THE GIRL WAKES STARING AT A WALL. She senses the rest of the house looming behind, room upon room, all empty now, the beige stucco façade streaked with soot. As she turns her head, a hot wire of pain snakes down her neck and she catches the scent of smoke, heavy in the air, settling into the cedar planks of the deck on which she is sprawled, face down.

This is better. The railing—2x4s stained blond, spaced evenly every three feet—is all that separates her from the needled tops of lodgepole pines and the shimmering gold leaves of aspen. The sun-bleached plane of the deck rushes forward like a runway into those treetops and she sees in her mind how the wash of trees flows down the mountain, over the dirt road below the house, and into the valley before stopping short and shifting course to accommodate the buildings of the town.

With the sun warming her face and the rest of her body still cool in the house's shadow, she begins to wonder. How much of it burned? Is she still alive? What was the name of that hamburger stand in town? She's driven by it a million times. The one with a cartoon coyote in a funny top hat. She clears her throat and swallows. Her mouth is so dry. She squints into the blazing sky and makes a silent plea for rain.

The girl can see it all from this position. She sees a crossbill pecking leftover seed husks in the feeder. She sees fire leaping from the first shake shingle she set aflame. She sees her mother. Seated at the kitchen table in the house years ago, she is writing with a pencil. And then the living room at Christmas, garlands of red shiny beads slung from rafters that are now, she imagines, charred black and splintered, threatening to collapse and bring the whole house down upon her.

But this is the wrong way to approach it, wading aimlessly in memory. What's done is done. She waits, listening for affirmation from the house. When it doesn't come, she forces her mind back to the immediate, the here and now.

First, there is that ample stretch of sky. She closes her eyes but still it screams at her, shouting the obvious answer to a long confounding question. There is the clicking of aspen leaves in the breeze and the quick scratches of a chipmunk scurrying across the deck. The girl reaches down to touch the backs of her aching calves. The skin is hot and her fingers come up wet with a clear fluid.

She lays her hand back at her side and considers getting up. She debates. Her shoulders and arms are sore and there is definitely something wrong with those calves, but she can't just lay here forever, can she? She cocks her arms at her sides and pushes up to her knees. Her calves sting and her lower back locks in the dull grip of a clenching fist. She hauls herself to the railing and clings to one of the posts, watching and listening as a thin thread of crunching gravel—too constant and unyielding to be part of the forest's irregular rhythms—grows louder on the road.

A rider emerges from around the bend. He is crouched low over the handlebars, wheels spinning fast, silver hubs blinking in the sunlight. She watches his tires track through the trees until a loud cracking noise erupts from the far corner of the house, then a second of silence, then shattering over rock. The mountain biker slows and glances up the hill in her direction. She lifts herself an inch higher against the railing and raises one hand over the top rung.

But as quickly as he slowed, the biker is speeding up again. She is mesmerized by his wheels, their revolutions and the wispy trail of dust they leave behind. There is a moment when he swerves in the road, when she thinks he is preparing to make the turn up her driveway, but then she slips back to the deck and he disappears. She can only listen for the hum of tires and wait. The girl is still listening when the next piece of house peels off, landing almost silently in a bed of pine needles on the forest floor.


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