I definitely feel likeI am on fire.
I step into my townhome after work, and the first thing I notice is water. “No, no, no!” I say as I drop my bag and keys by the door and race over to the big puddle on the floor of my kitchen, right in front of my sink. I fling open the cabinet doors but can’t immediately find the source of the water. I race up the stairs to the bathroom and grab all the bath towels, then run back downstairs and start laying them on the puddle.
At work, I may feel like I’m on fire, but at home, I usually feel like I’m drowning. Real life and I don’t get along so well. Somehow, a water leak right now feels appropriate. So maybe my elements are fireandwater. Fire by day, flood by night.
I pull out my phone, my finger hovering over my family group chat. No, I decided I was going to stop running to my mom or my brothers whenever I need help. I am going to get better at figuring things out on my own.
That had been my plan. Right now, my plan doesn’t feel like the best idea ever. But still, I manage to not text my family and instead tap on my browser and type inWhat do I do if my kitchen is leaking?
Maybe it’s because I’m so flustered right now, but nothing I’m seeing feels like it makes sense. But I do get the gist that I need to turn off the water to my place, find the source of the leak, and clean up the mess.
Not only can I not find the shutoff valve (I have agreat need to always be prepared in case of emergency, so I have no idea how I overlooked learning this detail when I moved in), but I also can’t find the source of the leak.
I’m in the middle of pulling out everything from the cabinet under my sink when my roommate, Reese, comes home. She’s hanging her keys and her Cipher Springs Middle School lanyard on the hook when she says, “Got a sudden urge to clean enthusiastically?”
Then, she must notice that I’m still in work clothes, the bottom half of my slacks are soaked from kneeling in the water, my sleeves are pushed up to my elbows, and I probably look as rattled as I feel. She rushes over. “It’s leaking?”
“Yes. I just can’t figure out from where.” I’ve got the cabinet emptied, but none of the pipes I can see are the culprit. Reese sticks her head in, too, but can’t find anything.
Then both of our heads turn in the direction of the front of our townhouse as we hear the now familiar sound of our new neighbor’s truck pulling in.
Reese grabs my shoulder. “You should go ask Owen to come and look at it! He’s in construction. He probably knows just what to do.”
I shake my head as I stand, hands on my hips, as I look down at the water mess that is continuing to grow. “We’ll figure something else out.”
Reese is silent for a beat, so I look overat her. She gives me a sly smile. “You know, they have therapists you can talk to about your fear of people.”
“I don’t have a fear of people! I just don’t like all their attention on me.”
“So it’s a vulnerability thing.”
“Which makes it just your run-of-the-mill human nature issue. No big deal.”
Reese must not like my plan of figuring something else out because she walks straight to our front door. I follow because I’m curious about what she’s going to do. She opens the front door, waves, and calls out, “Hi, Owen! Perfect timing.”
And then she gives me a push out the door.
CHAPTER 2
DUST IN MY HAIR, WATER AT MY FEET
OWEN
Ipull off one of my work gloves and wipe my forehead with the back of my hand before I move to the next seat in the historical theater we’re restoring. My guys and I have a good assembly line going. They unbolt the chair, remove the armrests, and pull off the seat and back cushions before it comes to me. Then I inspect it for wood rot, broken springs, rusted fasteners, and the status of the upholstery before bagging and tagging, and another of my guys hauls it off to the appropriate storage container for restoration.
We do it all to some of my favorite sounds—the whine of a power saw, the screech of a nail being removed, the groan of a bolt being turned for the first time in over a century, the whir of a power drill. They’re the sounds of exciting things happening.
I flinch when I hear a clatter and a muffled curse before twisting to see a strip of molding fall to the ground and break into pieces. “Oops,” Luis says as he climbs down his ladder.
“Careful,” I say, “this molding is older than your great-grandma.”
“She was one tough lady,” Luis says. “She probably would’ve told it not to be so brittle.”
I shake my head, chuckling. I found a manufacturer who can match the design of the molding exactly, and their work is beautiful. So we’ll get this place looking like its old, glorious self, only without all the wood rot.
A bit of movement draws my eyes up to one of the ornate balcony boxes, and I squint. It was probably a mouse. Again. Luckily, we’ve finished all of the foundation stabilizing, roof repairs, window replacing, and fixing most of the masonry work on the outside of the building. Except for days like today when we’ve got doors open to the outside to haul out the seats, we’ve got this building all closed up, so we shouldn’t have a problem for too much longer.
“We should name them,” I say. “The mice. Like tiny theater goers.”
