Burn Before Reading

by Sara Wolf

  "Hey Dad," I whispered. "I'm in the library."

  "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought school was over." His voice sounded so thin, that day. "I'll call you back –”

  "No, it's okay! It is over. I'm just picking up some books before I go home. I can talk now."

  "I'm so proud of you, you know." I could hear the smile in his words. "I can't stop bragging about you to the neighbors. My daughter - going to Lakecrest of all places."

  I laughed. "I know. How was your day?"

  He cleared his throat. "Do you know when you're coming home?"

  Subject change. My stomach churned. That was never a good sign. "Like, a half hour? How does that sound?”

  "Great. I think we're having spaghetti tonight, so there's no rush."

  "Spaghett about it!" I said in an Italian accent. Dad laughed a little at our old joke, but it was so faint I barely heard it at all.

  "See you soon, Bee."

  "See ya."

  I had to get home, I knew that much. Dad didn't sound so great, and Mom wouldn't be home for another seventy-two hours, since her shift at the hospital this week was a double. He needed someone there with him, and I was the only one.

  As much as I wanted to stay and watch the sun set over the grounds, I stood up, threw my books in my bag, and checked them out with the librarian.

  "Ah," she pushed her glasses up on her nose. "You're the McCaroll scholarship student, aren't you?"

  "Yeah," I shifted uncomfortably. "Do I really stand out that much?"

  "You're one of three students in this school without a designer bag."

  We laughed, and she spoke again.

  "I've just seen you in here so much I thought you must be studying hard for something. You've got to maintain great grades to keep that scholarship up, huh?"

  "Yeah. And an essay, every month."

  Her eyes widened. "Wow. That's a lot of work."

  "It's worth it," I smiled at her. She kept checking out my books, reading the titles softly out loud.

  "The Modern Brain, A Study of Chemistry and Moods, Mental Awareness for the Unaware -" She looked up at me. "Do you have a psych class soon?"

  "Something like that." I grabbed the books and zipped my bag up. "Have a good night."

  I made my way across the lawn and to the parking lot, now mostly empty of Jaguars and chrome-fitted convertibles. My little gray Volvo waited for me, and I threw my stuff in back and took off towards home. Mom's hideously smelly air freshener swayed on the rearview mirror, an empty coffee cup of hers with lipstick stains on it still in the cup holder. I usually dropped her off at work and picked her up after it, but any other time the car was hers. On days when she was home, I took the bus. I liked driving. Dad couldn't do it, not since he got sick, so I pushed to get my license early so we wouldn't be totally house-bound with Mom at work.

  The fir trees flashed by on the highway, piercing the setting sun with dark spearheads. Sunset is the one time the sun doesn't hurt to look at, I thought to myself.

  Wolf's eyes, on the other hand, never dimmed.

  "Urgh! Get out of my head!" I grit my teeth. Wolf's gaze ignored my demand, and lingered in my memories like a bad stain.

  I get how he knew about my scholarship - every teacher knew, and apparently the librarian did, too. When I first joined Lakecrest rumors went around about me - who my parents might be, why I was driving such a cheap-looking car, why my hair was so tragically covered in split-ends. It wouldn't be hard to put two-and-two together; that I was the scholarship student. But the other stuff - where Mom worked, Dad being sick, me wanting to go to NYU - how did Wolf know about any of that? That's private, personal stuff. He even knew I wanted to be a psychologist. How -

  I think back to everything I'd written about NYU. It was really just the one essay, the thing I wrote to get the McCaroll scholarship in the first place. He must've read that. I didn't exactly go around announcing I wanted to be a psychologist, and the only one I'd told about NYU was the scholarship committee.

  So Wolf somehow sneaked a read of my essay. Why? Why bother with something as insignificant as that? Maybe he was nosy. Truth made its clear little voice known; he wasn't nosy. He sent out red-cards to people who did stuff he didn't like. He read my essay so he can know what I'm all about, so he knows exactly what kind of trouble the scholarship student will be, and whether or not I'll play by his little rules.

  "Ass," I muttered, pulling up the driveway of home. The sight of our duplex unknotted some deep anger I didn't know I was holding inside. At least home was free of the Blackthorns.

  I climbed the stairs and was greeted in the doorway by the smell of burning. A cold wave of terror ran through me - was it a fire? I had to get Dad out, before the smoke hurt him, unless it already had -

  I dropped my bags and dashed inside, covering my nose with my sleeve.

  "Dad?" I shouted. I found the source of the smoke in the kitchen - a pot of tomato sauce was burning. I took it off and turned the heat down, throwing open the kitchen window to let the smoke out.

  "Dad!" Flinging open the doors to their room, my room, the bathroom, I finally found him sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring at the floor.

  "There you are," I collapsed at his side. My eyes darted to his wrists, but Dad scoffed and muttered.

  "I didn't hurt myself, if that's what you're worried about."

  "I didn't -" I tore my eyes from his wrists and looked to his haggard face. He hadn't shaved in a few days, but he rarely did, these days. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it, Dad. I was just worried. You left the sauce on the stove, and I -"

  "I know what I did, Bee," He snapped, head moving up. Mom always said I looked most like him, with brown-gray hair, like a silver summer fox. His was grayer than mine, with white streaks just barely showing at his temples. Dad's eyes are my blue ones, pale and a little too large for our square faces, but his were bloodshot and irritated more often than not.

  "I was making dinner. I came in here to take my pills," He breathed. "And then I realized - why do I take them at all, if no one is home to take them for?"

  I felt sick to my stomach. "Dad -"

  "They make me normal," He said evenly. "They make me act like a normal person, right? So why should I take them if I'm alone for most of the day? If I'm by myself, I can be as abnormal as I want. I can -"

  He faltered, his eyes going dim as he looked at me. "I'm sorry, Bee. I didn't mean to scare you."

  "It's okay," I smiled, jumping up and fishing a paper cup and his pills from the cabinet. I filled it with water, and handed it to him. I tried to dredge up what little I remembered from the books I'd checked out. I shouldn't be confrontational, the books said, but I should always keep the focus on the patient's well-being. "If you don't want to take them today, that's fine. It's just, you might feel better if you do."

  Dad stared at the pills, then looked up at me.

  "Alright."

  I watched him swallow the pills with water, and though his smile afterwards seemed forced, it was still a smile.

  "Well, I burned dinner. So."

  "Spaghett about it!" I crowed. "I can order us a pizza."

  Dad nodded tiredly. "Might as well."

  I watched Dad as we settled in to catch crappy soap operas on the couch. It was a thing we'd always done together; grab a bowl of popcorn, find the most hilariously bad show, and make fun of every overdramatic plot twist. That used to be my ideal Saturday night.

  Now, though, it was a different story.

  Dad tried - at the beginning of his diagnosis, I know he tried his hardest every day to act like nothing was wrong for me. But that lasted four months. The days when he wouldn't get out of bed began to get more and more frequent, and he'd come out feeling bad about staying in bed so long. It was a vicious cycle. Mom was understanding, and she loved him, but their fights had been getting more and more frequent. They weren't really traditional 'fights' - most of the time Dad would retreat to hi
s basement workshop before a real fight could break out. When he came up, Mom would accuse him of running from his problems, of being a coward, and the whole thing would start all over again, on another day, during a different dinner. Sometimes, she'd go down there after him, and I'd hear crying from the basement. When they'd come up, they'd be a little friendlier to each other. I don't know what happened down there, and I never would - I couldn't stand to listen to the crying for more than a few seconds. It always felt like the sound itself was a monster trying to rip my chest open.

  I started to think I was the real coward. I couldn't even comfort Dad, or Mom, when they needed it the most.

  The pizza arrived, and Dad and I dug in with gusto. I suggested more TV afterwards. TV was always a nice way to spend time together, without demanding too much from him. But Dad insisted on cleaning the burnt pot, so I went upstairs to my room and cracked open the spines of my new books.

  'Above all,' the book said. 'You must remember depression and suicidal thoughts are a result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is a sickness, not a condition of the patient's character, and should be treated as any sickness is - as a malaise not under anyone's control'.

  "Not under anyone's control," I repeated, and wrote it down in my purple-leather notebook. It's the same one I'm writing in now, actually. I started keeping one just to have all the important stuff readily available, should Dad have a particularly bad episode, or I forget what not to say when talking to him. I couldn't afford to say the wrong thing and make him hate himself even more. I promised myself I would only make his sickness better, not worse.

  A knock on my door made me look up. "Come in."

  Mom peeked her head around the door, and I smiled.

  "Mom! They let you off?"

  "Denise took my shift," She said. "Said she really needed it. And she gave me a ride home, too, the sweet thing. How did it go tonight?"

  She was referring to Dad. It's the same question she asked every time she came home after a long shift. I opened my mouth to tell her about the pan, his pills, then stopped. Her eyes looked so tired, the circles under them a bruised purple and her hair in disarray. The faint smell of antiseptic clung to her. I shook my head.

  "It was fine. We had pizza, and watched TV."

  "Ugh, that sounds like heaven," She heaved a sigh. "And how're you doing? Is school still okay?"

  "Aside from the fact I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who knows how to clean my own room on that entire campus, yeah, it's great."

  Mom chuckled. "That bad, huh?"

  "I swear I saw someone wearing a diamond necklace. In P.E."

  Her smile made my heart swell a bit - even tired, she was so pretty.

  "Incredible. I can't believe you chose that school."

  "You'll see. When I'm world-famous and obscenely rich, you'll regret ever questioning me!"

  "Alright, tiger." She laughed again and looked around the room. "Don't you miss all your old posters and pictures? The walls look so bare."

  "It's called atmosphere, Mom. I can't concentrate on algebra if a shirtless boyband keeps staring at me."

  “What about your old books? The fantasy ones? Did you put those away too?”

  “I’ve got textbooks to read now.”

  She shook her head. "Alright, I get it. Leave your uniform out and I'll iron it when I get up. But for now, I'm crashing."

  "Okay. Sweet dreams."

  "Sweet dreams, Bee." She said, and closed my door behind her. I let out a long sigh, and stared at the blank walls. They used to be covered in things I liked - boybands, anime, the occasional musical and old TV show. I hoarded books, too, on a massive bookshelf; all my childhood favorites meshing with my new loves. Like a fanatic little squirrel hoarding for the winter, I used to collect figurines, band t-shirts, the newest fantasy trilogy signed by the author - anything and everything about the people and media I was obsessing over. But especially books.

  Books were my cake, my crack. I could eat through a whole trilogy of books in one day, easy. Back when I was reading for real, when Dad wasn’t sick, I used to go through forty books a month. Crazy, I know. It took up most of my time, but I didn’t mind at all. I had nothing better to do. Sometimes I’d even try my hand at writing – sitting at my laptop and dreaming up lavish fantasy worlds for my characters to prance around in. I never showed anyone my writing, mostly because I was embarrassed, and mostly because it wasn’t any good.

  Before Dad got sick, I wanted to be a writer.

  I know it sounds dumb, pen-and-paper. Everyone wants to be a writer. Everyone wants to be a rock star, too. But I really wanted it. I was ready to go to school for it, making a wishlist of my top writing schools, like Sarah Lawrence. I dreamed of reading all kinds of literature, writing my own kinds of literature, surrounded by people who loved books just as much as I did.

  But it wasn’t meant to be.

  The day Dad was diagnosed was the same day I researched the best college psych programs I could find, and the best high schools to help me get in them. I buckled down and turned my grades from C's to all A's. Two weeks after the end of freshman year at my old high school, I entered the McCaroll scholarship essay contest for Lakecrest, and won.

  My eyes skipped over to my closet, where piles of cardboard boxes sat, all my old, childish things inside them. My books sat there, calling out for me. I'd always been tempted to open them again, dive into the worlds I used to love so much, but at the last second I'd remember the look on Dad's face when he heard his diagnosis, the look on Mom's face when she'd come home, tired and barely holding together, and all of my selfish urges to slack off would instantly fade away.

  I didn't have time to play around in fantasy lands. Dad needed me. Mom needed me.

  I pulled out my homework and cracked down on it, but no matter how hard I'd try to concentrate, the image of Wolf's angry eyes slid into my brain, burning between all the equations and derivatives. The fact he thought he knew about my family just kept pissing me off, over and over, like rubbing salt in a wound.

  He talked a big game, up in his golden castle with his perfect body and infinite money and petty little red-card power struggles, but he didn't know shit about me.

  Chapter 3

  I went to bed angry at Wolf. The next morning, I woke up only slightly miffed. I was willing to forgive him. Maybe. If he decided paid me a million trillion dollars.

  Except then Mom dropped me off at school, and he had to go and make me hate him again.

  You always knew when the Blackthorn brothers were around, because that's where the people gathered, too. A ring of them surrounded two other people in the quad, a grassy part of the campus where people usually hang out before the bell rings. The two people in question were Wolf, and a freshman boy I recognized as being on the swim team, too. Fitz and Burn waited for Wolf far from the crowd, leaning against a pillar and watching everything go down. I fought my way to the edge of the circle, just barely picking up on the words around me.

  "Who is that?"

  "Wolf seriously needs to stop picking on the freshmen. Don't tell him I said that, though -"

  "Look at that guy! He's so big for a freshman."

  It was true - the freshmen was nearly Burn's height and twice as wide. His muscles bulged from his uniform, like he was growing too fast for his own skin to keep up. Wolf stood across from him, his blazer perfectly pressed and his hazel eyes narrowed, his body the exact opposite of the freshmen's - lean and sleek and coiled tight like a spring.

  "I'll ask you again - are you going to stop?" Wolf all but snarled.

  The freshman clenched his meaty fist, a red card peeking out of it. "You don't know what it's like."

  "No, I don't." Wolf drew his eyebrows tight and hard. "And you won't either, if you keep going on like this."

  "I'm not stopping," The freshmen set his jaw proudly. "I don't give a shit what you say."

  My chest swelled a bit. Good for him, standing up to Wolf's sorr
y ass. Wolf, on the other hand, didn't even blink. He walked over to the crowd, to where a girl was drinking an iced coffee. He said something to her, and she gave the rest to him. It was a bizarre silence, until Wolf walked over to the freshman and dumped the coffee over his head.

  The crowd gave a half-muffled shriek. Some started laughing. The freshman looked mortified, anger buried deep in his gaze, but he didn't so much as glance at Wolf with it. Wolf, on the other hand, stared right at him, as if daring him to throw a punch. He'd just antagonized a guy who could probably fold him in half, but he looked unruffled and fearless to the point of arrogant.

  "You will stop," Wolf said. "Or I will make you stop. It's your choice - control yourself, or have me do it for you."

  The freshman could only stare at the ground, but even I could tell he wanted to spit out a 'fuck you'. I gritted my teeth. I was getting sick just watching this. I'd had enough. I strode into the center, between the freshman and Wolf. He immediately turned his snarling on me.

  "What the hell are you doing, scholarshipper?"

  "Wow, it's weird how I also have a question for you, which is; are you actually this much of a pisslord, or is it just to show off for your daddy?"

  A second murmur ran through the crowd. I kept my head high. Wolf's feral glare was practically searing me from the inside out. He opened his mouth, and at that second the bell rang, loud enough to break the tension and scattering the crowd in a dozen directions. The freshman ducked away from us, dripping coffee as he went. In a blink it was just Wolf and I. I'd make a pun about staring down a wolf, here, but I was too nervous at the time.

  "You keep getting in my way," He growled.

  "Someone's gotta do it," I lilted. "Haven't you seen a single feel-good after school cartoon? How else will we defend against the evils of bullying? Who am I kidding - you probably grew up watching orchestras in Berlin instead of TV."

  I was shocked by my own bravery, but then I realized my mouth was running on an auto-pilot born of chest-crushing anxiety. Could he really take my scholarship away? Even if he could, that doesn't mean I would just stand by and watch him harass and humiliate other people. Not when I know how much psychological damage that could do. Wolf's glare lingered on my face, over my blazer, to my skirt and long socks and worn converse shoes.