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  He stood at the top of the Janss Steps, his back to Royce Hall, and gazed south and west, toward the coast. Thin columns of smoke dotted the landscape like black geysers.

  Somewhere in the corner of his mind, somewhere he couldn’t quite access fully, he was sure he’d seen something like this before. He’d been here before, the sky dark and ominous, carrying destruction on its breeze.

  He shook it off when a familiar voice interrupted his thoughts. It was his roommate Michael Turner. The six-foot-tall, socially awkward only child with thinning, curly red hair was rubbing his paunch with his palm. It was a nervous habit.

  “That doesn’t look good,” he said. “Are those fires?”

  Barker shrugged and leaned into the first step, descending one at a time with short strides. He tucked his thumbs inside his backpack straps. “Looks like it,” he said, forgoing the thirty sarcastic things he might have normally said. “That’s a lot of them.”

  Michael kept pace with Barker as they pounded down the eighty-seven steps that once marked the entrance to UCLA. They reached the bottom of the stairs, skipping the sixth one to avoid bad luck, and headed back to the Hill.

  “I heard there’s a bunch of forest fires,” said Michael. “My TA was talking about them in discussion. He said they popped up overnight. They’re already out of control.”

  Barker nodded. “I saw some video on Twitter. There are two or three of them that are merging. I didn’t see anything about fires in the city.”

  “We haven’t had rain in, like, what? Two months? Three?”

  “I don’t remember having rain all summer,” said Barker.

  Wilson Plaza was no longer the familiar green plots of grass to which Bruins had become accustomed. There were thin ropes, like the kinds that guided the tourists at amusement parks, blocking access to the yellow, dead lawn, and signs warning passersby to stay off the remnant grass.

  They passed the plaza and headed to Bruin Walk and the path back to their dorm.

  “I can smell it,” Michael said.

  Barker knew what Michael meant, but often pretended he didn’t just to make his roommate explain himself. Michael, who was undiagnosed but somewhere on the spectrum, was oblivious.

  “The fires,” Michael said. He wiggled his fingers in front of his wrinkled nose. “I can smell the smoke and whatever’s burning. It’s…pungent.”

  Barker unconsciously inhaled more deeply than normal. The odor was stronger than it had been atop the steps a few minutes earlier. The haze was darker too.

  There’d been fires before. This was California. The environmental cycle was as sure as death, taxes, and some USC douchebag causing trouble at a party off campus. The drought dehydrated everything to the point of tinder, and the fires started. They burned for days or weeks, until his news app told him they were one hundred percent contained. Then it rained, and with nothing to stop it, the water flooded the hillsides enough to loosen the dirt into mudslides.

  This was different though. He’d never smelled the smoke. He checked his phone and saw a string of alerts he’d missed. They weren’t encouraging. He read them aloud to Michael. “Angeles National Forest ablaze,” he reported. “It joins four other aggressive wildfires across southern California. Two are closing in on west Los Angeles.”

  “That’s us.”

  “Yeah,” Barker said in a tone that suggested Michael was stating the obvious. “And there’s a nail salon on fire. Firefighters are trying to stop it from spreading. Power is affected. Forty-five thousand customers are in the dark.”

  He noticed others wiping the sting from their nostrils as they passed him in the opposite direction. Some had their eyes squinted toward the sky. It was remarkably quiet for a Friday afternoon. There was no music outside of Ackerman, and nobody was playing soccer on the intramural fields.

  Michael thumbed the screen on his phone. “Service is slow,” he said. “I’ve got one bar. Nothing is loading on the browser. I can’t even open the Bruin Alert app.”

  Barker closed the news alert and pressed the screen on his phone. “Siri, open Bruin Alert.”

  “Okay, King of the World, opening Bruin Alert.”

  Michael chuckled. “King of the World?”

  “It’s a joke,” Barker said flatly, sarcasm escaping him for the second time. It wasn’t like him.

  “I figured. Why would you—”

  “I’m unable to open Bruin Alert,” Siri reported. “Please connect to a network for service.”

  Barker stopped walking to stare at his screen. A coed behind him bumped into his pack.

  “Seriously, dude?” she sneered and shouldered her way past him.

  “He’s the King of the World,” Michael called out as the woman passed.

  She shot both a glare over her shoulder and kept walking. Michael noticed the Greek letters tattooed on the small of her back above the top of her yoga pants.

  “Classy,” he muttered.

  “I don’t have service at all now,” said Barker. “All I can see are the alerts I read to you, and they’re thirty minutes old. Now the phone is just cycling, searching for a signal.”

  Michael raised a finger. “Hang on.” He tapped his screen several times, swiped, and then held it up to Barker.

  Barker stared at it in confusion, not following. “What?” he said, sounding irritated.

  Michael wiggled the phone. “Wi-Fi. Log into campus Wi-Fi. It’s working.”

  Barker tapped through the screens to adjust his settings and tapped on the Wi-Fi. He didn’t thank Michael for the suggestion.

  “Why are you in a bad mood?” asked Michael. “You seem like you’re in a bad mood. Am I reading that right?”

  Barker lifted his eyes from his phone and exhaled. He saw the genuine concern in his friend’s face and shrugged. “Yeah. You know that girl I was talking to?”

  “Becca?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think she’s into me.”

  Michael tilted his head to one side. “Why?”

  “Long story,” Barker said.

  He didn’t want to talk about Becca, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  “We have time,” said Michael. “We could go to B Plate, grab some food, and you can tell me about it…her.”

  Barker was hungry. “Okay. I’m good with that.”

  ***

  Michael dipped his French fry into a cup of ranch dressing. He always ate the same thing. A cheese quesadilla, French fries with ranch dip, and a Caesar salad.

  “Go ahead,” he said, swirling another fry in the dip before shoveling it into his mouth. “Tell me more.”

  “Like I said, I took her to Diddy Riese.”

  “Your favorite place.”

  Barker nodded. “Yeah. I’m in line, and I let her go ahead of me and order first.”

  “Like Dub suggested.”

  “Yeah,” said Barker, running his fingers through his hair and patting the thinning crown on the top of his head.

  Dub, their third roommate, was the expert with women. Well, by comparison. Michael couldn’t get within five feet of a woman without melting into goo. Barker was convinced Michael had never carried on a conversation with a woman that didn’t involve engineering, math, or ordering ranch dressing.

  By contrast, Barker had no trouble talking to women. His issue was what he said when he talked. The middle of three children, Barker had learned that sarcasm and hyperbole were the best way to get attention. He’d never learned women didn’t always like one, the other, or both, when getting to know someone. Worse still, he behaved like the runt of the litter at the dinner bowl. He lacked social graces, despite being a proper Southerner from North Carolina, and took care of his needs without thinking about others.

  Dub had a successful relationship with a woman and he was dating out of his league. Keri Monk was a catch by everyone’s standards. How Dub had managed to snow her into loving him was beyond anyone who saw them together. It didn’t hurt that he treated her like a queen and typically put her first. />
  Barker constantly teased Dub, telling him he was whipped and a slave to his woman. Dub blew it off, and instead of shooting back with condescension, he genuinely offered to help Barker learn how to talk to women in a way that led to more than a random hookup.

  His first tip was that he should always let the woman go first: walk through a door, take her seat, order her food. Among the many suggestions Dub had given during their time on campus, that first one had stuck.

  “So she orders her ice cream sandwich,” said Barker, “and—”

  Michael held up a fry. “What did she get?”

  “White chocolate and strawberry cheesecake chunk,” said Barker, “but that doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it matters,” said Michael. “Girls who don’t eat aren’t good for you. She eats. That’s good. Full-fat ice cream and two cookies? That’s really good.”

  Barker stared at his roommate without expression. He bit the inside of his cheek.

  Michael’s eyes widened with expectation. “Go ahead. She ordered her ice cream sandwich…”

  “She orders her sandwich, and I tell her I’m going to pay for it. She ignores me and moves to the register to pay. Before I can stop her, or even order my sandwich, she’s handing over a ten and telling the cashier to pay for mine too.”

  Michael stopped mid-chew and narrowed his eyes. “What’s the problem?”

  “She didn’t let me pay,” said Barker. “If she was into me, she’d have let me pay. She didn’t. She paid for herself.”

  Michael wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and placed his hands palms down on the table. He stared at his roommate for a minute.

  Barker shrugged defensively. “What?”

  “I’m mildly autistic,” said Michael. “I have trouble with social cues; I’m inept with girls. I’m barely functional in large groups. I’ve never been on a date, never hooked up.”

  “And? What’s your point, Michael?”

  “You’re more of a moron than I am.”

  Barker felt the heat in his face and clenched his jaw. He was baring his soul and Michael was making fun of him. He sat back against the chair and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Really,” Michael said. “You’re clueless. Even I know she likes you and I’ve never met her. She paid for your food. That’s better than letting you pay for hers. She. Paid. For. You. She wouldn’t do that for a guy she doesn’t like.”

  Barker’s muscles relaxed. “You think so?”

  “If you don’t believe me, ask Dub. Or ask Keri. She’ll tell you. From everything I’ve read online about dating—”

  Barker laughed. “Read online?”

  “The internet is a valuable tool,” said Michael. “You can learn about anything there.”

  “I know what the internet is, Mike.”

  “How would I know?” said Michael. “You’re a moron when it comes to girls.”

  “Women,” said Barker. “I’m a moron when it comes to women.”

  Michael took a sip of his water, and his phone chirped. Barker’s phone followed with a ding; then a cascade of chimes cascaded through the dining hall.

  Barker checked an alert in all capital letters on his screen:

  BRUIN ALERT. ALL CLASSES CANCELLED BECAUSE OF FIRE THREAT.

  CHAPTER 6

  Friday, October 17, 2025

  Angeles National Forest

  The pain shot through Sam McNeil’s leg from his ankle to his knee. He grabbed at it, squeezing his calf with clawing fingers. He pressed his teeth together, his temples flexed, and he squeezed his eyes shut. None of it helped lessen the bolts of electricity sparking from the top of his foot.

  “What can I do?” asked Loretta, her body trembling despite the ambient heat. “What can I do?”

  She was kneeling beside him on the edge of the trail. Behind them was a thick root that Sam hadn’t seen as they’d run from the fire. She coughed from the wisps of smoke filtering past them.

  Sam groaned. He was on his back, lying on the bed of leaves and dirt that composed the trail. He was drenched in sweat. The bottoms of his feet were burned, his knees bruised, his palms were scratched and bleeding. Sam couldn’t feel any of it. All his focus was on managing the sharp throb in his leg.

  He remembered the breathing exercises he and Loretta had learned during birthing classes. He’d tried for so long to forget those lessons, the deep gut ache that accompanied any memory of those five months, two days, three hours, and two minutes.

  This pain was more acute, more tangible, and it brought with it the need for any coping mechanism Sam could pull from his mind. He took a long, slow pull of air. He exhaled.

  He opened his eyes to the sting of sweat and saw the terror in Loretta’s eyes; she was focused on something behind him.

  Sam followed her stare to the approaching flames. They were towering, climbing the tree trunks, and swarming effortlessly to the branches. Foliage combusted and burned, curling into black remnants of leaves and needles.

  Loretta coughed again. “Can you move?”

  Sam rolled onto his side and tried pushing himself to his feet. His right leg screamed at him when he tried to put any weight on his foot. He balanced on his left and reached for his wife.

  She draped an arm over his shoulder, holding it there with as tight a grip as Sam imagined she could muster. She wrapped her other arm around his waist and drew him close to her body.

  Singed and barefoot, the two of them ambled away from the flames as fast as they could. They’d made it another three hundred yards along the trail, slowly descending, when the heat from the surrounding fire was too much.

  Sam signaled for Loretta to stop. He pulled away from her hold, steadying himself against a tree. He slid down against the trunk, the bark scratching his back. He sank to the thick cradle of roots at the ground, sighed, and motioned to his wife to come close.

  Sensing what her husband was about to suggest, Loretta trembled. Her chin quivered. Tears streaked down her face, leaving clean trails in the layer of soot that caked her objectively beautiful face.

  Sam spoke loudly, above the noise of the fire. White balls of spit webbed at the corners of his mouth as he told the love of his life to leave him there, to run for her life and escape the fire that would consume them both if she didn’t.

  She crouched beside him, her fingers grabbing thick wads of the thin waffled fabric at his chest. She shook her head. She coughed from the deep, uneven breaths she was fighting.

  “I can’t go,” he said. “I’m holding you back. Go without me.”

  Loretta refused. The fire inched closer.

  Sam wiped the sweat from his eyes with one hand and used the other to tightly grip Loretta’s bicep. The flames had jumped from the spent canopy of one tree to the fertile one of the next. Flaming limbs were falling; burning debris drifted and landed on the ground near them.

  He took his other hand and pushed her back from his body, locking his eyes with hers. She tried avoiding his stare, but he held it and spoke firmly.

  “Go get me help, then,” he said. “I can’t make it if you don’t try to get me help.”

  Loretta flinched. Sam knew part of her rational mind had to know he was manipulating her, but he could sense the emotional part took the bait.

  She nodded emphatically. Her eyes darted past him toward the path away from the flames.

  “Go now,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”

  Loretta wiped her nose with the back of her hand and leaned in to kiss him. He tasted the salt and the ash on her lips. He resisted the urge to pull her closer, hold her in his arms one last time, and tell her he loved her.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “I’ll hurry.”

  She got to her feet and scurried away from him, half running and half walking. She hesitated, perhaps reconsidering. Then she disappeared beyond a cluster of brush and evaporated in the smoky haze that was beginning to burn Sam’s nose and throat.

  He pushed himself up against the tree and braced himself f
or what was coming. The superheated air warbled and danced in front of him. The fire crept closer.

  The heat stung his already raw feet. His ankle throbbed with pain.

  This was not how Sam imagined his death. But it made sense when he added it to the film reel of life experiences that flickered through his mind in what he knew to be his final moments.

  So much of his life had been the opposite of what he’d pictured it becoming. A poor child with little hope of escaping his bleak surroundings, he’d surprised himself with his intellect and aptitude for numbers. His plan to go to a city college and live at home were undermined by a college recruiter from out of state who saw his potential. The chance to work on Wall Street ended when he chose love over money. Loretta had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. She’d always supported him, lifted him up, been his advocate and his partner.

  She’d helped him through the miscarriage that threatened to sink him into a deep depression. Somehow, she’d been the strong one. She’d been the backbone and the glue and every other metaphor he could think of to describe someone quietly heroic.

  They’d moved to southern California for a lucrative new job and found a perfect bungalow within walking distance of the beach. They’d decorated it with comfortable furniture, coffee-table books, and pictures of their travels.

  They’d joined exclusive, little-known clubs and spent Sundays drinking eight-dollar cups of coffee or eating fifteen-dollar kale salads. There was yoga before work and Sunday nights watching the sun setting on the edge of the Pacific. Life was unexpected and, for the most part, it was good.

  Now it was over. The dry heat threatened to suffocate Sam. He took shorter, shallow breaths and then decided that was working against him. Was he really going to try to save his lungs so he could burn to death? He couldn’t imagine a more agonizing death than the one he felt coming in brutal waves that toasted everything around him.

  He chuckled to himself as the moments in his life rolled through his mind. He and Loretta had planned for the end, or thought they had. They’d imagined themselves having time to enact their escape from whatever apocalypse came their way. Loretta called it their golden ticket.