The Burning Man

by Christa Faust

  No one seemed to care what Olivia and Rachel were doing there.

  The salty wind whipped Olivia’s hair around her face and the warm, gentle surf bubbled around her bare feet. The sun was high and bright in a clear blue sky. Another beautiful, perfect postcard kind of day. Another day her mother would never see.

  Rachel pressed her face into Olivia’s shoulder, sobbing as their mother’s best friend Joelle carefully unscrewed the lid on the cheap aluminum container that held all that was left of Denise Dunham.

  “Should I say something?” Joelle asked, looking back at Olivia like she was the adult and Joelle was the fifteen-year-old.

  Joelle was a good person, with a huge heart, but she was flighty and clueless most of the time, flapping around like a frightened chicken. Her being seven months pregnant and awash in baby hormones didn’t help matters at all. Unfortunately, she was the only adult that was willing or able to help scatter Denise’s ashes on the beach. Olivia and Rachel had no living family.

  “Go ahead,” Olivia said, her voice tight but steady.

  “Denise,” Joelle said, tears ruining her thick mascara. “You were my best friend since sixth grade and... um... you loved the beach. We had such fun times here, you, me, and the girls.” She choked up for a minute, lips stretched thin and tight. “And now we’re here, to scatter your ashes in the ocean like you wanted, so your beautiful spirit will live forever in the beautiful waves.”

  Olivia found her mind drifting during Joelle’s awkward and corny but heartfelt speech. Drifting back to other, more vivid memories of her mother. Not tan and happy on the beach, but pale and skeletal, wrapped in an oversized hospital gown, her eyes already dead and waiting for her body to catch up.

  It had all happened so fast.

  * * *

  Her mother always had headaches, for as long as Olivia could remember, but they got worse when Randall left.

  After the “accidental” shooting that left Randall with a limp and a monster pain pill addiction, he’d come back from the hospital all smug and more insufferable than ever. Olivia just went along with his story that she had been playing with the gun, and it went off by accident, but a day didn’t go by that she didn’t wish her aim had been better.

  Olivia ran away several times, but always ended up coming back for Rachel’s sake. She just couldn’t leave her little sister alone with that abusive scumbag, because if he was going to hurt someone, Olivia preferred that it be her. She could deal with it.

  Then, one day, Randall was just gone. No explanation, no goodbye, nothing. Olivia was ecstatic, convinced that her mother would finally start to live again.

  But that’s not what happened.

  Denise withdrew even further, refusing to leave her room for days on end. She slept most of the time and when she was awake, she was like a hollow-eyed shadow of herself. Her headaches got so bad that she was unable to work, and they had to go on welfare. There was a time when Olivia came to wonder if her mother’s headaches were just an excuse for her to lock herself in her room with her pills and the TV, leaving her daughters to fend for themselves.

  Cleaning the house, packing lunches for Rachel, handling all the bills and groceries and everything, Olivia had been filled with deep, simmering resentment. So much so that she wanted to grab her mother by the fragile, pipe-cleaner arms and shout.

  He left you, but we’re still here!

  The strange thing about it was that Olivia’s terrible resentment somehow made her guilt-twisted love for her mother even stronger. So if her mother needed to be taken care of, then that’s just what Olivia would do.

  They were in the middle of another pointless, depressing argument about the overdue power bill when her mother had her first seizure.

  “I told you not to open bills and leave them lying around your room, where they’ll get buried and forgotten,” Olivia was saying. “Just give them to me right away, okay?

  “Okay?”

  But her mother didn’t seem to be listening. She was staring at the floor, mouth slack and eyes blinking slowly.

  “Mom?” She put a hand on her mother’s skinny shoulder, exasperation evaporating. “Mom? Are you okay?”

  And bang, her mother went down, twitching, eyes rolling up in her head and urine puddling beneath her on the carpet.

  * * *

  The doctors wouldn’t tell Olivia anything for weeks.

  Inconclusive results.

  More tests.

  Specialists.

  But Olivia knew the truth. She saw it in their faces and the way they refused to meet her gaze for more than a second at a time. And then, finally, there came a day when they couldn’t hide the truth from her anymore.

  It was an inoperable tumor. Cancer. Six months was a generous estimate.

  They still wouldn’t meet her gaze.

  Standing there in the hushed hospital hallway with her inconsolable sister, Olivia had wanted desperately to scream. To punch walls and kick out windows. To shake her fist at the sky and rail against the unfairness of it all.

  But she didn’t. She just nodded and signed forms and accepted leaflets and the phone numbers of various child welfare agencies and grief counselors. Taking care of things, the way she always did.

  * * *

  Joelle shook the jar over the incoming waves and the pale, powdery ash fell like impossible snow across the water. The three of them were silent for a long minute, each one lost in their own thoughts. Joelle and Rachel cried. Olivia didn’t.

  On the drive back to their apartment, Joelle explained to them again how she really wanted to take them in, honest she did, but she just couldn’t. She had four daughters of her own, plus her current husband Brett’s two kids from a previous marriage and now this new baby on the way. There was no room at the inn.

  Olivia understood, both what Joelle said and left unsaid. Like the fact that Brett was a little too fond of Olivia and had recently started complimenting her on her “development” whenever she came over to babysit. She also understood why Joelle felt the need to explain her situation over and over again. Because Joelle wasn’t really explaining it to Olivia and Rachel, she was explaining it to herself.

  “Okay, well...” Joelle said, pulling up in front of their familiar apartment complex. “Stay in touch. You have my number.”

  “Of course,” Olivia replied, climbing out of Joelle’s battered green minivan for what she knew would be the last time. “Thanks.”

  Joelle couldn’t drive away fast enough.

  * * *

  Rachel threw herself onto the sofa in a sobbing heap while Olivia packed up the rest of her sister’s things. Olivia’s own meager possessions were already neatly organized and stowed inside a single rolling suitcase, but Rachel had been unable to handle packing. As if leaving her shoes and CDs strewn around the room would prevent them from having to leave their familiar home.

  No such luck.

  A Child Welfare agent named Leona Byers had just arrived and was standing in the doorway, waiting impatiently for Olivia to finish. She was in her late forties, short and round with razor-thin eyebrows and a fussy little mouth. Her bushy black hair was cut into a weirdly mannish style that clashed with her tight floral dress, chandelier earrings, and garish make up.

  “Look,” Olivia said, “I don’t understand why we can’t just stay here. I can quit school and get a job. I’ve been taking care of all the bills and things since mom got sick, so I know what to do. We don’t need foster care.”

  “I’m sorry, honey,” Leona said, her smarmy, insincere tone making it clear that she was anything but sorry. “That’s just not how it works.”

  “But we’ll get to stay together though, right?” Rachel asked, suddenly panicky. “They’re not gonna separate us are they?”

  Leona smiled, flashing her disturbingly perfect little doll teeth.

  “You’d better hurry up and finish packing,” she said.

  “They can’t separate us!” Rachel cried, clutching Olivia’s arm. “You won�
�t let them, will you?”

  “Here,” Olivia said, handing Rachel their mother’s favorite teddy bear, a panda holding a heart that read GET WELL SOON! A gift from Olivia and Rachel during the first few days of her first hospital stay, back when getting well soon still seemed like a possibility. Rachel clung to the panda like a life preserver while Olivia put her arm around her little sister and spoke close to her ear.

  “If they try to separate us,” she whispered, “I’ll run away and come find you. I swear. Okay?”

  Rachel hugged the panda even tighter and nodded.

  Outside the open door, the mailman was whistling an upbeat salsa tune as he shoved letters and magazines through the mail slot of each apartment. When he reached the Dunham apartment, he raised a hand and called inside.

  “Here you go,” he said, holding a single envelope out to Olivia.

  She turned it over in her hands. The paper was a creamy off-white, thick and expensive. In the place where a return address would be, there was just a corporate logo, a graphic three-dimensional letter M.

  She opened the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of equally expensive letterhead with the same M logo.

  Dear Olivia and Rachel Dunham,

  We are pleased to offer you both full academic scholarships at The Deerborn Academy in Westley, Massachusetts. Room and board are included, plus a monthly stipend to cover your basic living expenses until graduation. Enclosed are two airline tickets from Jacksonville to Boston, where you will be met by a school official who will transport you to the campus.

  Please note that although the date on the tickets is open ended, it would be in your best interest to leave immediately, so you may start the semester at the same time as all the other students in your respective grades.

  The letter wasn’t signed. As indicated, the envelope did contain a pair of airline tickets, as well as a glossy brochure extolling the virtues of the school. It looked perfect—a dream come true. Only Olivia didn’t remember applying for a scholarship to any Deerborn Academy.

  On the other hand, she had applied for dozens of grants and scholarships in the last desperate months of her mother’s life, including several national programs that offered to find placement on behalf of gifted students experiencing personal hardships. She didn’t specifically remember any of those programs having a three-dimensional M logo, but she was under such immense pressure and stress that it wasn’t out of the question that she may have simply forgotten.

  She looked up at Leona, who tapped the spot on her thick wrist where a watch would be, as a signal for her to hurry up.

  Olivia hated being rushed into anything, but there was no time to weigh the pros and cons and come to a carefully considered conclusion. There was clearly no room for debate. Rachel needed her, and being separated wasn’t an option.

  She knew what she had to do.

  “How about a ride to the airport?” she asked.

  4

  When Rachel and Olivia arrived at Logan International Airport, they had no idea what to expect.

  Neither of them had ever been on a plane before, or been outside the state of Florida. Rachel seemed to think the whole thing was a grand adventure. She had been thrilled by the little packet of peanuts, and the view out the oval window, and the fact that her seat tilted backward.

  Olivia, on the other hand, was wary and anxious, full of questions.

  The first thing they had to do was figure out where to get their luggage. Luckily one of the flight attendants, a friendly older camp guy, helped them out, pointing them toward the baggage claim area. But right when they passed through the doors that led to baggage claim, Olivia saw a tall woman in her late fifties with obnoxiously bright, clearly dyed red hair, holding a paper sign that said DUNHAM. She had a thick, sturdy, tank-like build and was wearing a maroon, varsity style jacket that had the Deerborn Academy logo on the left breast.

  As soon as she spotted them, the woman started waving frantically.

  “Um... hi,” Olivia said, walking up to her. “I’m Olivia Dunham.”

  “Of course you are,” the woman replied, revealing a hard accent that Olivia guessed was Bostonian. “And this must be Rachel. So good to meet you both.”

  To Olivia’s surprise—and slight discomfort—the woman swept the two of them up into a big three-way bear hug.

  “I’m Mrs. Gilbert,” she said, squeezing Olivia’s shoulder with one hand and Rachel’s with the other. “I’ll be Olivia’s dorm mother at Deerborn.”

  “What about me?” Rachel asked, looking up at her sister with an anxious, thundery frown forming between her pale eyebrows. “Are we going to stay together?”

  “You’ll be staying in the junior girls’ dorm with the other seventh and eighth graders,” Mrs. Gilbert said. “But don’t worry, you and Olivia will still be neighbors. You can visit each other any time.”

  “It’s okay, Rach,” Olivia said. “It’ll be fun. Think of all the new friends you’ll make.”

  Rachel nodded, but still seemed a little unsure.

  “Come on, girls,” Mrs. Gilbert said. “Let’s go get your luggage.”

  * * *

  After retrieving their meager belongings from the revolving baggage carousel, Mrs. Gilbert stopped them right before the exit.

  “You girls got coats, right?”

  Olivia nodded and unzipped their suitcases to retrieve her beloved battered denim jacket and Rachel’s pink Nike windbreaker.

  “Those are your winter coats?” Mrs. Gilbert said, her eyebrow arched. “I guess it never gets cold in Florida, huh?”

  “It does too!” Rachel said, pulling on her jacket. “It’s like forty degrees in January.”

  “Forty, huh?” Mrs. Gilbert smiled. “It’s forty out there right now. By January it’ll be more like four degrees.”

  “Four?” Rachel said, exchanging a horrified look with Olivia.

  Mrs. Gilbert smiled.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I was supposed to take you shopping for winter clothes this weekend, after you got settled in, but I don’t want you two freezing your little kiesters off in bikinis and flip-flops all week, so how about we stop off on the way to the school? Pick you up some real clothes.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Olivia said. “But... well... We don’t really have any money.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mrs. Gilbert said, stepping through the automatic doors and gesturing for the girls to follow. “An allowance for school clothing is included in your scholarship.” Then she was off.

  Frowning, Olivia took Rachel’s hand and hustled to catch up with Mrs. Gilbert’s brisk pace.

  “Listen,” she said. “About that scholarship. How did we end up qualifying for it anyway? I don’t remember applying to Deerborn, so I was kind of surprised when I received the tickets in the mail.” She didn’t mention Leona Byers.

  “Right,” Mrs. Gilbert said, leading them across the street to the parking garage. “Well, the Deerborn family has always been charitably inclined, and each year they reach out to a select few gifted but financially challenged students who are experiencing personal hardships, and may not otherwise have access to the kind of high-quality education provided by the Academy.” The way she said it sounded like a commercial. “Here, the van is down this way.”

  Olivia frowned again slightly as she followed Mrs. Gilbert to a dark green minivan with white lettering on the side that read: DEERBORN ACADEMY. Something about the explanation didn’t sit right with her. It sounded too rehearsed, like a speech written by someone else.

  “But why us?” Olivia asked, as Mrs. Gilbert took her suitcase and put it into the back of the van. “I mean, how did you know we were experiencing ‘personal hardships’?”

  “Beats me,” Mrs. Gilbert said with a smile and a shrug. “I just work here.” She closed the hatch in the back of the van and opened the sliding side door. “Come on, hop in.”

  Olivia and Rachel got in and she slammed the door, then went around and got in behind the wheel. Sudd
enly finding herself confined with a stranger, Olivia felt nervous. But for Rachel’s sake she didn’t say a word.

  “So why don’t you tell me your story,” the woman said as she keyed the ignition and pulled out of the parking spot. “What sort of personal hardship brought you to us?”

  “Our mom died,” Rachel said. “She had cancer.”

  Olivia kicked Rachel’s foot and shot her a warning look. She got a hurt expression in return. Her sister was like a happy puppy that would eat out of anyone’s hand, but Olivia wasn’t sure if they should trust this woman yet.

  “Gee, that’s awful,” Mrs. Gilbert said. She leaned out the window to pay the parking fee to someone in a booth, and then headed out of the airport toward the highway. “I lost my mom at a young age, too. Lymphoma. I was eight.”

  “Wow,” Rachel said. It was obvious from her face that she wanted to say more, but didn’t, because of her sister’s silent warning.

  Olivia couldn’t help thinking that maybe she was being unnecessarily paranoid. That maybe she ought to lighten up. After all, this scholarship could be the best thing that had ever happened to them. It certainly seemed like a dream come true.

  Problem was, she wasn’t sure she believed in dreams come true.

  They stopped at a mall on the way to the school. Rachel went a little berserk and wound up with both arms full of shopping bags, while Olivia was more practical in her choices. Her only indulgence was a pair of black eight-hole Doc Martens boots, which she’d always wanted but had never been able to dream of affording.

  Once they’d crammed all their purchases into the van, they headed away from the city and into the picturesque New England countryside. Rachel and Mrs. Gilbert were chatting away like they were best girlfriends, but Olivia didn’t really feel like talking. She was too busy taking in the scenery.

  It seemed like another world. Autumn wasn’t really a thing in Florida, and was often just as hot and humid as the summer. Here, autumn was a Technicolor, multisensory experience. The air was cold and crisp and smelled like burning leaves and apples and wet stones, tempting Olivia to hang her head out the window. The leaves on the trees were just starting to turn color, a phenomenon she’d read about in science class, but had never seen in real life.