Jade took my hand and pressed it against her breast. “Is my heart still going?” she asked in a whisper.

“It’s incredible,” Ann said. “All we have to do is get out of here and we can’t.…” She made a short laugh.

“Where’s Keith?” I cried.

“He’s upstairs!” Jade said.

We were on the floor; the room was more than half smoke, much more. I could barely see the staircase, and as I ran toward it my only hope was that by the second floor I’d find more clear space. A thousand other things must have been racing through my mind but the only one I remember was the hope that someone—Jade—would grab my leg and stop me from going up for Keith.

I took the stairs two at a time and the smoke filled the air with deeper and more absolute authority. I felt the intensity of the heat but saw no flames—they were inside the walls and burning in toward us. Inasmuch as I could open my mouth, I called Keith’s name. On my hands and knees, I felt the heat coming up through the floor, so tangible that I thought it might actually lift me. Coughing, nauseated, I spit onto the floor. I was on the second story of the house now. Down at one end of the hall was the room where Jade and I had been sleeping for the past six months. At the other end was Ann and Hugh’s room, vast, cluttered, and open to all. In the center of the corridor, on the left, was the bathroom, and on the other side was Sammy’s small room. The door to Sammy’s room was closed and as I looked at it, it burst into flame.

The stairway to the top floor was just past Sammy’s room, and through the layers of smoke, which were dyed by the color of the flames like fog tinted by headlights, I saw what looked like a moving figure. I called Keith’s name. I didn’t know if my voice could be heard; I could not hear it over the pounding of my blood and the sound of the fire. I crawled down the hall and tried not to think about dying—my thoughts were not brave but neither did I turn and run.