Nothing Left to Burn

  Her lips got tight for a second, and then she smiled. “Sure. We’re working on fire behavior today.” She chattered on, cutting me off when I tried to interject, even going as far as to turn her back on me. Finally, Ty and Kevin came in, and Mr. Beckett stood up.

  “Okay. Have fun. I’ll be back to pick you up just before noon.”

  He left with a glare aimed at me, and Amanda cursed under her breath.

  “What the hell was that about?” I demanded.

  She shook her head. “Let it go. It’s nothing to do with you.”

  I snorted. “Really? Seemed like it was all about me. Who is he to you, anyway?”

  She sighed. “My foster dad.”

  Whoa. Foster dad?

  “I’ve been living with the Becketts since I was fourteen. He has a strict no-boys rule and doesn’t like the way you look at me.”

  I looked away and shifted my weight. “Oh, um, sorry.” Jesus, how did I look at her? I shoved my hands in my pockets and kept my eyes pointed at anything but her.

  “Yeah, well, that doesn’t change things, okay? He wants me to quit.”

  “Wait, you mean give up junior squad? I thought you were the captain.”

  “Relax, I’m not quitting anything. But it would really help if you’d stop staring at my ass.”

  The breath got caught in my lungs, and my face burst into flame. “I wasn’t staring at your…at your ass. I just like to watch you walk.” Oh God. The words that left my mouth sounded so much better in my head than out in the real world. I snapped my teeth together, resolved to never speak again until I was thirty.

  “Hey, Man. What’s up?” Kevin frowned at us.

  “We’re good. Grab a seat,” she ordered.

  Bear ambled in and nodded a greeting at me. By the time my dad came in, the whole junior squad was present and accounted for.

  “Good morning, cadets. Page seventy-six, please. What is the fire triangle?” Dad waited for a volunteer, and when no one spoke up, he called on Max.

  “Fuel, heat, and oxygen.”

  “Good. What about them?”

  I read about this yesterday. “They’re essential elements for ignition,” I answered with confidence.

  “Yes, but what about them makes them essential?”

  “Remove any one of those elements to stop the fire.”

  Dad’s jaw twitched. “Yes, but you’re not answering the question.”

  I damn well was. “They’re all essential—”

  “Reece, you said that already. I want you to tell me why they’re essential.”

  Amanda intervened. “When the three elements are combined in the right quantities, a fire can spontaneously occur.”

  Dad clapped his hands. “There it is! The right quantities. That’s the key here, cadets. You know what they teach you in the military? Know. Your. Enemy.” He paced between the tables, pounding a fist into his palm on each word. “The military spends countless hours gathering intelligence, analyzing, predicting, knowing what the enemy is up to. Your enemy as firefighters is fire, and to beat it, you need to know it. Reece, maybe you should read page seventy-six again.”

  I crossed my arms and bit my tongue.

  “Lieutenant, maybe you should explain the chemical process.” Amanda indicated her photocopy on the table.

  Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, should I? I wasn’t aware that I needed to hold anybody’s hand.”

  “I didn’t suggest holding hands. I suggested explaining the process so that my squad understands the chemistry that causes fire.”

  I stared at Amanda, astounded.

  And impressed.

  Really, really impressed.

  I snuck a glance at my dad. His face was red, but he smiled. “Okay. Why don’t you explain the chemical process, Captain Jamison?” He pulled out a chair and sat.

  Amanda’s face flushed, but she stood up and faced the class. “Your handout explains what causes combustion. The fire triangle tells you that you need something to burn—that’s your fuel. You need heat at a temperature high enough to make that fuel source burn—which is called what, Reece?”

  I knew this. “Its flash point temp.”

  She nodded and kept going. “You also need oxygen. Why?”

  Gage put up his hand. “Because combustion is an oxidation process.”

  I knew that too. Oxidation, the same process that causes metal to rust, is what fire was—except a hell of a lot faster.

  Amanda grabbed a marker and drew a simple time line on the whiteboard. “Okay. You’ve got oxygen, fuel, and heat at the right combo, right here.” She tapped a point on the line. “This is called ignition. Then, the fire goes through a growth stage because the flame that results from ignition is now increasing what?”

  “Heat,” Bear called out, and she nodded.

  “Right. As heat is produced and unchecked, growth accelerates. Additional fuel sources, when heated to their flash point temperatures, will ignite. At this point, superheated gases are collecting at the highest point of a room.” She marked points on her time line as she spoke. “When the fire heats everything in reach, we say it’s fully developed. If nothing else changes, the fuel source and oxygen source get depleted, and the fire starts the decay process and eventually loses intensity.”

  She stepped aside and pointed to the first point she’d marked on the time line. “These points are how fire spreads. What are they?”

  “Conduction, convection, and radiation,” I answered, recalling exactly when I’d read that.

  “Oh, stop it already.” My father stood up and blocked Amanda’s diagram. “I get it. You want me to see how much Reece memorized. Very good.” He applauded slowly. “Do you mind if I get back to my lesson?”

  “I do mind,” Amanda snapped back. “I’d appreciate it if you taught a lesson instead of asking questions you know only our oldest cadets can answer.”

  Holy Jesus on a Popsicle stick.

  She told him off.

  She’d actually talked back to John Logan and lived to tell the tale.

  Damn! I wished I’d recorded this moment on my phone. I held my breath, watching my dad’s nostrils flare, the tick in his jaw getting more pronounced by the second as he gritted his teeth and chained his temper. My mouth fell open when he left the room without a word. If we’d been alone, I’d have fallen to my knees and kissed Amanda’s feet.

  “Man, what the hell are you doing?” Gage demanded as soon as Dad shut the door.

  Amanda, her hands on her hips, stared after Dad. “I’m sorry. I lost my temper. I’m just getting tired of him using this class for family crap.” She turned those angry eyes on me. “And you need to stop baiting him.”

  What? “When did I bait him?”

  “He asked you a question, and you answered. That was fine. But he kept trying to trip you up, and you were buying it. You had him, Reece. You know the material, but you kept letting him get inside you.” She jabbed a finger at her head.

  This was a disaster. I ached every time I moved. I’d done more studying over the last few days than I did all semester, and it was a waste of time. Dad was never going to give an inch. I slouched lower in my seat, stared at my book, and waited for class to end.

  Chapter 8

  Amanda

  Crap, crap, shit! This class was a total train wreck. It was just like Wednesday night’s class—all John was doing was asking stuff J squad already knew and Logan didn’t. When was he going to teach us anything? He’d been a firefighter for twenty years or more. There had to be something he could teach us.

  I stared at the door John just slammed. Okay, so maybe I could have handled that better. The whole squad had been working with Logan, trying to get him all caught up. Even if John couldn’t find anything nice to say to his kid, he damn well should have said something to my cadets.

  I cur
sed again. Maybe I should say something to my cadets. “Guys. Thank you. You’re all doing a lot to help Reece. He’s learning fast, even if the lieutenant doesn’t see it. Right, Logan?” I slid him a look. He was pouting in his seat like a three-year-old.

  He jolted. “Um, yeah. Yes. Thank you all. So, uh, what do we do now?” He jerked his chin toward the door.

  Good question. I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes and sat down. “Okay, here’s what we’re not gonna do. We’re not gonna wait for the lieutenant to take his head out of his ass.”

  Logan choked, but when I shot him a glare, he swallowed his grin.

  “Let’s finish the lesson.” I indicated the whiteboard. “Before John stopped me, I was about to connect a few dots here. You guys know the fire triangle, and you know the basic chemical process. Let’s talk about suppression.” I got up, went back to the whiteboard, and picked up a marker. “Got any questions so far?” I asked, and Logan shot up a hand.

  “Like a dozen.”

  “Okay. Shoot.”

  “I read about a fire tetrahedron, a shape with a fourth side. Is that extra aspect the oxidation?”

  I shook my head. “Not exactly. You’re close though.”

  “Yeah, Logan. Check it out.” Max stood up, took my marker, and started adding to the diagram. “The fourth thing in that tetrahedron is the chain reaction that starts with ignition. Here. Look.” He changed my triangle to a pyramid by adding perspective. “A pyramid has four walls, right? Heat, oxygen, and fuel have to combine just right to start a chain reaction we see as the flame.”

  I nodded, grinning. Max was explaining this really clearly. He drew a circular arrow around the pyramid.

  “As soon as ignition starts, a few things are happening. At the molecular level, the fuel source that’s actively burning up is creating more heat to sustain the burn.”

  “What’s the basic principle we learn about heat in science class, Logan?” Gage asked.

  “It rises?”

  “Exactly. So what do you think happens with heat rising?”

  Logan angled his head at the diagram and pointed to the growth phase. “The fire grows because all that heat is spreading to the room or whatever and ignites more fuel sources.”

  I nodded and smiled. “Keep going.”

  Logan grinned back. “Okay. So if the room where a fire breaks out is heating up, the fire spreads from convection, conduction, and radiation until everything in the room is—oh.” His eyes popped. “Flashover?”

  “That’s it. Good. Now how do we prevent that?”

  The frown came back, and his lips moved silently while he tried to remember. “Ventilate the room.”

  Bear punched his shoulder. “You got it. Giving the hot gases an escape route cools the room.”

  Logan studied the diagram again. A second later, I saw the lightbulb go off. “We lowered the heat.” He pointed to that panel of the pyramid. “And to cut off the oxygen, we smother it—like putting out a candle with one of those snuffers.”

  “What about the fuel source?” I asked, but only because I knew he had this.

  He smiled. “A log in a fireplace that burns up. Fire goes out.”

  Yeah. He had this.

  “Okay. Let’s take a break and then head outside for some breathing practice.”

  Ty and Kevin exchanged fist bumps.

  “Yes!” Max cheered.

  Even Gage looked perky.

  At Logan’s blank look, Bear just smiled. “You’ll see.”

  ***

  Outside, dressed in full bunker gear, carrying a ball under my arm, I decided not to wait for the usual arguments while my squad split into teams. “Kevin, Gage, Ty, you guys play against Max, Bear, and Logan. I’ll sit this one out.”

  “Hell.” Max shot me a disgusted look but put on his mask.

  “Wait. You want us to play ball? Wearing all this gear?” Logan stared at me, jaw dangling.

  “Dodgeball, Logan.”

  “Jesus.” He looked sick.

  “It’s a great way to learn mask breathing and tank conservation,” Bear said as he put a beefy arm around Logan. He didn’t look all that comforted.

  We lined up in an empty section of the parking lot. I only had one ball, so we’d have to skip the opening rush. I threw the ball to Max and stood back while he chucked it over my arbitrary line. The ball bounced off the chain-link fence behind Gage’s team. Logan stood in the center of his space, looking way too much like a guy trying hard to hold his breath.

  I shook my head and tried not to wince when Gage hurled the ball directly at him. He pivoted out of the way. Bear took up the ball and propelled it back to the other side, hitting Gage in the leg. Gage waved his arms in protest, but I didn’t say a word.

  Kevin chucked a shot with a wicked curve, catching Max by surprise. He had to execute a fantastic leap to avoid getting hit. A few of the guys on Engine 21 came out to watch, calling out advice. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes in, but I could tell that Logan was sucking down air way too fast. I called for a time-out and had everybody read their tank gauges. As I expected, Logan’s was lower.

  “Conserve, Logan. Short breaths and hold.”

  He flashed me a thumbs-up and took his position. The ball was in flight when Max nudged me. “Uh oh.”

  I glanced at the rear doors and saw Lieutenant Logan watching the game, the chief standing beside him. Nobody told me to stop, so I didn’t call our impromptu game. I turned back just as Logan tried tossing the ball. It went far wide of Kevin, his intended target, who decided to do some trash-talking.

  “Conserve your air, Sheppard!” I reminded him.

  Kevin chased down the ball, and my cadets managed to keep the ball in play for a few minutes. But then Logan noticed his father. He wasn’t ready for Kevin’s power pitch that hit him right in the face, knocking off his helmet. I glanced at Lieutenant Logan, and he took a step forward when the ball hit, but the chief pulled him back.

  Kevin and Ty ran over to Logan, full of apologies. Logan shook his head, trying to clear it. I strode over and stopped Logan from removing his mask.

  “Don’t stop, Logan. Keep control of your breathing. Don’t pull away your mask.”

  The low-tank warning alarm rang, and Logan’s eyes filled with panic. His breathing sped up, and he kept shaking his head. “Short breaths. Do not pant,” I reminded him for the thousandth time.

  “He’ll be sucking face in another minute.” Max frowned down at Reece, whose cheeks hollowed with every breath.

  “Good. I want him to feel the last breath left in the tank,” the lieutenant said as he joined us. He crouched down and clamped a hand over Logan’s mask as he tried to peel it off. “The low-tank alarm rings when the tank is about three-quarters empty. At the rate you’ve been gulping oxygen, that’ll only last you a minute or two, and that’s a problem. If you were working a real fire right now, you’d have gotten yourself trapped. Worse, you’d put one of us in danger, because we don’t quit until everybody’s out.”

  Logan made a choking sound, and I figured he’d hit the bottom of the tank.

  With a sound of disgust, John removed the mask from Reece’s face. Reece gasped loudly, sucking in air so hard, I thought his ribs would crack.

  John stared hard at him and then addressed the squad. “Note the pressure levels in your gauges right now. Strip your gear off, and then bring your tanks to the filling station.”

  “Copy, Lieutenant,” I responded.

  We stripped down and stored our turnouts the way Neil Ernst had taught us. Five minutes later, the whole squad circled around John in the air cascade room.

  “Okay, juniors, file in here. Everybody took note of their gauge readings, right? Great. Now refilling your oxygen tanks can be dangerous. You guys have all seen Apollo 13? Then you know the kind of damage that an oxygen tank can cause when it e
xplodes. This is a cascading air system.” He indicated the large chamber behind him.

  While John explained the intricacies of the system, I watched Logan watching him. The expression on his face was…awe.

  Maybe.

  What did I know?

  John explained how to examine the tanks for cracks and defects and then showed us how to calibrate the charging station. The cascading air system held two tanks at one time, so it took a while to get all the tanks refilled. When all of them were done, John took the squad back to the conference room.

  “Okay. Start calculating your average consumption rates.”

  Bear winced; he absolutely hated math, but he took out a sheet of paper from the notebook he’d left behind during our dodgeball game and started to work. Logan looked lost. I went over to him, about to explain the procedure for estimating tank duration, but John stopped me.

  “Let him do it himself, Man. Reece is a genius, you know.”

  Logan let out a choking sound and stared holes through his father, but he said nothing.

  I knew Logan was some kind of brainy nerd, but a genius? I wasn’t convinced. “Lieutenant, we haven’t taught him the formula yet.”

  John folded his arms and smirked. “It’s basic math, Man, not rocket science. You can figure it out, can’t you, Peanut?”

  Again with the Peanut crap? Again, Logan didn’t say a word. He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms while everybody else jotted down PSI levels at the start and end of our game and then divided what was used by the duration of the game.

  “Tobay, using your little dodgeball game as a baseline, how long would it take you to empty your tank?”

  Max frowned at his numbers. “I did it twice, Lieutenant. I got fourteen minutes the first time and twenty-one the second time.”

  “Do it again. This ain’t some calculus formula you’ll never use in the real world. This is the real world, and your life depends on getting it right.”

  True; Lieutenant Ernst had driven that point home to us many times. But Logan still hadn’t picked up a pencil. What the hell was his problem?

  “Garner, how long?”