Among the Shadows: Part 1, Chapter 4
The blaring noise of the fire alarm woke me from a sound sleep. I rubbed my eyes and rolled over to see the glowing red numbers of my alarm clock. It read 2:38AM. I groaned and reached blindly for the switch for the fluorescent lamp on the nightstand. Eventually, my fingers found the switch, and the lamp blinked then flickered on to give a steady glow which illuminated the room. The fire alarms at college seemed to go off weekly, even though there never was a fire. Although I was not actually scared of a real fire about to burn down the building, I always evacuated just in case. If I was afraid, I would be sure to grab the most valuable item in the room, which was my laptop.
Quickly, I went to the open closet and rummaged through the hamper. Finding the jeans I had worn during the day, I fished them out. In one motion, I pulled off the yoga pants I wore for sleeping and yanked on the jeans. Grabbing a clean sweatshirt off a hanger, I shrugged it on, pulling it over on top of the T-shirt I was wearing. With a practiced motion, I swiped my keys off the desk as I left the bedroom. My sneakers were in the living room somewhere, but I needed to wake up my roommate.
I padded barefoot to Susie's room. "Susie, get up," I yelled over the noise when I had reached her bedroom. I knocked on the door and opened it in quick succession. She couldn't complain that I didn't knock first. As I flipped on the light switch, I looked in the direction of her bed. I spotted Susie's head against her pillow. She was lying in bed, facing the wall. It wasn't as if she was still asleep; no one could sleep through that racket. She just didn't want to leave the warmth of her bed when her life was not in danger. A dorm's fire alarm ringing in the middle of the night was largely due to a popcorn microwaving malfunction, or to be really evil, a drill, in which the Resident Advisor would then dock the people too lazy to get out of bed. Like Susie. Getting caught yielded a hefty fine.
"Go away," she mumbled into her pillow. Her tousled head rocked back and forth as she tried to shake her head to indicate her reluctance. To further showcase her listlessness, she pulled the edge of the blanket up over her head. Susie had been my roommate for three years, so she knew me well enough. I shook her shoulder.
When she didn't respond, I shook harder. "Get up, or I'm going to throw a bucket of water on you," I threatened. We had no bucket at hand, but I had once thrown a cup of water to get her out of bed during a fire alarm in our first year together. It had turned out to be a drill, and she was not happy with me that time. Just the fact that I did it once served as a great reminder for every subsequent fire alarm.
"Damnit, Lena!" Susie grumbled and angrily tossed off the blanket. "I swear, if you ever do that to me again, I'll..." The last part of her sentence was lost to some attempt at growling. I told her she sounded more like a diseased cat than a bear. She attempted another growl as she climbed out of bed. Once I was satisfied that she was actually getting dressed, I left her room to find my sneakers.
When Susie finally emerged from her bedroom, I was ready and standing impatiently by the front door. She nodded blearily as she approached, unconsciously pushing her glasses back up her nose into position again, while I opened the door. Instantly, our ears were bombarded by the resounding echoes of the fire alarm. The noise was deafening. After locking the door, we hurried down the stairs of the building, following our neighbors out of the complex.
Outside, we huddled with the other denizens of our college dorm, moaning our complaints about the rude awakening. A couple students had evacuated their rooms with laptops and backpacks of valuables. Noticing that the RA was outside too, we correctly deduced that the alarm was not a planned drill. In short order, we heard sirens from a distance. It was not the first time the firefighters were responding to a call to campus. The fact that there was actually a fire truck coming down the street indicated that there had been some danger. I studied the building carefully. Since I didn't see signs of a fire, I tried to calm down.
A blonde-haired girl approached the firefighters, frantically speaking a few words, and a couple of them disappeared into the building. Since the firefighters had entered without the whole ordeal of the hose and hydrant, it was probably nothing major. In minutes, the alarm was turned off by the firefighters. Susie had been eavesdropping on the conversation so she came straightaway to tell me the story.
The girl, Sarah, who lived in a first floor apartment, had been heating leftover pizza in her toaster oven at 2AM in the usual college lifestyle. She had most likely left it in there too long, or else the oils had dripped. In any case, she found the pizza on fire. After panicking, she had opened the oven door, which exposed oxygen to the fire. Of course, in hindsight, Sarah realized what she did wrong. The flames went pretty high, she claimed, so she had panicked again. She had let go of the oven door, which slammed shut due to the working springs, but by then, the smoke from the oven had already set off the smoke alarm.
"At least we got our daily exercise," Susie said to me.
I followed her gaze to a couple guys playing basketball while they waited. I smacked her arm playfully. "Watching them isn't exercise," I teased.
The firefighters left the building without hurrying. The first waved and loudly shouted that it was clear. They reported that the oven fire had burned itself out already. Embarrassed and culpable for the incident, Sarah busied herself apologizing profusely to all of her neighbors as we grumbled and shuffled back in the building. Although Sarah had been responsible for at least two failed popcorn attempts, she was not the only transgressor in the building. Susie giggled easily over the silliness of Sarah's panic, but coming so close to a real fire alarmed me. I swallowed to remain calm and nodded in response to Susie's babbling.
As I lay in bed after undressing, I pondered over the night's events. Times like these put me in a strange mood. Shortly after my high school graduation, my parents passed away in an electrical fire that burned down our house. I should have been home that night, but I had snuck out to hang out with some friends. I wondered often if things could have turned out differently.
It had happened years ago, but to pretend that the accident did not still affect me would be a lie. My particular background led me to be careful of fire hazards and to react hastily to fire and smoke alarms. Susie knew all this, of course. In our first year as roommates, I had checked all the lamps of our suitemates, making sure none were halogen. I did not care if everyone thought I was being overly obsessive about it; it was better safe than sorry.
If Sarah's oven door spring hadn't worked, tonight's adventure could have been more serious. Catching myself ruminating on the possibilities, I sighed to myself. No one had been hurt, nothing disastrous had happened, and there was nothing to worry about.
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