“Mom?”
“Get out of bed.”
“What happened?”
“There’s a fire.”
She ran toward me and pulled me out of bed.
I was nine years old.
Too young to understand how quickly a normal night could become the night that divided your life into before and after.
My mother grabbed my hand.
We ran toward the stairs.
Smoke filled the hallway so quickly that I couldn’t see the bottom.
I started coughing.
“Mom, I can’t breathe.”
“Keep your head down.”
She wrapped her arm around me.
We started down the stairs.
Then something crashed downstairs.
The sound was enormous.
I screamed.
My mother pulled me backward.
“Stay behind me!”
I remember the heat.
That’s the part I remember most.
The heat.
It wasn’t like standing near an oven.
It was like opening a door to another world.
A world made entirely of fire.
My mother tried to take us through another part of the house, but the smoke had already spread.
Then I slipped.
My hand hit the wall.
I fell near the kitchen doorway.
My mother grabbed my shirt and tried to pull me away.
But before she could, a burst of flame came through the doorway.
I felt it hit my face.
