“Yudi,” he gasps out. He can’t find Yudi when he reaches for him. Everything around him is fire and black smoke, acrid and deadly

The desk burns like an effigy, like a Lag B’omer bonfire gone horribly wrong. Naftali is closer than he’s ever been to a fire, and it’s so much hotter than he’d imagined. He is gagging, bent over and stumbling as he tries to take action.

They have to escape. They have to call for help. They have to—

“Yudi,” he gasps out. He can’t find Yudi when he reaches for him. Everything around him is fire and black smoke, acrid and deadly, and he can only see shadows moving in the room. A large figure looms in the smoke, making its way to him.

It isn’t Yudi. It’s Eliezer, moving with determination, his jacket pressed to his mouth to filter out the smoke. The rage is gone from his face. Instead, he looks terrified, eyes flickering over Naftali as he seizes his hand. He tugs at him as if they’re still little boys — Naftali’s older brother running into a fire to pull him to safety — and Naftali wants nothing more than to follow him out.

But there is an even littler, even needier boy somewhere in the room, all on his own with no one to retrieve him.

“Yudi,” Naftali chokes out again, and Eliezer nods without hesitation. They grope around them, reaching for a limp body in the smoke.

Then, the sound of crashing glass, as though the windows have exploded from the heat. Naftali can barely hear it over the roar of the flames, and he reaches out blindly for Eliezer again, catches his hand, and holds it tightly. They have to find Yudi before something worse happens, before the heat and the flames are too much to bear.

White smoke billows over them, washing out everything in the room aside from the sensation of his brother’s hand clutched in his, and Naftali fears the worst.

But the smoke is strangely cool, and it feels thinner than the black smoke that had been pouring from the desk. It settles slowly around them in a strange foam, and Naftali squints through it and finally sees what has caused it.

Yudi stands near a shattered glass case embedded in the wall behind the desk, a fire extinguisher still in his hands and pointed at the desk. The white smoke shoots from the canister, soaking the desk with moisture and turning still-defiant embers into ash.