Osprey Island by Thisbe Nissen

hollering, his voice high and panicky. He ran to an inner door, shouting, pounding. He tried the knob. It gave. “Fire!” he shouted. “There’s a fire!” In the room, clothing and crap were piled everywhere—dishes, cups, cracker boxes, Styrofoam to-go containers, lotions and nail polish and all sorts of women’s things, towels, packing bubbles, a double bed, empty. Gavin whirled around to the other door and took up pounding. “Fire!” He hammered the flimsy door. “Fire!” Gavin paused, listened, heard nothing, and tried the knob and found it locked. He shouted louder, kicking at the door now to rest his fists. He leveled his kick at the doorknob and let go. There was a splintering sound, but the latch held. Gavin glanced around him. Lying there on its side on the floor was, of all things, a fire extinguisher. He hefted the red cylinder, got his grip, and swung it at the knob, which folded into itself as if made of tinfoil. The door, light as cardboard, swung inward. In the twin bed, still fully dressed, Squee’s body was just beginning to twitch awake. His head was tucked under a pillow, which he held around his ears with a grip so insistent it seemed incongruous to sleep. Gavin grabbed the kid by the middle and hoisted Squee over his shoulder— the boy still clasping the pillow to his ears—and carried him through the cabin and down the steps outside to safety.
    A few lights had gone on in the Lodge, and Suzy was dashing up the hill barefoot, in a tank top and underwear, clutching Mia as if rushing her to an emergency room in the middle of the night, the girl’s skinny legs dangling limply from beneath her oversize T-shirt.
    One of the waiters had raced up the hill to get Bud, who came tearing down moments later in a pair of thin pajama trousers and a white V-neck. He held a broad-beam flashlight and was struggling into a bathrobe as he ran.
    Bud’s wife, Nancy, called the fire department from their house up the hill, then came tripping down toward the motley crowd assembled by the staff barracks. The fire was hot, but contained—it looked as though it was going to take out the laundry shack and leave it at that. Still, the waiters and housekeepers stood before the barracks as if they might somehow shield their new home from danger. Squee was just like the rest of them, staring at the fire, glowing in the firelight.
    Nancy clutched her robe about her, scanning the crowd. She saw Squee and stopped. “Where are Lance and Lorna?” she shouted. Then something in her tripped over to the hysterical. Her voice screeched and broke:
“Where are Lance and Lorna?!”
    Bud wheeled around, scolding his wife for her noise. “For god’s sake, no one’s in the laundry at two a.m.!”
    Gavin, who was standing beside Squee, spoke: “I checked their room, their house.” He gestured toward the Squires’ cabin with his chin. “They weren’t there. Just Squee.”
    Nancy stared at Gavin. “Squee!” she cried. “Where are your parents?!”
    Squee shrugged absently, unconcerned. That his mom and dad might be inside hadn’t crossed his mind.
    “No one’s in the laundry in the goddamn middle of the night!” Bud hollered again, and what Squee was realizing was how sad his mom was going to be when she saw what had happened to her laundry shack.
    It was the scream of the fire engines that woke Lance from his whiskey sleep on the porch of the Lodge, jolted him awake and sent him running up the hill toward the lights, the people, the scene, his own scream rising as he ran, as though he knew—already knew—that his life was over.
    RODDY JACOBS LEFT HIS PLACE behind Eden’s house and jumped into his truck at two in the morning to follow the sirens down Sand Beach Road to find out what the hell was going on. Firefighters were stretching hose lines toward the shack when Roddy drove up. A primary search into the laundry shack had been attempted and aborted soon thereafter. It was such a close space, engulfed in