Jingle Boy by Kieran Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

the worst part of this whole thing. “Let’s get this over with,” I said. Then I somehow made myself start walking.
    The front doorjamb was ripped and splintered where I’d kicked open the door earlier, but other than that, the downstairs was okay. Aside from the muddy footprints of about a thousand boots, everything was intact. The kitchen was a wreck, but only because my mother had been baking when the fire started. A cookie sheet with uncooked blobs of dough sat on top of the stove, and the counters were covered with spilled flour, eggshells, and various bottles, boxes, and bags of ingredients. Even in her panic my mother had managed to turn off the oven.
    “Cookie?” Holly asked, walking over to the cooling rack and picking up a Toll House. My stomach grumbled noisily. It had been a long night without food. But I didn’t think I was going to be able to digest.
    “Go ahead,” I told her. After all, she was starving, too. We’d be better off if at least one of us wasn’t delirious with hunger. Holly popped the cookie in her mouth and grabbed a handful more.
    The floor overhead creaked and I could hear the muffled voices of my mother and the firemen. They were in my parents’ room, just above us. I glanced at Holly. I really didn’t want to go up there. But there was no point in avoiding the inevitable. Holly smiled reassuringly, her cheek sticking out from a full mouth. We headed for the stairs.
    It was a nightmare. My palms were sweating and my heart was pounding so hard it was nearly choking me as I climbed the stairs. I really felt like I must be asleep and that at any second I would sit up straight in my bed, realizing it was all just a product of my twisted imagination. But when I got to the top of the stairs, the first thing I saw was the miniature Christmas tree my mom and I had made when I was in kindergarten, toppled to the floor in front of the hallway table where it once sat. It was smashed and stepped on, the mini-Santa and snowman ornaments ground into the rug like tiny crushed corpses.
    When I didn’t wake up from seeing that heinous sight, I knew for sure that I wasn’t dreaming.
    Holly and I stood at the top of the stairs as my mother and the two firemen walked over to my bedroom. My mother gasped and her hand flew to her mouth.
    “Mom?” I said.
    She looked at me with this dazed, horrified expression, then stepped into the room ahead of me to make space for me to get through. I kind of wished she hadn’t.
    I had never seen anything like it. It wasn’t my room. It couldn’t be.
    “It’s pretty bad,” the fireman’s low voice rumbled.
    The wall had collapsed on top of my bed, engulfing it in a pile of . . . well . . .
crap.
Wood, paper, plaster, roof shingles—all soaked and pungent—tumbled over the mattress and onto the floor. Everything was wet. Water dripped from the ceiling, ran from the window-sills onto the floor. When I stepped on my wall-to-wall carpeting, water bubbled up from under my feet and chilled the canvas of my sneakers. I pulled my sweater closer to me. You could see the stars through the gaping hole in the upper corner of the room.
    I tore my eyes away from the bed and made the mistake of looking at my desk. The wallpaper had peeled all around it and hung down in limp strips. My computer screen was covered with hardened bubbles and the CDs that always littered the surface of the desk had
become
the surface. They had melted and congealed to the desk in pools of psychedelic colors. My school-books were charred and soaked and there was a pile of black ash that had once been a stack of notebooks.
    And the smell. Ugh. I can’t even describe it. The usually comforting scent of burned wood mixed with this acrid, sour aroma that came from melted synthetics— plastics of all kinds that I never even realized I owned. I took a step toward the desk.
    “Son, you don’t want to go over by the window.”
    I ignored him. I had to see if there was anything salvageable.