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Mr Cooper is at the point of yelling where his neck vein pops out. “What on earth,” he roars, “were you thinking?”
May has to admit: despite the fact that her phone is currently up in flames, there is something delightful about how Leila looks right now – absolutely terrified, with half her hair singed off. Maybe it’s bitchy to think, but May reckons she has a lot worse to think about Leila Creedy before it outweighs all the shit she pulled with her in tenth grade. In fact, she’s kinda annoyed she didn’t have the sense to bring her phone out with her, if only to capture the look on Leila’s face.
“Those Bunsen burners are not toys!” Mr Cooper is still yelling. His face has gone all splotchy and pink. “There’s a reason we sit you through weeks of fire safety in the sixth grade, and it’s not because we have so much fun teaching it!”
“I’m sorry, Mr Cooper,” Leila whimpers.
“Say sorry to everyone’s lab books going up in flames right now! Say sorry to your classmates whose bags are currently burning to a crisp while we speak!” And yeah, okay, that part’s not so fun. May thinks mournfully about her brand new Fjallraven Kanken she’d begged her mom for. It was blush pink. “You’re just lucky no one got seriously hurt!”
“I banged my elbow, sir,” one kid says.
“If you can’t see the bone, I don’t care,” Mr Cooper says. In the distance, there’s a siren, and he exhales, the vein in his neck disappearing. May silently bids it goodbye. “Okay, that must be the fire brigade. Everyone, get back so they can get through. Come on, back, back.”
He and the other Science teachers hurriedly shepherd everyone out the way, lining them up against the sports hall as the science classrooms merrily burn away in front of them. May ends up by Georgina, who shoots her a small tentative smile and says, “Crazy day, huh?” May doesn’t think she and Georgina will ever go back to being the kind of best friends who sleep at each other’s houses and braid each other’s hair, but they’ve definitely come a long way. “At least we don’t have to do next week’s lab assignment.”
“Thank fuck,” May says, and they both laugh.
The siren grows louder, and a flash of red appears around the corner as the fire truck pulls in. May’s been so swept up in the chaos of the day, and mourning the loss of her pretty pink backpack, that it had completely slipped her mind that the fire brigade had been called. She crosses her fingers silently behind her back, but alas, her luck can never be that good.
The fire truck proudly boasts 118.
“Shit,” May sighs.
Georgina glances at her. “What?”
“My stepdad.”
The truck rolls to a stop, and half a dozen firefighters leap out. May spots Bobby almost immediately – there’s something naturally authoritative about him, the way he holds himself, how all the other fighters naturally defer to him. He’s turned away from her so he doesn’t spot her, but she watches as he delegates his crew, half coming over to the huddle of students with light scrapes and bruises from clambering out the classroom, and the other moving back to the fire truck for the hose.
Still, it’s not like he’s stupid – he knows that this is her school, and also that she has science today, considering he was the one who helped her with her dumb lab report last night after dinner. After all his fighters have dispersed, he turns, and picks her out almost instantly.
“Well, hey there, May,” he says, as he approaches. “I didn’t think I was gonna see you until dinner.”
May rolls her eyes. “Hi, Bobby,” she says, but she accepts his hug when he reaches for her. His big red jacket smells of gasoline and plastic and her mom’s perfume, which, ick. “Sorry about this.”
“Part of the job,” he says, when he pulls back. “You’re all okay? We have Hen and Chim doing preliminaries right now.”
“I’m fine. Not a scratch.”
“I banged my elbow,” the kid says again, who has somehow ended up next to her. May takes a glance down at his elbow, which is barely even bruised.
She looks up and meets Bobby’s eye, who raises his eyebrows at her. “Well, we can sort that out next,” he says genially to the kid.
Mr Cooper comes over at this point, heavy-footed and stomach-first, as he always does. He looks strangely meek next to Bobby, probably due to the height difference and also the difference in reasons as to why their shoulders are so wide, which he seems to realise at the same time as May does. He sticks out his chin, setting his shoulders back, as he pauses next to Bobby, hands tucked into his belt like he’s a cop from an eighties movie. “Hi, chief,” he says. “I’m Dave Cooper. I called 911.”
May and Georgina share an eye-roll at the peacocking as he and Bobby shake hands.
“Nice to meet you, Dave,” Bobby says.
Mr Cooper gestures towards the building behind them in a show of almost indifference. “Sorry about all this,” he says. It’s so different to the high-strung man who was shrieking at them only moments before May has to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing out loud. “Just kids being dumb, is all. We didn’t mean to pull you from your busy schedules.”
Bobby raises his eyebrows. “Well, it’s in our job description to fight fires, and you have a fire. You’re not pulling us away from our schedule as you are making it.”
Mr Cooper goes pink again. “Right. Sorry.”
“Sir, my elbow,” the kid whines again, but by this time one of the paramedics, Chimney, May remembers, has arrived, holding a first-aid kit in one hand and Leila’s shoulder in the other. Leila is still sniffling, tears carving tracks in her foundation down her cheeks, her mascara smudged. Her hair looks even worse, somehow – one side has had all but a couple inches burned off, the rest sticking out like she’s been electrocuted.
It’s definitely bitchy for this to make May sort of irrationally pleased, but she doesn’t care. Bitch had it coming.
“Captain, this is Leila Creedy,” Chimney says. Leila sniffs again, as if to punctuate. “She says she’s the one who started the fire.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Leila blubs immediately. “I just thought it would be funny!”
“Leila Creedy?” Bobby repeats. At first May just thinks he’s double-checking, but then his eyes flit over to her, and it hits her: he knows. About last year, about the suicide attempt. The memory makes her ears burn and something like acid roil in her stomach, but when Bobby raises an eyebrow in a silent question, she shakes her head.
Yes, it’s her. No, don’t do anything stupid.
She has to, because if he’s anything like her mom, he absolutely would.
Mr Cooper does not look impressed. “Maybe it’s just the generational difference, but I don’t see what’s funny about blowing hairspray into a Bunsen burner.”
“I’m sorry!” Leila wails. “It was—it was just a prank!”
“A prank?” Chimney says.
Leila sniffs. “I just… I just wanted to scare Farah. I didn’t think it would go so far, or repel backwards onto me!”
“Farah? Is this a classmate?” Bobby asks this to May, who nods. “Is she okay?”
“Unharmed, captain,” Chimney says. To Leila, he adds critically, “No thanks to you. You’re lucky that she dropped her pen at the same time and bent down for it – you could have given her third degree burns.”
“I’m sorry!” Leila sobs.
Bobby sighs. “Well, don’t worry,” he says. “No one’s seriously hurt, and it looks like the universe has punished you enough.” He gestures towards her hair, and Leila’s wet eyes go wide. She brings her hand up to it, and when she feels the short spikes coming off one side of her head she starts hyperventilating.
“My hair!” she shrieks.
May bites her lip to hide her smile, because Leila may have driven her to suicide but she doesn’t doubt that she’d be in a world of trouble if someone saw her laugh, but luckily before anyone can notice two other firefighters jog up to them – Eddie and Buck, May thinks, but it’s hard to tell in the helmets. Then they both pull off the helmets, and yeah, definitely Eddie and Buck.
Behind her, the sea of students falls silent. Leila’s eyes grow huge, her mouth wordlessly forming words as she loses the ability to speak.
Bobby is oblivious. “What’s the damage?”
“Not much, cap,” says Buck. He has a smear of soot across his forehead, which if anything makes his blue eyes even bluer. May has long since gotten over her dumb girly crush on him, and of course she now has Darius, but she can’t deny how good-looking he is. Next to him, Eddie rests his helmet against his hip, pushing the hair off his forehead, and someone actually sighs.
“He’s so hot,” May hears her whisper to a friend.
If only you knew, May thinks amusedly.
She tunes back in to realise that she’s missed most of what he said, and subsequently also the fate of her nice schoolbag, but before she can inquire further Bobby turns and claps her on the shoulder. “Buck, Eddie, you both stay here and make sure that no one goes into the building. Chim, you too – make sure everyone here is okay. Hen and I will do a check of all the teachers. May, will you be okay?”
May rolls her eyes. “Yes, Bobby, I’ll be fine.”
“Just making sure, kiddo,” he says, and chucks her gently on the shoulder. “All right, Hen, let’s go.”
With that, he and Hen – who May only notices to have come up behind him now – turn on their heels towards the huddle of the teachers by the doors of the sports hall, some of whom are sat on the ground coughing. May turns to Georgina, ready to pick up conversation, but Georgina’s eyes are resolutely set on Eddie and Buck, wide as saucers.
Chimney either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Leila’s practically gone into a state of hot-induced paralysis, because he squats down in front of her. “Can you look this way, Leila?” he says. “I need to check you for smoke damage.”
Leila jerks to attention. “Yes, sorry,” she says, and does as he says, but one hand comes up to self-consciously smooth her burnt hair down.
For the first time, Buck and Eddie seem to realise they have an audience, but adorably Buck completely misses the point. “Oh, hey, May Grant!” he says. He always refers to her as that, May Grant, full name, and it privately makes her feel a little special. He comes up to her, pulls her into a side-hug. Rolling her eyes, she lets him. “I didn’t know this was your school.”
“I just missed Bobby so much,” she says dryly, and Buck throws back his head and laughs.
Eddie’s eyes are warm on hers when he comes up to her. He doesn’t hug her like Buck – of the two, he’s a little more reserved, even though he’s the one with a kid – but his voice is kind when he says, “How are you doing?”
“Okay,” she says. “Happy next week’s lab report is burning up.”
Chimney snorts a laugh from where he’s still checking Leila’s eyes. He clicks the torch off and turns to speak to them, and behind him May notices Leila taking the chance to openly gawk at Eddie and Buck. “Amen on that. Hated lab reports, man. They sucked.”
“Isn’t your job, like, all science?” Buck asks.
“Fun science,” Chimney corrects. “Physics, Chemistry – hated all of that.” He pulls himself to his feet, pats Leila on the shoulder. “Aside from your hair, you’re all good. No smoke damage here.”
Leila’s face looks like she’d rather have smoke damage than her hair like this.
“Do we even know what happened?” she hears Eddie ask to Chimney as the three of them move away to another huddle of kids. “Was it a Bunsen burner or something?”
“It’s so hot hearing you talk all Science-y,” Buck cooes to him, squeezing his shoulder, and Eddie laughs, swatting his hand away. Still, with his other, he briefly touches Buck’s back, just in time for May to hear him say, “You might want to check that you didn’t get smoke damage if you think Bunsen burners is talking science-y,” before they’re out of earshot.
May rolls her eyes at them fondly, and then turns back around – only to find everyone staring at her. She suddenly feels a little self-conscious. “What?” she says.
“How do you know them?” Leila demands.
May frowns. “They’re Bobby’s coworkers. I see them around all the time.”
“They’re so hot,” Georgina sighs dreamily.
Like an odd form of call-and-response, the sea of students around them ripple with similar sentiments, all the girls not-so-discreetly peering over each other’s heads to try and catch another glimpse of them. Even the kid with the banged-up elbow says conspiratorially to May, “You know, I totally would too.”
“You’re so weird,” May says.
He shrugs. “Listen, my elbow’s hurt, not my eyes.”
“Your elbow’s not even that hurt,” she begins, but before she can add anything more someone takes her arm, and she turns to see two girls who sit behind her in class.
“You know them, right?" one of them demands. When May nods, she says, "What are their names?”
The other adds, “How old are they?”
“My parents are ten years apart,” someone says, “that’s the oldest I’ll go,” and everyone nods in assent like this is a sensible conclusion.
“Okay, gross,” May says, “and that doesn’t count when we’re teenagers. Eighteen and twenty-eight are, like, totally different.”
“So he’s twenty-eight?” the first girl prods.
May extricates her arm from her grip. “Jeez, I don’t know! He’s just my stepdad’s coworker, I don’t know his social security number.”
“What’s his full name?” says someone else, and May glances over to see that they’ve pulled out Instagram. “I wanna see if I can find him.”
“Which one?”
The girl stares at her like she’s dumb. “Uh, either?”
May cannot believe this is her life. Trust high school girls to be more concerned with hot firemen than they are their school nearly burning down. She supposes it can’t hurt. “Uh, Eddie Diaz and Evan Buck. Buckley, I mean.”
“Eddie Diaz,” someone swoons. “That’s so, like, exotic.”
“I found it!” a girl crows, and everyone huddles around her phone. Even though May is very much over this whole thing, she can’t help the seed of curiosity. She used to obsessively check Buck’s Instagram when she was younger, though now she doesn’t think she even follows him, and she didn’t even know Eddie had Instagram. Sue her for being curious, okay? Looking doesn’t hurt anyone.
The girl has pulled up Eddie’s Instagram, which is unsurprisingly mostly just filled with pictures of his kid Christopher. Even though some of the girls grumble about the lack of shirtless selfies – “he’s a fireman, it’s not objectifying if I’m appreciating his strength to rescue!” – May feels herself smile at all the photos: in every single one of them Christopher beams gap-toothed at the camera, eyes squinted shut, crutches splayed out triumphantly, at the beach, the cinema, the park, the playground. Buck, also unsurprisingly, is in most of them, too, usually with an arm around Christopher, but sometimes by himself, or with other members of the 118 fire station. In fact, pretty much all of Eddie’s Instagram are photos of either Christopher or Buck, or both.
“Oh,” one girl says, unappreciatively, “he has a kid?”
“He has a kid,” another breathes dreamily. “That’s, like, so cute.”
“Is he married?” someone asks May. “I didn’t see a wedding ring.”
“It’s psychotic that you looked,” May says, and to her credit the girl nods in agreement. “Also, no, he’s not. But you know he’s not single, right?”
A dozen eyes turn to her.
“What?” a girl demands.
“Seriously?” another bemoans.
May wants to ask if they seriously thought they actually had a shot, but has the sense to keep her mouth shut. Something like that is akin to chum in shark-infested waters. “Yeah, they’re together.”
“Who?” Georgina says.
“I bet she’s a model,” May hears someone say. “It’s always models.”
“No, with each other,” May says. When everyone still looks confused, she elaborates, “Eddie and Buck – they’re dating.”
There is a very long silence.
“Oh my God!” And that’s the first girl, who still has Eddie’s Instagram up. Her eyes are wide. “That’s, like, so cute.”
May realises that this probably didn’t help the cause.
“I love when boys are together,” someone says. “It’s so romantic.”
“That’s kinda homophobic, Tami,” someone else says.
“Homophobic? I just said I love them!”
“Okay, but are they, like, bi?” a girl prods May. “Like, is there still attraction to women?”
“Oh, drop it, Megan,” one of her friends snaps. “You’re short and seventeen, you have no chance.”
“Guys, look!” the first girl crows, and flashes her phone screen to show a picture, this time from Buck’s Instagram, which is probably more in line with what they were wanting from a hot fireman (okay, so it’s been a few years, but May also hasn’t forgotten those gym mirror selfies). But this photo is a simple selfie of Buck, Eddie and Christopher on a couch together, Christopher in Eddie’s lap, Eddie’s arm around Buck’s shoulder, their cheeks pressed together. The caption simply reads, thankful for family.
“Oh my God,” someone coos. “That’s so adorable.”
Before anyone can say anything, Mr Cooper returns. Everyone hurriedly shoves their phones into their pockets before he can spot them. “All right, thanks for waiting, guys,” he says. “We should be able to go back inside in a few minutes.”
“Is the fire out?” someone asks.
“Yes, thanks to the hard work of our brave firefighters,” Mr Cooper says. If May didn’t know better she’d think he had a hard-on for Buck and Eddie too. “Can we all say thank you to them?”
“Thank you,” everyone choruses dully, and the firemen nod in appreciation. Someone shouts, “YOU’RE HOT!”
“Okay, none of that,” Mr Cooper says hurriedly. May bites down on her smile. “Come on, everyone, let’s stand back to let them through again.”
They all obediently crowd back up against the wall, as the firemen all climb back into the truck and the engine revs to life. As the truck slowly glides past them, May catches a glimpse into the front seat, which Buck is leaning between, chatting to Bobby and Hen. One of the girls must spot him too, because she cups her hands around her mouth and yells, “MR BUCKLEY!”
Buck looks up, startled.
“YOU AND MR DIAZ ARE REALLY CUTE TOGETHER!”
Hen bursts out laughing. Buck’s face is confused for a moment, before an almost shy grin pulls at his lips, and waves his hand at them in a bow, mouthing thank you. Then he meets May’s eye, and winks.
“Oh my God,” May hisses. She doesn’t think she’s ever been this humiliated before in her life. “Why did you do that?”
The girl beams proudly. “Just because.”
“I think I might actually be gay,” elbow kid says.
“Okay, everyone,” Mr Cooper says. “Please stop heckling the poor firefighters, and go back inside.”
He begins to shepherd everyone in the direction of the sports hall, though everyone is so alive with chatter barely anyone pays him any mind. Georgina hooks her arm through May’s as they move, and even though May’s ears are still red-hot, she can’t help the bubble of laughter inside her. “Well,” Georgina says, smiling. “That was certainly better than lab.”
May barks out a laugh. “You’re telling me.”
“I guess you can say we saw sparks fly in more ways than one,” Georgina muses, and May elbows her even as they both burst out laughing.