The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(14)

It’s fine, I assured myself. My parents are adults. They can act like adults.

My mother’s hand was shaking so much, I was worried the candle was going to fall. It took us three tries for her to be steady enough to transfer the flame.

“It’s okay,” I whispered to her. “You’re doing great.”

She nodded so slightly that I was sure I was the only one who could recognize it as a nod. Then she turned to her ex-husband and extended her candle.

For a second, I thought it was going to be okay. For a second, their candles were touching and it was just like it had been with everyone else. For a second, my mother was looking at her candle while my father was looking at my mother.

Then my father opened his mouth.

My mother wasn’t looking. She didn’t see it coming. When my father said, “And here I was, thinking you’d never light my fire again,” she wasn’t prepared. The shock that hit was real, and it was powerful. She recoiled. And as she did, her candle fell. As she called him a bastard, the flame hit a section of the Sunday paper that someone had left under the tree. As he told the room she had never been able to take a joke, the floor burst into flame.

I thought everyone would react, and maybe they would have, but I was the closest person who wasn’t an arguing member of my former family, and I was the one who got there first. Smother the flame, I thought. Smother it. So I belly-flopped onto the paper and the candle that had started this mess. I suffocated the flames. It was only as I was mid-flop that it occurred to me that this was a stupid reaction. I half expected to set myself on fire. But the smothering worked. I robbed the situation of its oxygen. I put out the fire my father had started.

I was conscious of Lily screaming. Langston yelling. Then Boomer in the air, to smother the smotherer. “Close your eyes!” someone yelled. I did, and was doused with a foamy, chemical substance just as Boomer landed on top of me.

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Then:

“You can open your eyes.”

I did, and found Mrs. Basil E. standing over me and Boomer, with a sizable fire extinguisher. We were covered in foam.

My mother kneeled down beside me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded, my chin squishing into the carpet.

“Boomer,” my mother said gently, “I think you might be crushing him.”

Accurate!

Benny and Langston helped Boomer up. Then Langston reached down for me. When I got to my feet, he said, “Oh, that’s not good.”

Was I hurt? Was there a burn so severe I couldn’t feel it?

No. I was fine.

But I’d murdered the sweater.

I looked down and saw a smear of wax and a field of singe. My dove looked like a toasted marshmallow. Lily’s looked like it had flown way too close to the sun. And the snowflake had undergone a precipitous meltdown.

I looked up and saw Lily. Everything I needed to know was right there in her eyes. She wanted to cry but wouldn’t let herself. Which was worse than her actually crying.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her.

“No,” she said. “It really doesn’t matter.”

Suddenly everyone was talking. The lights were back on. My mother was taking deep breaths. And my father…

My father was gone.

Mrs. Basil E. insisted on inspecting me for any “errant burns.” Benny started to refill people’s cider. People blew out the candles they were holding and put them down on the floor where the newspaper had been. Lily flicked on the tree’s electric lights. Nobody oohed or aahed.

I had no idea how to make it better.

—

We all rallied—tried to fill that apartment with a joyful noise. But mostly it felt like we were trying to cover up another noise, an uncertainty that had crept into our party and wouldn’t leave no matter how unwanted we made it feel.

I’d been planning to stay later—to help Lily clean up, to talk about everything that had happened, to try to turn it into a comedy so it wouldn’t linger as a tragedy. But as the cousins started to exit for their respective boroughs and Sofia and Boomer left for an evening date, Lily summarily dismissed me, telling me that I should probably head home with my mom. I knew she was right, but at the same time, I worried that Lily might need my attention more than my mom.

This was especially true after Mom and I left, and it became quickly clear that my mother Didn’t Want To Talk About It. When we emerged from our subway station back home, my phone buzzed with a text from my father.

Sorry 2 have left. Seemed best.

I refused to reply.

Which seemed best.



Monday, December 15th

I texted Lily later that night after the party, to check in.

No response.

The next day, I texted her a few times during the school day. At first to check in. Then to make sure she hadn’t checked out.

It wasn’t like her to fail to respond.

I asked her if she wanted to get together after school. I called her and left a message along the same lines.

Nothing.

By the end of the night, all the birds had gone quiet.





Tuesday, December 16th

Christmas was still over a week away, but it was already ruined. I hate to use such harsh language, but everything felt motherfudging suck.

I woke up to the sound of my parents fighting, loudly. Boris lay at the foot of my bed, his paws covering his eyes, whimpering from the angry tones coming from the next room.