Ellie Hong
Walnut, CA
2024, Senior, Creative Writing

At an unidentifiable point in my life, it became normalized to see flames. Once spring began to ebb away, fires were expected to gladly take its place among the dry branches.

That was simply the way things were, in always too-sunny Southern California. Concrete would become too hot for bare feet to bear, ice cream would melt faster than you could lick away, and plumes of smoke would litter the horizon. Those were merely the telltale signs of summer, signs that long days spent in stuffy classrooms had finally come to an end.

The rapid introduction of fires wasn’t necessarily a hard truth to have to come to terms with. I already knew that summers seemed to get longer and hotter each year. Obviously, something had to happen from it. Fires were a logical effect, one I could acknowledge and accept.

If your house was burning down, what three things would you save? It’s a strictly hypothetical question, meant as a throwaway icebreaker asked to get shy children to open up. It’s a worst-case scenario, a what if? to mull over for a minute or two at best. No one truly expects to be caught in such a situation- so the answer is always given with a grin and a touch of foolishness: my phone, a charger, and a snack!

But with each new summer and each new drought, the hypothetical becomes less and less imaginary. The possibility of the worst-case scenario grows, and the question of what to save becomes more essential to answer. In the actual moment, there will be no time for consideration; no time to determine what holds the most significance in our lives. Instead, the question becomes answered ahead of time, and a premeditated plan of action is drilled into our heads long before the first spark catches.

For me, my three things are simple. My cat, my phone, and what little amount of money I own. Nothing else is worth the extra smoke I will undoubtedly inhale, the extra minutes I spend in perilous danger. The phone and money are simple: I leave my phone charging every night, and the money is kept in a wallet on my desk.

But my greatest fear is my cat’s natural reaction. I fear that she will only see red and yellow and death, and run upstairs to somewhere I can’t reach- somewhere only the fires will have a long enough grasp for. I worry that she will be punished for what humanity has done- that she will be the one to face the flames, and not the ones who put down the kindling.

Such situations should have remained in the realm of the fictional. But each new year only grows more dangerous, as the atmosphere heats and the grounds dry out.

And yet, we only seem to care less and less. The slow death of our planet has become standard, barely even a secondary thought to most. Our own personal and shallow issues outweigh the earth’s significant ones, and the consequences of them are becoming deadly.

One day in August, I woke up from a sweat-soaked dream to a noxiously yellow sky and a burning red sun. Centuries ago, it would’ve been considered a sign of an upcoming apocalypse, a sign that the end of times was near. The cue to clasp your hands together and pray, for the prophecies of a scorched earth was coming true.

For me, it was merely something to snap a picture of. Something to send to a group chat, to briefly marvel over and applaud Mother Nature for. Isn’t it crazy, what smoke can do to the sky? I would forget about it the very next day.

The next year, an extreme heatwave cut out the power to my school, plunging all 2500 students into tongue-parching darkness. Every one of us had been complaining about the heat since the very start of the day. It was only the cherry on top of a melted sundae.

Administration ended the day early, dismissing us back to the safe havens of our houses. It wasn’t safe, allowing us high schoolers to be taught without any air conditioning in such a severe heatwave. I was just giddy that after school color guard practice had been canceled.

Eleven months ago, the school fire alarm went off during lunch time. Not a single person reacted, and no one even made an attempt to evacuate or get into the safe zone. The fire alarm going off was almost a weekly routine- everyone assumed it couldn’t be serious.

The principal himself had to make an announcement, clarifying that actual smoke had been detected on campus and we all had to safely move onto the football field. Even then, we all just laughed about it, completely unworried about the potential dangers.

Nine months ago, my friend’s neighborhood was evacuated. All of its residents were forced to quietly pack a bag and leave- leave before the crackling fires a handful of miles away could come too close. The fires never did reach his home.

He returned back home before the week had even ended, returned to a street where the faint smell of smoke still tainted the stagnant air. In the end, the fire had only been an inconvenience; a bump in the road to make him late to school.

We all assume that a catastrophe won’t happen to us. We know the threat is there, but live in the delusion that it will avoid our inner circles- that we are somehow safe. If it isn’t my house burning, the fire doesn’t exist. If the smoke is not filling my lungs, I don’t need to pick up the water.

But at high enough temperatures, fire can melt through even the strongest of steels. Fire burns even if you choose to look away, and flames are uncaring of what they’re consuming.

One day, we will crane our heads outside to marvel at a faraway light show, and the fire will be on our doorsteps. Our faces will fall, and we will turn to finally turn down the temperature, but it will be far too late. No amount of annoyance or buckets of water thrown will be enough to quash down the monster of our own making.

The earth is already turning vengeful for what we have done to it, and we shouldn’t pretend that it is the one in the wrong. It is our responsibility to apologize – to step off of the tanning beds and extend the shade to further than ever before.

Time is running out, and it will soon be too hot for any amount of money to soothe the wounds we have inflicted.

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