Sawyer hovers nearby. Rowan, Trey, and I all sit together in birth order, thinking about all the things we’ll never see again, and every once in a while stating the obvious: “Everything is gone.” But it’s not everything. It’s weird. I have my boyfriend, my siblings, my parents. I’ll miss the pillow I pretended was Sawyer. My favorite pajama shirt. My hairbrush and clothes and makeup. But I realize there isn’t much else up there that’s all mine. Certainly there was no space up there that was all mine. These people—this is what’s mine.

I look around, realizing Tony has gone home. “How did it start?” I ask Rowan after a while.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“But you were in the kitchen, right?”

“Yeah. But it didn’t start there, or we might’ve been able to put it out. Tony and I grabbed fire extinguishers as soon as we heard the smoke alarms, but it was already too late and we had to get out of there.”

Weird. I heard my parents warning us about fire hazards in the galley so often that I figured restaurant fires must always start in the kitchen. “I guess they’ll investigate.”

Rowan shrugs. Nothing is important right now. I look at Trey and he looks at me, and I don’t know what to say or do. Nothing is adequate to express how I am feeling. As we turn our eyes back to the smoldering remains of our lives, I hold his arm and rest my head on his shoulder, and we speak at the same time.

He says, “Happy birthday.”

And I say, “Did you make out?”

And we look at each other again, absolutely beside ourselves with the strangeness of this all.

“Thanks,” I answer. “Best one yet.”

“No,” he says. “But he touched my face and kissed me.”

And that’s the thing that makes me start to cry.

Eight

In the morning, Sawyer reluctantly leaves to get ready for school. Neighbors and people from my parents’ church come with clothes and food, and we don’t know what to do with it all. We put it in the meatball truck and try to figure out where to go from here. There have been offers, but no one is able to put all five of us up together for more than a few nights. I guess hoarders don’t tend to have a lot of friends.

Is it wrong that I’m okay with that?

Is it wrong that I don’t want to go live in some other person’s house?

Now that the fire has been mostly out for hours, the lack of flames helps Dad focus. “We’ll go to Vito and Mary’s,” he says. My uncle Vito and aunt Mary, our hostess, have four kids. The oldest, my cousin Nick, occasionally works—worked—for the restaurant on the pizza holidays. Night before Thanksgiving, New Year’s, Super Bowl, prom. Days like those. Nick has three sisters. It’s hard to keep track of how old they are, or even which one is which—they’re a lot younger and they all look sort of the same. And I’m sorry, but there’s not enough room in their house.

“I’ll stay with a friend,” Trey offers.

“Me too,” I say. Yeah, right. I have none.

Rowan frowns. “I’ll go with Jules.”

“We’re all staying with Mary,” Dad says, and it’s clear that now is not the time to argue. “At least for now.”

• • •

When it’s finally clear to my dad that the firefighters aren’t going to let him poke around in the still-burning embers, we pack up the meatball truck and the delivery car and drive away with everything we own. We park in the elementary school parking lot across the street from Aunt Mary’s house. We drag our bags of random donations inside and crash in Aunt Mary’s living room while her kids are in school.

• • •

When I wake up, it’s two in the afternoon. I have a crick in my neck and for a minute I can’t figure out where I am. But then I hear my mom and dad talking about insurance and it all comes back to me.

Five things that rush through your brain when you wake up midday in a strange place after your house burns down:

1. It feels like somebody died.

2. I wonder what the losers at school are saying about this.

3. I guess that’s one way to get rid of all Dad’s shit.

4. My hair absolutely reeks.

5. Oh yeah, it’s my birthday.

Wait. One more thought:

6. Um, why didn’t anyone have a vision to help prevent this?

From the reclining chair I’ve been sleeping in, I watch my parents talking at the kitchen table. My dad looks like he got hit by a truck. His hair is all messed up and his face is gray leather. I don’t think he slept much. Mom looks tired, but not as bad as my dad. She’s always been stronger than him. I get up and venture over to them.

Mom looks up and sees me. She smiles and points to a chair. “Did you sleep okay, birthday girl?”

My lips try to smile, but for some stupid reason I’m overcome by the fact that in the midst of this mess, my mother remembers it’s my birthday, so I do this weird screwed-up face instead. “Not bad, considering it’s a lumpy chair. I just want a shower.”

“You’ve got about an hour before your cousins get home,” she says. “Aunt Mary has everything you’ll need in the bathroom.”

I get up, and she grabs my hand. I stop.

“We had gifts for you,” she says through pinched lips.

I swallow hard and feel dumb that I’m so emotional about this. The whole house and restaurant is gone, and I feel sorry for myself because my birthday presents burned up. “I don’t need anything,” I say. “I wasn’t even going to mention it.”