Vivian Wants to Eat the Sun by Starr Jiang

Vivian tasted the high when the Alum Rock Fire devoured the oak trees by Xochi’s. I’d just paid for our birria tacos when the sky, for two months muddled and gray, darkened to anthracite. As the sirens wailed around us, Vivian stuck out her tongue to catch the falling ashes. I didn’t think much of it at the time, having been around her shenanigans since she tattooed herself with a Bic pen on the first day of fifth grade, but as soon as the acrid tang hit her, her body went still, trance-like, as if taken to another dimension.

For three days, I didn’t see Vivian. She wasn’t at school, which was strange because she never missed a chance to get away from her family. I rang her doorbell, and as expected, no one answered, though there was evidence of life: her parents squabbling in Vietnamese, audible through the thin garage door, and a small collection of used matches, arranged in neat rows on the stoop.

On Friday at midnight, a pounding pulled me from sleep. There was Vivian, knocking at my bedroom window, her face so white that I thought she had died and become an apparition. I could smell the smoke wafting off her dirt-streaked hoodie, as if she’d been rolling in a campfire. Margo, I need to taste it again, she panted. In my semi-lucid state, her words were barely registering. Please, I’m so hungry. Will you take me there? I was snared; Vivian had never asked me for anything.

In the kitchen, Vivian opened drawer after drawer, her lungs wheezing, until she found what she was looking for. She reached above our fridge and pounced on my dad’s hidden stash of Chunghwas. Then we were speeding out of the driveway in my family car. The radio was busted – later I’d learn it was because a few satellites in the towers had smoldered – so we could only pick up three of every five words the news announcer was rattling off. Four miles west…Willow Creek…spreading rapidly…advise…evacuate south. I immediately tensed; my family’s home was on the east side of Willow Creek, but Vivian’s was on the west. As if she heard my thoughts, Vivian poked my arm reassuredly. Fuck that house, I hope it explodes. She laughed weakly, took a puff of a cigarette, her fifth of the night. Here! Turn left.

The tires whined as they hit unpaved road. Vivian was guiding us to the far west bank of the creek, so we could meet the fire as it metastasized. I spotted it through the windshield, a shimmering stroke of hot orange on the horizon. Closer, Vivian whispered. I pressed my foot on the gas, and we inched our way down the dirt road, towards the inferno.

Soon, we were close enough that I could feel the heat pulsing inside the car. I could hear the engine squealing, metal groaning under duress. Any closer, and we were going to combust. Viv, we can’t go on, but she was already out of the car, stumbling towards the fire, her mouth wide open. I chased after her, screaming her name, when I must have tripped on something, because the next thing I knew, we were crashing headfirst into dirt.

I woke up soaking wet, surrounded by a bruised darkness. It had rained while we were out. Vivian was shaking uncontrollably in my arms, and it wasn’t because of the cold. I fumbled through her pockets, pulling out my dad’s cigarettes, only to find that the box was empty, save the lighter. I flicked it; a flame sparkled, sputtered dead. 

Morning came, and the sky settled into its ashen equilibrium. All I could do was whisper a lifetime of secrets and fears into Vivian’s hair. I wasn’t raised religious, but at that moment, I quietly hoped that confession could conjure the future. And perhaps it did, because suddenly the rain did what it was meant to: the sun broke through, the sun we had missed since the start of summer. I watched Vivian open her eyes, I heard her laugh, her mouth opening like a net, opening for the rising sun. As she guzzled the light, the world grew dark. So I took her face in my hands, ready to kiss her, but she had already swallowed.

Starr Jiang is a filmmaker and writer from Nanjing, China. She is currently based in New York City, where she is finishing her upcoming short film, The Adventures of Star & Sweetie. Her work has appeared in DIALOGIST, Sine Theta Magazine, and elsewhere. 

21 August 2026