Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  You okay? Zola asked.

  Sejal didn’t look up. I just don’t really want to be here.

  Zola didn’t know what else to say. Justin Banks. A boyfriend she’d had for only weeks. She wondered if Sejal lay awake at night wondering if his house would burn.

  It’ll be okay, Zola said.

  We were in Students for Humanity together, Sejal said. Me and Jacob.

  Zola knew where Jacob lived, only a few streets from Christina. She wondered what Christina had seen, what sirens had awoken her and her family. Her brother. Her father. What smoke had blown over every home, the same scent of Alisha Trenway’s house, where Zola had been standing taking pictures as Jacob’s home ignited.

  The passing bell signaled the start of class and Mr. Albertson looked out over the room. Okay, everyone, let’s get started. He said nothing of the news or yesterday’s school-wide assembly but only stood at the front of the room in his white lab coat, what he wore every time they conducted an experiment. He’d lined up a series of powders on the sheet-metal laboratory table at the front of the room.

  Today we’ll be discussing flame colors and chemicals, he said. For safety purposes, this will be demonstration-only. Get out your notebooks for observations.

  Flame color. Zola glanced at Nick, obscured by the hulking shape of Dennis Carroll, his lab partner. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t tell the expression of his face. Zola couldn’t believe Mr. Albertson hadn’t thought to realign the lesson in light of the fires.

  For review, he said, can anyone tell me the difference between a flame test and the temperature of a flame?

  No one spoke. The last time the class had spoken of elements and flame tests, a lifetime ago in another building. She fully expected everyone to resist, to ignore Mr. Albertson’s eyes and the absurdity of conducting this lesson now. So many fires in their streets. Flames they already knew firsthand without need of test tubes or powders. But Michele Theroux raised her hand in the front row, timidly at first, then higher.

  The textbook said incandescence depends on the object on fire’s temperature, she said. And flame tests, on the spectrum of gas excitations produced by an element.

  Correct, said Mr. Albertson. And what is gas excitation?

  Peter Longworth raised his hand. It’s when the atoms of gases are excited by heat or electricity, when either moves from lower to higher energy levels.

  That’s right, Peter. And what makes them produce flame?

  When they return to their ground state, they emit photons of energy.

  Zola couldn’t believe Mr. Albertson was continuing with this lesson plan, that despite his social awkwardness a week away from class hadn’t given him time to rethink. Even more, she couldn’t believe that her peers were answering him. That everyone had thought to study across a week meant for mourning. That they’d buried themselves in a textbook to keep from thinking about what they’d lost.

  That’s right, Mr. Albertson said. Can someone else tell me what this has to do with flame color?

  Dennis Carroll raised his hand. Someone who never spoke in class. The chapter we read said energies correspond to wavelengths of light, he said. Spectrums we see as colors. Each element has its own line emission spectrum.

  Good. So what we have here is a spectrum of elements, and hence, colors.

  Mr. Albertson waved a hand over the piles of powders lined up before him on the laboratory table. He pulled a small torch from his coat pocket and instructed the class to take notes as he lit each pile sequentially. He held a blue flame to the first pile on the class’s left, powder that ignited in a wash of crimson light.

  Red, he said. Can anyone recall which element corresponds to red chemical flame?

  Lithium, Claire Gallagher said. It’s what emergency flares are made of.

  Correct. Take notes, everyone. The colors and their corresponding elements will be on next week’s midterm.

  He lit the next pile: orange flame. Danielle Watkins identified its corresponding compound, calcium chloride. Yellow flame: table salt. The easiest, the one Zola imagined everyone knew. Simple sodium chloride, small crystals she could have lit up in her own kitchen. Green flame: boric acid, copper sulfate. Often found in laundry detergents, Adam Wu offered from the lab table beside hers, and in disinfectant and sometimes insect and weed killers. Zola glanced at Sejal’s notebook on their lab table, empty of notes, Sejal’s gaze cast away from the line of flame colors. Mr. Albertson lit the second-to-last pile, a blue burning. Blue flame: alcohol, regular fuel. Zola closed her eyes and saw nothing but the Trenways’ home in flames. The Jensen home. The Ndolo home. All of them full of table salt and detergents and disinfectants, homes in flames like nothing she’d imagined: crimson fire but also cobalt, also sapphire, a rainbow of household items ablaze. Mr. Albertson lit the final pile of powder and a violet flame erupted.

  Salt substitute, Zola said aloud. Potassium chloride. Often used in plant fertilizers and processed foods.

  Mr. Albertson nodded. Very good, everyone. Your memories have retained a wealth of information across the break.

  Zola watched the line of flares on the front table, all of them still burning, a spectrum of color she might have once thought lovely. The break. Nothing of what it was. Break meaning vacation, meaning leisure, meaning time off and not a stalemate, not hours of sitting on her porch watching maples shed their leaves so she wouldn’t see a library and its wall of books. Mr. Albertson stood oblivious, a torch still in his hands.

  I hope everyone recorded the elements in their notebooks, he said. Keep your pens out. We’ll be discussing the wave-particle duality of light.

  Zola looked across the room at Nick, expecting to see a visible anger. But his expression was impassive, his face blank. His eyes were only focused ahead on Mr. Albertson, his pen poised above his notebook.

  PAST MORNING CLASSES, Nick walked into the lunchroom and saw Christina and Matt and Zola already seated at a round table in the far corner. The cafeteria bustled around him, loud but somehow quieter than the day before. Jacob Jensen’s house and his mother. Class carrying on as if nothing had happened, the same as the resigned headline he’d seen in the paper that morning: FIRES RESUME. His mother had packed him a ham sandwich, one he had no appetite to eat. He’d stayed up late in front of a blinking screen. He’d dimmed the backlighting of his computer. He didn’t want his parents to wake up and see the glow beneath his door. He didn’t want them to worry. Didn’t want anyone at all to know what he was doing, what it was that he’d looked up.

  A late-night special: mysterious cases of human skin suddenly igniting.

  A myth. A jokebook gag. A figment of illusion, the same as a program on ghost hunting. He’d listened to the television regardless, had opened a new browser on the screen, had quieted the typing of his keys. A program he watched until its end credits rolled for no other reason than that it provided some kind of answer, a thin explanation for unexplained fires despite the absurdity of believing. He’d gone to bed unconvinced, the flames on television only cases where even in suspected instances of self-ignition the body still remained as evidence, where every human bone and muscle didn’t disappear with the burned ravages of a house.

  He’d gone to bed exhausted and awoken to a new fire, another fatality.

  When he reached the table, Christina was already telling Matt and Zola what she’d seen. A house on fire, a neighborhood behind barricades. How she stood with her father and her brother and their neighbor, Mr. Wilcox, a man Nick could envision from the times he’d seen him across the street from Christina’s house. How she saw the fire above the rooftops, its flames snapping and bursting into the dark. How the brightness of the full moon was obscured by the shock of the fire, flickering bands Christina said she saw long after firefighters doused the blaze and long after she’d pretended to go to sleep.

  Did you see anything suspicious? Matt asked. Anyone strange in the crowd?

  I saw people I didn’t know, but nothing out of the ordinary.

&nb
sp; How many fire trucks were there?

  I don’t know. Six? Seven? There was water everywhere in the streets.

  How about police cars?

  Doesn’t your dad tell you this stuff?

  Less than you’d think, Matt said. The only news he told me this weekend was that the fires have no chemical cause. That the debris reports returned only organic material.

  Nick looked up. Organic material? What does that mean?

  I asked the same thing. I really don’t know. All I know is that my dad says all three fires show organic flashpoints. Not acetone or butane or gasoline. Something natural.

  Nick thought of human skin, self-ignition. Everything he’d looked up, everything he didn’t want to hear spoken out loud in his own voice.

  You mean human? he asked.

  I don’t think so. But at least the same makeup. Fats, carbon, proteins.

  What does that mean?

  Look, I don’t know. I had the same reaction. I think it just means there were no chemicals, that the fires could have been started with more basic materials. The police are working with the FBI. They’re trying to find answers.

  This doesn’t help anyone, Zola said. Jesus, Matt. Give it a rest.

  Well, don’t you want to know?

  I do and I don’t. I couldn’t sleep last night. I went out and took pictures of Alisha Trenway’s house. That’s all I can take for now. That’s all I want to know.

  Why didn’t you say anything? Matt said.

  Well, I’m saying it now.

  Did you find anything? Nick asked.

  No, I didn’t find anything. Just a bunch of debris. What did you think I’d find? What would I find that police haven’t already found?

  Nick bit into his ham sandwich, a blend of mayonnaise and stale bread. What he refused to say out loud: a lone night of rabbit-holed guessing. Web pages of photographs. Burned homes, open case files, blank autopsies. Histories of circumstances without answer, a trail of questions and only ash. Nothing worth saying in a cafeteria filled with the clatter of popped soda cans and the squeak of Styrofoam plates. Nothing he believed but for the possibilities it opened amid so many dead ends, that elsewhere homes had blazed down and left only questions amid cinder and smoke.

  Zola was watching him. Don’t even get me started on chemistry this morning.

  Why, what happened? Christina said.

  Flame tests. Burn color. An entire lesson on fire. It was as if Mr. Albertson hadn’t read the paper at all, like he lives in a bubble. Like any of us wants to learn about fire right now. She kept her eyes on Nick. Except you. I saw you taking notes. I bet you can tell us every flame color.

  Nick heard the tone in her voice. I probably could, he said.

  Go ahead, Zola challenged. Regale us with your knowledge.

  Dark red: 1,200 degrees. He felt himself grow irritated. Yellow-red: 1,920 degrees.

  And what about human skin? Zola said. How the fuck does that burn?

  Jesus. Nick set down his sandwich. What, Zol? What the hell is your problem?

  What’s my problem? My problem? That all you’ve done since any of this happened is hole away in your bedroom with your computer, like you feel nothing at all.

  Get over yourself. There, I said it: get over yourself, Zola. You think you’re the only one this is happening to? You think you’re the only person? Look the fuck around you. Look at everyone here.

  Yeah, well, we can’t all have the luxury of having been in English class where a psychopath just chose not to go. We can’t all have the luxury of seeing nothing. Of only having moved a fucking desk against a door and that’s it.

  Nick watched her as if slapped. What did you say to me?

  Zola pushed her chair back from the table. I said fuck you. That’s what I said.

  She slammed her lunch tray into a trash can and left the cafeteria.

  I’m not going after her this time, Christina said.

  Don’t, Nick said. She needs to calm the fuck down.

  We all do, Christina said. She didn’t mean that. What she said. She didn’t mean that you experienced nothing—

  It sounds like that’s what she meant, Nick interrupted. He was tired. His brain a fog. And anyway, he said, it doesn’t matter. We all saw the paper this morning. The curfew’s been lifted. As sure a sign as any that the police have given up, that there are no rules left. That no one knows anything.

  I can’t even imagine the families, Matt said softly. Parents for Home Protection. Did you see that? The other parents must be scared out of their minds.

  I didn’t sleep at all, Christina said. I tried to write Elise’s profile. It’s a total mess.

  Nick kept his eyes on the table. Said nothing of what he’d spent the night doing. Zola was right: he’d been interested in everything Mr. Albertson said, homework he’d forgone for a night of harebrained searching. A chemistry lecture Zola thought was insensitive, information he’d welcomed gladly for its empiricism. Color emission. Wavelengths of light. The science of burning, the same as arson investigation. So much more tangible than unexplained cases of self-generated combustion. Christina looked at her hands. Matt ran a finger against the metal of his soda can. The room buzzed all around them, a whirlwind of echoed murmurs and plastic cutlery.

  ZOLA FOUND HERSELF in the courtyard of Timber Creek, the bathroom too claustrophobic and the library, even makeshift, beyond question. She found herself without a coat, the brisk sky a knife, the school’s height shadowing the courtyard and blocking out the sun. She stood apart from clusters of peers taking themselves outside for fresh air. She stood and breathed. Let her lungs let go, even as the cold of the fall air filled them. Felt her blood crazing through her veins, the adrenaline of anger.

  Hey, a voice said. Zola turned to see Aurelia Lopez standing behind her.

  Hey, Zola said. What are you doing out here?

  Just needed some air. A minute alone.

  Zola glanced through the window behind Aurelia, where students still gathered in the cafeteria. She saw no sign of Aurelia’s boyfriend, Adam Wolf. A senior, a guitarist. They were inseparable, hardly ever seen apart. Aurelia’s hands gripped a soup cup in fingerless gloves. Black nail polish. Her eyes ringed in coal. Aurelia had been in Zola’s classes since seventh grade, all honors courses, a teenage punk who was also whip-smart.

  You okay? Aurelia asked.

  I’m fine. Just needed a minute. Some time outside.

  This building is pretty awful. Too dark.

  The small talk was a comfort, something Zola usually hated but the lightness felt necessary. Aurelia raised a plastic spoon to her mouth and Zola realized this was the first time she’d seen her since they’d come to Timber Creek. Aurelia hadn’t been in English class yesterday, her presence once so obvious, someone who spoke rarely in other classes but engaged easily in literary discussion.

  Did you stay home yesterday? Zola asked.

  I wasn’t ready to come back. I’m still not ready.

  Yeah, I know the feeling.

  Are you okay? Aurelia asked again. I know you were in the library.

  Aurelia must have remembered, must have known by comparing the classes they shared and the few they didn’t. Aurelia’s academic lab earlier, Zola remembered now, though she couldn’t recall where Aurelia must have been.

  I was in the library, Zola said.

  I can’t even imagine. I was in chemistry. Pretty safe, pretty far from the noise.

  Zola recalled Aurelia always entering Mr. Albertson’s class as she was leaving, their academic labs and their chemistry hours the only two classes that flipped between them as junior honors students. She wondered if Aurelia had spent the morning learning about flame tests and color, if the lesson was why she needed fresh air.

  It’s good you were safe, Zola said.

  I guess I was safe. But I don’t feel that way.

  I know. I’ve felt crazy this entire week, completely full of paranoia. And anger.

  My mother sent me to a therapist, Aurel
ia said. They put me on Wellbutrin. It helps, I think. Are you seeing anyone?

  Zola shook her head.

  I didn’t think I was ready to talk about it. But it helps.

  I keep hearing sounds, Zola said. Gunshots. Screaming. People choking, gasping for breath. She winced as she said it, more than she’d said to anyone since it happened. But when she looked at Aurelia her face was unflinching.

  You should talk about it, Aurelia said.

  I don’t think I’m ready.

  Aurelia nodded. Everyone moves at their own pace.

  How’s Adam doing? Is he okay?

  He’s fine. He was in physics, not far from me. We made it outside with everyone else. He’s just grabbing lunch. He’ll be out in a minute.

  I won’t keep you, Zola said.

  It’s no trouble. It’s good to see you.

  I’ll see you in history, Zola said.

  Aurelia nodded. Zola stepped away from the courtyard and back into the building, the words bouncing back inside her brain: It’s good to see you. That it was possible. That anything was good. That she could open up more readily to a stranger than her own mother or Christina or Matt or Nick. That it felt like a wild free fall to speak, to liberate her voice into the air of the courtyard. That something at last felt good.

  WHEN MATT PULLED his hatchback into the driveway after school, he was surprised to see his father sitting on the front porch. He expected him to still be at work but he sat in a corduroy coat watching the street, a glass of whiskey on the low table beside him. When Matt drew closer, his father motioned for him to sit in the chair beside him.

  How was school?

  Fine. It’s a little cold to be sitting out here.

  I don’t mind it. I needed some air.

  Did you just get home?

  Maybe a half hour ago.

  How was work?

  His father didn’t immediately answer. Matt knew it was a loaded question.

  Your mother’s inside marinating steaks, his father finally said. We figured we’d grill tonight, even though it’s so cold. This temperature dip won’t last. It’s still October. We’ll have another warm spell before winter settles in.