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In one version of this story, Victoria Spring finds herself standing in the art department of a burning school at 6:30 on a Friday morning in February. She watches a still-drying painting of a landscape slowly disintegrate around her and can’t help but think this is how it was always meant to end. In a fiery inferno. Dante’s Inferno and his journey through hell. Is this Hell?
What was she thinking? She can’t save anyone. She can’t even save herself.
Something to her left explodes. She knows she should run away. She knows any sane person would’ve already been gone by now, would’ve fled to the snowy field outside where their hair wouldn’t be plastered to the back of their neck and their eyebrows wouldn’t feel like they’re melting off. But she’s not a sane person. She’s a manically depressed psychopath.
She stays where she is.
***
In another version of this story, she doesn’t call anyone. Not Becky, not Charlie, not Michael. She confronts Solitaire on her own and watches helplessly as Evelyn’s boyfriend sets the building on fire.
The flames dance in her eyes as she stares, mesmerized. Orange and red flicker in front of her, and she can see them even when she closes her eyes. The two different colors remind her of Michael. Blue and green. Orange and red. The two fight each other behind her eyelids.
Neither color wins, but neither does any color lose. They’re locked in a standstill, with no chance of a resolution.
The heat gets closer, and she spreads her arms like Christ on the cross.
***
In another version of the story, it’s all almost prevented. Charlie enters Tori’s bedroom one day and sees that she’s stripped the wall of her posters and replaced them with Solitaire’s posts.
He hurries back downstairs, disturbed, and asks his boyfriend for advice.
“Am I overreacting?” he asks. “Am I just projecting my own mental health issues onto her?”
Nick wraps one of Charlie’s curls around his finger then lets it go, watching it bounce back. “I don’t think you’re overreacting. And even if you are, it’s better to be safe than sorry, right? If you want, we can write a letter to your parents explaining the situation. Like we did back in August.”
So when Charlie’s parents get home, before it’s time for dinner, he reads to them the letter Nick helped him write. He explains as patiently as he can about Solitaire and how worried he is about Tori’s growing obsession with them. Halfway through, he glances up into their doubtful eyes and feels himself losing hope. Still, he carries on, determined to have them listen and understand.
When he finishes, he sits in anticipatory silence for several moments.
“I don’t know, Charlie,” his mum says, sounding thoughtful. “Sounds to me she’s just found something to be interested in.
“And it’s less noisy than the violin,” his dad adds, chuckling like this is a joke. Like the state of their daughter’s mental health is a laughing matter.
Charlie thinks about arguing back. He could probably wear them down enough to at least talk to Tori, but he doesn’t.
“Yeah, I guess so,” he says finally, ignoring the nagging voice in his head telling him to push harder.
They leave, and he crumples the paper into a tiny ball, fighting back tears.
Higgs still burns, and Tori is still in the thick of it.
***
In a similar version to the previous story, Jane and Julio Spring listen to their son. They look at Tori’s wall of Solitaire and note similar obsessive patterns present in Charlie.
They schedule an appointment for Tori to see a psychiatrist as soon as possible, and they make her go, regardless of how much she screams that it’s unnecessary, that she’s fine, that it’s just a stupid side project.
In this story, Higgs burns, yes. But this time, Tori is safely in bed, far away from the flames.
***
In one version of the story, she jumps off the smoking roof.
***
In one version of the story, Michael manages to get to the school before Tori does. He bursts in on Evelyn, Lucas, and Quiff and stares at them.
“What’s your plan?” he asks. “What could you possibly do that’s worse than what happened at the festival?”
Evelyn smiles and holds up a lighter. “We’re going to burn the school,” she says.
“No,” he says. “You can’t.” Still, he can’t deny the flicker of desire in his stomach, the desire to see this miserable place in ashes.
“Oh please,” Quiff says. “Give up your holier-than-thou attitude. Nobody actually likes it here. It’s all slowly killing us, isn’t it?”
Michael looks at Lucas. There’s a strange sort of pleading look on his face, which Michael can’t stand.
“Do it,” he says finally, staring levelly at them.
The fire doesn’t get very far. Tori comes rushing in and sprays the fire extinguisher over the slowly developing flames. All that’s damaged is a hallway and some artwork. The building is still very much intact.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” she screams at Michael, eyes as wild as her hair. “Seriously, what the fuck was going through your head?”
He tries to explain how he actually hates education, how horrible his entire school experience has been, how it would vindicate something hard and black inside his chest to see it all gone.
Tori doesn’t understand. Of course she doesn’t. She’s a good person. Not like him. Not like any of them.
“You could’ve died,” she says softly, and the scratchiness in his throat is no longer from the little bit of smoke he inhaled.
“I know,” he says, and the words hang in the air between them.
***
In one version of the story, Oliver hears the front door slowly creak open.
“Tori?” he calls softly from the front door, squinting out at the already fading figure of his sister. “What are you doing?”
“Oliver?” She turns around. “Oliver, go back to bed.”
“Where are you going?” he asks again.
“School,” she says, walking back to the front door. “Here, let me tuck you back into bed.”
Oliver crosses his arms and glares at her with all his seven-year-old anger. “I’m not dumb. School doesn’t start this early,” he says. “It’s not good to sneak out of the house. I’ll tell Mum and Dad.”
Tori curls her hands into fists, nails digging into her palms. She doesn’t have time for this. “Olly, please, you don’t understand.”
He looks at her, consideringly. “I want a hot chocolate,” he says.
“What?”
“Make me a hot chocolate,” he insists.
“I can’t—”
“Mum,” he calls softly, and Tori claps her hand over his mouth.
“Fine,” she hisses, and Oliver smiles triumphantly.
By the time she makes him a hot chocolate and gets him back to bed, news of the fire has already made local news. She gets an alert from Lucas’s Facebook, along with a picture of the flames.
“That looks scary,” Oliver says, peeking at her phone screen from under the covers.
“It does,” she says. She turns off her phone after a moment and smiles at her youngest brother. “Good thing we have hot chocolate, though.”
***
In one version of the story, Charlie is the one who catches Tori sneaking out.
“I knew it,” he says. “I knew you were going to do something stupid.”
“Leave me alone, Charles,” Tori says, not breaking her stride.
Charlie jogs to catch up with her, stumbling slightly as he sinks into the snow a little with every step. “Do you really think I’m going to let you do this alone?”
Both Spring children are there when the school erupts. In the chaos of it all, Tori and Charlie get split up, and Tori screams his name over and over but there is no response. The flames seem to call her to them— Tori! Tori! —but she tunes them out.
Her brother needs her.
Eventually, she finds him (or, more accurately, they find each other) and they flee the building, grasping one another’s hand.
Outside in the cold air, Tori freezes in her tracks. “Michael,” she says. “He’s still in there. I have to go back—”
“No,” Charlie says, tugging her away from the flames. “No. I’m sorry, Tori, but I’m not going to let you go back in there.”
She screams and hits him and tells him she hates him, that she’s not important, it’s Michael who deserves life more than her, but his grip remains steady. He pulls her to where Nick and their friends are standing in a semicircle, and he hugs her.
“He’s going to die,” she says frantically. “He’s going to die, and it’s all my fault.” She says it over and over again, and each time it feels less real.
She hides her face in Charlie’s jacket, unable to look.
She might’ve stayed buried in Charlie’s jacket forever if not for Nick shouting, “There he is!”
Tori looks up and there, standing on top of the roof, like a goddamn angel, is Michael Holden. The flames illuminate his wild curls.
“Michael!” she yells, waving her arms wildly. “Michael, I’m here. Michael!”
He hears her over the chaos somehow and waves to her. Then he waves at something behind her. She turns and realizes a small army of Higgs and Truham students have formed to watch the school burn.
“Can someone get me a ladder?” he asks, and she can’t help but laugh. “And maybe call the fire department?”
***
In no version of the story does she die.
If she’s in the school, she either has burns or she doesn’t, but if she does, it’s not serious. Nurses tell her she should be grateful. While she doesn’t know if she is grateful, she knows right now, she doesn’t want to die. Which is probably an improvement. When she’s finally released, after an hour of being poked and prodded, she walks out to a waiting room full of people who love her.
If she’s outside the school, she gets Nick to drive them all to the hospital. She sits in the waiting room until Charlie, Michael, Becky, Lucas, whoever it is, are allowed to leave. Nick is always there for her to rest her head on—sometimes Charlie is as well but sometimes he’s the one who needs checking up on, and in these versions, Nick lets her cry silently on his shoulder.
If she jumps off the roof, she gets a broken leg and a minor concussion. Michael comes to visit her every day, and Charlie teaches Oliver how to make hot chocolate himself.
If she’s at home, her, Oliver, and Charlie pile into her bed together and share memories of a better time, a time before smoke and tears and shrieking fire alarms in their heads. When Jane and Julio wake up and their children aren’t downstairs in the kitchen getting ready for school, they peek into Tori’s room and find them all curled up together, fast asleep.
They smile at each other and softly close the door behind them.