Her cousin gave her a limp smile in return.
* * *
Later that evening, Pinky hopped out of the shower and got into her pajamas. The Kumars, Yeungs (or one Yeung), and Montclairs had played charades and then moved on to the Boggle tournament. It amused her greatly to see her family loosen up and make fools of themselves. Especially her mom. Meera Mausi had made sangria, and her mom had drunk two glasses, which was two glasses more than she usually drank, and then she’d announced to everybody that she might just quit her job and take up painting houses as a career. Everyone had laughed, and her mom had said seriously, “I’d get to be outside during the day. It would be freeing.”
And the weird thing was, she’d looked at Pinky when she said it. But then the moment was gone because Pinky’s dad had made the word “luminosity” and won the game and everyone had begun yelling and cheering and Dolly had ceremoniously awarded him the trophy.
Pinky walked across her room to the window, wet hair dripping down her back, wondering what her mom’s whole career crisis had been about. She didn’t really want to paint houses. Pinky knew that. Veena Kumar lived, breathed, and ate corporate law. If they ever opened her mom up for surgery, they’d find contracts stamped on her internal organs.
Pinky grabbed the cord to lower the window shade when something way out in the yard caught her eye. Frowning, she opened her window and leaned out into the cool night air. Her bedroom faced the lake, mostly, and just a bit of the yard. To really see it, she had to twist her torso at a pretty painful angle. Was that… fire? Some kind of orange light?
“Hello?” she called out the window, her voice carrying in the stillness. “Is anyone down there?”
But no one answered. Weird. They probably just couldn’t hear her, and anyway, maybe it was just the adults down there with flashlights or something. They liked to go talk in the backyard sometimes, though usually not at… Pinky glanced at the alarm clock on her nightstand. Almost midnight. She considered going down into the yard, but decided against it. It had been kind of a long day, and she was ready for her book.
She crawled under her covers and was grabbing her Kindle when her phone beeped. Grabbing it off her nightstand, she read the incoming text.
Ashish: Dude, I just heard from Samir
Pinky: What’s up what’d he say
Ashish: You know that DC internship he was so excited about?
Pinky: Yeah you mean his reason for freedom
Ashish: Exactly. It got canceled
Pinky frowned. What do you mean canceled? They can’t just cancel an internship at the last minute
Ashish: Well they did so now he has to go back home. He was already in DC when they told him
Pinky: Seriously? I thought he was like 1% of the applicants picked?? Why can’t he find a different position at the same place?
Ashish: Idk man but it’s rough he’s pretty bummed
Pinky: Yeah I can imagine
Ashish: I invited him to HI but he didn’t wanna come. Any chance you could invite him there? Maybe he could be like a buffer between you and your mom
Pinky snorted. What makes you think he’ll come to my lake house if he didn’t want to go with you to HI? Pretty sure Samir would rather live with the bears in SF Zoo than come hang with me for the summer
Ashish: Yeah you’re probably right idk… just feel bad for him I guess
Pinky: Hey how’s Sweetie
Ashish: :) Good. Hey what do you think about bacon roses as a romantic present
Pinky: Sophisticated meat treat
Ashish: Right? That’s what I thought. Sweetie’s gonna love them. Man I can’t wait to see her again to take her in my arms and hold her close
Pinky: Okay that’s gross bye
Ashish: Lol bye
Fools in love. Shaking her head, Pinky set her phone on her nightstand again and turned back to the thriller she was reading. But way before she’d figured out who the killer was, she was asleep.
* * *
“Pinky.”
“Pinky, wake up.”
She groaned and tried to roll over, but the person had her shoulder in a vise grip. Pinky opened her eyes and squinted as her mom’s worried face came into focus.
“What?” Pinky croaked. The room was almost completely dark, with just a tinge of orange light coming in from outside. “What is it?”
“We have to get outside. Now.”
The urgency on her mom’s face had her following orders without even realizing she was doing it. “Why?” she asked, stumbling after her mom to the door. “What’s going on?”
In the hallway, Dolly, Abe, Meera Mausi, and her dad, all dressed in pajamas and slippers, were talking in urgent, loud voices. The clock on the wall said it was four a.m.
“Let’s go!” her dad said, shepherding them all toward the stairs. “We need to get outside, to the bottom of the driveway.” He grabbed her around the shoulders and firmly guided her.
“What’s going on?” Pinky asked again, her heart racing. “What happened?”
“There’s a fire,” her mom said, pulling the front door open. The cool night air rushed in and wrapped them all in its arms. “In the backyard.”
“The backyard? What kind of fire? Where’d it come from?”
“We don’t know, but the fire trucks will be here any moment.”
Pinky followed her family to the bottom of the large driveway and turned around, her breath catching in her throat. The huge old barn was ablaze. It looked like a giant torch in the night, spitting embers into the sky. Even at this distance, she could feel a faint heat. Pinky clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God!” In the distance, she heard sirens.
She glanced at Dolly, sandwiched between her parents, looking just as stricken as Pinky felt. They’d played in there every summer when they were little. It was their “reading fort” for a while. Pinky’s dad put an arm around her and pulled her close. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I know it’s hard to watch.”
Her mom stood on his other side, holding his free hand. She gazed at the flames, her face glowing orange.
“Mom?” Pinky said, leaning around her dad. “How do you think this happened?”
Maybe it was silly that she, a seventeen-year-old rising senior in high school, expected her mom to know that. But that’s just how it had always been—in scary situations, Pinky went to her father for comfort and her mother for knowledge.
Her mom glanced at her, a slight crease between her eyebrows. “I don’t know,” she said slowly, just as two fire trucks came screaming around the corner, their sirens blaring, red lights bathing everything in their strobe. “But I think we’ll have some answers soon.”
CHAPTER 3 Pinky
“You’re lucky you noticed the fire when you did, Ms. Kumar,” the cute fireman said, shaking his head. “Windy night like this, if you’d waited even ten minutes to call, the fire would probably have engulfed your entire yard; possibly even your house and your neighbors’ properties.”
The firefighters had finished putting out the fire in the barn, and except for Mr. Cutie, they were all packing up. Pinky’s and Dolly’s families had gotten shoes on and were standing in the backyard now, looking at the smoking wreckage and smelling the crispy smell of burned wood.