The Mountain Story by Lori Lansens Page B

fired, all because of me.”
    “So what’d you do?”
    “The laundry was sitting there in the basket on the table with the bottle of bleach and all I wanted to do was grab the thing and start gulping it down. I was that close to the edge.”
    I swallowed hard because I knew the feeling.
    “But I couldn’t stand there one more second listening to my father crying in the other room, so I took the bottle of bleach and ran out of the house without my parents ever knowing I’d come home.”
    “What were you going to do with the bleach?”
    “I didn’t know. I walked around the block a few times. I sat in the park for a bit. I’d lost the nerve to drink it. Then I had an idea and headed for Dorrie’s Steak House.
    “The street was more crowded than usual. I went around the back but it was busy behind the restaurant too, people going in and out of the back door. So I hid in the alley beside the restaurant, waiting until some cars drove off, then I stepped out onto the sidewalk. The steak house had this fancy red carpet out front.”
    “You poured bleach on the red carpet? That was your revenge?” Vonn asked.
    “ That’s your big confession?” Bridget said. “I knew it.”
    “I had the cap off the bleach and I was all set to pour when I heard Laura’s voice coming from the apartment overtop the restaurant. I’d heard the girls at school talking about how the Dorries’ place was like a palace and how Laura had a closet as big as most girls’ bedrooms, so when I saw there was a set of stairs that would take me straight up to the open window where these gorgeous white curtains were blowing, I put the cap back on the bottle of bleach and snuck up to take a peek.
    “When I got up there, Laura wasn’t in the room. I just stood there at the open window. She had this huge canopy bed and silk curtains, and I could see that the door to her closet was open.” Nola took a moment to catch her breath. “You would have thought she was a Hollywood starlet—all the clothes in there. Then I remembered the bleach was still in my hands.”
    “Ah!” Vonn cried.
    Bridget inhaled. “Her clothes ?”
    “I waited a minute then leaned in through the window to make sure she was really gone. She was, but I noticed that there was a package of cigarettes and a lighter on the windowsill and cigarette butts all over the landing. I figured she must smoke quite a lot and I got worried she was gonna need a nicotine fix any minute, then I heard a noise in the hall, then my bracelet snagged on the window ledge and broke again and fell off.”
    “Oh no,” Vonn said.
    “It was dark by then. I couldn’t see very well so I grabbed the lighter from the windowsill. It took me a hundred tries to light it but finally I did. I held it so that I could see the landing,but I couldn’t see the bracelet. Then I got thinking maybe the bracelet was caught on the windowsill.” Here Nola stopped for a very long beat. “After that, it all happened so fast.”
    “What?” I asked.
    “I raised the lighter. The curtains. They went up—just …  boosh !” Nola said, gesturing with her good arm.
    “I ran down the stairs and grabbed this man walking on the sidewalk and showed him where the fire was shooting out of Laura’s bedroom window and he ran into the restaurant to call the fire department. No one was hurt.” Nola paused. “Well, that’s not exactly true.”
    “That’s a terrible story, Mim,” Bridget said.
    “That’s why I never told you,” Nola said.
    We were quiet for some time. “What about Pip?” Vonn asked.
    “When I made it to the playground in the park where we said we’d meet, Patrick was already there, worried because of all the sirens. I can’t say what possessed me but I told him what I’d just done.”
    “What did he say? What did you do?”
    “He took me to his church. It was quiet and dark and smelled like candles. We just sat there in the front pew for an hour, could have been longer, holding hands. Didn’t