I slather thin strips of peanut butter on slice after slice of bread. Ben picks up a broom and starts sweeping. He’s taken off his hoodie and is wearing a short-sleeved shirt underneath. He turns away from me, and I watch the muscles in his back and arms move gracefully under the fabric.
When he turns back around, I snap my head down and hope he didn’t see me watching.
“I think you know my friend Kara,” I say. Ever since Kara’s nonanswer about Ben, I’ve been dying to know what happened between them.
Ben stops sweeping. “How is she? Is she doing okay?” The caring concern in his voice is obvious. He’s not inquiring about a casual friend.
“Yeah. She’s great.” I’m not going to tell him about what happened at her locker this morning.
“Good.” He looks relieved. From both of their answers, I’m getting the impression that they dated at some point. Maybe they had one of those breakups where they say they’re going to stay friends, but that doesn’t work out and they end up avoiding each other. It would explain why Kara took off when she saw him in the truck.
Jealousy pricks inside me at the thought of the two of them together, which is stupid. I barely know Ben—or Kara. They had lives before me. They didn’t pop into existence when I arrived.
Ben leans over the counter so that his eyes can meet mine. “I’m glad Kara has a friend like you.”
And I’m hooked. I don’t really know anything about Ben, but I want more. More smiles, more sparkly eyes.
My face is burning. I spin around to the sink and rinse the knife.
“So what do you do in this town when you’re not making lattes or peanut butter sandwiches?” I ask, hoping it sounds flirtatious. It probably doesn’t.
“I’m sure Cam has told you all about my past.” His voice is still light.
I turn back around. “No. Cam doesn’t talk much.”
Ben shrugs. “I work at the coffee shop. I live in the apartments above it. I volunteer here.”
“But you’re Mike Vargas’s nephew. Couldn’t you be making tons of money working for him?” I remember too late what Cam said about Ben and his uncle not speaking.
Ben’s body goes rigid. His face grows dark.
I focus back on the bread. “It’s none of my business,” I mumble.
“It’s okay. I—”
Commotion fills the main room.
“Get Doc now!” a voice I recognize yells. It makes my hair stand on end.
Ben’s eyes are wide with alarm. “Stay here.”
I wait until he’s gone before I creep forward to look out the kitchen door. Suds is flailing his arms, keeping Ben back several feet from him. The police didn’t do anything about Suds looking in my window. They just took him to the hospital so he would stop making a scene on the sidewalk at the Los Ranchitos.
“Doc. Now!” Suds yells again.
Doc comes out of the exam room. He removes his reading glasses, folds them, and slides them into his front pocket.
Suds drops his arms. Doc nods to Ben, who steps back.
“What’s the problem, Mr. Roybal?” Doc’s voice is gentle and polite.
I cringe as Suds points to the shiner that Dad gave him. “The pain, Doc. I need something for the pain.”
“I can give you ibuprofen and an ice pack. But that’s it. You know I don’t have anything stronger here.”
Suds doesn’t back away. “I know what you’re hiding. You’ve got pills back there. The good ones.”
A sudden coughing spasm shakes his whole body.
Doc places a hand on Suds’s shoulder. “Mr. Roybal, that cough sounds bad. Let me help you.”
Suds shrugs Doc’s hand off. “You don’t want to help me. You don’t want to help any of us. You’ve got pills, but you’re saving them all for yourself.”
Doc flinches. Suds points an angry finger at Doc’s chest. “That’s right. I know all about you.”
Ben leaps forward to place himself between Suds and Doc. Doc grabs his shoulder to hold him back.
Suds comes chest to chest with Ben. Ben’s eyes shoot daggers at him. One of them is going to take a swing. But then Suds backs off. He must realize that he’s no match for Ben.
“Fuck this,” he says. He turns like he’s going to leave, but his eyes meet mine, peeking out from the kitchen doorway.
Suds starts to laugh. “I seen you, girl.”
Ben and Doc spin around and look at me.
Suds makes a flicking motion with his thumb. “I seen you in the trees.”
My heart pounds so loudly in my ears that it mutes his cackle of laughter, which dissolves into another coughing fit.
Ben’s fury can’t be contained any longer. He puts both his hands on Suds, and pushes him out the door.
As soon as Suds is gone, everyone goes back to what they were doing. Doc gives Ben a light pat on the back that I think is supposed to be a signal for Calm down now, and walks into the exam room. Ben turns toward the kitchen. I jump back to my spot along the counter and pick up my peanut butter knife.
Ben crashes through the door. His face is red, and all his muscles tense. “Are you okay?” he asks.
I nod and try to come up with an explanation for why Suds would have seen me—one that doesn’t involve the truth. But Ben seems too wrapped up in his own head to process what Suds said about me.
Ben picks up the broom and starts sweeping again. “Suds likes to make trouble. He’s the kind of person who causes so much trouble that he eventually gets his way,” he says. “Someone needs to put a stop to that,” he adds to himself.
Doc sticks his head into the kitchen. “Jenny, your ride is here.”
I wash the peanut butter residue off my hands and dry them with a paper towel. I expect to walk out alone, but Ben appears at my side.
When we enter the main room, all eyes lock onto me in my school uniform. Ben puts a protective hand on my back. My stomach flutters.
Outside, Cam is waiting in the truck. He looks momentarily startled to see Ben and me standing together—so close that Ben’s body warms mine. I don’t need my coat.
“Thanks,” I say to Ben. “I’ll see you next time? Or maybe at the coffee shop?” My voice is full of expectation. It turns my cheeks hot. I walk fast over to the truck and get in before Ben can respond.
Cam glances over at me and wrinkles his nose. “Why do you smell like peanut butter?”
“You smell like peanut butter,” Ro says. She’s lounging on my bed watching TV. I pull the curtains aside and look out into the parking lot. Dad, Mike Vargas, and the lawyer are having a serious-looking discussion.
Ro sidles up beside me. “The police came back. Then some young, cheap-looking lawyer handed your dad a stack of papers.”
I drop the curtains, close my eyes, and swallow hard to shove the bile down into my stomach. What if they find something that incriminates me?
“The motel will be fine,” Ro reassures me.
She has no idea what I’m really thinking, but I nod in agreement.
“You never told me what was so bad in Ohio,” she says.
I sigh and sit down. “My sister Hailey started a fire.” Ro leans forward with keen interest. “She didn’t mean to. She was trying to surprise Mom with dinner. A towel or something must have fallen onto the hot stove. She started screaming.” I take a deep breath. At any moment, tears could spill out of my eyes. “It was like I was back at my friend’s sleepover again. Like I was seven, hiding in the bathroom in that burning house, smelling the smoke, feeling the heat. Listening to everyone scream as they died.”
I wipe the water off my cheeks. “Mom put out the fire in the kitchen and found me curled up in a corner. Now it’s all I see whenever I close my eyes: Hailey being overcome by smoke and flames. I was completely powerless. I didn’t try to save her. Anything could have happe
ned, and it would have been my fault. I had to leave. I can’t be around her.”
“I’m glad you came here,” Ro says with a smile. “I’ve never had a real friend like you.”
I blink at the word “real.” Both because it’s a strange thing to say and because I’m lying to her. Would a real friend do that?
Hailey did start that fire, and I did have a panic attack. But watching those flames dance in front of me in the kitchen had awakened the monster. I split in half. One half is terrified of fire—of someone getting hurt or killed by it. The other half wants to possess it. Control it. Hold that power in my hands. Decide what it does.
The night of the kitchen fire is when my scar started to itch. I’d felt it before, but only in little bursts. We never had candles in the house. We didn’t have a fireplace. Our jack-o’-lanterns were stuffed with LED lights at Halloween. There was no fire in my world. I started having nightmares after the house fire, and Mom didn’t want to upset me.
One night, it was raining. A lightning storm. Everyone was asleep. The thunder covered the sound of my footsteps as I crept through the house. Brian had an emergency kit. In it was a waterproof tube of matches. Mom probably didn’t want me to know they were there, but Brian wanted to tell everyone what to do in case there was a disaster and he wasn’t home. He’d showed me and Hailey the kit. He showed us what was inside.
I shuffled down the street in the rain with my hand covering my scar. I didn’t know where I was going, but I followed my feet to the abandoned house.
The house was notorious for being a place to go get high on the weekends. It was a Tuesday night. I crawled through the broken back door.
I called out. No one answered. I went from room to room. I checked every closet and every bathtub. If someone had been there, I would have turned around and walked right back out into the rain. But no one was.
It was easy. I remembered how to do it from when I was seven: Light a match. Drop it on the carpet. Light another, toss it at the curtains. Soon the house was glowing around me. The flames chewed up the wall, and I felt something I never had before. I felt powerful. I had done that. I had decided when and where to summon the fire monster. I held him in my hands. I told him where he could go. I told him he couldn’t hurt anyone.
When it was too hard to breathe, I slipped back outside. Fat raindrops sizzled as they hit the burning house. I heard sirens in the distance.
My feet skipped me home. I was elated and drained and satisfied. The itch in my scar had calmed. It was the most perfect I had ever felt.
Then I opened the door to my house. The light flipped on in the living room. My high disappeared. Brian sat on the couch in his uniform, holding the unzipped emergency kit.
It was a stupid mistake; in my haste to go do what I was going to do, I’d left it out.
“You’re supposed to be asleep.” My voice came out resigned. I was too spent from the excitement to fight for myself. I should have made up a secret boyfriend. Anything to explain why I was shivering and dripping water on the floor.
“One of the guys is out sick. I’m being called in for a two-alarm house fire.” He zipped the bag and stood.
I watched in terrified silence as he walked to the hall closet and placed it back on the top shelf.
The memory brings a tear to my eye. I wipe it away.
Ro puts an arm around me. “It’ll be okay.” She rests her head on my shoulder. “You still smell like peanut butter.”
I sniffle and wipe another tear away. Then we both start to laugh.
“Do you want to stay for dinner and watch a movie?” I ask when we have caught our breath.
“No.” Ro sighs dramatically. “I have a test tomorrow. I have to go home and study.”
“Oh. Okay.” I try to hide the surprise in my voice. Ro never mentions school.
She collects her coat from the floor and bounces toward the bathroom.
“See you tomorrow,” she announces, and slips out the window.
Then I’m all alone with my thoughts. I lie down and let fire and the image of Suds seeing me in the trees swirl around and around in my head.
I wake up in the morning to voices outside my room. “My client has nothing to say.”
I jump up and rip open the curtains. Two police officers, a man and the woman I saw with Allen, stand outside the office. Dad’s lawyer blocks them from going in.
“Sir,” the woman says, “this is serious. A man is dead.”
My heart starts to race. I can’t see Dad. Only the lawyer.
“My client has nothing to say.”
The male officer points over his shoulder. “We need to look in the toolshed, and then we’ll be on our way.”
The lawyer does not budge. “Do you have a warrant?”
The cop sighs. “We got information that the murder weapon was painted with a green logo. If you let us into the shed, this can all be over quickly.”
“Let them look,” Dad calls from the office. “I have nothing to hide.”
When I hear his voice, my lungs relax and suck in air again. He’s okay. The police won’t find anything, and they’ll leave. This is going to be okay.
The four of them make their way across the parking lot. I grab my coat and open my door a crack. When they don’t turn around, I open it all the way and run to a bulldozer that hasn’t been put into place for the day’s work yet. I peek over the tread of the back tire.
“Who has keys to this shed?” the female officer asks.
The lawyer glances a warning at Dad, but he doesn’t pay attention. “Me; Mike Vargas; his son, Cam; and our architect. That’s it.”
The two cops walk around inspecting the shed and yank on the door. It’s locked.
Dad produces his key. The lawyer takes it from him and makes a show of holding it up for the police.
The female cop unlocks the door. All four of them look inside. The two cops glance at one another. Dad gasps. I don’t know what’s going on, but in the line of hanging tools, only the shovel Cam had been using to dig holes around the property after he got in trouble is missing.
The cops look at the lawyer. His face is a solid wall, blank of emotion. “We’d like to talk to the others who have a key.”
The cops and the lawyer walk away talking about appointments and police stations. Dad stands with his mouth open, looking into the shed. He rubs his hand over his face.
I creep forward. “Dad? What’s going on?”
He spins around. “Everything’s fine,” he says. That doesn’t answer my question. I don’t move. “The guy who would protest outside the fence. He, uh, passed on last night.”
Passed on. Dad is talking to me like I’m five. The police wouldn’t be here if he had coughed himself to death.
I glance over my shoulder at the police car and lower my voice. “But what about—”
Dad cuts me off. “It’ll be fine, Jenny. I’m not hiding anything.”
“Okay,” I say, but I’m not convinced. I point to my room. “I should get ready for school.”
As soon as my door shuts, I flip on the TV. The reporter from before is parked in the lot near the cottonwoods where Cam takes his naps.
A picture of a better-kempt Suds fills the screen. “…where a man was brutally murdered last night. Police aren’t releasing many details, but he seems to have been beaten to death with a shovel.” She points over her shoulder to a flurry of activity and police tape behind her. “As you can see, this is still an active crime scene.”
I flip the TV off. If Suds is no longer around to sue, that means my secret is safe. The Los Ranchitos is still a go.
Assuming no one here murdered him, of course.
I laugh out loud, imagining little blond Monica creeping through the woods at night. And Cam? Even though Suds got him in trouble, killing someone seems like it requires a lot mo
re initiative than I’ve ever seen him take. Dad? No. Dad didn’t do it. He wouldn’t. Mike Vargas? I hardly know him, but I can’t imagine he would take that kind of risk. He’s a good businessman. He’s built an empire; you don’t do that by killing people—at least, not in such a public way.
Suds won’t be missed. I smile in spite of myself. I don’t have to worry about him trying to start something by telling the cops what he saw me do in the trees. I can sleep without worrying about someone standing outside my window.
When I’m ready for school, I go into the office to grab a bagel to eat on the way. Cam is seated across from the lawyer. His keys are on the table between them.
“When was the last time you saw it?” the lawyer asks, losing his patience with the heap of man-boy in front of him.
Cam shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe a couple days ago?”
“And you haven’t left your keys unattended at any point?”
“No,” Cam says with such confidence that it has to be a lie. I know it is. I’ve seen them lying on the seat next to him when he’s asleep in the truck. He sleeps like the dead. It wouldn’t take much to swipe them.
I press my back into the door. The Los Ranchitos isn’t out of the woods yet—not if Cam’s key is missing. Cam looks up at me and smiles. “Ready for school?” He wants to get away from the lawyer, who’s inspecting his every facial expression.
When I climb into the truck, Cam’s smile is gone.
* * *
—
Kara is standing in the middle of the hallway at school. She never answered any of my texts about why she disappeared after that paper fell out of her locker.
“Are you feeling better?” I ask.
She nods, but she doesn’t step forward to open her locker.
“I went to my service project at the free clinic,” I say. “It turns out Ben works there too.”
I wait to see her reaction. I need to know more about the two of them. Ben and I spent one afternoon together, so it’s not like we have any sort of relationship, but the little spark of jealousy returns after thinking about them together.
Watch You Burn Page 8
