“Pine Crest”

“F?”

“Good!”

“B.”

“Go on.”

“I.”

The more letters I say, the more my voice swells with pride.

Mama says how smart I am and leans in to give me a kiss.

Daddy puts a hand on my hair and messes it up and asks if I can read anything else. I look at the screen again and say aloud, “Wa— … Warn …” But then the words are gone.

On any other night, Greta would make a sound with her tongue and say, “Oh, brother. Just start the movie.” She doesn’t say that tonight because she isn’t here.

It does not feel right without Greta here. I want to squeeze between Mama and Daddy – safe. So that’s what I do.

Mama’s knee shakes.

Daddy says just to watch the movie.

Mama says they should have called by now.

Daddy says just to watch the movie.

Mama gets up and says she is going to make some popcorn.

Daddy says just to watch the movie.

Mama says what if something –

Daddy says just to watch –

Mama lets out a big, heavy sigh, and then we watch the movie, Sleeping Beauty. There are songs, and three little fairies and it’s beautiful. I want to live in a place like this, with color and music and flags and everyone in their funny hats. They all wear dresses, even the men.

But the witch comes. Horrible and evil. She makes herself appear inside tall, green flames of fire. She is angry.

That’s when the phone rings.

Mama bursts out of her seat before it can even ring again. Daddy reaches for the remote control to pause the movie. In the kitchen I hear Mama saying thanks to God. She laughs a little and makes her voice sound like she is happy, even though she isn’t. I know that voice, the one she uses when she is pretending.

There was one time when she put me to bed and told me to sleep tight and kissed me and I asked her if she was sad. She said of course she wasn’t sad. She said she couldn’t be sad as long as she had me and Greta.

“And Daddy?” I asked her.

That was the first time I heard the pretend in her voice. “And Daddy, yes.”

She shut my door. “Night light,” I called to her.

“Night light,” she repeated back and turned on the light. When there is light you are not alone. She left the room and went down the hall to their bedroom. I heard the door shut and words I can’t repeat because I didn’t know them then and I don’t know them now. Grown-up words. “Frank,” I heard her say, her voice big but soft, mad but quiet. “Sarah,” I heard him say, soft-big, quiet-mad, too, and they went on and on, softer and quieter, bigger and madder, until Greta came into my room and closed the door all the way and told me, “Shh, shh.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, and told me again, “shh, shh,” and my sister held me while she listened to the voices and cried, but next to her, tight against her warmth, her long, smooth hair rustling in my face, I could not imagine why anyone would be sad. I could have stayed there with Greta forever, and in her arms I fell asleep.

“Thank God,” Mama says when she sits down again. “They made it.”

“I told you they’d be fine,” Daddy said. “Let’s watch the movie.”

“They’re safe,” Mama says again, relaxing.

Even though the sofa is big and there are two armchairs in the living room, she sits right next to me and I’m squeezed in tight smelling the smells that mean only them. Before the movie has ended, Mama and Daddy both fall asleep, but I don’t care. They still hold on to me. I stare at the screen and wish and hope Prince Philip finds a way to kill the giant dragon who sets everything on fire.

When the movie is over and the witch is no more, they take me upstairs. Mama helps me brush my teeth. Daddy puts me on his back and tells me I am a knight and he is my noble steed, and he gallops me to bed.

“Night light,” I say when they leave.

“Night light,” they assure me, and turn it on before they close the door.

At night I dream about the witch and her fire.

In the morning there are no witches, no fire, nothing but sunlight against the blinds. I come down the stairs – I can do this by myself now, I don’t need to wait for anyone’s help – and there is Mama in the kitchen, wearing her apron. She smiles and says I woke up early, she was going to surprise me, but since I am here I can help her make some cookies. Out the window, in the big, sloping yard, there is Daddy, pushing the noisy lawnmower, wearing his blue jeans and his orange T-shirt, the only things he ever wears around the house. Sometimes I think he must have a hundred orange T-shirts. Or maybe there is only this one. It is one of the mysteries that one day I would like to solve.

Mama measures powders and liquids into the plastic cups and spoons, and when she is done she tells me I can put them into the bowl. She hums. I try to hum the same song but I don’t know what it is, so I make it up. She laughs, which is a wondrous sort of sound. The pretend in her voice is gone this morning. While we work, she tells me over and over how big I’m getting. She pours tiny chocolate drops into the bowl, then passes me the bag and asks if I can read it. I sound out almost all of the words on the front. I know what some of them mean. Some of them, I don’t.

Morsels? She explains.

Semi-sweet? She explains again.

I ask what the thing is she uses to mix the dough: Beater.

Why does it need to be plugged in? Electricity.

Why can’t I touch the holes where it plugs in? Dangerous.

Why is it dangerous? Shock.

What does “shock” mean? Hurt.

Why, I want to know? How, I want to know. Again: why. Again: how. Over and over. Why? Why? How? Why? And Mama never gets tired of telling me all these things.

Outside, it turns quiet. Daddy leaves the lawnmower right where it is and walks up toward the house. Mama says to go meet him with one of the still-hot cookies. He takes it from me and says thank you with some surprise in his voice, but scoots me back toward the house.

“You can smell it,” he says. “There’s a fire.”

“Where?” she asks. Then she says: “Greta.”

The thought makes Daddy freeze.

“Go turn on the TV,” he says. His voice sounds wrong. Daddy does not get scared.

Mama pulls me by the hand to the TV, and as the picture fades in, we sit on the sofa again, but it isn’t like last night. Not at all. I sit off to the side. Mama gives me a book and says to read it, but I’ve read this one too many times. That’s why it’s called an “I Can Read” book, because I can read, even if I can’t make out the words fast enough to read what is on the screen that says “FBI Warn.” Someday I will be able to read that fast, I know it.

It's like with the lady on TV. She talks fast. I can’t figure out what she says. This is my problem. This is what I wish I could find a way to make Mama and Daddy and Greta understand: I can make out almost all of the words, I just don’t always understand how they go together. There is only one way I can find out: ask.

“What are they saying?”

“Shhhh,” Mama says. “Did they say exactly where it is?”

“Where what is?” She doesn’t hear me.

“Hang on. They’ll show a map soon. They always show a map. Go get the note she left.”

Mama rushes into the kitchen and returns with a piece of paper in her hands. She gives it to Daddy and says, “This says their cabin is in Pine Crest. Where is that?”

He seems not to believe her, because he looks at the paper, too. “Pine Crest. I’ve never heard of it. I don’t go camping. Where did she get this idea that she can go camping? Why did we let her go? That’s not something we do. She doesn’t know the first thing about camping.”

Mama’s voice is careful and steady. It isn’t her pretend voice, but it’s close. “It’s fine,” she says. “That boy she’s with knows about camping. The time I went to their house, they had wilderness gear everywhere. If anyone would know what they’re doing, it would be him.”

“Maybe so,” Daddy says, staring at the TV, which fills with moving pictures of trees and helicopters and men wearing big yellow jackets. And fire. Tall and angry. Red and orange. It is not green and there is no witch.

I listen, but the woman won’t slow down. Overnight, I hear. Yes. That one I can figure out: it means while I was sleeping. Massive blaze. Massive means so large you wouldn’t believe it. Blaze is fire. While Mama and Daddy watch TV, I focus on these words and look at the pictures.

I get off the sofa but no one notices. I open the back door but no one hears. Because nobody is paying attention to me, I reach up to the counter and take a cookie when I go out back.

If Greta were here she would explain to me what I cannot work out. Her name has not been among the words, but I think they might be talking about her all the same. Greta would tell me what I don’t know.

I’m about to bite the cookie when something soft and white falls on my hand. It can’t be snow. Snow happens when it is cold, when the leaves are off the trees, when the days feel slanted and short. This is summer, when we don’t have school and when the trees are full. Snow does not happen in summer. There is another white flake. I put the cookie into my mouth, telling myself to hold it there and not to bite it, but I can’t help it. My teeth close down and a little moon-shaped piece of the cookie falls out of my mouth and to the ground. I chew on the rest of it while I examine the flake. I touch it with my other hand but instead of melting it turns to powder.

Now I see these flakes have fallen all over the grass. Snow is quiet, but this is silent. You could listen with the best ears in the world and you wouldn’t hear a thing when these crumbly little flakes fall. Will there be enough summer snow that we could build a powder snowman? Will Mama need to shovel out the driveway tomorrow morning so Daddy can pull the car out of the garage and go to work? I drop to my knees to find more of the flakes, to gather them and see if I can make a summer snowball.

Mama’s voice cries out. She shouts my name, over and over. The summer snow keeps falling.

Daddy runs to me. “There you are!” he says, thinking he can hide his worry with a deep laugh. He scoops me up and lifts me high above him, hands on my stomach. “Propeller!” he says and stands in one spot, spinning himself around and around while I hold my hands out. He will not drop me, I know that. While I laugh, he calls back to Mama: “He’s fine!”

Up on the porch of the house I can hear her thanking God again. I wonder what she thinks God had to do with it. I was just right here the whole time.

Daddy puts me on his shoulders, and I conk my head on the top of the door when we come back in the house. It does not hurt, but I can smell the cookies and I know they will give me one or two more if I cry, so after the bonk and after Daddy says, “Oh, man! You okay, Sport?” I let myself turn red and scream and hold my hand up to my head until Mama does just when I thought and tells me to sit down with a cookie. She brushes the hair from my head and kisses me everywhere she thinks it might hurt and says, “Frank! What were you thinking?” They pull me close and in that single moment there is only one worry in the entire world, in the entire universe: me.

Pine Crest. There are the words again, and they make Mama and Daddy turn away from me, back to the TV, and all of a sudden I am the least of their concerns. I try again, opening my mouth to emit a hurt little noise. With her back turned toward me, Mama tells me, “Shh! Quiet!” and waves a hand behind her to swat away the sound.

“We’re trying to listen, Buck,” Daddy says, turning to pick me up again. He holds me in one hand and bounces me a little because I’m not too old for that. They stare at the TV, so I look, too. It is a confusing jumble of images, of flames and trees, of cars and buildings on fire.

The woman on the TV says six people have died. Four people have been airlifted, so I ask Daddy what airliftedmeans and he says that I shouldn’t worry about it and puts a hand on my head and draws me to his shoulder, so I rest on his orange T-shirt.

“Why haven’t they called?” Mama wants to know.

“We don’t even know how far they are from all of this,” Daddy says.

“They said ‘Pine Crest.’ She wrote ‘Pine Crest.’”

“I’m trying to be hopeful.”

What does that mean, I wonder? I know hope is when you want something to happen, but you don’t know if it will. What is it they want?

I wish Greta were here. She would take me from Daddy and hold me and take me to her room, where she has a record player and some statues of ponies that she lets me play with while we listen to music. I could ask her what it means. I could ask her why Mama and Daddy are worried. If Greta were here –

But she is not.

She went away.

She went somewhere with her friend.

She went to Pine Crest.

The fire is in Pine Crest.

Six people have died in the fire.

The fire is not green. There is no witch.

Greta is not here.

I want her. She needs to come back.

I pull my head off Daddy’s orange T-shirt and squirm until he puts me down.

“Where.” My voice is small. They cannot hear. Mama has both hands on her face. Daddy has an arm around Mama. Now that he is free of me, he puts the other arm around her and pulls her close to him. “Where,” I start again, louder. “Where?” Two words. That’s all I need to say. I can’t get them to come out right. Between my head where they live and my mouth where they enter the world, the thought gets jumbled. The words are stuck.

I push them. I force them. I demand they come: “Where’s Greta?”

“Sweetie,” Mama says. She is crying.

“I want Greta!”

“Come on, Sport. Let’s go upstairs,” Daddy says.

“No!”

“Shall we change the channel? Let’s see what else is on,” Mama says, and this should be enough – I am their focus again. Mama turns the dial and finds Sesame Street and says, “Look! It’s Mr. Snuffleupugas. This is better. Isn’t this better?” She dries her eyes and tells me to watch the TV. But there is no distraction, no way to hide what they are thinking.

Somewhere out there, Greta and her friend are surrounded by a fire. She is somewhere far from here, frightened, and even though she is not alone she might as well be, because she is not with Mama and Daddy, she is not with me. Hitting her head on the top of the door when she rides in on Daddy’s shoulders is not the worst thing that can happen to her. She cannot be tucked in to bed with a night light to help her forget about what she has seen.

I turn the dial on the TV back to the lady and the news, and at the top of the screen is the word “LIVE.” She says that if you see smoke, if you smell smoke, you should close your windows and not go outside because it is dangerous. There are more pictures on the screen, taken from the air. There is a little house in the middle of the woods covered in fire. You can tell it is a little house because there is a chimney and some steps but other than that it is orange and red and yellow. Two deer jump into the middle of the screen, frightened, confused, and then they are gone and it is impossible to tell if they have gotten away, or if they have run right into the flames.

It is impossible to tell if Greta has gotten away. Or if she has run right into the flames.

Mama pulls me away from the TV, but I scream. I need to stay here.

Daddy says, “Come on, Champ, let’s make some ice-cream sandwiches with the cookies.” That sounds like the worst idea in the world.

I want to tell them I understand that they are trying to do. I want them to know I feel the terror in their hearts. They do not need to pretend anymore. Wherever Pine Crest is, what is happening there has made its way into our little world, falling over us in smoky ash – not summer snow, but proof of the horror the world can bring. If we open the door we can smell it on the air, taste it on our tongues and know how real it is. Greta is there in it, and we can do nothing at all to help her. Whatever may happen is not up to us.

These are the things I want to say.

These are the things I know inside.

But I am five years old and I cannot make any of these thoughts come out of my head.

I cannot explain. I think ash is “summer snow,” and I cry to get my way. I don’t have the words. I don’t have the ability. But I feel it all. Every thought, every worry, every fear lives inside and cannot come out. All I can do is stand between my parents and let the feelings begin their lifetime of feeding on my heart.

I wrap my arms around Daddy’s leg, feel the scratch of his denim jeans.

The only word I can say is, “Up.”

“Oh, Bud,” he says, lifting me.

Mama hugs us all and lets herself say the word: “Greta.”

Her body shudders with a sob. We stand there, three of us, me wedged between them, where they can keep me safe, at least for now.

That’s when the phone rings.

The End

April 2025