She Burned Her Own Parents Alive

Summary

"Natalie, the fireworks! They caught your house—your parents are still inside!"

It was New Year’s Eve, the kind of night where the air feels brittle with frost and expectation. My childhood friend, Hailey, had insisted we go out to celebrate. She wanted a spectacle, something to mark her "return" to our small town, so she’d dropped nearly two thousand dollars on professional-grade pyrotechnics.

I’d watched her line them up along the dry brush at the edge of my property, my stomach doing slow, anxious somersaults.