“Be careful, it’s hot!” Someone screams out. Sure enough, it is hot to the touch, and getting hotter by the second. I put my right palm against it and press hard. It burns me, but I can feel a little give there in the glass. Someone yells out and someone else faints as they listen to the skin on my palm sizzle. I turn around to face the crowd, making sure most of my face is still covered.
“Okay. I’m getting us out of here. Everyone get on the floor.” I blink as everyone obeys. I’m shocked that anyone is listening. A few people mumble things, but they all fall in line. The young healthy ones help the too young and the too old onto the floor. I look at the flames advancing behind me and to the left, creeping across the glass like magic. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of being burned alive, and just living through it, but I’m even more afraid of listening to all these people die in here with me as I live through burning to death. It’s too gruesome. We have to get out now.
I look at my hand. It’s better, not fully healed, but better. This is good. Maybe that means I can take the heat long enough to push through and free us. I put my hands on the glass. It’s hotter now than moments ago, and the flesh on my hands sizzles immediately. I press against the wall. It bends under me a little, but maybe because it is so hot now, it just folds a bit, it has even more flexibility than ever before, and it is going to take so much more to break it.
I scream as I feel my flesh melting down off my hands and onto the glass. People around me scream with me. Maybe because they can see what’s happening to my hands, or maybe because they’re afraid I’m not going to be able to get them out, or maybe because they’re burning too. The last thought surges within me and I press harder, give more. I feel it go. First just a little, and then all the way. The glass bends away and breaks, and I dig deeper and press with everything I have until I feel a huge chunk of it fall away onto the concrete outside. I am so pleased for the second before the fire hits my back that I don’t have time to notice the flesh is completely burned off both my hands. I think I’m on fire as I yank apart the security gate and fall forward into the street. I start to shake off the fire like a dog shakes off a soapy bath. As the flames leave me I’m hit with water from a hose. Not a fire hose, but a garden hose. A hardware store owner, very pleased with himself, has doused me. I turn back to the wall. The back draft has come and gone, the fire surging back into the store, thick black smoke rolls around the street and inside the building and even onlookers are tearing up and coughing. I tear back some of the sharper glass, plastic, and metal with my destroyed hands, making the space larger and people start pouring out while the flesh on my back begins the painful process of knitting itself back together. The whole time I keep the now soaked towel draped around my face in the hopes that between that and the black smoke the cell phones I can already hear snapping away won’t get anything useable of me.
I see the boy helping to carry out an older woman and we nod to each other respectfully before I make my escape. A few people look at me in the crowd as I run away, and a few even call out, but none try to stop me. Perhaps it’s respect; perhaps it’s understanding or gratitude. Whatever it is, I’m grateful for it. I look at the flesh on my hands as it grows back, covering the bone and muscle ever so slowly. It’s painful and gruesome to look at, but I know they’re healing. And I know that everything is as it should be, that is until I remember Clark and my ‘grand perfect girlfriend dinner plans.’ A dozen blocks from his apartment I buy new jeans and a t-shirt and change into them inside a Taco Bell bathroom after washing myself down as best I can with the sink, paper towels, and an overly aggressive hand dryer. The flesh on my hands is new and pink, and crazy sensitive, but I don’t have time for sensitive. I ditch the smoky clothes in the bathroom trashcan and, three blocks from his apartment, pick up a pizza.
When I come in, Clark looks at his watch and then looks at the pizza box in confusion. I shrug my shoulders.
“I changed my mind,” I say, smiling and then add, “I’ll cook for you next week.” But I know it’s unlikely to ever happen again, and maybe he knows too. Fitting these two lives together is too hard. Something is going to have to give. I saved almost 50 people from a burning supermarket – it’s a great thing to have done – and I’m beaming on the inside, but I’m full of lies and deception when I’m with Clark, and I can’t bear it, the feeling of that wedge of my lies between us. I don’t see how the two parts of me can live together in harmony, not without being a crappy girlfriend, or letting lots of people die. I think I have to stop. Either being with Clark, or being what I am. How can I make that decision? I mean, for anyone truly good inside, it wouldn’t even be a question for. What does that say about me? Clearly saving people is more important. But I’ve gone my whole life barely knowing what happiness feels like and now that I have it, I don’t know if I can give it up. It’s too hard. I feel split in two, choosing between impossible things.