Nothing to See Here (25)

“My sweet children,” Jasper said. He was crying a little, and I couldn’t quite place why he was crying, what it meant.

“Sir,” Carl said, but then Bessie and Roland started to catch on fire. I could feel this little twinge in the air, and I committed it to memory. And then their skin rashed and strawberried. And then these blooms of flame started to appear on their arms, on their hands. It wasn’t the explosion of a star, like at the Cunninghams’, but they were definitely on fire.

“Back up!” Carl said, jumping between the children and Jasper and Madison. Smoke started coming off the children, their cheap clothes now singed.

“Ohhhh!” Madison said, and everyone was just standing there, not doing anything, while these children increased the intensity of the fire that was inside them. That’s what it seemed like, like the fire was inside them, children made of fire. And I knew it would get worse if something didn’t happen to stop it. Madison and Jasper seemed stunned, and Carl’s only concern was keeping Jasper from getting burned.

I took off my muumuu, which was so easy to remove, by the way, and then I used it to cover my hands and gently lower the children to a squatting position on the ground. “Hey, Bessie. Bessie? Calm down now, okay?” She was rigid, and so was Roland, but the fire was just rolling across them, yellow and red, like what you’d draw with a limited supply of crayons.

“Can you turn it off?” I asked, almost whispering, but they weren’t listening. So then I started smothering the flames with the muumuu, which caused it to smolder and spark. I patted the children all over their arms, their backs, on top of their little heads. I went pat-pat-pat-pat-pat and kept whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

I could feel the heat, but I just kept lightly tapping them, and the fire seemed to finally die out. As if they had been holding their breath the entire time, Bessie and Roland each took in a deep gulp of air and then sighed, suddenly sleepy. I leaned against them and they kind of slumped onto me. And Carl finally ran over and scooped them both up, one in each arm, and put them back in the van, gently closing the doors.

I stood up, confused. I realized that I was in my bra and panties, but either people were being really polite or it didn’t matter because we’d just fucking watched some fire children do their thing. Carl and I had already seen it, knew it was real, so we both snapped out of it quicker than the Robertses.

“My god,” Madison finally said. She hugged Jasper, as if she only now believed him and was sorry for doubting him. I looked down and realized that the teddy bears were lying on the driveway, their fur burned black.

“Sir,” Carl said, “you tried, and I respect you for that, but it’s time to think about real solutions to this situation. I have a few options.”

“What?” I said. “That was an accident. They don’t know what’s going on. Look at the size of this house. Madison? Right? Wouldn’t you be freaked out?”

“They caught on fire,” Madison said.

“I’m sorry,” Jasper said. “I don’t know what I thought was going to happen.”

“Sir?” Carl said, waiting for the word. He was jingling the key to the van.

I felt like the only sane person, and I was in my underwear, holding a ruined muumuu that I’d stolen from a sleeping old lady. “This isn’t fair to them,” I continued. “You have to give them a chance. I can help them, okay? I can figure this out. It’s not that big of a deal, honestly; like, I can already see how to handle it.”

“Lillian, please,” Carl said.

“She’s right, though,” Madison finally said. “Jasper, she’s right. We have to give them time to acclimate to this, to get used to us.”

“I don’t want any harm to come to you or Timothy,” he said, and then, as if remembering the kids in the van, “or to those children.”

“You got that house ready for them, right, the slave quarters—oh shit—sorry, the guesthouse. Okay? You’ve made a place in your home for them. I can help them.”

“Sir, she has no training—”

“CPR, Carl, okay? CPR and . . . other stuff,” I said.

“We let them stay,” Jasper said. “They’re staying. They’re my children. My son and my daughter.”

“This is right,” Madison whispered to him, rubbing his back. Jasper was sweating, the linen not doing a damn thing for him. “Family values, okay? Personal responsibility? A better future for our children?” She was saying these things like she was reading them off of huge billboards along the road. Or like she was coming up with campaign slogans.

“They’re staying, Carl,” Jasper said with some finality. He became senatorial for that moment, standing up straight. Not quite presidential, but maybe vice-presidential.

“Yes, sir,” Carl replied, so formal, returning to the back of the van and throwing the doors open. I ran in front of him, kind of nudging him aside. And the kids were sitting there, half-lidded, as if a little drunk.

“We keep getting your clothes messed up,” Roland said. He was really staring at my body, but things were too weird to worry about that right now.

“I don’t care. I don’t care at all,” I told them.

“We heard you,” Bessie said. “We heard . . . all that.”