Excerpt:

Why doesn't she move away from the stove? My Mother is watching it. It has been on too long. All of the water has boiled out of the pot. The pot gets hotter and hotter. The handle begins to melt. It bends until it touches the element. Then there is fire and the smell of burning plastic. She stands there, like I sometimes do, transfixed. The fire grows and soon the bottom of the cupboard above the stove blackens, the wood veneer peels and it too begins to burn.

“Move!” I try to scream, but my voice will not work. It is as though I have forgotten how to use it. Or perhaps it is broken. I can barely create a gasp. I try to move toward her, but my body will not obey. The flames have almost reached the ceiling. One of the cupboard doors falls off, still in flames and I can see the food inside. Bags of soup mix and boxes of crackers burn and melt and smell like a hundred meals.

“Mother!” I croak, but she is absorbed, trapped by the spectacle. Then the room is engulfed with smoke and flickering flames that grow, seeming to use up all of the oxygen.

This is when I wake up. The clock says 3:57. I get up to get a glass of water. I have to walk quietly past the boy's room and down the stairs to the kitchen. I do not want to wake anyone up. I know if someone asks me why I'm awake, why I look so upset, that I will scream. We are not a household that screams.

None of the glasses are familiar. The kitchen was practically destroyed. I can still smell the smoke lingering in the curtains and carpets. Father says he can't smell it. He says no on else can. I still do. I fill a new glass to the top and sit in the kitchen nook. It is also new. With all of this newness, I can imagine that I am someone else. Not Miracle, skinny and lonely and scared. Miracle who lives in a house that is too full and too empty all at the same time.