You're On Fire Pt 17

You and Tim manage to get outside when no one is watching, hurrying along the base of your new home and pausing between the overgrown shrubs, blinking in the rain and feeling the electricity in your fillings as you study Mike Cavard’s former residence next door: its windows are bare and its rooms are stark with naked light – this is in contrast to your house where the drapes were the first things up because Dan Bell likes his privacy. You don’t see the new Lieutenant, some new guy from Peoria according to your father, or the new kid either; you move into the dark back yard, tripping over the fire ring that’s deep with rainy soup made of ashes, and you think that this is where Cavard made smores for the fire kids and that he helped you with your Halloween costume last year and you just want to kick somebody because Cavard was a good guy, he was jake, but crying for dead people is stupid and you choke it back before Tim sees you.