Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,4

weird howl in the room became comforting proof that I must be fast asleep, tucked in bed, making it all up in my head. As usual.

I wasn’t really here in a hotel ballroom at the proudest moment of my life, about to receive Austin FD’s highest service award—from Heath Thompson.

Life couldn’t possibly be that unfair.

But there he was. Still. Talking into the microphone, up onstage, in the lights, like reality was his birthright. I blinked again, as if I could clear my eyes. He was a thousand miles away. My eardrums started to throb, and then, just as I heard his distant, almost unintelligible voice call my name, or thought I did, I felt nausea welling up through my torso—from my stomach to my rib cage to my collarbones to my throat—

Hernandez poked me on the shoulder.

I turned to him and, in slo-mo, he pointed at the stage and waved me toward it.

I looked around. Every face in the room was trained on me. Smiling. Clapping. Cheering. The guys on my shift stood up for a standing O, and the rest of the room followed. My next move was clear. I’d won an award, and now all I had to do was one simple thing: Walk up to the stage and take it.

I swallowed, and stood. Mind over matter. Just stand, walk, take plaque. Simple. Simple. I swallowed again, then stood, cursing those ridiculous pumps, and moved through the crowd, winding past the tables like a blinking fish through a coral reef.

Somewhere between my seat and the stage, I dropped my prepared remarks. I felt them flutter from my fingers, but it was like it had happened to somebody else. Oh well, I thought. No speech, then. Least of my worries.

There was a step at the stage. Then another, then another. My ankles wobbled on those dumb heels. Then I was approaching the podium, my stomach feeling heavy inside my torso, like a water balloon tied to my rib cage.

I wouldn’t look at him, that’s all. Or touch him. And I wouldn’t stop moving. I’d keep in motion like a shark, and I’d keep my eyes averted at all costs. Get in, get out. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Pretend it’s not happening.

Just take it and go. Take it and get to the back of the stage. I coached myself through this the way I’d coached myself through every other hard thing in my life. The way I’d add just one more mile to a ten-mile run, or one more set of reps in the gym. I’d navigated a collapsing staircase. I’d held a dying man’s skull together. I’d jumped from a collapsing roof. I could do this.

I stopped in front of the podium, eyes fixed on the plaque itself, trying to mentally Photoshop the person holding it out of the frame.

Was I actually going to have to shake Heath Thompson’s hand?

No. No way.

I could make myself do a lot of things, but I wouldn’t make myself do that.

I saw the plaque come my direction in slo-mo and clasped my fingers around it, trying to ground myself by focusing on how solid and heavy it was. What wood was that? Oak? Walnut? It weighed a ton.

Take plaque, move away. But before I could, Heath Thompson—Heath Thompson—grabbed my free hand. To shake. The way every other presenter had done for every other recipient.

Except he wasn’t every other presenter, and I sure as hell wasn’t every other recipient.

Heath Thompson had made sure of that.

The shock of his touch was like a burn from an electrical wire—sharp and mean and fast. It registered as pain somehow, and then, in response, on instinct, I looked up into his face.

There he was. Older and beefier and more hair-sprayed than he had been ten years ago, and wearing a smug city-councilman expression, as if the entire world existed for him to grandstand in.

I knew in that instant: He recognized me.

He’d just read my name out to three hundred people, so it stood to reason.

But I’d changed a lot—my hair was darker, and shoulder length now, and I’d worn it down when I was younger but now wore it tight back in a braid or a bun every day. I’d gotten contacts. And I had about twice the muscle mass I’d had in high school. Not to mention my dress uniform, its blazer buttoned all the way up with its padded shoulders and little crossover tie.

Something about that combination—his beefy, self-satisfied face, his pompous grin, his self-serving