Fire

She heard the chanting as she passed the top of the stairs. Arms straining, she lugged her grocery bags straight past the open basement door on her way to the kitchen. She couldn’t make out the words over the sound of keys jangling and plastic rustling, but the repetition and rhythm meant she was sure, yes, they were chanting.

The change had come on slowly. One day, Sara’s preteen daughter appeared at breakfast wearing heavy black eyeliner. Not long after, she added a choker adorned with tiny silver spiders to the look. 

Each week came with something new. Nail polish, purple hair, indistinct music thumping behind her bedroom door. Until, before their eyes, she transformed from a round-cheeked, innocent 12 year old, into a fully-fledged, purple-haired preteen monster.

The same week Sara’s daughter told her to “piss off,” when she’d asked about her after school plans, Sara dragged her old storage box out of the basement to rifle through memories of her own teenage years.

She had gingerly touched the faces smiling back at her from old school camp photos. Her friends, arms thrown casually around each other’s shoulders, braces flashing and the first hint of teenage acne brushing across her cheeks, looked carefree.

But Sara knew better than to trust the shine of hindsight. Those innocent looking girls had their own angst and drama. Drop-kick boyfriends, strict and emotionally absent parents, friends who would, without warning or reason, stop inviting them to sit with them at lunch or go to the shops after school. 

Their lives were a maze of unspoken rules they were somehow meant to know. Emotions that had no logic and no place to go. Expectations they brushed up against with so much force and friction it was a wonder that they didn’t set the world on fire. 

There was no black eyeliner in Sara’s makeup case when she was 12 because there was no makeup case at all. There was no heavy metal music playing from behind the closed door of her bedroom because closing her door was a breach of the rules so serious it was met with a week’s grounding. Instead, Sara learnt to blunt the angst and smile through clenched teeth until she was old enough to flee.

She heaved the groceries onto the kitchen counter and went back to the basement stairs to listen. She could hear her daughter down there with her two close friends. Their words clear from the top of the stair, a monotonous incantation lifting from the depths, “earth, fire, wind, water, earth, fire, wind, water, earth, fire, wind, water.” 

Suddenly the chanting stopped and the girls’ voices peeled into laughter. The soft music of their voices tinkling up the stairs. Sara closed her eyes and imagined them, smiling, arms thrown casually around each other, full of care but somehow also, carefree.