Lingering Echoes (24 page)

Jenna continued to wipe the tears from her face. “What happened?”
she asked. Her long lashes emphasized the purity in her eyes.

I shook my he
ad. “I can’t tell you about it—not right now. Just know I won’t be hanging out with them anymore, ok? Can that be enough for now?”

She paused, studying my face.
She almost seemed ready to argue but the expression washed away. “Yeah, ok,” she agreed. She smiled, revealing her dimples. I smiled back in relief.

“
Now, what do you say we take a break for some hot chocolate?”

Hand in hand, we walked across the s
treet, prepared to indulge in twenty-ounces of steaming, mint-truffle cocoa.

For a moment,
I seemed to forget my troubles. There was no gang. No robbery or murder. Just Jenna and me, Christmas shopping together like we did every year.

***

Two days later on December 23, Tommy Miller was found shot to death with a nine-millimeter bullet in the back of his head. I watched the breaking news from inside my home, unable to tear myself away.

“Sixteen-year-old Tommy Miller was found in Oakland Hills Park
at eleven PM in what appears to be a homicide. A resident and fellow classmate of Miller found him dead at the scene with a bullet wound to the back of his head. It is believed to be a drive-by shooting.

“Local police report
Miller was seen inside their station just a day before the shooting. Miller requested to fill out a police report. However, he abandoned the papers and disappeared from the station before an officer met with him. The police suspected gang involvement but have no suspects or witnesses at this time.”

“Damien, honey, doesn’t that boy go to your school?” my mom asked, placing a hand on my
shoulder, as she listened to the breaking news with wide eyes.

“He did.” My face was expressionless, somehow able to hide the terror and grief in my chest.
The Samoans must have been keeping tabs on Tommy and seen him walk into the police station. Poor kid didn’t stand a chance—not even when he apparently got cold feet and kept his mouth shut after all.

And neither would I if I followed suit.
Now I was the sole person who knew what happened to the store clerk. And now to Tommy.

They had mean
t what they said, and their warning was clear. The police could not protect me.

I tossed and turned all night,
tormented by troubling dreams...

I was suffocating. The air was warm and too heavy to breathe. I felt as though someone was squeezin
g my neck and blocking my trachea. A familiar voice called my name, again and again…

“
Damien! Damien!”

I looked around in the darkness, searching for the source.

“Damien!”

I sat up, my head spinning around the room.
I coughed as my lungs inhaled the smothering smoke. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, while my brain struggled to awaken.

The voice from my dream
was calling my name again.

Jenna
!

Reality
yanked me out of my dreaming state. I jumped out of bed. A thin layer of smoke was seeping through the crack under my door.

I twisted and pulled on the doorknob
, fanning the hazy air as I looked down the hall.

Jenna’s door was open. Her bedroom light lit the hallway.

I ran to her room. “Jenna! Jenna, where are you?”

Panicked,
I threw her quilt aside. Nothing but the warm shape of her body indented into the mattress. She couldn’t have been gone long. I opened her walk-in closet. Besides her hangers of clothing, it was dark and empty.

A muffled cry alerted my attention
to the north wing of the house, where my parents slept. I ran out of the bedroom and down the hall, where the smoke thickened. I heard the crackling flames before I saw them. My eyes widened.

The brilliant inferno engulfed the s
ide of the home where my parents’ bedroom resided. It roared in my ears, blocking my path. I couldn’t get to them. And they were nowhere in sight.

“Mom!
Dad!” I listened for their voices, coughing as I inhaled black smoke.

Nothing.
Nothing but the sound of the walls and ceiling burning around me.

“Jenna, where
are
you?” I spun in a circle, dizzy and disoriented. Covering my face with my hands, I fended off the fumes. Where could she have gone?

Running
to the front door, I threw it open. I inhaled the cold, crisp air from outside, relief and clean oxygen filling my lungs.

I looked
around, hoping to find my family huddled in safety outside our burning home.

But my family was nowhere in sight.

In the distance, I could hear the faint sounds of sirens approaching.

Hurry! Get here NOW
, I wanted to scream. But the rescue teams were too far away to hear me. They would never make it in time.

And my family was still in there.

The warm heat wave behind me made me spin around. Stepping back inside the home, I cringed against the contrasting temperature that sheathed me. I sprinted to the east end of the house towards Jenna’s playroom, following the path of the growing flames. I hurdled over scorched pieces of furniture that lay broken and blazing before me, holding my arms in front of me.

“Jenna! Jenna, where are you?”

She might be in there. Despite her insistence that she was too old for her playroom now, I knew she still played in secret with her favorite dolls, and colored on the chalkboard. More than once, I had found her in there when she was hiding from the loud arguments between my father and me. Or when she was scared from a show on TV she had seen.

Maybe just when she was scared.

The fire had beaten me there. The ceiling was charred, with pieces of wood falling around me. I put my hands up, dodging the debris. My face stung red, and my eyes watered, blinking the smoke out of my eyes.

The playroom door was aja
r. I kicked it open, coughing and gagging. Smoke filled my lungs, suffocating my breaths. I lifted the bottom of my shirt up to my nose and mouth, my throat burning.

My eyes rummaged among the toys and dolls lit up in flames, their fake doll hair singed bald. The air smel
led of burnt plastic.

From there, it all became a little hazy. The next moments seemed to move in slow motion, like being
caught in a bad dream and desperate to wake up. The fire seemed to be chasing behind me, reaching out its long, blazing fingers.

I don’t recall when the back of my shirt caught fire
. I don’t remember the searing pain that melted off a layer of skin.

But I do remember the small, limp body huddled in the corner
, surrounded by her childish dolls, and almost hidden behind the smolder. Her tiny hand was clasped around one of her Barbies, tucked into her chin.

I’m sure I called out her nam
e as I scooped her up. I’m sure it hurt when I broke through the glass windows with Jenna curled protectively in my arms.

But nothing mattered in that moment.
Nothing but reviving my little sister.

I laid her onto the cold ground, vaguely aware that I was tearing off my burning shirt and hurling it to the side.
Piercing, cold air shrouded my bare torso.

Sirens blared nearby, b
ut I didn’t see them. My eyes focused on the pale face beneath me, her cheeks and forehead stained with soot. In vain, I breathed air into her lungs and pumped her chest, over and over again.

My tears cascaded
against her unresponsive body.

An unfamiliar hand touched my
arm, pulling me back.

“Com
e on, kid. You gotta move!”

“No! No!” The
raspy, hysterical sobs resonated from my throat. I watched them wheel Jenna’s small body into the ambulance as they continued CPR.

Someone pulled me off my
knees, and I staggered with them. Leaning on their arms was the only reason I hadn’t collapsed. My head swung around, catching glimpses of my home lit up in orange flames and shadowed by plumes of black smoke. Water blasted from two separate hoses, bathing the overgrown flames. Lights flashed all around me, swirling in reds, blues, and yellows. They seemed to blend together into a dim halo of color.

“My parents
...”

A million thoughts raced inside my foggy head,
but coherent words would not form. I relinquished control to the uniformed stranger beside me.

Someone laid
me facedown on a white-sheeted table inside the ambulance. A mask was thrown over my own face while someone examined my back.

I o
bserved my little sister lying beside me. Her eyes were shut, her face peacefully still. She looked like one of the dolls from her playroom—the ones whose eyes always closed shut when lying on their backs.

I w
anted to reach over and pull Jenna into a sitting position—to watch her eyes flutter open like her porcelain dolls.

I wanted to put my arm around her
, hold her close, and read her favorite fairy tale to her like when she was little. Back when we all believed in happy endings. Back before reality destroyed “Happily Ever After”.

“1-2-3
CLEAR.” Her body arched in response to the electric shocks to her chest.

A
gain. And again.

A single, drawn-out beeping from the machine beside her rang in my ears.
Frantic movements flurried beside me, surrounding her body.

But the piercing,
flat tone continued to resonate inside the ambulance.

“That’s it.
There’s nothing more we can do.”

Gone.

My Jenna was gone.

That’
s the moment when I felt it—the searing, fiery sensation along my shoulder blade causing me to cry out. I was inside the flames all over again, fire engulfing my entire body. I writhed, hollering wildly.

Gloved h
ands struggled to hold me down, to prevent me from further tearing the damaged, raw surface of my back.

The roaring beneath my skin was
intolerable—second only to the serrated knife that twisted and wrenched unmercifully inside my heart.

I couldn’t hold back the
tears as I listened and watched Damien relive the memories of his past. His eyes were dark and hollow, yielding to the painful images in his mind. The tortured expression lingered on his face as he stared across the room.

I’d seen that
vivid look hundreds of times, reflected in my own eyes. The times when I allowed myself to think about Maddie, and the unbearable pain I had caused her family. Sometimes there seemed no escape from the torment.

As I watched Damien struggle with
the very same demons, my heart ached with understanding. I reached my hand out to his. My fingers touched the skin of his knuckles, but he didn’t seem aware of my touch. His mind was trapped elsewhere. His eyes still cast across the room, his dark hair falling across his right eye. His skin was warm—perhaps burning with the intensity of his memories. I couldn’t bear to see him suffer.

On impulse, I threw my arms around
him, pulling my body into his. I squeezed him, burying my head into the crook of his neck. I was desperate to absorb his pain, to break him free from the unchangeable past that plagued him.

“D
amien, I’m so sorry,” I said. His body was solid, his muscles stiff and immovable, but I didn’t let go.

Returning the embrace, h
is hands pressed against my lean back.

“The
fire wasn’t your fault,” I said. I felt his jaw tighten against the side of my face. Gently, he pushed me away, looking back at me.

“It
was
my fault,” he corrected.

Perplexed, I squinted at him, waiting for an explanation.

“The police waited three days before they approached me for a statement. I was, of course, still bedridden in the hospital with third-degree burns on my back. I wasn’t in danger of not surviving my injuries, even though I knew that’s what I deserved. I hated lying there day after day, recovering. The process was slow and excruciatingly painful, but I was recovering nonetheless, while my parents’ bodies were charred beyond recognition, and my little sister was being prepared for a coffin that should never have to be made for a body that small.

“The police couldn’t wait to
get the dirty details from me—how I planned and carried out my family’s death, and happened to be the sole survivor. They asked if I was aware of the millions of dollars in life insurance that was coming my way in a few months. From the way they asked it, I knew they believed that was my intent, and of course, my motive.” His laugh was bitter. “Every suspect needs a motive, right? Well, they seemed to have mine. Cops always think they know the answers.”

“What did you say?” I asked. “
Did you tell them about the Samoan gang?”

“No.
”

“What?
Why not?”

Damien turned away from me, not daring to look me in the eyes.

“I was afraid,” he confessed. I had to lean in to be sure I could hear him, but I could see the shame in his face—a shame that resembled a recognizable self-loathing.

“When the police told me they found evidence of an accelerant used to start t
he fire out on the back deck, I knew it was
them
. I don’t know if the fire was intended to scare or to kill, but it accomplished both. It killed my family and scared me enough to keep my mouth shut. I knew if I said a word about them, I was as good as dead. Even if the police arrested those guys, there are always more of them. I hung out with Fanua, Afona, and Iona, but there were a lot of guys who were a part of that gang—a bunch of different factions branching down from Tau, the ring leader. I would never be able to run from them all. Brotherhood and loyalty—they all had each other’s backs. A white kid like me didn’t stand a chance.

“Of course, I told the police I didn’t do it. But you read some of the reports. They were able to find more than enough disapproving peopl
e to create a case against me. All the locals knew I hated my dad and hung out with a rough crowd. They had heard the rumors and seen some of it firsthand, with the shoplifting and dinner-ditching...Even my neighbors in Oakland Hills didn’t have much good to say about me, not from my behavior over the previous few months before the fire. As you read, there wasn’t enough evidence to even arrest me, but I was socially convicted from the start. No one needed to see me behind bars to believe I was capable of it.”

“But Damien
, why, until now, have you insisted to me that you did kill your family?”

“I may not have started the fire,” he answered, “but their deaths were my fault. If I hadn’t g
otten involved with that crowd—if I hadn’t witnessed the murder and robbery at that convenience store—my family would still be alive. It was my choices and my behavior that led to their deaths. No one is going to convince me otherwise.”

I wanted to argue with him—
to shake him and make him see how it wasn’t his fault. You can’t control what other people do! Sometimes, that was the hardest part about life. You can control a fraction of it that is your own, but even then, people find ways to influence it all the time, both for the good and the bad. How could he hold himself responsible?

But
I would be a hypocrite for trying to convince him otherwise. Did I not feel the same way about Maddie’s death? Did I not hold myself accountable when I lost her in the river, for failing to save her?

I put a hand on Damien’s shoulder. He turned his head to look over at me.

“I understand,” I stated. I shrugged and offered a small smile. He studied my face and seemed to grasp what I was thinking. His body relaxed.

“I think we’re more alike tha
n we realize,” Damien said. He wrapped his warm hand around mine. “I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t think you’d understand. But it seems I was wrong.”

“Well,
I hope you don’t think I believe it’s your fault. What I mean is that I understand why you feel that way. I’ve been stuck there, too, as you know.” I paused in thought, comparing our situations. “It seems easier to take out the irrational blame when it’s someone else’s life and not your own.”

I lean
ed my head against his shoulder, sighing with contentment to be with him again. Taking advantage of his unusual candor, I asked another question.

“So
after your burns healed, where did you go? I mean, you were still seventeen right? Who took care of you?”

“
I have an uncle who lives in San Jose. I lived with him when I wasn’t recovering at the burn center. He and my dad had some big falling out years ago, so I didn’t know him too well. Yeah, it was kinda awkward. But he made some phone calls, and I was allowed to finish up my senior year online. Not quite the memorable graduation a kid anticipates, but at least I finished.”

“That was just last year,” I said. “
When did you move to this cabin?”

Damien looked around the room at his simple
, yet tasteful, furnishing. I only now noticed the lack of pictures or décor on the wall, remembering the distinction he once made about the cabin being merely a place of residence, rather than his home. Damien continued answering my questions.

“As much as I appreciated my uncle’s help while I recovered, we were strangers to each other, and I felt more like an obligation to him than anything. Needless to say, I was eager to get out of there.
I was already eighteen by the time I finished high school, since my birthday is in March. That allowed me to inherit the life insurance money, as well as my father’s business at the lodge.”

My jaw dropped, and I interrupted with,
“You own Eastridge?”

“Yep
.”

I sat up and pushed
hair out of my face. “You told me you worked there doing ‘managerial stuff.’ Yeah, no kidding! I suppose
owning
the business falls under that category.”

Damien gave a light laugh at my surprise.
“I didn’t feel like going back home to live in our oversized, empty house. So I bought this cabin and moved in last May.” He looked at his open hands. “I don’t know. I guess it makes me feel closer to my family, even though they’re gone. Hidden Pines is familiar.”

M
y attention returned to Damien’s features. I wanted to memorize his face, not sure when I would see him again, once he remembered he had been trying to leave. That moment came as if on cue.

Damien
looked towards the door. “Allie, I need to go.”

I could feel the desperation building in my chest, my mind racing for any and all excuses for him to stay. This was the part of the story I didn’t want to hear.

“Why?” was the only word I managed to force from my throat.

“I told you the Oakland PD stopped by
two days ago. Some new information has surfaced, regarding the Samoans.”

“What
is it?”

“Tommy Miller’s journal.”
Damien’s face tightened back up again, his lips pressed together into a firm line.

“He kept a journal?”

“I guess. His mom was going through his boxes, and she came across a notebook. The last entry to date was the night he witnessed the shooting at the convenience store. He wrote down everything—hanging out with the Samoans, bribing them with money, and then their threats to kill him if he said anything about the robbery. He also wrote my name in there.”

I gasped. “But that’s good, isn’t it? That clears your name
! His journal is evidence of—”

“
—of the gang I was involved with and the trouble I was mixed up in,” Damien finished for me. “That’s not going to matter to anyone. People are still going to associate me with them, and I will still be at fault for my family’s death in their eyes.” He shook his head. “But that doesn’t matter. I’m not talking to the police to clear my name. The Miller’s deserve to know what happened to their son, and hopefully get some justice if the police can bring those guys in. I can’t live as a coward any longer. I’m ashamed I’ve gone this long.”

“So the police want you to testify to help build their case against the Samoan gang?” I said.

Damien nodded. “If the least I can do is help the Miller’s earn retribution for their son’s death, that’s what I’m going to do. But I can’t stick around here and wait for the Samoans to come find me. Word’s going to get out soon enough that the police have a

L
ead—if it hasn’t already.” Damien stood up and walked to his room. He finished throwing some final articles of clothing into his duffle bag, and then stepped into his bathroom. I could hear him knocking bottles and containers over in his haste.

He was really leaving.

Panic crammed its way into my chest. I hurried to his room, stepping inside for the first time. The lighting was dim, emanating natural light from the bathroom window, as well as the square windows on the east wall of his room. I hovered outside the doorframe of his bathroom, watching him throw small items into a gray hygiene bag. He stepped past me to throw the final items into his duffle bag.

With his back towards me, I swallowed hard
, begging, “Don’t go.”

Damien stood up and turned around. “Allie, you know I have to.”

I shook my head. “Not yet. Please.” My eyes searched the room. I pointed to the clock above his bed. I was amazed how much time had passed since I had arrived, but it supported my argument. “It’s already after six. The police station in town is closed anyway. There’s no point in leaving tonight. Can I … just stay here until the morning? And then I promise I won’t put up a fight.”

A part of me wanted to shake the desperation from my voice, barely aware enough that I should be embarrassed for allowing my emotion
s to take hold of me like this.

Damien seemed to struggle as he stood before me, weighing the situation in his mind. My knees tempted
to buckle as I watched him run his eyes across my face. I knew he wanted to stay, too.

“Your dad—
”

“
—is on a two-day excursion with my stepmom. He won’t be worried,” I reassured him. “I’ll sleep on the couch tonight. I just want to be with you while I can.”

Damien stepped towards me and wrapped his arms around me.
“All right. You win.” He sighed, allowing me to bury my face against his chest. “You sure are persistent,” he accused. “But I happen to like that.”