Things We Set on Fire

by Deborah Reed

A week after arriving, when she was at the base of Mount Hood, she’d slipped into the phone booth, barely able to contain her excitement. She knew what she needed to say to him. But as soon as he heard it was Elin on the line, she lost her voice, not because of what he said, but because of his silence, the wall of disdain so impenetrable, he could not absorb what she needed him to take in, which was that leaving had been such a simple, small thing, like stopping the car on the side of a road to take in a farmhouse, to study a tree on the side of a hill. Leaving had allowed her to think about the people who lived other lives in other towns, and to find her own life, because it did not exist in Florida, she did not exist in Florida, but she did now, in the west, come alive like an animal, roused and catalyzed through the wilderness. “Come west,” she was going to say. A line for a laugh, standing in the snow she was going to make him laugh. Come west, young man. She’d come down a mountain to tell him this, and to tell him that she loved him. I’ve come down a mountain and it’s snowing and I love you. But she said none of those things because he could not hear them. She did not know her sister had gotten to him first. She said, “I hope you’re all right.” “I’m seeing someone,” he said. Her chest barely had time to take the sting. “That was fast.” “Not as fast as you packing up and leaving. What’d it take, Elin? Two hours? Less? An hour to throw your clothes and books and albums ...