Maggie looked at me, startled—by my swearing, perhaps, but also my conviction. I meant it. She saved two young lives, so I wasn’t going to let her beat herself up.

“Thanks,” she said, and put her head against my chest. I rubbed my chin against her silky, if sooty, hair.

“Listen,” I said softly. “I saw something. It crawled out the front window of my house and ran into the woods.”

She pulled back to look into my face. “What kind of ‘it’? Another wild dog?”

“No, a person on fire,” I said.

She kept her gaze on me. “We have to get you checked out,” she finally said.

“Hey, I’m serious,” I said. “Someone climbed out of our window, and I chased him—or it or whatever—to try to help because he was on fire. But he ran into the forest while parts of him dropped off his body, like a skeleton leaving a trail of burning flesh.”

“Jesus, Jordan,” she said.

“I know, it was gross.”

“No, you need to stop. I’m having trouble processing what I actually saw. I can’t deal with your hallucinations or fantasies or whatever.”

“That may be the first unkind thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“I’m not trying to be unkind, Jordan. I’m just—”

“This isn’t something I wanted to see. You can tell from my tone that I’m not joking. Give me a break, Maggie.”

“I’m sorry, Jordan. I’m sorry. I’m probably just, you know, traumatized from what I’ve experienced. You probably are, too, and it’s coming out in a different way.”

“This wasn’t a reaction to what happened,” I said. “It’s something else that happened. This thing had me on the ground and could have killed me but instead turned and ran into the forest, embers flying off of him all the while.”

“Jordan, you did recently have a concussion. You did breathe in a lot of smoke while committing acts of true bravery. You did not see a man on fire running out of your house and into the woods.”

I couldn’t believe we were having this argument, but a sudden roaring in the sky effectively ended it. I put my fingers to my ears to make sure this wasn’t some noise inside my head, but, nope: In a moment, a bright light shone from above the trees, and the rumbling intensified. It was a Black Hawk helicopter, which circled around the neighborhood, looking for a good place to land. Avoiding downed power lines and debris, it finally set down in the Allens’ soybean field. Its rotors were still turning when three Humvees sped into the neighborhood.

Medics ran from the helicopter to the ambulance in the Carters’ yard, and army personnel from the Humvees rounded up everyone to get a head count. Violet and her dad huddled in the cab of the ambulance, and Mom lay on a stretcher outside it, her chest and shoulder wrapped in bandages. Charlie sat on the step of a fire engine and breathed oxygen from a mask while a firefighter sat next to him. The guys from the helicopter ran to the ambulance, and one climbed up inside to look at the patient in there.