Chapter 32: Safe at Home

The wick took.

A flame the size of a fingernail stood on top of the cake.

A thread of gray smoke rose off it and bent toward me.

Nobody at the table moved.

I felt the old signal start in my chest.

It was the small tightening at the bottom of each lung that meant my body was getting ready to close.

It had a voice in my head, and the voice was Dylan's.

Don't. It isn't worth it.

I put my hand flat on the tablecloth.

I breathed in through my nose, slowly, and the smoke came with it, a thin sweet burnt thread of wax.

I waited.

My chest did not close.

It rose, and it held, and it let the breath go.

Across the table, Sam's mother was crying without any noise.

The chairman had both hands folded on his cane.

Marco had his fist against his mouth.

"Make a wish," the captain said, gruffly.

I looked at the flame.

I thought about what I wanted, and for the first time in my adult life I knew the answer without having to be asked.

I filled my lungs, all the way down to the scar, as far as they would go.

And I blew.

The flame went out.

The smoke curled up in a long gray ribbon, and I breathed in again, slow and deep, and I did not cough.

Marco let out a shout that rattled my grandmother's good china.

The whole table came apart.

Sam's mother kissed me on both cheeks and then hit me lightly on the arm for scaring her.

The chairman shook my hand with both of his and said nothing, because his eyes were too bright.

The old neighbor said she would have been terrified, and ate a second slice before anyone else had a first.

Sam stayed in his chair.

He looked at me across the length of the table, and I looked back.

He didn't have to say it.

He took one hand off the cloth and tapped his jacket pocket twice.

I shook my head, smiling.

Not here.

By ten the house was empty.

Marco had gone to bed upstairs with a pillow over his head.

He had left a note on the fridge that said: I SEE NOTHING, I HEAR NOTHING.

I stood on the back porch in my birthday dress, with the new boards under my feet.

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