I had to come back.
They don’t understand. Jamie and dad and nearly everyone I know don’t understand why I’d ever want to come back. Jamie, she just wants to let it go.
She’s big on letting go. Good at it, too.
I’m not. I wish I was.
I take a left turn onto Maple Street, then another and I’m on Eighth. My heart picks up, and so do the whispers, echoing in the back of my head like it’s been hours instead of years.
“There she is. The girl.”
I pass the general store.
“The one in the accident. Didn’t you here?”
You know, before, I had wanted to be an actress. Not the ones in the plays my mother used to take us to, no. I’d wanted to be a film actress. In movies, if you mess up, it’s no big deal. There’s always take two.
“Did you see her face?”
One left turn off Eighth and I’m on ninth.
“Did you see the scars?”
The yellow house.
“Nothing has to change, you know. Nothing at all.”
My friends, they didn’t talk to me.
“What’s wrong with your face?”
The old elementary school.
“Erin? She’s such a freak.”
I can’t stand fire anymore, you know. Not even contained. All I can see are the flames, ten feet high, all I can hear is the sizzle as my home, the place I was born in, burns to the ground.
“Stay away from her.”
There it is, I can see it in the distance. Oh God. I can’t do this--
“I hear bad luck catches.”
I pull up to the curb. I kill the engine, open the door, take a deep breath, and step outside.
The first thing I notice is the grass. The fact that there’s grass at all surprises me. In my head this place has always been a black skeleton charred to a crisp.
But that’s not what stands before me now. It’s a nice house with a nice yard. Even a little plastic playset out back.
I expected to cry, to panic, to lose it, right here and right now.
I don’t.
The house is gone. You think it’d make me sad, but I feel lighter. If charred ground can grow grass, maybe a burned girl can smile. And I do.
I get back in the car, start the engine, and drive away, grinning the whole while. And I only look back once as the car rounds a corner and the house disappears out of sight.