Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,62

to do that?”

“You did, sir.”

He gave me a look that said he could not be bullshitted.

“Remember?” I said. “Way back, on my first day. I asked if we had cyanide kits at the station, and you said no, and I said we needed them, and you said, ‘Find me two thousand dollars a pop and we’ll get some’?”

He squinted at me. “Vaguely.”

“Well,” I said. “I found you two thousand dollars a pop.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I applied for a grant from FEMA. For the station. For money to buy two kits. And we got it.”

“You applied for a grant?”

“I applied for a bunch of them, actually,” I said, feeling the tiniest bit of pride in my initiative. “From different places. Funding for new paint, new mattresses, better lighting. Also, for a new gear dryer and new lockers. A better vent for the engine bay. A bunch of stuff.”

I’d assumed, honestly, that if any of the grants came through, that would unequivocally be a good thing. How could it not be?

But as I watched the captain’s face, it was clear: not good.

The captain stood up. “Is writing grants part of your job description?”

“No, sir. I just—”

“We have a chain of command here, Hanwell. You do not apply for grants, or decide we need new mattresses, or even get us new toilet paper unless I tell you to.”

“Yes, sir, but you yourself said—”

“This firehouse,” he went on, “has been standing here, on this very spot, for one hundred and twenty years”—

Oh God. I’d offended him.

—“and we’ve survived all of them, every damn one, without your help.”

“I just thought—”

“You thought you’d come in here with your compost heaps and your solar panels and show us all how it’s done.”

“No, I—”

“Don’t you see how that’s a little insulting?”

“I just—“

“Has it occurred to you that you might not know everything about everything?”

He waited for an answer on that one.

I lowered my eyes. “I was just trying to make myself useful, sir.”

“Maybe the newest person on a crew shouldn’t start changing everything right away. Maybe the newest person on a crew should spend a little time at the station before deciding to repaint it.”

There are no words to describe how much I had not expected this reaction from him.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“You bet you are.”

“Should I—” I began, amazed that I was even asking the question. “Should I send the kits back?”

“It’s not about the kits, Hanwell,” the captain said. “It’s about respect for the chain of command.”

“I respect the chain of command, sir,” I said.

“Do you? Because what do you do when a ranking member of the crew tells you to do something?”

He blinked at me, waiting for an answer.

“You do it, sir,” I said.

“And what if a ranking member of the crew doesn’t tell you to do something?”

I sighed. “You don’t do it, sir.”

“We’re clear on that?”

“We’re clear.”

He turned back to his computer. We were done here. “Good,” he said then. “Now scram.”

I walked to my locker feeling stunned—but also very lucky that I hadn’t been in trouble for what I thought I’d been in trouble for. Maybe the rookie was right. Maybe our going on a date would not lead inevitably to the end of my career.

Maybe we were going to get away with it.

Or maybe not: because when I opened up my locker, I discovered that somebody had scrawled graffiti all across the inside. Very specific graffiti that made it clear somebody somewhere knew something.

In terrible handwriting, in five-inch-tall letters, in Sharpie—there was one word: Slut.

* * *

I SLAMMED THE door shut the second I saw it.

I felt a sting of panic through my body. Not cool. Not fair. Not even, you know—accurate. Not even close.

Six-Pack looked over. “Everything okay?”

“Yep,” I said. But I was breathing fast.

The timing was uncanny.

Six-Pack was still eyeing me.

“The lock sticks sometimes,” I said, leaning hard against the door, breathing.

Had the captain recognized me? Was that why he was so weirdly mad that I had just earned the station four thousand dollars’ worth of safety equipment? Or had there been someone else there we didn’t see? Or maybe word of mouth? Of course, by the end of the party, every single person there knew that Owen had screwed a very drunk girl in the coat closet.

All anybody had to do was recognize me.

I’d been warned, of course. Captain Harris had warned me—as had a lifetime of being female. If we broke the rules, I would be the one punished. I had known the risk I was taking when I went