Flash Fire (17 page)

When he saw how badly she had needed to hear that, he wondered how much Michael or Beau might have liked to hear it, but it was too late for them.

H
ALL WANTED HIS PARENTS
so bad he could hardly manage not to scream, the way Mrs. Severyn had screamed. If he had lost one of his family…

He imagined them in their cars, engulfed by hundred-foot flames. He imagined them in their cars, breathing in a solid wall of black smoke. Turning to charred, dead, stinking flesh.

The once beautiful California hills encircled him like a black soiled wreath. The land twitched, erupting here and there with flame or a burst of smoke or a sizzle of sparks. Dead houses and corpses of cars were just litter.

His own house was gone. His entire neighborhood was gone. Beau, short for beautiful, was dead. Fire was stronger than people, even the beautiful people.

And what if fire had been stronger than Hall’s mother and father? Hall didn’t exactly pray. He built a wall out of a single word, a wall of brick repeats:
no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Exhaustion hit Hall. He did not see how he could stand up any longer, or form another syllable, or lift another eyelid.

They had taken Danna so suddenly, so completely. Just whisked her away, as if she were
their
sister instead of his. He knew he could trust them, but to have her flown off into the ashy sky without him — it left him with nothing. Nobody.

They had said Hall could go with her, but Hall could not go; he had to take care of the neighborhood. Mr. Severyn was managing for a minute, but that would end. In a minute, Mr. Severyn would understand what had happened to his son. He would look at the remains of hills and houses and know that was also the remains of Beau.

If only I’d fought with Beau, Hall wept in his heart. If only I’d knocked him down. Forced him back into the car. If only I could do it differently.

He rubbed tears with his fists, like a grubby little kindergartner.

So terrible, to find out that the best you could do might not be much.

He watched Elisabeth, savoring any crumb of affection her father gave her. She was as damaged as Geoffrey, her landscape as bleak as if she, too, had grown up unloved in a silent orphanage.

And then, unmarred by smoke or fire, his mother’s car nosed its way through the press of rescue vehicles and tourists and television crews and neighbors. Then his father’s car, right behind her. Hall’s parents vaulted out from behind their steering wheels, eyes wide with horror, heads swiveling for clues, hearts falling with fear.

He knew exactly what brick wall against fate the single word was building in their hearts and mouths:
no, no, no, no, no, no!
Not Hall. Not Danna. Please, take our house, take land, take anything we’ve ever owned, but spare our children.

There was nothing on earth more wonderful than parents who loved you. Hall had them. Danna had them.

“Mom,” he croaked, trying to walk toward them, but he was sapped of all strength. They would have to come to him. “Dad.”

They saw him. They ran.

“We’re all right,” he said. “We made it.”

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life. 

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.