“Wait! Here, don’t burn your hand!” I yelled, handing her a towel. She wrapped it around her hand and darted through the smoke, yelping when she touched the knob but managing to turn it off.

“We gotta put that fire out,” she told me. “It’s already pretty big or I’d say we could just let it burn out on its own, but I don’t think it will.”

“Yeah, and the whole kitchen will probably go up before it burned out on its own anyway,” I agreed. “So what do we do?”

“Well, we could…” she trailed off as the wood from the cabinets right next to the oven started smoking. “Shit. Okay. We need water, a lot of it.”

“Wait, is there grease in whatever they were making?” I asked. The wok hadn’t even been used yet, so I had no idea what they’d put into the oven.

“I don’t know!” Shane said. By this time, Jenny and Alice were in the room too, trying not to choke on the smoke that was still rolling out of the oven.

“Here, take this and go fill it with water in the bathroom,” I heard Shane say, and a big cup touched my arm. I took it and ran for the bathroom, with Shane telling Alice and Jenny to do the same thing in the other two bathrooms behind me.

It took awhile, but we managed to put all the fire out. We had to keep running to the bathrooms for a little bit, but in the end we made it. The kitchen didn’t look too good, but at least the fire hadn’t spread beyond that room.

It was almost time for the others to start arriving, and we all looked like crap and smelled like smoke. Alice looked contrite but pissed off at the same time, although I didn’t see anything to be too upset over.

“How’s your hand?” I asked Shane. She had a cold cloth over the burn, but it looked like she was still hurting.

“It’s okay. I just touched that bare metal part of the ledge right above the knob by mistake, that’s all,” she replied.

“Let me see,” Jenny told her, taking the cold cloth away before Shane had a chance to think about trying not to let her. Jenny grimaced when she saw the injury. “That looks really painful.”