I sit here. And I wonder. Am I going to make it to dawn? Will I be awoken by screams or the sound of a window being smashed into shards? What window will it be? My own? With a rock or with a gun? Will they take own money and run, or will we all go up in flames?

Then I sit here, and I tell myself that all of that would be too unreal to really come true. Too crazy. But I keep asking myself if the way I evaluate the situation is sane or daft. Who can know? 

It all started yesterday afternoon when Preston came running into the house exclaiming “There’s been a robbery!” Typical line from the movies, but when stuff like it happens in real life, you can’t question it. You don’t think twice about the idea of grasping for the phone with your shaking fingers and dialing 9-1-1 with the surrealism of a nightmare. One that you can’t pinch yourself to wake up from. The idea is scary, but when it happens—you do it.

I went carefully outside and approached my mother who was talking to an officer. 

“…They came outside the yard but they didn’t have anything in their hands. They acted normal, ma’am. They talked to me. Said they were doing a neighborly think and closing the gate. All the doors were locked to the house, and the owner’s not home to tell us if anything is missing. There is no reason to arrest anyone here.”

“Who?” I asked. I didn’t know who I was asking. The officer or mom.

Mom responded. “Five teenagers. A young guy—probably eighteen—and four girls—same age.” She looked to the officer uncomfortably. He noted her uncertainty and said sympathetically, “If anything happens let us know…”

That night we called the cops again. The owner got home and found things missing. A teenager identified as the boy in the group of thieves was found around the house again, and was bold—or just stupid—enough to talk to the officers. He gave them his name and home address. He said he lived in the neighborhood right behind the house and that his soccer ball went over the fence.

My mom had been there, and said she didn’t see him carrying a soccer ball.

“Oh no, no,” he’d corrected. “I through my football over the fence already.”

…Football? 

“What’s happened at this house?”

“There was a robbery,” mom told him.

“Oh really? yeah, I had my laptop stolen a month or so ago too.”

Stupid that he should say that. Only a few moments earlier, the cops had taken a laptop in a briefcase full of knives out of the house. A Facebook page with pictures and his name was opened on the laptop. 

My mom was the one who identified him later that night and landed him in jail.

He is still there.

Can you imagine that? An eighteen year old still in high school put in prison for his first offense. How broken were his parents? Did he regret his choices, or was he simply angry? Angry at who? My mom? Did his friends know who turned him in? Who we were? How long before his entire school would find out where he was? What he’d done. Was he ashamed? I can only imagine what an impact a night in a public prison can have on such a young person. Was he hurt? What drove him to this? Did he want attention? Did he want revenge? Would this break him? Or would it stoke his fury? 

But there’s something deep and dark about teenagers. Sometimes they just don’t care. Sometimes there is so much going on inside of them that the Caring Button shuts off and all that is left is Apathy. So I felt nothing at all this. “Besides,” I told myself carelessly, “it’s over now.”

Over now?

It was today; this afternoon. 1:30.

“Call 9-1-1!” I heard my dad yell.

“Here we go again.” I tore out of my room and down the hall. Would I have to do it? To press my fingers to those buttons I had never before dared touch? I heard my older brother’s commanding voice answer the operator before I could grab a phone. though.

I followed him outside as he said, “Yes, we have a fire at our neighbor’s house. Nobody is home,” and he gave the address.

“Lord,” I thought. “First the neighbors to our left get robbed. Now the house directly to our right of ours is on fire.”

I heard a mind-numbing smash and my mind registered that it was of glass; a window breaking. Then I listened to all of the shards of glass clattering together and breaking into even smaller pieces as they crashed to the ground.

Incoherent yelling.

A door burst open and my neighbor’s dog ran out and down the street. At first I assumed he was just scared of the smoke and that he would stop once he made distance, but he didn’t. I bolted after him. I nearly matched his pace but he kept running further away until he turned the corner. And then he was gone.

“Oh, God, help me. I can’t stop. I have to get him.” So I kept running. I felt exhaustion taking over my legs pretty soon, but I kept pushing. “That dog means everything to my neighbor. When she gets home and finds out not only that her house caught fire but that the closest thing she has to a family is missing it will break her.”

No, that can’t happen. Run. Run! 

I finally reached the corner and looked desperately. There was no sign of him. “What’s his name?” I kept asking audibly to myself. If I could call him, maybe that would help? Yelling ‘Doggie’ sounds dumb. But what can you do?”

The only thing I did was keep running, praying as I listened to sirens begin to draw near, even as I ran farther and farther away. The dog was gone.

I was at that point where I realized he could’ve run in any direction. Was it down in the court or did he turn left? Would he have kept running straight or will he have crossed the street? I saw a man bent over an old-looking black car in a drive-way up ahead of me.

“Sir?” I couldn’t believe how hoarse my voice sounded. He didn’t look up. At this point I’d stopped running and half walked, half limped toward him. “Sir…….SIR.”

His head popped up.

“Have you seen a dog? A sand-colored poodle run this way?”

“No, why?”

“There’s a fire down the street and the dog bolted,” I explained bluntly. I was too out of breathe for flowery talk, or even panic. 

“I can drive you around and help you look,” he offered, but I declined, thankful for the fact that I wasn’t stupid enough to take him up on his offer. “Thank you, but I’ll just keep looking.”

I began running again. “What is that stupid dog’s name?” 

“DOOOOOOOGGG!” 

I rounded another corner, beginning to wonder, to hope that he had turned back and would be at home should I return. I decided to go one more block.

My cell phone rang. It was my older brother. Before I could pick up, I saw him with Preston in his car come around the corner and slow down so I could hop in.

Out of breath I began trying to tell him what had happened. He didn’t even stop all the way as I climbed into his car, and I remember my leg knocking into the door as it began to swing shut on it’s own from the car moving.

“I saw you chase him,” he told me.

“Turn this way.” Preston dictated from the back, and so we did. The relief I felt when I heard “I SEE HIM!” was wonderful. We turned a corner toward where Preston had pointed in excitement, and sure enough, a man and a woman walking a pair of dogs, as well as our sand-colored one, stopped as I poked my head out of the window and inquired, hoarse as ever, “Did you find this dog running loose?”

“Yes,” they told me.

We hauled him into our car after noting on his collar that his name was Teddy, and after thanking the rescuers profusely, we drove off again. 

Very carefully I took Teddy by the collar and dragged him nearly to our gate. Teddy was so panicked, however, that he was somehow able to slip his head out of the collar and run toward the house that now had firemen walking in and out of it. The fire was out, I was told, but the last thing anybody needed was a dog thrashing through the glass-covered floor of a house filled with foggy smoke. I chased him to the door where I watched him slide through the shattered glass, make it through unscathed and run past a fireman. And up a flight of stairs visible from the door.

I was more annoyed than frightened at this point. A bit embarrassed too. The fireman looked at me and asked “What’s his name?”

“Teddy.”

“Teddy! Come here boy! TEDDY. TEDDYYYYYY. Come on. It’s alright.”

The fireman lifted Teddy off the ground and carried him to our yard. He didn’t have any glass in his paws, but he was terribly nervous. You could see the sheer terror in his eyes. They searched left and right for shelter, for safety, for an answer that everything would be alright. All I could do was wrap my arms around him and sooth him with sweet-nothings for several minutes before he lodged in a dark corner or our yard and wouldn’t budge. Or drink water. Or eat anything. He wouldn’t respond. He shook all over, and his eyes wouldn’t stop moving from left to right, examining everything. To make sure he wasn’t about to die. 

I went outside our yard to inquire.

What had happened was the stove in the house had been left on with a towel on the burner. Our neighbor had left a few moments earlier, and when we talked to her later she said that she could’ve left the stove on. I wouldn’t believe it for a long time, however. All I could think about was that this was retaliation from the arrest yesterday. It had to be. Such a coincidence was too unbelievable.

The stove had caught fire after only a few moments and Preston had told my father he smelled smoke. Dad ran out and saw smoke pouring out of an upstairs window and, being a ex-fireman, he ran instinctively through the yard and to the nearest window. When he found he couldn’t smash the window with his hands, he’d grabbed a rock, and thrown it. He’d cut his feet when he entered the house barefoot, but this was a fire, and it had to be done. It was at that point that Teddy had bolted and I’d run down the street. Dad put the fire out, with water. The fire had melted part of the overhanging microwave and the stove. The towel over the back burner was black inside of the red flames that were running up the cupboards and even onto the wall, but my dad put the fire out himself before the firemen and the cops even got there.

Our neighbor was driving to LA, but she turned back when we called her. She said she could’ve left the stove on, but I’m not sure. I want to believe it, but what a coincidence all of these disasters are. Are they even a coincidence, or am I just living inside of my story-book part of my imagination? I don’t know. But I am almost afraid. For my life? Maybe. My mother told me that we mustn’t be afraid though. Even if we get killed, who wants to live here anyway?

Sure, I do not fear death. But it is the dying part of it—the part before it actually happens—that scares me.

But who am I kidding? Why would this be a retaliation? What is even going on? Can I just escape from here already?