Burn Before Reading

by Sara Wolf

  I felt bad about dragging him out of the house, looking disheveled, but he didn’t seem to mind. He never seemed to mind, these days. He pulled on a coat and we were back on the freeway in minutes. Dad kept telling me to slow down, but I’d only do it for a second before revving back into gear. We got to the pawn shop with only one minute to spare. I ushered Dad across the parking lot as fast as he’d go, which wasn’t very fast at all. The owner of the shop glared at us through the window, taking Dad’s appearance in with disdain. When we came in, he raised his voice.

  “Who is this? You’re not going to get me to sell to some homeless guy.”

  I squared my shoulders. “This is my dad.”

  The shop owner froze. I looked at Dad, but he was staring at the counter, eyes empty. Maybe he hadn’t heard. No – of course he did. And he didn’t show an ounce of emotion about it. My stomach twisted like I was gonna be sick. Dad should’ve said something. He should’ve at least frowned, or winced, or blinked. But….nothing.

  The sight of the wolf ring made me tamp down the gnawing worry.

  Dad sighs. “Seventy dollars is a lot, Bee.”

  “I know,” I blurt quickly. “I know. It’s just – this ring is so pretty. And – “

  What am I doing? What am I doing, asking Dad to spend this much on a ring for a boy who hates me when he could be saving that for therapy? For food? For our rent that looms bigger and scarier by the day? Who am I to ask him to spend this much on me?

  I shake my head and smile. “Actually – crap, I’m sorry. For dragging you out here. We don’t have to get it. I don’t – I don’t really want it, anyway.”

  Dad’s quiet as he stares at the ring. I pull at his arm, trying to distract him from it.

  “Come on. Let’s go. Are you hungry? I’ll make something when we get home –”

  Dad slaps four twenties on the counter, and the shop owner gives him change. My stomach falls.

  “Dad, don’t, please, I’ve changed my mind. It’s ugly, and stupid. I don’t want it –”

  The owner hands over the ring to Dad, and he hands it to me with a soft gaze.

  “You deserve to get a gift, Bee,” He murmurs. “For your birthday. So don’t worry so much.”

  I close my shaking fingers over the ring, the cool metal of it a shock against my hot palm. I don’t know what I deserve anymore. But I hug it to my chest, and then throw my arms around him.

  “Thank you, Dad.”

  I smile, and he tries on a smile as best he can, and it only breaks my heart a little, today.

  When we’re home, I marvel at the silver ring alone in my room. It’s so perfect. Wolf will definitely like something like this. The more he has, the better he feels, right? His rings were only part therapy – the other part was clearly fashion. And this ring is certainly the coolest looking one I’ve ever seen. Not to mention it’s his namesake.

  Now it was just a matter of getting it to him.

  School isn’t an option. Or is it?

  I’m so pumped about getting the ring to him that I only start to get nervous once I step out of the house the next morning. The nerves didn’t get me during breakfast, or as I brush my teeth, or when I dress – but the moment the cold air hit my cheeks, all the bottled-up anxiety I thought I’d thrown into the sea comes crashing back on my head like a tidal wave.

  I can do this.

  I have to do this.

  I time my arrival at school way before the first bell – a whole twenty minutes early. Barely anyone is on campus, the empty halls and quad infested by dreary mist instead of students. I inwardly say goodbye to the few places on campus I remember fondly – my locker that I empty out, my History class, the cafeteria. Mr. Brant waves at me from his desk when he sees me at the door. He pulls it open and flashes me a smile.

  “Hi, Bee.”

  “Hey, Mr. Brant.” I can’t meet his gaze, shame overwhelming me. “I – I just wanted to say thank you. For everything.”

  “What? Why does this sound like a goodbye?”

  “You didn’t hear? My scholarship got pulled.”

  His eyes light up. “Oh, right. But I thought that was just a rumor – why are they doing that? Sure, you dipped a little in my class, but you clawed your way right back up. You’re the brightest student in your year!”

  “I wouldn’t say that –“

  “I would, Bee. I’ve seen kids come and go, and you’re the smartest I’ve ever had the honor of teaching. They can’t pull the McCaroll from you, not with how hard you work. I’m going to have a word with them –“

  “Don’t!” I protest. “I mean, don’t. I’m not – I’m not completely blameless. I did something pretty bad. So.”

  God, I wish I could stare at something other than my feet, but my head feels so heavy. My whole body feels heavy. Mr. Brant sighs.

  “Well, if that’s the case, I hate to see you go.”

  “Yeah. I’ll miss your class, Mr. Brant. Thank you for everything.”

  “Anytime, Bee. If you need a recommendation for that NYU application, you let me know.”

  “I will. Thanks.”

  We part ways, and I head to the Auto Shop. Mr. Francis is, thankfully, in the garage, welding an exhaust pipe back into shape. I shout over the sound of the plasma torch.

  “Mr. Francis!”

  Nothing. Fire and sparks and his aproned body turned away.

  “Mr. Francis!!!!!!!!”

  He turns, finally, taking his metal faceguard off and flashing me a grin.

  “Oh, Bee. You’re early. Something you need?”

  I guess he wasn’t told I got kicked out, either. Somehow it just gets harder and harder to say it out-loud to every smiling face that’s been teaching me the past few months.

  “Listen, Mr. Francis, I need a huge favor.”

  “Ooookay.” He smudges his cheek with soot. “Can’t promise anything until you tell me what it is.”

  “I’m not going to be able to make it to class today.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “D-Dentist appointment,” I say. “There’s something I have to give someone in the class. But I won’t be there.”

  “And you want me to give this person that something?”

  “Yeah,” I pull out the small, paper-wrapped box I put the ring in. “If you could give this to Wolf, I’d be really grateful.”

  He eyed the tiny box, looking relieved it wasn’t as big as he thought it was going to be. “Alright. I can do that. Do you want me to tell him anything to go along with it?”

  “No!” I lowered my voice. “I mean, no. Just – if you could leave my name out of it altogether, that would probably be for the best. He might throw it in the trash can, otherwise.”

  Mr. Francis frowned. “It isn’t anything illegal, right?”

  “No, I swear. I can open it right now and show you and re-wrap it – it’s a ring. Shake it.”

  He does, the metallic clink clear enough for both our ears. He nods.

  “Okay. I’ll be sure he gets it, and that you’ll remain a mystery.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Francis. It means a lot to me. And thanks…for accepting me into your class. It was fun.”

  “I’m glad,” He smiles. “Alright, get out of here. I’ve got a lot of pipe to weld and there’ll be sparks all over.”

  I nod, and start up the stairs to the quad. On my way back to the parking lot, one building catches my eye – one beautiful shining building. The library.

  It can’t hurt if I step in it one last time. Just once more. And then I’ll say goodbye to it forever.

  I walk in, the librarian nowhere to be seen. Her cart’s perched at the back of the nonfiction section, so she must be shelving books. I inhale the smell of the library – the comforting smell of old pages and well-worn carpet and sun-bleached wood. I walk quietly up the stairs to the plush chair by the window I spent most of my time after school in. I’d say this was the place where I’d spent the most
time in this school, period. I flopped in the chair and looked out at the sprawling lawn and gorgeous, morning-kissed trees one last time.

  “It’s weird,” I whisper to no one. “How much I used to hate this school. I mean, I don’t like it or anything. But at least now I don’t resent it so much.”

  The trees and pale-peach sky don’t answer me. Why would they? They have much better things to do than contemplate my life choices with me. I close my eyes and lean back and breathe out. One last time. And I pray someday, someone will find this little oasis of calm and quiet, and love it as much as I did.

  The librarian is at her desk as I leave, and she shoots me a sad smile.

  “I heard about your scholarship.”

  “Yeah,” I nod. “It’s okay.”

  “That’s just how private schools are. Fickle, blind, and a little stupid, if you ask me.”

  She winks. All I have the energy to do is crook one corner of my lips in a half-grin.

  “You’ll do just fine, Beatrix.” She continues. “Lakecrest, in my opinion, is an idiot for letting you go. You’ll go on to bigger and better things in no time, and they’ll be sorry, then.”

  “I don’t know. But thanks for the sentiment.”

  “It’s not sentiment! It’s fact. Where do you want to go college, anyway?”

  Sarah Lawrence, my heart says.

  “NYU. But that’s over. Without Lakecrest it’s pointless. The acceptance rate is so low -”

  She ponders this for a moment. “You know, I have a sister that went to NYU.”

  “Really?”

  “Mhm. And she didn’t go to Lakecrest. She was from a tiny, backwater public high school in West Virginia, but she worked her behind off. And let me tell you – the amount of effort she put into studying was maybe half of what you do.”

  “You can’t know that,” I say, willing my stuttering heart to stop clinging to hope.

  “Of course I do. I’ve seen you upstairs every day, checking out book after book. You stay here reading long after every other student has gone home. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that someone who loves reading as much as you do can never be stopped. No matter where you go, you’ll have whole worlds in your head. No matter how hard life gets, you’ll have whole people’s lives worth of experience tucked away inside you. No matter how hard the world tries to silence you, there are millions and millions of words just waiting to burst from you.”

  She pauses. “Well. I flubbed that metaphor, maybe. It sounds like I was talking about zits.”

  I laugh. “No, I – I think I get what you’re saying. I get it. Maybe. Or maybe it’ll take me time to really understand it.”

  “That’s a start.” She smiles. “The school might not have you, but if you ever manage to sneak back onto campus, my library is open.”

  I thank her, turn one last time and look at the sunny spot of my sanctuary, and leave.

  This is it.

  This is how my world ends.

  Not with a bang, but with a library.

  Everything I’ve done up until this moment seals itself away inside those glass doors.

  I left my old school for nothing. I came here every day and poured myself into every test and lecture for nothing. I abandoned my old friends for nothing. I stayed up so many sleepless nights studying for nothing. I made Mom and Dad proud for nothing.

  My perfect plan dies here, the flawless one, the one that would save what was left of our family.

  No - it was stupid of me to think a school could help Dad. It’s not the school that can help him. It’s me. Lakecrest was the fast-track, and now I have to lower myself onto the slow track. That’s all. I can work twice as hard in public school and make it to NYU just the same. Nothing has changed. I go home, I make dinner for Dad, I start the laundry and sweep the house. I make sure his pills are down two from yesterday. I search the internet for Algebra II practice so I don’t fall behind. I look up part-time jobs to see if there isn’t something I can do after school to help pay for Dad’s therapy fund, now that I won’t have as much crushing Lakecrest homework. It’s better now that the Blackthorn brothers hate me. Now I don’t have to shirk my duties to go to parties, or hang out with them. No friends. No distractions.

  I am, and always will be, the only one who can do something. I’m the only one who can help my family.

  It’s better this way.

  Chapter 16

  WOLF

  Rumors always follow me. That’s what being a Blackthorn means.

  I’ve spent my entire high school career carefully curating those rumors – making sure the right ones got out, and the wrong ones got shut down. Fitz helped with that immensely; being able to spread rumors was his entire reason for living, some days.

  Or it used to be.

  It’s been two weeks since Beatrix stopped coming to Lakecrest. Two weeks since we heard her admission that she’d been working for Dad all along. Two weeks since I heard words from her own mouth admitting she became friends with us just to keep her scholarship.

  Nothing’s changed.

  “I swear to you guys, I didn’t do it, okay? That bastard is lying!”

  The girl’s voice is high pitched. Vanessa, I think her name was. Fitz would know – he’d hacked her Facebook to confirm she’d been catfishing her ex. If it was just harmless catfishing, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash at it. But she’d been trying to get him to come to a secluded location for weeks. And then she’d contacted five other guys from South Portland High School, promising sexual favors and drugs if they’d meet him there instead and beat him to a pulp for her.

  I hold the red post-it note between my fingers, and hand it to her.

  “You will stop,” I say. “What you’re planning.”

  Her eyes narrow with disbelief – I can’t know. Wolf Blackthorn can’t know her inner secrets, her darkest thirst for revenge. But I do. And I watch her gaze until she sees the truth in mine.

  “How do you know –”

  “If you continue to go down this path, I’ll find out,” I interrupt her. “And I will expel you. Consider this your first and only warning.”

  “You’re such a stuck-up asshole,” She seethes. “First you chased out that scholarship girl, now me, huh?”

  I feel my insides writhe. Fitz snorts – dismissive, angry. Nothing like he usually is with girls. Behind me, Burn steps forward so he’s level with her, towering over her.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice is slow, and it’s not directed at me, but his face is faintly irritated in a way not even I see often. The girl shrinks back, faking bravado.

  “Fine. Whatever.”

  The three of us watch her go. When she’s gone, Burn looks at me.

  “You alright?” He asks. I scoff.

  “Of course I am.”

  “Weird of you to start caring,” Fitz says. “After the whole Bee thing, not before.”

  Burn rounds on him. “I cared before.”

  “You sure as hell didn’t show it,” I interject.

  “It’s…” He slams his fist on a nearby locker, the sound reverberating in a way his words don’t. “It’s hard for me. To stay, instead of run. I’ve been trying. This whole time I’ve been trying.”

  “Poor you,” I crack my neck and walk away, towards my Calculus class.

  School is a blur, my brain barely soaking in any information. Tests come and go, homework comes and goes, people smiling at me or whispering about me barely register. It’s not me I hear. It’s Bee. When her name comes up on someone’s lips I can narrow in on it in less than a second, sharp and ready for every word that comes after.

  “- what did the scholarship girl do, anyway?”

  “ – at some party. She passed out and almost drowned in the pool –”

  “ – gave her CPR right there. We were so freaked out, he was the only one who moved at all –”

  “ – dating?”

  “
– they hated each other –”

  “ – he got her kicked out –”

  “ – she was sort of stuck up, huh –”

  They know so little. They know nothing, and yet they love pretending they do. That’s what humans do best. Pretend. I learned that all thanks to Bee.

  A wave of sickness washes through me, and I spin my ring frantically. Let it pass. Dear God, please let it pass. I can’t lose control in school. Not in front of everyone. My shoulders are shaking so badly I can feel it radiating to my jaw.

  I let myself trust again.

  I trusted a liar, again.

  I loved a liar, again.

  She never hit me. Not once were her motions violent towards me. And yet somehow, this wound of hers burns hotter in me than any of Mark’s ever did.

  That one dead poet was right when he said gentleness can kill, too.

  Dad is smug about it, at home. He asks me if I’m ‘doing alright’, as if he genuinely cares. Today after school, I catch him sitting at the kitchen table, pouring over brochures of some kind.

  “There you are,” He smiles up at me, that special snake smile he gets when he’s planning something awful. “Sit with me?”

  He motions to the open chair, and suddenly exhausted by school, by the whispers, by all of it, I sit.

  It takes me a minute to realize what the brochures he’s reading are about. My eyes focus – all of them are ‘rehabilitation centers’. For drug addictions. Dad sees me reading their headlines, and smiles again.

  “I think it’s far overdue for Fitz to get some real help with his problem, don’t you?”

  “Problem?” I whisper, hoarse. “He takes drugs at parties. And when he’s stressed, sometimes. But he hasn’t done a single one in two weeks –”

  “You don’t know that. We can’t trust him, Wolf. It’s harsh but true. He might be your brother, but you can’t trust an addict’s word.”

  “He didn’t tell me that,” I growl. “I know that. He gave me his stash. And I flushed it down the toilet.”

  “You can’t know that he gave you all of it.”

  “Haven’t you noticed? He isn’t himself, lately. He’s snappish and irritable. He’s having withdrawals.”