we are Allison and nick, The smoke didn’t smell like a campfire; it smelled like melting plastic and ending chapters.

I stood on the curb in my mismatched socks, the asphalt biting into my heels, watching the orange glow dance behind the window of my childhood bedroom. That room was a museum of "me"—the height marks on the doorframe, the shoeboxes of concert tickets, the secret loose floorboard where I hid my diary in middle school. Now, the roof was exhaling sparks into the black sky.

"Riley Mae!" I screamed, my voice cracking under the weight of the heat. "Riley!"

She was a golden retriever who didn't know she was a dog. She was a professional napper, a thief of unattended socks, and the only soul who knew exactly when I needed a cold nose pressed against my hand. When the first alarm chirped, she had retreated under my bed—her "safe spot" that was now a cage of timber and heat.

The firemen were silhouettes against the inferno. One of them held me back, his heavy glove a lead weight on my shoulder. I watched the bedroom window shatter. I knew exactly what was behind that glass: my favorite worn-out sweater, the photos of my grandmother, and Riley Mae.

In twenty minutes, twenty years of life became a pile of gray slush and charred beams.

The silence that followed the sirens was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. The next morning, the neighborhood was bathed in a cruel, bright sunlight. The house looked like a hollow tooth. My father sifted through the wreckage, his hands stained with soot, looking for anything—a ring, a ceramic bowl, a sign of life.

I sat on the tailgate of the truck and looked at the empty leash in my lap. The loss of the "stuff" was a dull ache; the loss of the walls was a heavy grief. But the loss of Riley Mae was the hole I couldn't walk around.

People told me, "It’s just things. You’re safe." And I wanted to scream that those "things" were the anchors of my identity. That dog was the heartbeat of the hallways.

I walked toward the blackened shell of the porch one last time. There, sitting on the soot-covered top step, was a single singed tennis ball. It was Riley’s favorite—the one she’d drop at your feet until you gave in. I picked it up, the scent of smoke clinging to the fuzz.

The house was gone. My childhood was a memory. But as I squeezed that ball, I realized that while fire can take the wood and the wool, it can’t burn the way she used to tilt her head when I said her name. I walked away from the ashes, a piece of her still in my hand, leaving the ghosts of the house behind.