Chapter 3 - The Fall of Bennett Street
There was no time to hesitate. The fire roared behind me, a living wall of orange and black heat that caught the edges of my old curtains. I gripped the wooden frame of the window, swung my legs out into the open air, and let go.
The wind rushed past me for a terrifying half-second before I crashed through the thick, overgrown hydrangea bushes my mother loved so much. The branches snapped violently, breaking my fall but sending a jolting, white-hot pain through my left ankle.
I rolled onto the grass, coughing up gray phlegm, my skin covered in soot and blood from the glass cuts.
Sirens wailed in the distance. Maya had come through.
My mother quickly changed her expression from fury to frantic worry as she sprinted across the lawn toward me. "Caitlyn! Oh my sweet girl! Thank God you jumped!" she screamed, her voice loud enough for the neighbors who were just beginning to step out onto their porches.
"Don't touch me," I rasped, dragging myself backward on the grass, ignoring the agony in my ankle.
Jessica walked up behind her, her eyes darting around nervously as the distant sirens grew louder. "Mom, she has a phone," Jessica whispered, pointing to the burner phone I was still clutching tightly in my bleeding right hand.
My mother’s eyes locked onto the small plastic device. The clinical, cold calculation returned to her eyes. She knelt down beside me, blocking the view of the gathering neighbors, and reached for the phone. "Give that to me, Caitlyn. You're shock-y. You're having an episode. Let Mommy take care of it."
"If you touch me, I'll scream loud enough to wake the dead, Deborah," I whispered, using her first name for the first time in my life.
She flinched. The mask slipped just a fraction. "You ungrateful little bitch," she hissed under her breath, her hand freezing in mid-air. "We gave you everything. And you come home just to ruin my house? To start a fire in your own room?"
The gasps from the neighbors grew louder as three fire engines and two police cruisers tore around the corner of Bennett Street, their red and blue lights painting the white siding of our burning house in shifting shades of emergency.
Within minutes, firefighters were dragging hoses onto the lawn, and two paramedics rushed toward me with a stretcher. My mother immediately threw her hands over her face, weeping hysterically into the chest of a handsome young paramedic.
"She’s my daughter! She’s been so sick, she’s had these psychological issues since she was a teenager," my mother wailed, her performance flawless. "I think she started it in her room... she’s always been so dramatic..."
An older police officer, Officer Miller—a man who had known my mother from the local church fundraisers—stepped forward with a notepad. "Deborah, calm down. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Caitlyn, can you tell me what happened?"
I looked at Officer Miller, then at my mother, who was giving me a subtle, warning glare that had controlled me for twenty-seven years. It was the look that said remember your place.
I sat up on the stretcher, pushing the oxygen mask away from my face.
"My mother and sister locked me in that room from the outside," I said, my voice clear and steady despite the raw burning in my throat. "They set the fire in the hallway. They left me there to die."
Jessica scoffed loudly. "Oh my god, look at her! She's completely insane! Officer, she’s on heavy medication—"
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"I haven't taken her pills since I was fourteen years old, Jessica," I interrupted, looking directly at Officer Miller. "And if you check my mother's purse right now, you'll find the key to the external deadbolt she installed on my bedroom door three days ago before inviting me over for dinner."
The silence on the lawn was absolute, save for the roar of the water hoses crashing against the burning roof of the house.
