Ignite

Chapter 56

The next few weeks pass in a blur of long bus rides and white hospital walls. Sylvia and Peter withdraw me from Randwick High for the rest of the semester, and I spend every hour I'm allowed at Jake's side.

At first, being with him is painful. He's either too exhausted to speak or crying because of what he'd done, but slowly, he improves and I hear what happened all those months ago.

How he'd been smoking out back of the house when I'd yelled that we were late for soccer and he'd stubbed the cigarette on the ground. How some dry leaves had caught alight, and he'd crushed them with his feet until he'd extinguished any visible signs of fire.

How he'd forgotten the most basic rule of fires and embers: that in dry enough conditions they can lie dormant in the underbrush for days before something ignites.

And ten minutes after we'd left, Mum had looked out the window and found our yard engulfed in flames.

The police visited Jake, and he told them this too, finally confessing to the crime that'd been killing him as surely as it'd destroyed many others.

And only days later, the media found out as well.

Suddenly, our family photos are on the front page of every newspaper, our lives popping up in opinion articles, and the backlash that hits is as vicious as Muhammad had predicted.

Emmy and Aleisha call to say Jake and I are infamous around campus again. Lewis sneaks around back when he comes to visit to avoid the reporters, and I get yelled at and abused whenever I'm recognised, security guards on either side of me.

But in amongst all the fury, there's sympathy too.

The fact that Jake had tried to kill himself for a mistake, admittedly, a very catastrophic one, had made a difference.

I'd already read enough opinion pieces questioning whether he should be charged with a crime or whether the dryness and the heat were really to blame. After all, how many of us had stubbed a cigarette on the ground mid-summer and thought nothing of it?

People from school sent him messages too, saying they'd support him if he went to trial. Even Matt gets in contact, but his concern for Jake is tangled amongst flashes of betrayal and anger that I don't think he'll ever completely forget.

The whole thing is overwhelming, but it has a therapeutic effect on Jake, as if he's realised he's over the hill.

Soon, Harper and Lewis start visiting him on Wednesdays after training, striding into the guest room of the mental health ward smelling of sweat and scattered with grass stains; and only a couple weeks later, Emmy calls him too, telling him about the fundraiser she and Heather have set up for survivors of the fires.

It's a step in the right direction, a massive one, but there's still plenty of hours each day when Jake's alone with his thoughts, hating and blaming himself, and I can only hope the help he's getting now will teach him how to deal with them.