Celeste Ng Little Fires Everywhere Novels & Stories

"Okay." Celeste gave him a slight nod, glanced at him on the screen one last time, and then ended the call. Setting her phone down, she stepped out of the small garden to join Hector and Jamie in setting off fireworks.

He stared at me for a long while before getting back up on his feet. A loud crack of thunder was heard outside the hut. The sky continued to rumble with thunder as we gazed greedily and lustfully at each other. … Neither one of us told anyone about our rendezvous in the hut that night. However, we had a nightly ritual now before going to bed every night. The chat window with my second number had now become a place for us to reveal our deepest, darkest desires. We kept video calling each other in secret at night as we vented out our school stress and turned it into sexual pleasure.

Like it was trying to apologize. She lit a cigarette she wouldn’t smoke and let it burn between her fingers, the scent curling around her like memory. The office was dim, lit only by the amber glow of a banker’s lamp and the flicker of a dying candle. A record played low in the background—Chet Baker, all brass and heartbreak. Celeste didn’t believe in love. Not anymore. But she believed in contracts. And she believed in consequences. The buzzer rang. She crushed the cigarette in a crystal ashtray and smoothed the silk of her blouse. No one came here by accident. If they found her, it meant they were desperate—or dangerous. Sometimes both.

But there is something masochistic about watching the world decide who you are without asking. “She was never his equal,” one commentator says in a clipped video segment. “Too reserved,” another adds. “Men like Arrow De La Vega need fire.” Fire. Celeste sets the phone down, hands trembling. She walks to the mirror in the guest bathroom of the Montaire estate, barely recognizing the woman staring back at her. Her hair is loose, her face bare, her eyes rimmed red—not from crying, but from strain. Not enough fire. Her phone buzzes again.

She didn’t know if it was the cold night air or the truth clawing its manner out of her past. The fire. She hadn’t thought about it in years—not really. Just glimpses in dreams, shadows of memory. Now it felt closer. Real. Like it had never left her at all. She stepped back from Damien, needing space, needing air. But there wasn’t enough of either. “Celeste,” Damien said, his voice rougher now. “What fire? What memory?” “I can't recall,” she whispered. “I was only a baby.” Damien stared at her like he was seeking to place broken puzzle portions collectively.

It was the only one in this area, purposefully secluded from the village for some reason. Its wood went up in embers, feeding the hungry fire as it devoured the entire cabin. But I knew there was still someone inside. Without hesitation, Celeste jumps straight into the fire. I hold our breath to not inhale any smoke as my eyes busily searched for the person, but it was not easy, when my entire vision was orange with the fire and foggy with the smoke. It was annoying and I desperately wanted to get the fire off my fur with my powers, but I worried the fire would fly away and spread to the entire forest and the coven, thus instigating a bigger disaster.

A silhouette stepping through the flames, calm, unhurried. Celeste. Her eyes glowed cruelly in the firelight. She tilted her head, lips curling into a smile that promised only torment. “Game over, Eloise.” My chest convulsed as another coughing fit tore through me. Black smoke poured into my lungs, clawing at me from the inside. I could barely see through the blur of tears and ash, yet I forced my head up. Beyond the curtain of fire, I caught it—the faint shimmer of moonlight on water.

But the fire surged again, and my knees buckled. The world went white. When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in the clearing anymore. I was standing in a field of ash, the sky black and churning with fire. And there she was. Celeste. She smiled at me, her silver hair glowing like liquid moonlight. “So small,” she said softly, tilting her head. “So fragile. And yet, inside you… a power that could burn this world to the ground.” “Stay away from me,” I growled.

The morning after the fire, the garden smells of smoke and sea salt. Celeste is already outside when I wake, standing by the fire pit, her hands in the pockets of her coat. The ashes are cold now, gray and scattered, the last evidence of decades of letters reduced to nothing. She doesn't turn when I approach, but I feel her awareness — the way she tracks my movements without looking, the way she always has. "You're up early," I say. "Couldn't sleep."

Celeste calling twice in two days and asking about what I look like. All of it. The Truth. None of it is making sense to me