Fall Bonfire

Chandler was wearing the flannel.

The dark green and navy one, washed so many times the plaid had gone fuzzy and the cuffs had frayed white at the edges. He had the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and the collar was flipped up crooked on one side, like he’d pulled it on in the Jeep and never checked a mirror. In ninth grade, after a freezing scrimmage, he’d tossed it at me when my teeth were chattering, and I’d said without thinking, “This is the best shirt you own. Don’t ever get rid of it.” He’d laughed at me. Then he’d worn it every single week for a month.

I hadn’t seen it since spring.

It was probably a coincidence. He’d probably grabbed it off his bedroom floor.

We walked to the bonfire in a loose line across the gravel lot behind the school, and I smelled it long before we reached the gate: sweet cedar smoke, the warm sugar tang of cheap spiced cider, and half the school’s body spray fighting for the same chilly night air. Up ahead, Stetson and Noelle walked shoulder to shoulder, talking too loud and pretending they weren’t flirting. Noelle wore an oversized cream sweater, wide-leg jeans, and her platform Tasmans, her golden waves bouncing with every laugh. She laughed at basically everything Stetson said, including things that were definitely not jokes. Stetson kept running a hand back through his hair, which he only did when he was nervous.

Behind us, Maekynzie and Emory were arguing about whether a hot dog qualified as a sandwich with the solemn fury of a murder trial. Tinsley walked a few paces off to the side in an oversized black hoodie, hands shoved deep in the pocket, her green eyes scanning the crowd like she was heading private security.

The closer we got to the glow of the field, the denser the crowd packed in. Every time somebody jostled past, a freshman walking backward or a guy balancing three foam cups of cider, Chandler shifted. Just a half step, just enough to set his shoulder between me and the crush, as if his sneakers had simply drifted there on their own. He never once looked down to make a show of it.

The bonfire rose taller than the soccer goalposts. Student council had piled wooden pallets twenty feet high in the center of the field, and the blaze crackled and popped, sending thick ribbons of orange sparks spinning into the black Colorado sky. Past the far end zone, the mountains were nothing but a darker line against the stars. Bass vibrated through the grass from two competing tailgates. People were laughing, screaming across the circle, posing for flash photos with the flames blazing behind their heads.

Right near the front edge of the heat, perfectly positioned in the gold light, stood Tahni. Cheer hoodie, white bow straight and immaculate, phone held high as she filmed herself, Kleo, and Gemma doing a routine for the squad account. She spun in a slow, practiced circle to catch the fire in the frame, and her eyes slid across me like glass.

I found a spot a dozen feet back from the perimeter, planted my right foot to carry my weight, and didn’t move.

Sitting down would have been a relief. There were hay bales scattered around the grass, but if I sat, someone would come sit with me. They’d watch how stiffly I lowered myself, and they’d ask questions.

So I stood.

The fever had flared up again right after dinner, hotter and heavier than Saturday’s. It pulsed under my skin in slow, nauseating waves, burning across my chest before dropping into a sudden, shivering chill. The field seemed to tilt a few degrees off level, the fire and the goalposts leaning slightly to the left. Heat washed over my face from the flames, and after a while, I couldn’t tell how much of the fire was in front of me and how much was burning under my own skin.

I held a warm cup of cider in both hands to give my fingers something to grip.

My phone vibrated in my back pocket.

Pops: having fun sunshine?? 🔥

Pops: home by 11. text me when you leave

Pops: and EAT something. i’m serious 💛

I typed back a thumbs-up and a flame. He replied instantly with a string of yellow hearts. I locked the screen before he could think of another question.

“Oh my God, your hair looks so good,” Noelle said, appearing at my side with an apple cider donut. “Did you curl the front pieces?”

“A little.”

I’d curled it sitting flat on my bathroom rug for forty-five minutes because my left leg had refused to hold me up at the sink. I’d redone my mascara twice after my hands started shaking, and I’d put in my favorite gold hoops so I’d look like the girl in the framed team photos on my dresser. My black leggings stayed up, and my oversized gray Bighorns crewneck hid the gap between my waist and my hips.

From the outside, I still looked like Sloane Deshazo.

That was what mattered.

“You look like you,” Noelle murmured, her blue eyes softening as she bumped her shoulder against mine. Then she smiled and turned back toward the circle.

At the far end of the field, Emory climbed onto the makeshift stage on the bed of an old Chevy truck with his band, Static Honey. The second the drummer clicked his sticks, Maekynzie cupped her hands around her mouth and shrieked, “THAT IS MY BEST FRIEND!” Emory caught it over the microphone, his grin flashing white across the dark field, and for a second before he hit the opening chord, he wasn’t looking at the crowd. He was looking at her.

It was the biggest night of the fall. Everyone I cared about was surrounded by noise and warmth.

I couldn’t feel any of it.

Every ounce of my energy went into maintenance: angling my body so the flames hid the hollows beneath my cheekbones, steadying my grip on the paper cup before the tremor reached my wrists, calculating how far away the porta-potties were if my knee started to give. I smiled on cue. I laughed when Stetson did his dead-on Mr. Grzywacz. I nodded whenever someone spoke to me.

Around nine, Stetson drifted back over, hands buried in his hoodie pocket, his hair pushed back yet again.

He checked my face first, before he even glanced toward Noelle. His gaze dropped to the slight shake in my hands, and his brows pulled together.

“You good, Sloaney?” he asked quietly. “You look kind of pale.”

“Stetson.” I jerked my chin hard in Noelle’s direction. “Focus on your mission.”

His ears turned bright red. He pivoted toward Noelle and cleared his throat twice.

“Noelle,” he said. “Do you want to, um. Go check out the. There’s a thing over there.”

“A thing,” Noelle said, tilting her head.

“A really cool thing. By the south goalposts.”

“The goalposts.”

“They’re, uh. Extra tall tonight.”

My twin brother, varsity soccer captain, who could talk his way out of a red card without blinking, stood in front of my best friend looking entirely terrified. For a fraction of a second, the heavy gray fog in my head parted.

He’d loved her since fourth grade. I’d spent half my life waiting for him to finally say something.

“Go,” I told him, giving Noelle a light nudge.

They walked off across the field, keeping a rigid two inches of space between their sleeves, staring straight ahead at the metal posts like they were visiting a museum.

“Masterclass,” Chandler muttered beside me.

“He is going to trip over his own feet,” I said.

“Guaranteed.”

“And she’s going to let him pretend it was deliberate.”

“One hundred percent.”

I laughed, and the jolt sent a sharp needle of pain through my left thigh, but for that one second, I didn’t care.

Then came the s’mores table.

I took the slow ten-foot walk over because standing still was making my knee lock up. Tinsley stood by the metal fire dish, methodically charring a marshmallow on a wire skewer while Maekynzie described the exact chemical reaction of caramelization to two uninterested sophomores.

Tinsley didn’t lift her eyes from the coals. “There’s an empty bale right behind your legs.”

“I like standing.”

“You haven’t moved two feet since eight o’clock.”

“It has the best view.”

“Right.” She gave her skewer a slow quarter turn. “You keep glancing at your lock screen without opening messages. You keep smiling with your mouth while your eyes stay totally flat.” She pulled the skewer back, blowing out a tiny flare of fire. “You’re counting down the minutes.”

I stayed silent. She didn’t push. She held out the golden-brown marshmallow, and when I gave a small shake of my head, she ate it off the wire herself and reached for another.

Tahni stood on the other side of the folding table, holding an unopened chocolate bar, Kleo and Gemma flanking her in matching team jackets. Tahni glanced down at the paper plate in front of me: a single plain marshmallow sitting cold on the white rim. No graham crackers, no chocolate. I’d only grabbed it so nobody would ask why my hands were empty.

Tahni lifted her phone, holding it horizontally, the little red recording light shining in the dark.

“Wow,” Tahni said, her voice carrying clear and bright over the chatter. “Some people are really out here skipping meals just for the attention.”

Kleo snorted. Gemma smirked into her cider.

Half a dozen nearby people turned around. Then a dozen.

A hot rush of blood hit my throat and surged into my face, stinging my cheeks until I couldn’t separate the humiliation from the fever.

Tinsley set her skewer down on the foil. Her black-painted nails tapped the wood, once, twice, and then she planted one boot on the bench and one knee on the tabletop, ready to vault right through the graham cracker boxes. Her expression had gone terrifyingly still.

Chandler reached out and snagged the hood of Tinsley’s hoodie with one hand, holding her anchored in place.

“Not worth your time, Tins,” he said calmly.

“It feels pretty worth it,” Tinsley said, her voice low and dangerous.

“Tins. Down.”

Tinsley paused for three long seconds, staring straight into Tahni’s face. Tahni kept the smile pinned to her mouth and the lens pointed forward, but her shoulders tightened, and she took a quiet half step behind Gemma.

Tinsley stepped down off the table, picked up her skewer, looked directly into the camera lens, and said, “Your dark roots are showing on the squad feed.”

It was a lie, but Tahni’s left hand immediately flew up to check her ponytail, and the phone dropped to her side.

I wanted to laugh.

Except the ground beneath my sneakers suddenly rolled like a deck in high water. The blaze stayed fixed, but my vision tilted hard to the right, the sky and the grass trading places for one horrifying second. The paper cup slipped through my numb fingers, splashing lukewarm cider across the dirt and my shoes.

People looked down at the puddle.

A firm, warm hand closed around my elbow, taking my weight before my knees could buckle.

“Come on,” Chandler’s voice said, steady and quiet against my ear. “Walk with me.”

“I’m fine, Chandler.”

“Great. We’re walking anyway.”

Underneath the home bleachers, the air was cold and dark. The bonfire filtered through the steel floorboards above us in narrow bars of orange light that slid across the concrete whenever people walked overhead. The roar of the crowd faded into a dull, hollow rumble, replaced by the smell of damp grass and old metal.

Chandler kept his hand on my arm until I had my back braced against one of the thick steel support beams. The icy metal pressed through my crewneck, shocking my skin, and I took slow, deliberate breaths until the concrete under my feet stopped spinning.

“You lost your cider,” he said, leaning against the opposite post with his hands in his pockets.

“It tasted like watered-down juice.”

“It tasted like juice that gave up on life.” The corner of his mouth ticked up. “Student council spent ninety percent of the budget on firewood.”

“It was a really solid fire, though.”

“Top-tier timber.”

A breath of a laugh escaped me before I could lock it down, and Chandler laughed too, ducking his chin. Out across the dark field, Static Honey hit a chord so spectacularly sour that somebody in the bleachers above us shouted, “WHAT WAS THAT?” Emory’s voice crackled through the speakers without missing a beat: “That’s called artistic dissonance. Read a book.”

I laughed so hard my ribs ached, gripping the beam to stay upright, and Chandler watched me, laughing softly under his breath. For thirty seconds, the heaviness vanished, leaving just the two of us under the bleachers being ridiculous, exactly the way we used to be in eighth grade after two-a-day practices.

Then the laughter faded out.

The silence settled between the metal posts, heavy and sudden.

Chandler had stepped closer without me noticing.

A stripe of amber firelight cut across the bridge of his nose. His thumb moved against the frayed cuff of his flannel, rubbing the worn threads back and forth, a quiet nervous habit he only had when he was thinking too hard. He was looking at me with total, unhurried focus.

His eyes dropped to my mouth.

Then rose slowly back to my eyes.

The air went tight in my lungs.

He leaned in. An inch. Less than an inch.

There was no pity in his expression. No hesitation, no careful distance. He just looked like Chandler, looking at me like he’d spent months waiting for the rest of the world to get out of the way.

My throat tightened.

He feels sorry for you, the small, ugly voice whispered in the back of my skull. He saw you drop your cup. He heard Tahni call you out. Chandler is good to everyone who falls apart.

This is just pity with good lighting.

Before I could pull away, he raised his right hand and pressed the back of his fingers against my forehead.

His skin was freezing from the night air. For one terrible second, my forehead wanted to sink into the coolness of his knuckles and stay there. Then the softness went out of his eyes all at once, and alarm came in behind it.

“Sloane,” he said, and his voice dropped. “You’re burning up.”

I wrenched backward, breaking the contact, my shoulder slamming hard into the support beam.

“It’s just the bonfire heat,” I said, my voice coming out thin.

“We’re forty yards away under steel bleachers.”

“It’s residual.”

“That’s not how bodies work.”

“It’s how mine works tonight.”

He opened his mouth, stepping forward again. “Sloane, listen to me…”

“CHANDLER!”

Stetson’s yell sliced through the night from the far fifty-yard line, loud and cracked with pure, unhinged happiness.

“CHANDLER, GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW! SHE SAID YES! AN ACTUAL DATE! WITH DINNER AND EVERYTHING!”

Chandler froze. He glanced toward the open field, then snapped his focus right back to my face, his hand still suspended in the cold air between us.

“Go,” I told him, keeping my voice perfectly flat. “He’s been waiting six years for this. Go celebrate with your best friend.”

“Sloane. You’re sick.”

“I’m fine. Stetson needs you. Go.”

He lingered for two seconds, his eyes searching mine, visibly torn between leaving and dragging me straight to his Jeep.

“CHANDLER! MOVE YOUR LEGS!” Stetson bellowed again.

Chandler pressed his lips together. “Stay right here. Don’t move. Two minutes, and then I’m driving you home.”

“I’ll be right here,” I lied.

He turned and broke into a jog toward the firelight, looking back once over his shoulder before disappearing into the crowd.

I didn’t go back toward the fire.

The moment he cleared the bleachers, I pushed off the steel pillar and took the long, dark path around the back of the visitors’ stands toward the gravel parking lot. The Jeep sat under the single amber streetlight at the far end of the fence line. If I made it to the passenger door, I could lean against the fender, text him that I’d gotten cold, and let him drive me home in silence.

The walk across the empty gravel felt three times longer than it had two hours ago.

Behind me, the whole crowd roared as Emory’s band kicked into a slow song. The sparks drifted upward over the goalposts, bright and steady.

Halfway between two parked pickups, my left leg gave out completely.

There was no stutter, no warning twinge. The joint simply dissolved. The gravel rushed up to meet my face, and I hit the ground hard enough to drive every drop of air straight out of my chest. Sharp stones bit deep into the heels of my hands, my left kneecap cracked against the packed rock, and a blinding white flare exploded from the center of my thigh bone, so bright that the night vanished behind a wall of static.

I couldn’t make a sound. There was no breath left in my throat to scream.

I stayed on my hands and knees in the narrow gap between a stranger’s silver Honda and a mud-spattered truck, waiting for my lungs to pull in air. The gravel felt hot against my bare palms, even though my breath came out in white plumes. The heat was coming from me.

Nobody turned around. The music rolled on across the grass, the chorus swelling as couples swayed near the flames, and the field stayed full of light while I knelt in the dark.

I looked down at my hands in the dim wash of the streetlight. Gray grit was embedded deep in the raw skin of my palms, and a thin ribbon of dark red welled up along the heel of my right thumb.

I wiped my hands on the thighs of my black leggings.

Then I set my right foot flat against the dirt, reached up, and grabbed the plastic housing of the Honda’s side mirror.

The first time I pulled, my fingers slipped on the smooth plastic, and I dropped straight back onto my bruised knee. The second time, I got halfway up before my left thigh gave out and slammed my ribs against the Honda’s door with a dull metallic thud.

The third time, I hooked both hands over the mirror bracket, locked my jaw, and hauled upward with my shoulders and back until my arms trembled.

My right leg locked into place. I stood.

I did it completely alone.

I dragged my left foot across the last thirty yards of gravel, keeping to the shadows until I reached the passenger side of Chandler’s Jeep. I leaned my weight against the cold metal door, my chest heaving, and pulled my phone from my back pocket with shaking fingers.

All I had to do was tell him I was tired. That was all. Just tired.

When I tapped the screen to open his name, my thumb left a dark red smear of blood across the glass.