Over and Run With - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Twenty-Three

The building went up in flames quicker than anyone might have expected.

It was all that old wood, dried up and rotting, eager to catch with the slightest spark and begging to be brought to its end. The fire crawled up the beams and flashed through windows. It reached for the rafters and blew through the breeze. It lit up the night—its golden glow extending beyond the building, the trees, out toward the mountains. Out toward the stars.

I turned to look over my shoulder, at Luke, whose eyes caught on the flame. That is, until he finally landed on me. "Morgan."

It was a warning. It was a plea. There was the slightest shake of his head.

And then I ran into the flames.

"Morgan," he called out behind me, but it was too late. "Why do we always have to run into the fire?"

His voice was already lost to the snaps and crackles of a burning building. The heat landed on my face with a dense smack, and it was instinct to cover my eyes with the front of my arm. Blisters seemed to crawl along my skin as the smoke settled into my lungs.

I've spent a lot of time in this report being critical of my family—and, to be clear, I stand by that. I think we needed the criticism. I think someone needed to stand up and tell them that enough was enough. I think, in some sick and unpleasant way, we needed this to happen to us, otherwise our power would have gone unchecked and, someday down the line, we might have become our own version of the Circle, fueled by our own sense of purpose. I don't regret a single day.

But it's equally important to note that I do love my family. And, more than that—that I never stopped loving my family. Even when I really wanted to. Even when it would have been easier. Regardless of how this ended, or what side I fell on, my family would have stayed with me, because sometimes, love happens against your will. If you're lucky, it runs so deep in your blood that you have no choice but to feel it, suffer by it, understand it in the most confusing ways possible. Love didn't just consume me—it was me.

So when it came down to it, I didn't have a choice. When it came down to it, this was a no-brainer. My family was inside, and so I needed to be with them. It didn't matter that the fire was rapidly growing. It didn't matter that I would likely be met with combat. It didn't matter that, even on its best days, that old abandoned hospital was hardly structurally sound, and growing weaker by the moment. There was no doubt in my mind that I was either going to help them out of the flames, or I was going to die trying.

"Maggie!" It was my mother's voice, rounder and hollower than usual amidst the heat. I had to squint through the room to find her, shoving up against a long fallen beam that was just starting to catch. As I approached, I saw that she was lifting it off of something—rather, someone. "Help me lift this."

I bolted to the other side of the beam, avoiding flame as best I could, and I felt my heart pounding with possibilities—was it Matt, crushed beneath the weight? One of my aunts? Grandpa Joe?

Except that it wasn't any of them. In fact, I didn't know this person at all.

"On my count," she said, with a strain in her voice. "One, two..."

On three, we lifted. On three, we pulled a piece of building off of a man I had only ever seen once or twice, training alongside me in the last dwindling weeks of the Gathering. I hadn't even learned is name yet—and my mother certainly hadn't. But here she was, amongst a fatal fire, desperate to set him free.

And as I looked around, I saw more of it—more Goodes, carrying out their enemies, aiding their foes, ensuring that no one died such a terrible death as burning alive. Townsend threw someone over his shoulder. Uncle Jonas dragged two people out by their collars. And it occurred to me that, yes, maybe we were restricted by the rules of morality. But maybe we were guided by them, too. Maybe morality was what kept us whole and human at the times when we felt our very furthest from it.