Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  You’re lucky, Christina said. I could use a distraction.

  You can take care of Ryan. Zola’s smile thin. Make sure he’s okay.

  Christina glanced at her bedside clock. I wonder if Matt and Nick are at home.

  Zola hadn’t thought to check in with either of them beyond knowing they’d made it out safe. They were alive. That was all. Everything she needed to know.

  Call them, Zola said. They’re home. Where else would they be?

  WHEN CHRISTINA CALLED, Nick lay in the soft down of his bed. He’d clipped the newspaper and heard his parents and brother return from church sometime late morning, but he’d left his bedroom door closed. Though he’d called Sarah and tried to coax her to venture out of her house, he’d barely moved beyond his own room. He hadn’t seen blood. He hadn’t looked on as his classmates and teachers expired. But he’d seen a face through the glass, the passing of an armed figure, a face that haunted him into stasis if he imagined where it went and who it shot after moving beyond his English class.

  Nick didn’t want to leave his bedroom. But he was happy to hear Christina’s voice on the other end of the line. She asked first about Sarah. Only the particulars Nick had let her know about their relationship. Christina knew only that Sarah was shy, a year younger, that she sang soprano in the Lewis and Clark choir. That Nick was still a virgin, that he was afraid of getting Sarah pregnant, that her choral scholarships would be risked if they made mistakes. Not much but more than Nick knew of Christina’s boyfriend, Ryan, someone who ran in other circles, who Christina seemed to only talk about with Zola. Nick said Sarah was fine and when Christina asked if he would come over, that Zola was already there, Nick felt the exhaustion of the entire week encasing his limbs. He didn’t want to move. But he didn’t want to stay in his bedroom and watch the news or be tempted to scroll through refreshed articles on his computer. He sat up. He said he’d pick up Matt on the way and pulled a pair of jeans from the floor, jeans he’d thrown off after the vigil that still smelled of smoke.

  In the car, a 2000 Honda Civic hatchback he’d paid for across four summers of mowing lawns, Nick rolled down the driver’s side window and let in the sunlight and moved along the grid of Midvale County’s streets. The days were still sun-warmed and bright blue but the nights were cool, the humidity and sweltering heat evaporated. Summer seemed far gone now, a span of months spent sweating in backyards and visiting Sarah at the custard stand where she worked and lighting off M-90s toward a hazy sky, a stockpile of firecrackers he’d kept long after the Fourth of July had come and gone.

  Nick let the October air dishevel his hair through the breeze of the open window. Fall banners swayed from flag holders fastened to the porches he passed. Homes that seemed boarded up, yards bereft of children or people walking to their own mailboxes, houses closed off to the police patrols and FBI vans that filled so many once-sleepy streets. Nick watched the wind litter maple leaves across the panorama of his windshield. He’d once loved autumn in St. Louis. Born and raised in the outer stretches of the city, a landscape he’d known his entire life, he waited every August for the oppressive humidity to burn away to the clarity of September. He anticipated the turn beyond Labor Day, the pools finally closed and the summer thunderstorms gone for the promise of new teachers and new weather, an opportunity each year to begin again. He waited for the tangled foliage of poplars to strip away their green for crimson and orange, colors he watched beyond the windshield and wondered whether he’d ever see them the same way again.

  He knew Matt would be home. He didn’t think to call. He knew Matt rarely did anything but play video games and smoke pot in his basement bedroom when his parents weren’t home, the window cracked for the smoke to escape. His mother probably home. Everyone home, shielded inside from the heavy scrutiny of reporters, hiding out in their living rooms or basements or backyards. He hadn’t spoken to Matt but knew Tyler hadn’t come to the vigil. He didn’t know what had happened. He knew only that Tyler was safe. Nick pulled into Matt’s driveway and saw his Ford Fiesta parked alone, his parents’ Chevy Impala gone, an absence he knew meant his father had been called into work.

  Matt’s mother answered the door when he knocked. She set a hand on his shoulder and asked how are you and drew him into the house and shut the door. Nick tried to smile and she nodded toward the basement door, said he’s downstairs. Nick made his way down the stairwell off the kitchen to the basement, where Matt was sitting in the alcove of his bedroom window and Nick knew right away by his face that he’d seen something terrible. He knew that somewhere in the halls Matt had witnessed what Nick had not: a scattering of blood, a gunning down, something lost to the walls of a high school. Nick said only what he could, it’s okay, though he knew it was not.

  My father’s there, Matt said. Not at the house, but he’s out there. For the fire.

  Nick knew immediately in the tenderness of his voice what Matt had witnessed.

  Caroline Black, Nick whispered. You saw her inside the school.

  Matt nodded and Nick imagined Caroline’s glasses and sheen of long dark hair, hair he once recognized by the back of her head from sitting behind her in their shared third-grade classroom wondering what it was like to brush something so long. He tried to imagine her bleeding, her glasses shattered, and found that he could not.

  I’m fine, Matt said.

  Are you?

  Really. I’m fine.

  How’s Tyler? Nick asked.

  I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him.

  Nick moved from the doorway and sat beside Matt in the window.

  We were both there, Matt finally said. The second-floor bathroom. That’s where Tyler and I found her. He just took off. He didn’t even stay to see if she was okay.

  Nick put a hand on Matt’s shoulder. I’m sure he didn’t know what else to do.

  Matt shrugged off his hand. I’m fine. I’m just so fucking angry. He left me there with her. So he wouldn’t be caught with me.

  Are you doing okay? Nick asked.

  I said I was fine.

  Christina wants us to come over. Zola’s there, too.

  Matt looked up at him, something tired in his face.

  I don’t want to talk about it, he said. Not yet.

  Nick knew then that he meant the yearbook and not Caroline Black.

  We don’t have to talk about it, Nick said. He didn’t know what else to say, what wouldn’t be a lie: that he hadn’t thought about the yearbook yet, which he had, during the hours he’d spent in his room watching the patterns of paint on his ceiling. That he hadn’t researched how memory fires as synapse, how trauma tunnels into the human brain. That he hadn’t started clipping newsprint to configure somehow into a record. That he hadn’t already wondered how they could possibly put a book together, anything of significance to archive a year already fractured apart.

  I have no idea how we’re going to put this together, Matt said.

  None of us do, Nick said. Let’s just forget it for now. We have time.

  Do we?

  Nick looked at Matt. Are you sure you’re okay?

  I haven’t slept in three days. I’m sure I’m not alone.

  What you saw, Nick said. I looked it up. It changes the structure of the brain.

  Researching already?

  Not really. Not anything we could use.

  I keep seeing her, Matt said softly. Every time I close my eyes.

  That’s how memory works, Nick couldn’t help saying. It latches on to anything that bears a resemblance to what you saw.

  Matt said nothing and Nick wondered if he’d disclosed too much. If research was his comfort alone, a means of knowing in the face of so many unknowns.

  You don’t have to ask your dad what he saw today, Nick said.

  Matt looked at him. You’re a good friend, he said. His eyes shone in the window’s weak light. Nick wondered what made him say it but only nodded and looked away.

  I’ll go, Matt said. But only if we don’t talk about it.
It’s too soon to plan.

  We don’t have to go, Nick said. We can just stay here if you want.

  No, I’m fine. Let’s just go. Please. Let’s go.

  CHRISTINA HEARD MATT and Nick walk in from her bedroom floor, where she lay sprawled with Zola, the front door unlocked, a habit of past meetings after school. Simon asleep on the couch in the living room. Her father returned from errands, she knew, by his knock on her closed bedroom door and his voice asking if they needed anything, far calmer and quieter than his yelling at the living room television just days before. Christina’s bedroom carpet littered with past yearbooks. Matt walked in and saw them open-faced and told her immediately that now wasn’t the time. That there was nothing to plan. Not yet. That their lone task was to sit with the names. That he would stay only if Christina packed up the yearbooks and put them away.

  Christina met his eyes. Saw them hollowed out. Something empty beyond the shock she’d seen in his face at the vigil. Nick nodded hello but said nothing and Christina closed the yearbooks on the carpet and slid them in the drawer of her nightstand and Matt stepped forward only when she flipped the television station away from the news.

  Christina sat beside Nick on the carpet and said nothing of the newscast. Said nothing of Simon asleep on the couch, safe because of a storage closet within the high school’s science labs. Said nothing of Ryan heading home from the hospital, how he had no idea who Caroline Black was. She glanced at the red digits of her bedside clock: 4:46 P.M. She knew Ryan should be home by now and that he hadn’t called. She knew Matt’s father’s job. She wanted to know if he was there. She wanted to know what he knew, whether the fire was deliberate or an accident, whether Zola had been right to guess suicide. She wanted to know what police had found in the debris littered across the lawn, the ashes of photos and report cards and elementary school artwork, the remains of what had once been a home. She wanted to know if there was an answer yet, a reason why Caleb had done what he’d done. A reason for hiding beneath her desk, Henry Park crouched across from her as the French video blared. A reason for Ryan’s leg torn in half, his classmates gasping last breaths in the locker room stalls. A reason for Mr. Rourke pooled on the hallway carpet, what she’d seen when the officer ushered her French class away from the building. A reason for Elise, what room or closet of Lewis and Clark had claimed her away from the water, a swimming pool that would never buoy her weight again. But Christina didn’t ask. She didn’t know what Matt knew, if he knew anything at all. She only flipped the television away from the news and toward a mindless Sunday marathon of afternoon movies, a double feature of The Break fast Club and Sixteen Candles. She lay on her bedroom floor and watched so many high schoolers on-screen and tried not to think of an elsewhere of teenhood, some confusion of hormones and angst and a relationship that had seemed so much more important only days before, sex in a fogged car or the adrenaline of fighting, the only remnant the sting of Ryan not calling as an afternoon wore on.

  My dad’s there, Matt said at last from Christina’s bed, where he sat beside Zola. At the station, for forensics and fire analysis.

  Christina glanced at Zola, who looked blankly back. The television mumbled behind them, a movie no one was watching. Christina seized her chance to ask.

  Will he be able to tell you anything? she asked.

  I don’t know, Matt said. He usually doesn’t tell me anything.

  He might tell you something about this, she said. This is different.

  What time did your dad leave the house this morning? Nick asked.

  I don’t know. Early.

  Has he been there all day? Zola asked.

  Christina recognized the opportunity and took it, grabbed the remote control and switched the channel from the afternoon movies to the ongoing newsreel, CNN and local stations alternating between the Blacks’ home and continued coverage of Lewis and Clark. Matt didn’t stop her. Neither Zola nor Nick moved to protest. Christina knew each of them wanted to know: stories about each family, each shot student. Speculation as to when school would resume. Roundtable pundits discussing gun legislation and mental health reform, an indefinite break from the war in Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Just talking heads. Christina wanted information. Christina turned up the volume and threw the remote control to her nightstand.

  We can’t pretend this isn’t happening, she said. She looked at her bedside clock: 5:54 P.M. Ryan was home, she knew, had probably been home for some time. She felt her eyes smart and she bit her lower lip to keep her frustration at bay.

  I saved the article from this morning’s paper, Nick said. I couldn’t help it.

  I clipped the list of names, too, Christina said. God. So many fucking names.

  I saw Caroline Black, Matt said. I saw her on the carpet.

  On the carpet? Christina asked. What do you mean you saw her on the carpet?

  Christina glanced at Nick, who didn’t meet her gaze, who kept watching the news.

  You were there, Christina whispered to Matt. In the school. You saw her.

  Matt nodded and Zola’s face fell and she moved closer to him on Christina’s bed, put her hand on his hand, and Christina tried to contain the mess of herself, the guilt welling up from her gut to her throat. She’d seen Mr. Rourke. An image she could barely remember. Blocked from her brain in the haste of exiting. She’d seen nothing, heard nothing but a French video droning over a classroom of empty desks, everyone tucked beneath them. She hadn’t heard the last wheezing breaths of peers who’d no longer walk the length of the hallways when everyone returned to school, a point in the future that felt as far-off and inconceivable as growing old. No images burned to her brain, no sense of where Elise was or how she had died. Only imagination, not the same as what Zola had seen in the library that she wouldn’t say or what Matt had witnessed on the carpet, not the same as grief transforming the wiring of her brain. Only Henry Park’s face across the aisle, only a classroom that Caleb never entered. Only a boyfriend shot in the leg, one who hadn’t called all afternoon. Christina had no right to feel the way Matt or Zola did but couldn’t quiet the lack of stillness rattling her body, the need at once to shake every muscle off inside the resistant waves of a swimming pool, her arms gliding through the water, or else the need to set her pen to paper and start writing, the start of an archive.

  She pulled the yearbooks from her nightstand. Laid them on the floor.

  We said we wouldn’t talk about it. There’s no way we can’t.

  I can’t do this right now, Matt said. Really, I can’t.

  No one’s saying you need to write, Nick stepped in. Not yet. What would there even be to document at this point? But we need to talk about it. We’re all here.

  What do you want us to do? Zola said. There’s nothing we can do.

  Nick opened their sophomore yearbook to the block of photos that gridded the entire class. We at least need names, he said. The names of every junior, every person in our class that we lost. We’re going to have to profile them eventually.

  Where will we put these profiles? Zola asked. The front of the yearbook? The back? Somewhere in the middle? How do we even decide something like that?

  I don’t know, Nick said. Do you? Do any of us know how to do this?

  Christina pulled the list of names from her nightstand, a folded piece of newsprint clipped and saved from the morning paper. Ryan at home, surely worrying about tennis scholarships and not her. She knew he wouldn’t call all night. Matt looked away as she grabbed a pen and began circling faces in the block of sophomore year photographs.

  Zola stood from the bed. Don’t draw on that—

  I don’t care, Christina interrupted. We need to know what we have to handle.

  She circled the faces. Every junior. Caroline Black. Alyssa Carver. Alexander Chen. Connor Distler. Jacob Jensen. Elise Nguyen, a drawn ring that made her hand shake. Alexis Thurber. Kelly Washington. Jessica Wendling.

  Nine names, Christina said. Nine profiles. Matt, can you help me handle t
hese?

  Matt stayed soundless on Christina’s bed, his eyes fixed on the front lawn through her bedroom window.

  You can’t put Jessica’s and Alyssa’s profiles next to each other in the yearbook, Zola blurted. Jared Hirsch cheated on Jessica with Alyssa last year. Remember?

  Zola’s objection, one that would have felt natural only days before. Christina looked from Zola to Nick and back to Matt as the room fell silent.

  You can’t put Kelly next to Connor, either, Matt finally said. They were both in the top ten. It will look like a list of National Merit scholars instead of a memorial.

  We’ll put them in alphabetical order then, Christina said loudly, her voice harsher than she intended. Does that work? Does that work for everyone?

  The television buzzed. No one spoke. On the TV screen an entire community, a radius of grief.

  Where do we go from here? Nick said at last.

  He didn’t mean the yearbook. The beginnings of an archive we would have to plan by duty, a yearbook wholly different than the one we’d envisioned just days before. A book none of us knew how to make. A testimony to what, we couldn’t imagine. Of wanting to forget. Of wanting to go back. Of knowing only a counting of days, the growing distance from Wednesday to so many more Wednesdays that meant the past would only recede and become incrementally lost.

  We’ll do what we can, Christina said. When we’re ready. It’s an impossible task. We can only do our best and nothing more.