Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  Dad, Matt said.

  His father didn’t look at him.

  Dad, I saw something awful. Inside the school.

  I know. His father gathered the papers and photographs into a stack. It’s why we shouldn’t talk about these things. You should be resting. I’ve already told you too much.

  Matt thought of the bookstore. A fight. How it had been the worst meeting they’d had but had still opened a channel of words between them.

  Why is it easier? Matt heard himself say.

  Why is what easier?

  Talking about all of this. Exchanging facts. Looking at photographs. Instead of talking about how either of us feels.

  Matt’s father looked at him. What is it, son? How is it that you feel?

  He heard the irritation in his father’s voice. A familiar impatience. But also something searching and honest, something else beneath a learned temper: that maybe he’d always wanted Matt to ask him how it felt. What it was to be a father. What it was to receive a phone call at the police station, to locate a child in a public library parking lot. To know no other news. To rush through stoplights believing that this was the end. Matt watched his father’s face and lost the words, had no clue what to ask, had no idea how he felt. Angry. Exposed. Beyond control of his own life. Pulled open and hollowed out. Lost to photographs and reports that disfigured him if he looked at them too closely, information he drank in like water to flush out Caroline’s body on the floor, Tyler vanishing down the hallway, Caleb Raynor depriving them all of a life.

  I don’t know, Matt said. I don’t know how I feel.

  His father put a hand on his for a moment before pulling it away. You tell me when you know, he said. Even if I’m busy. You might not think it, but I’m able to listen.

  Eric Greeley, Matt said.

  The comfort of facts he put back on like a cloak.

  What about him?

  We were all talking about him today. If he’s not a suspect, then who?

  Matt’s father rested his hands on the stack of papers.

  You don’t know, do you? Matt realized.

  This might not be arson, his father said. Maybe it’s just two unfortunate coincidences. There’s no foul play yet. Not a shred of condemning evidence.

  Matt glanced at his father’s photographs and felt the lining of his throat burn. That what protected them, the police, was nothing but a series of smoke screens. That no one knew anything, nothing was certain. That his father was fallible, as faulted as anyone.

  NICK STOPPED BY Sarah’s house on his way home with a fudge brownie, the one bakery item Paul’s Books was known for. He hadn’t wanted to press Matt any further for details but thought nonetheless across the entire car ride about the fires, the lack of evidence. How he’d looked up cremation, how human skin burns. How high the temperature. How immense the pressure to erase bone, to leave nothing behind. How impossible it was that there was no trace of a single body. He walked up the steps to Sarah’s front porch and was surprised to see Sarah answer when he knocked, her face fresh, her hair cleaned and pulled back in a ponytail.

  Well, look at you, he said.

  Her eyes fell to the brown bag. Did you bring me something?

  From Paul’s. I was just there.

  She pulled the brownie from the bag.

  Can I come in? Nick asked.

  She left the door open and Nick followed her in.

  Where’s your mom?

  Out. Errands. Every errand she can think of to keep herself busy. We’re both going a little stir-crazy here.

  Nick followed Sarah into the living room and sat down on the couch, a wide sofa facing the room’s bay windows toward the backyard woods. Sarah curled into his lap, jersey shorts fluttering against his jeans. Nick pulled his hands around her legs.

  How are you feeling?

  I got tired. Tired of lying in bed feeling sorry for myself.

  I wouldn’t call it that.

  She ate the last of the brownie, crumpled the bag, and threw it toward the coffee table, her muscles moving against his chest. She tucked her face into his neck and he looked out the window above her head. Trees shedding their leaves, thin enough to see another row of houses beyond their woods. He thought of the Trenways’ home, the Blacks’, what made them different from any other home of families who had lost someone.

  Those fires, he said. They have to be connected.

  Let’s just not talk about it. Only one more day before the weekend, then we go back. Timber Creek. Can you even imagine it?

  Nick shook his head. There was nothing anymore that seemed unimaginable.

  When does choir practice start back up? he asked.

  I have no idea. But I promised myself I’d still try out for Pippin this spring.

  Nick could barely picture the spring, if they’d be back at Lewis and Clark or still at Timber Creek. But Sarah was talking. Far better than the state she’d been in across the past days. He wanted to keep her speaking, keep her thinking ahead even if he couldn’t.

  I’ll come, he said. I’ll be in the first row if you get the part.

  You’ll come. Is that all you’ll do?

  She grinned and Nick realized she was teasing him, the question of sex. The same conversation they’d had all summer, what he’d again forgotten for Web pages on fire investigation, on cremation, on the management of crime scenes.

  Maybe now isn’t a great time to talk about this.

  Why not? she said. I think it’s the perfect time to talk about this.

  Because we’ve talked about it ad nauseam. And you’re just starting to feel better.

  Then let’s not talk about it then. She smiled. Let’s not talk about it at all.

  He heard the whoosh of water beyond the window, a creek running somewhere through the ravine of the woods. He felt Sarah’s breath in the rise of her back, in and out. He felt her hair against his chin. He felt her mouth still and damp against his neck, her breath pulsing in clouds against his skin.

  He felt her lips begin moving up the base of his throat.

  He stopped thinking as her mouth moved. A soft suction pattering up his neck. A pressure that scaled his chin. A gravity soft as stars on his mouth, a force that pulled him to respond. He kissed her mouth. His hands running from her back to her jersey shorts. The weight of her mouth increasing, pushing against him. She moved her hands from his face, down his chest to the buttons of his shirt. One button undone. He let himself forget everything that had filled his brain for so many days, every image, every news clipping. He let himself forget every excuse he’d used. Her age. Her well-being. She was telling him what she wanted. She’d been telling him all summer. He slid his hand up the divide of her thighs. Two buttons. Her body opening. Three buttons. He slipped his hand beneath the jersey fabric and under the elastic band of her underwear.

  She pushed herself against him, straddled him, pulled at his belt, and unfastened the buckle. He felt his jeans tugged open, then her hand beneath the band, her fingers skirting the crevice between boxer and skin. He let her. His hand against her skin, her shorts strewn to the carpet. This was nothing they’d never done, an entire summer back before a week that had become a separate life, everything in her bedroom or his car but sex. She pushed herself onto him. His hand underneath her. She pushed herself onto him and he stopped her, his hand to her chest. Are you sure? he asked and she pressed herself against him and he held her back again: Are you sure? She looked at him for a moment, lucid, her eyes the same as he’d always known them: not taken by heat, not clouded by the listlessness of retreating to her room but hard and clear and hers.

  I’m ready, she whispered. I’ve been telling you. I’m ready.

  She pressed herself back onto him and he let her, let her weight sink down onto him. His shirt half-undone, her hands gripping his shoulders and the cushions behind him. She lowered herself slowly, with force, a sharp gasp of breath as he felt himself push. Then she moved against him and he pulled her to him, her face, her mouth a condensation.
Her breath pulsing in beats that quickened as he moved. Wait, he wanted to say but she clutched him against her, whispered it’s okay. Beyond the window, above Sarah’s head, branches wavered at the tree line. His body shuddered, the trees breathed.

  Are you okay? he asked and she slid from him to the couch. She nodded and leaned her head to his chest and he felt exposed, his jeans open, her shorts on the floor.

  Was that dangerous? he said. The only thing he could think to say.

  He had no condoms, no reason to think he’d need them.

  I went on the pill a few weeks ago, she said, and Nick imagined the past weeks and beyond that an entire summer of heat-soaked months. How everything he’d learned from the movies was nothing he’d ever known: sex the center of everything, a magnetic field, a looming question between every teenager. How he hadn’t even known she’d started swallowing a small pill, everything about him always so much inside his head that he hadn’t taken notice. How she’d been right. Nick looked at Sarah and only wanted to be near her, nothing more. He reached for her hand. She let him take it.

  Why didn’t you tell me? he asked.

  I wasn’t sure we’d need it. And besides, it didn’t seem to matter to you.

  It matters, he said. I’m glad you’re feeling better.

  She laughed. I’m feeling better. And you?

  The sun pierced the bay window, an angle already on its way toward setting. The days were growing shorter, Nick knew, wind and sun whipping through the trees. Nick glanced at the mantel clock and knew Sarah’s mother would be home soon.

  Good. Nick traced her knuckles with his thumb. But I should go soon.

  You can stay for dinner.

  I can’t. My parents need me to watch my brother.

  Are you okay? she said. The first time she’d asked.

  His brain turned back to the folder in his car, the photographs and newsprint.

  I’m fine, he said. As fine as anyone else right now.

  She didn’t respond and when he looked up, he saw sadness in her face.

  I’m fine, he said. Really. This is wonderful. You are wonderful.

  She watched him.

  I’m fine, he promised. He heard his own words fill the room.

  CHRISTINA ARRIVED HOME to her father still at work and her brother gone, a handwritten note left on the kitchen counter: at Brian’s. Her brother’s best friend, a freshman Christina knew hadn’t been at school that day, home sick and watching the events unfold on the news from his living room. Christina glanced into the garage and saw Simon’s bike gone and thought to call Brian’s house but the need escaped her. Simon surely knew to be home before dusk.

  Christina pulled open the refrigerator door and rummaged through two Tupperwares, containers of leftover Hamburger Helper and cold spaghetti. Her father hadn’t shopped, had barely cooked in the entire week they’d been home, a busy season at Boeing with third-quarter sales. She pushed past a carton of eggs, a half-full container of yogurt. She felt a lack of hunger in her gut clash with the compulsion to eat. To pass the time. To not think of what her friends had finally told her: that Ryan wasn’t good for her. To not think of the photographs of each home splayed across the table at Paul’s Books, news articles on the fires and the shooting and sub-articles on gun control, the legality of purchasing a lethal weapon. Articles on mental health. Who was Caleb Raynor? She didn’t want to know anything else about Caleb Raynor, the news insistent though she could have told them who he was: nothing. Someone who had blasted all of their lives apart. She closed the fridge and noticed the answering machine blinking on the kitchen counter.

  She played the message and stopped midstride when she heard it. Ryan’s voice.

  Christina, pick up. If you’re there, I need to talk to you.

  She pressed DELETE. Moved down the hallway to her bedroom and closed the door, a stone in her stomach. She knew his voice well enough across two years. She knew that tone, a calm field before a thunderstorm rolled in. She knew how his face took on a stillness before he unleashed something awful. Before he rolled down the window of his car after she slammed the door and started walking away: you fucking bitch. The vacancy in his face. The lack of warmth. The same lack she heard in his voice on the recording, a lack she’d have avoided by not calling back if there wasn’t a knock at the front door.

  When she opened it, he stood in crutches. A maroon Buick idling in the driveway behind him, Ryan’s doubles partner Chad Stapleton behind the wheel.

  We should talk, Ryan said.

  A brief spurt of elation broke through her dread. That he was here, on her porch. That he’d made the effort in finding someone to drive him, his cast an obstruction, an obstacle he’d overcome to bridge the streets between them and talk to her.

  I guess we should, she said. You haven’t called in three days.

  Yeah, this isn’t about that.

  She didn’t invite him in. Dread pooling. She knew then what he’d come to say.

  I don’t think we should do this anymore.

  Stomach gutted. Do what?

  This. I can’t do this anymore.

  What exactly is it you can’t do?

  I can’t be with you. It’s not working.

  Yeah, it’s not working. Where the fuck have you been for three days?

  Oh, I’m the one who was supposed to call? You threw a picture at my face. I was fucking shot, Christina. And that’s what you do?

  She didn’t respond. The evening’s cold air blew in through the open door. She glanced beyond the front porch to the Buick, where Chad sat watching them.

  Look, I’ll be leaving soon anyway, Ryan said. For college.

  You mean in a year.

  We wouldn’t have lasted the distance and you know it.

  Christina kept her eyes on a pine tree in the front yard.

  Where do you think you’re going? she said. Where exactly are you going? No college is going to want you on their tennis team now.

  He didn’t respond and she felt dirty. Mean. A shell of herself.

  She glanced up at him. Look, I didn’t mean—

  Fuck you.

  Excuse me?

  I said fuck you, Christina. Fuck you. You don’t know shit. You’ve never known shit, just a poor little rich girl. Go cry to Mommy and Daddy that I hurt your feelings. Or maybe just Daddy, Mommy way out in Edwardsville. You know what you are? Just a little bitch. You’ve always been nothing but a little bitch. Nothing but a fucking crybaby.

  Go, she said. Get back in the car and get away from my house.

  That’s right, he said. Be a fucking baby about it.

  She kept her eyes on him, the stone in her stomach a flamed rock. Kept herself from saying something awful. From being him. She gritted her teeth.

  Don’t ever come here again, she said.

  You can fucking count on it. You can—

  She slammed the front door. There was nothing but noise. The wind outside. The quiet of the house, a siren in her ears. She leaned against the door until she heard the Buick pull away and gun down her street. She didn’t think to put on shoes. No coat. She moved through the kitchen and into the garage, the concrete cold beneath her bare feet. Her brother’s bike gone, her father’s car. Hers alone in the closed one-car garage where she’d parked when she’d come home from the bookstore, that she’d planned to move before her father came home. She pulled open the door of her car and climbed into the backseat, the silence a womb. She lay down, the same upholstery that had held her body and Ryan’s so many times across the summer, nothing but skin. She pulled her hands inside her sweatshirt’s sleeves and curled her knees to her chest. Exhaled thin wisps of white, the first time all fall that she could see her own breath, a phantom broken loose through the sealed air of the car.

  ZOLA HEARD HER mother come home through the garage, from her spot on the living room couch where she’d watched the sun set. The clouds had dispersed through the late afternoon, leaving behind a haze of gold in their wake. Zola had watched the gold flatten
and disappear against the silhouettes of trees and tried to forget what she’d said to Christina and Nick and Matt at Paul’s Books.

  I brought movies! her mother shouted from the kitchen. Back to the Future. Can’t Hardly Wait. I even got a new release: Bend It Like Beckham. Anything you want to watch.

  Zola heard plastic bags rustling in the kitchen, then smelled the sharp scent of curry. Her mother appeared in the doorway, two aluminum containers in her hands.

  I got Indian takeout, too, she said. Chana masala.

  Zola took a container from her mother’s hands. You didn’t have to do this.

  Do what?

  All of this. Order food. Rent movies.

  But I wanted to. Long day at work. I could use the break as much as you.

  No scary movies?

  No scary movies.

  But Halloween’s only two weeks away.

  I thought we should keep the scary out of our living room. At least for now.

  Zola’s mother sat down on the couch. She placed her container on the coffee table and hesitated. She finally set her hand on Zola’s knee.

  It won’t always be this way, she said. This will get better.

  I know.

  They’ll figure this out, Zola. They’ll find who’s doing all of this.

  So you think it’s someone?

  I don’t really know. I don’t know what’s going on in this town.

  They took Eric Greeley in for questioning.

  Did you know him?

  Not really. But I’d be surprised if he did anything wrong.