I hoped me telling her I didn’t was convincing enough. I turned my Walkman up higher and closed my eyes.
“I know you wore my shirt. Next time just ask me. I know you want to be like me,” she said as she pulled my headphones off of one ear. I put my middle finger up at her and she got in her bed. I heard her call Bruce and say how she loved him so much. She made a kissing noise, then turned the light off and went to sleep. She was so boy crazy.
I liked boys, but they weren’t my world. My mom sat me and Lana down when we were twelve and said boys just want one thing and that’s a hot and tight place to put their dicks. That was the nastiest thing I’d ever heard, and she turned me off from sex. That same speech ain’t do nothing for Lana ’cause I know she giving it up. My sister probably would be pregnant by next summer—at least that’s what my mother said, and I agreed. I tried sex twice. Once with this boy named Mookie two years before—I didn’t like it—and another time with Dontae at summer school. Everybody I knew was doing it and they liked it. Chantel told me it feels real good, but I don’t like no one like that and I don’t want to get pregnant and have a bunch of kids. If my sister gets pregnant maybe I can get my own room, I thought as I rolled over in my bed and went to sleep.
The pain in my side let me know that my bladder could not wait until the morning to go to the bathroom. Instead of getting up and going, I yawned and tried to lie on my other side. I didn’t feel like walking all the way down the hall to the bathroom. I turned to my side, brought my legs closer to my chest and tried to hold it in and go back to sleep. I still had my Walkman on, and there was a loud commercial on, so I turned it off and placed it to the side of my bed. Then I noticed there was a bright light flickering under the door. I squinted to see exactly what it was. I coughed a little and then sat up. There was a burning smell in the room. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing and smelling. I went up to my door and touched it. It was very hot. I ran over to Lana’s bed and screamed, “Lana, get up.” I shook her arm and body repeatedly.
“What?” she said as she snatched her arm back and turned to her other side.
“Lana, get up and call 911. I think the house is on fire!”
“What? Leave me alone. Stop playing. I’m asleep.”
“Lana!” I screamed again. I opened the door and saw dark yellow and orange flames halfway up the steps. There was black smoke everywhere, but the fire hadn’t reached the hallway yet. I closed the door and screamed, “Wake the fuck up, Alanna! It’s a fire. Call 911.” I snatched her out of the bed. She finally saw how serious I was and got up and searched for the cordless phone.
“It’s not working. We going to die,” she yelled.
“Be quiet. We not going to die. Yell ‘fire’ out the window and see if anyone is outside. I have to get the kids.”
Me and Alanna were in the front room. I ran into the middle room to check if my mom was home, but her bed was empty. I ran past the steps where the fire was rising rapidly. It was coming up the steps. I could feel the heat on my back and neck. Lana came into the hallway and said the neighbors were calling the police. She then went into the bathroom and grabbed a bucket and threw water down the steps. That made the fire get higher and rise faster up the steps. I ran into the room next to my mother’s bedroom. Bubbles was still lying in the bed asleep.
“Bubbles, get up! It’s a fire!” I looked all around but didn’t see Bilal. “Where is Bilal?”
“I don’t know.”
I coaxed her past the flames and had Alanna take her into the front room.
“Where you going?” Lana asked.
“I have to find Bilal!” I hoped he wasn’t downstairs.
The fire was getting closer to the top of the steps. I was coughing, but I put my T-shirt over my mouth and kept walking toward the back room. There was dark smoke everywhere and I could barely see my own hand in front of me. I extended my arms out to make sure I didn’t bump into anything. I reached John’s room and found Bilal balled up in John’s bed. He had fallen asleep playing the game.
I tried to pick him up, but I was becoming weak and coughing. I almost couldn’t breathe. I felt myself losing strength. I couldn’t leave him but he felt so heavy. I pulled him out of the bed and began dragging him across the floor. That’s when I heard glass break. A few seconds later I saw a figure in a yellow suit coming toward me. He picked me up and pulled me off of Bilal.
I kicked and screamed, “My brother!” I fought him and yelled, “My brother! My brother! My brother! You’ve got to get my brother!” I continued to yell until I almost passed out.
The man carried me past the flames into the front room and passed me out the window to another firefighter. I unwillingly went down the ladder. All our neighbors were outside looking up. Three fire trucks and two ambulances were there. I could hear the firefighters’ radios and their trucks idling. They sat me on a stretcher and put an oxygen mask on my face inside the ambulance. As soon as they sat me down on the stretcher I told them to get off of me and that I had to get my brother.
“Get my brother! Get my brother!” I yelled. They told me to calm down, but I couldn’t calm down. I jumped off the stretcher. I ran out and saw Alanna. She was holding Bubbles next to her, and they were looking up at the window. My next-door neighbor, Ms. Arlene, came over to me and said the other firefighters were still in there. I looked up and saw another man coming down the ladder with Bilal. He was carrying him over his shoulders like a rag doll.
“Is he okay?” Ms. Arlene yelled.
The fire fighters pushed everyone out of the way, put him in the ambulance and pulled away. Then they grabbed me, Alanna and Bubbles and asked us if anyone else was in the house. Then they put us in the other ambulance. They said they had to check us out at the hospital. We didn’t say anything the entire ride. I think we all were too scared to ask if Bilal was still alive. We would find out in a few minutes when we got to the hospital.
At the hospital they tried to treat me, but I still wanted to know what was going on with Bilal. A nice nurse told us he was alive but unconscious. Lana found out what room he was in, so we asked the same nurse if we could see him. She acted like she didn’t hear us but opened the door on the sly. We walked into his room and saw that they had him hooked up to all these machines. Tubes were going up his nose, but at least he was alive. Alanna and Bubbles starting crying. I just wanted to know if he was going to make it and what was wrong with him.
Chapter 3
My mom showed up at the hospital about half an hour after we had arrived. She was crying hysterically and smelled like alcohol. I was so mad at her—she was actually slurring when she spoke. We were just fighting for our lives and she was somewhere having a drink. She tried to fix herself up, though it was so obvious that she was out of it. But we all got up and hugged her, and then we started crying. She walked down the hall with all of us attached to her.
“Where is your brother? Is he okay?” she asked, breaking away from our group hug.
“They won’t tell us anything. They were waiting on you,” Alanna said.
My mother went up to one of the nurses coming out of Bilal’s room. “Hello, ma’am, I am Bilal Thomas’s mother. What’s wrong with him?”
The nurse looked at us. Then she walked my mother into the room. The nurse came out and then brought a group of doctors back with her. Bubbles asked the group of doctors, “What’s wrong with my brother?”
One of the doctors stopped, kneeled down, and said, “Your brother’s going to be okay. We’re just checking him out, making sure he is one hundred percent before he leaves.” He touched Bubbles on her cheek, smiled at us and walked away.
My mother came out of the room and told us that he had smoke inhalation and they had to monitor him because his asthma could be affected, but he was not going to die. I went and walked to the bathroom. I felt a little better knowing Bilal was going to be okay. When I came back