Page 24 of Things You Save in a Fire

“Here’s another one: Don’t have feelings.”

“Don’t havefeelings?”

“Don’t talk about them, don’t explore them, and for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t cry.”

“I never cry.”

“Good. Keep it that way.”

I wrote the word “feelings,” circled it, and drew a line through the circle.Feelings: bad.

“Last, but not least,” she said, tapping the paper with her finger like she really wanted me to pay attention. “No sex.”

She waited for me to protest, but I didn’t.

“No sex with firefighters,” she went on. “Or friends of firefighters. Or relatives of firefighters. Even acquaintances of firefighters.” She pointed at me. “If they even get a whiff that you’re attracted to somebody anywhere near the station, you’re a goner. That’s the biggest rule, and I saved it for last: Do not sleep with firefighters.”

“So I need to live like a nun.” Not a problem. Tragic celibacy for the win.

“Until you’ve proved yourself, yes. Because there’s no faster way for you to go down in flames than to screw one of the guys.”

“Just hypothetically,” I said then, already knowing the answer, “would the guy go down in flames, too?”

The captain took off her reading glasses and gave me a look like,Please.

“I like you,” she said then. “I’ve always liked you. You’ve had it easy, and now you’re about to get the opposite. Maybe it’ll break you, or maybe it’ll make you. If you play it right, your struggles might even lead you to your strengths.”

I had no idea how to play it right.

Then she said, “My best advice to you? Find one person you can count on. Just one.”

I looked the sheet over. “So, to succeed in my new job, I basically need to be an asexual, androgynous, human robot that’s dead to all physical and emotional sensation.”

She sat back in her chair and nodded, like,Yep. Simple.

I nodded.

“Just be a machine,” she said. “A machine that eats fire.”

Six

THE DRIVE ACROSSthe country gave me a lot of time to think things through.

I didn’t even turn on the radio.

I just drove with the window down, the air roaring in and swirling around me.

Had all that really just happened? Had I really just torpedoed my career—the best thing in my entire life? Had I beaten up Heath Thompson on a stage in front of three hundred of my most esteemed colleagues? Had I given up a promotion to lieutenant by refusing to apologize? What the hell?

One thing I couldn’t decide: Had refusing to apologize been standing up for myself—or sabotaging myself? I could see arguments both ways. As I left behind everything and everyone I cared about back in Texas, and as I pictured my emptied-out apartment and my dad’s garage filled with storage tubs of my stuff, and as I watched the road ahead of me stretch out farther and farther into uncertainty, the question lingered.

It could have been worse, I kept telling myself.

I kept thinking about a woman I’d rescued from a plane crash not that long ago. The pilot, her boyfriend, got caught in a crosswind during landing and cartwheeled. The guy walked away without a scratch, but the woman was so burned, crushed, and wedged, we had to strip the plane apart with the hydraulic cutters.

During the extrication, she told me they had just gotten engaged. On that very flight.

Then she insisted it was the happiest day of her life.

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