do you want?”

“I came outside to say that I mean no harm.” 

Edgar scoffed forcefully. Max continued, ignoring him, “I want to help. There is power from the solar panels on my house, and our air conditioner is working. You are welcome all to cool down inside while you wait for the power to come back.”

The crowd was silent, frozen at the prospect. Though she had visited Max’s backyard many times, she had never once been inside his house. Neither had anyone else in the neighborhood. They were all too afraid of what the Visitors kept in their homes. Strange metallic objects, holograms projecting unreadable alien language, rooms where they locked up unwitting humans and experimented on them? It was all sci-fi horror movie nonsense, and yet a pit formed in Sarai’s stomach at the thought. She felt both afraid and guilty for being afraid. 

“I thought you didn’t use air conditioning,” Susan Landry spoke up, her tone accusatory.

“We do not,” Max admitted. “But there is no power in your homes, and you all must be very hot.”

“Won’t you be cold, then?” Lucy asked, though it didn’t sound like she cared much. She gestured to his clothing. “Or you know, colder?”

Max shrugged. “I will manage.” He paused, hesitation clouding his expression. “On my home planet, it was very warm, much warmer than here. Its surface was covered in volcanoes, which we used to power our civilization. I can still remember the sweet smell of sulfur and ash in springtime.”

He breathed in deeply, face soft with nostalgia. His forehead furrowed with disappointment at the chill of Earth air.

“Thousands of years ago, we realized we could harness the volcanoes for energy, but we relied on them too much. We took our resources for granted. The volcanoes all grew dormant. Everything froze. We could not grow anything. The few who came to Earth, we are the lucky ones. All of the others...” Max trailed off. “I hope you never have to know what that is like.”

The crowd shifted their feet, and Sarai felt the heavy burden of the heat and her own guilt even more than before. Max had never told her about his home planet. One time, she had asked, but he had brushed it off, said that they came to Earth for a better life, and she thought it was no big deal. She hadn’t considered how much he was grieving, how homesick he must be. 

When the Visitors first landed, she remembered the term “refugees” being used once or twice; now, most people just called them “Aliens” — or even “invaders.” But they weren’t invaders; they were survivors. And how did humans treat them? With baseball bats and mobs, with suspicion and hatred. It made Sarai sick to her stomach.

They had lost so much, almost everything, and all they wanted was a new place to live. To be good neighbors.

It’s time we return the favor, Sarai thought.

She stepped forward.

“Thank you, Max,” she said. “I would love to go inside your home.”

She walked up to Max, ignoring her family’s protests.

“Well, hold on just a minute — ”

“Absolutely not, young lady — ”

“Are you crazy?!” 

“No!” Sarai exclaimed. She stood beside Max, facing the crowd. “I’m sick of listening to you freak out and badmouth the Visitors because of one stupid video. They may not look like what we’re used to, but Max is my friend and he is behaving a lot more human than you all are!”

The crowd stared back at her blankly. Only her parents and brother seemed to be cowed by her words. Edgar Burke was still scowling, sour as a lemon.

Sarai was about to tell Max that they should head in when her father stepped forward, too.

“Brian!”

“Cynthia, he’s home alone.” He touched his wife’s shoulders. “We should at least make sure he’s okay until his parents get back. You don’t really think he’s responsible for all of this, do you?”

Cynthia’s posture softened. “No, but...” She was still thinking about the video.

“It’s only for an hour or two. He’s just a kid, and, more importantly, he’s our daughter’s friend. So why don’t we act a bit more neighborly?” He didn’t have to say anything more. He knew that, like him, she was recalling the times when they would be out on their porch in the summer, receiving blank stares from passersby. Or the moments when they would wave to neighbors across the street, who would wave back gingerly before closing their doors. 

She sighed and raised one hand, laying it on top of her husband’s. “Fine. But just until his parents get back.” 

“Thank you.” He cleared his throat and called to her brother, “Brian Jackson Jr., you go where this family goes.” 

JB pulled away from the other teens, grumbling a little for good measure.

Sarai exhaled, relieved. She grinned when her brother and parents joined them in front of Max’s house. 

“Your funeral,” Edgar said. He spat onto the pavement, and Sarai could swear she heard it sizzle. 

The air greeted them, sweet and cold, when they entered Max’s house. Much like the outside, the inside of his house was normal. Boringly normal. She saw her brother look around, clearly disappointed. They didn’t have much in the way of furniture or decoration, but there was at least a couch. Sarai sat down next to Max, along with JB and her mom. Sarai’s dad stood near the front room window, watching the neighbors still gathered outside.

Max’s teeth were chattering. He shivered. Sarai looked at him, concerned. “Be a good host,” he said with a smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me what you really looked like?”

“I d-didn’t want to get you in t-trouble,” he replied. “The more I told you, the more t-trouble we would both be in.”

After some small talk with Max about his parents and their work, the room grew quiet, tense. Sarai was tuned in to her parents’ fear, felt it as clearly as her own. Ten minutes passed, still no power. They could hear some muffled arguments from outside. Sarai didn’t want to look. Her own body shivered, though not from the air conditioning. 

Some time later, the sounds outside grew louder, like someone revving up an engine.

“Dear God,” Brian muttered.

“Come outside, Alien!” Edgar shouted. 

Sarai went over to the window and saw the rest of the neighborhood standing in front of the fence. The mob outside were all holding lit torches, the kind that Edgar Burke liked to stake in his yard when hosting barbecues. They looked ghastly in the glow of the kerosene-fueled fire. 

“Stay here, Max,” Brian said. “I’ll deal with this.”

“Dad! Don’t go out there,” Sarai begged.

“Don’t worry about me. Edgar Burke is a coward. He’s not going to do anything.”

“I’m coming with you,” Sarai said.

“We will, too,” said JB and Cynthia.

“Me three,” Max added.

Moments later, the Jackson family and Max stood on the front lawn, facing down Edgar Burke and the people they used to consider their neighbors.

“We just want the boy!” Edgar demanded. He looked wild-eyed and was drenched in sweat. The heat and fear have cooked his brain, Sarai thought. “No one else needs to get hurt.”

“Go home, Edgar!” Cynthia shouted. “This isn’t something you can take back.”

“Don’t you see?” Edgar shouted, his parched voice straining. “This is what they want. Divide and conquer! Then they’ll swoop in and replace us. Wipe us out. It’s us or them!”

The crowd around him roared in agreement, shaking their torches above their heads. 

“This is your last chance,” Edgar threatened. “Unlock this gate and send out the Alien.”

“No,” Sarai said firmly. “Go. Home.”

Edgar stared at them, his eyes burning with fanatical fury. “I guess I’ll have to smoke you out then.” He threw his torch over the fence and onto the dry, brown lawn. It bounced and rolled to the ground near JB, nearly hitting him.

Brian stretched out his arms and pushed his family and Max behind him. “Get inside!” 

The crowd followed Edgar’s lead, lopping the torches over the fence, aiming for their retreating bodies. They hurled insults along with the torches. Edgar laughed as if they were throwing water balloons. There was no rhyme or reason. Some of the torches didn’t even land on Max’s lawn but next door. In their reckless hatred, someone threw another — too hard — and it spiked, the tip of the torch breaking against the ground. The kerosene spilled out, igniting a fireball of dry grass. 

A few people in the crowd cried out in horror, but it did little to stop what they already started. A month without rain meant that everything was bone dry: perfect kindling. The fire swam up towards Max’s house and across the neighboring lawns, climbing up the wooden sidings of the adjacent houses. 

The street lit up like a match.

Brian shoved everyone inside just as the fire began to lick the front door. 

“What do we do?” Cynthia shouted.

“We’re trapped!” JB cried.

Max grabbed Sarai by the arm. She knew exactly what he was thinking. 

“Out the back door!” Max shouted. “There is a gap in the fence!”

They ran out the back door as the fire cracked the front windows and swam into the room where they had been sitting just minutes before. Max held open the gap as the Jacksons squeezed through it.

“Follow us!” Max shouted. “We know a way up to the hill!”

Max and Sarai guided them along the little wooded path between two houses leading up to the cell phone tower on the hill. They ran, feeling the scorching heat of the growing fire on the backs of their necks.

They were all panting and sweating when they made it to the top. They looked down in disbelief as the fire engulfed their homes and the homes of their neighbors. The Burke’s house was completely swallowed by the flames. Minutes later, the frantic wail of sirens drew ever closer, and they could see the red and blue flashing lights illuminating the distant streets. 

Max stood at the edge of the hill looking down at the raging inferno. Sarai walked over to him. 

She noticed a tear escape the corner of his eye. He closed his eyes and smiled, letting the blaze warm his chilled face. 

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” he sighed. “For the first time, this place feels like home.”

Behind them, a light on the top of the cell tower flickered back to life.