Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  Matt watched leaves whip across the yard. He couldn’t imagine another warm spell. He couldn’t imagine summer, the cicadas diminished now to a soft trill. He sat on the edge of his chair, his hands shoved into his pockets.

  How were your classes? Timber Creek going okay?

  I guess.

  Things will get back to normal. I know it’s hard.

  None of my teachers really mentioned Jacob’s house. I don’t think they know what to say anymore.

  Matt’s father took a sip of his whiskey. There’s really nothing to say. Not until we know why this is happening.

  Why is it?

  Matt’s father looked at him. All we know is that there’s a pattern. The first fire happened on October 11. Today’s October 21. That’s four fires in ten days. Not every other day, but damn near close.

  It was so quiet through the weekend.

  That’s what we’re looking at now. The curfew helped nothing. We thought it did through the weekend, quiet as it was. But last night proved us wrong.

  A gust of wind pushed across the porch and Matt stayed silent.

  In my twenty years on the police force, I’ve never seen anything like it. His father set down his glass. We chose this community for its safety. We chose it for you.

  None of this is your fault.

  Your mother and I keep trying to remember that. But we can’t stop ourselves from thinking of what-ifs. What if we lived elsewhere? What if I’d worked in a different precinct? What if we’d fallen in love with a different house, in a different school district?

  Matt heard his father stop himself short. What if it’d been you in the hallway instead of that girl on the carpet.

  This could have happened anywhere, Matt said.

  I know it. We’re just trying to figure out why these fires are happening here.

  What did they find today? What of Jacob Jensen’s house? What about his mom?

  Matt’s father didn’t look at him. The same. It’s the same as the others.

  What do you mean?

  I mean it’s the same. Nothing left. No trace of a body left.

  The wind cut into Matt’s skin. Dad, this is fucked.

  Watch your mouth, son.

  Benji’s mother in the yard? What Christina saw—that doesn’t mean anything?

  All it means is Benji’s mother was outside and then she wasn’t. It could have happened at any of the other homes, too, we just don’t have eyewitnesses. But it doesn’t mean she’s the culprit, or a suspect. There’s no evidence at all to suggest that.

  Then what? Matt asked. The mail truck stopped in front of their house and Matt’s father waved across the yard. The mailman waved back and Matt considered the strangeness of routine, that mail was still being delivered.

  Given the pattern, I suspect we’ll find nothing in the analysis of the Jensen house, either. No evidence of accelerant. Nothing but organic material. No chemicals. But we’re considering other leads. Other possibilities.

  Like what other possibilities?

  Well, for starters, nothing points to arson, even still. At least not on the level of chemical analysis. But now we’re not so sure, especially after the Jensen house.

  Why? What’s different?

  The pattern is odd. No fires through the entirety of the weekend.

  What difference does that make?

  Matt’s father sighed. I shouldn’t get into this with you.

  Come on, Dad. I need to know something.

  His father troubled the glass, whiskey swirling inside it. We’re looking into juvenile arson, he said. I can’t say specifics. But the hiatus across the weekend suggests it.

  What do you mean juvenile?

  A teenager. Kids. No fires over the weekend indicates supervision, the time of week when everyone’s home and it’s harder to slip past surveillance. It suggests maybe a kid who can maneuver around working parents during the week.

  Matt sat back in his chair. He couldn’t imagine that someone walking through the halls of Timber Creek or sitting next to him in class could be responsible for this. He thought of Caleb Raynor. A plan none of them knew he’d made.

  That’s the only thing? That there were no fires over the weekend?

  Not necessarily. There are other attributes. This just makes it clearer.

  What other attributes?

  Well, multiple fires are an indication. Youthful fire setters tend to set more than one within a finite time span. They also use materials available on the scene. There usually isn’t a lot of forethought. Since we can’t find evidence of accelerants, it might mean that flammable materials weren’t transported from elsewhere. That whoever did this, they used what was already available in each house. Organic materials. Like I said. Candle wax or vegetable oil. Whatever people already have in their homes. Juvenile fires also tend to be set in a small radius. Sure, some teens have cars. But most wouldn’t go far. These neighborhoods are most kids’ entire world.

  Matt watched the mail truck retreat down the street. He thought of Christina tapping on his window in the early morning. Zola out in the Trenways’ yard, Tyler sometimes in his car all night. How easy it was for everyone he knew to sneak out. He tried to remember the farthest he’d ever driven in the hatchback on his own.

  Anything else? he asked.

  Most arsonists set their fires late at night or early morning, Matt’s father said, regardless of their age. That’s the time all of these fires have erupted. And most young fire setters are dealing with high family stress. Without saying much more, suffice it to say that we’re looking at kids who’ve been most affected by this tragedy, since all of these fires are connected to the school. Kids who might also have a history of emotional problems, academic problems. Even a history of abuse or neglect in their families.

  It doesn’t make sense, Matt said. Kids affected by this tragedy. Wouldn’t they empathize with the families of victims instead of wanting to burn down their homes?

  It depends. Grief works in strange ways. It could be that someone lost someone else close to them—a friend, a boyfriend, a girlfriend—and they want that grief to spread if they’re a troubled individual. They want everyone to suffer even more.

  But doesn’t that take a lot of planning, especially given the police presence now?

  It implies premeditation. But police have just been patrolling the streets. Every street. They haven’t kept watch exclusively on the homes of those who have lost children.

  But will they now?

  I anticipate they will. It’s something that was discussed last week with the curfew. We thought surveillance might violate family privacy, for so many people who are already undergoing enough media scrutiny. These parents are already watching themselves, too. Parents for Home Protection. But not all of them are participating.

  The wind blew a small branch from the hickory tree in the front yard.

  What about Eric Greeley? Matt asked. Would you bring him in again?

  A third time? No. The kid is clean. Matt’s father glanced at him. I can’t say more, but there’s a slight chance the Raynor boy had a different accomplice.

  Matt sat up in his chair. A different accomplice? Dad, Caleb had no friends.

  Do you know that for a fact? How well did any of you know this boy?

  Matt imagined Caleb in the back of the classroom. In the lunch line, picking out a carton of milk. The only images he had of someone he’d never thought to notice.

  Not well, he admitted. Is this someone at school? Someone I need to know about?

  There’s no someone yet, his father said. It’s just another option we’ve reopened, given the possibility of juvenile arson. It could be that the Raynor boy had a partner in all of this, or else someone who’s just very angry that he’s gone. I promise, son. I’d tell you if you were in danger.

  Christina lives right by Jacob’s house, Matt said. She saw the fire last night.

  Matt’s father sighed. Benji’s mother and now this.

  She said last night ever
yone was gathered out in the streets.

  People are scared. They want to know what’s happening. I understand that. We all want the same thing.

  Matt looked at his father. Are you sure you’d tell me? Would you tell me if you really knew something?

  His father finished his whiskey. I’d tell you what was necessary to keep you safe.

  NICK DROVE SARAH home after school, the wind picking up, so many leaves thrown from the trees to the street in front of them. They’d barely seen each other at school since returning. Nick knew he’d been preoccupied. He hadn’t told her about anything he’d looked up, not arson or fire scenes or the process of burning. He knew she’d say he was too singularly focused, too gripped by yearbook and research, too removed from what they’d done though she’d barely spoken of it since it happened. He imagined her taking her pill, every day, the time he knew now by asking: 4:30 P.M. Just after school, before her father came home, when no one would see her slip a small tablet beneath her tongue.

  How was class? he asked.

  Fine. It still feels weird to be back. Weird to be in that building.

  I know. I’m not used to it. The classrooms, the cafeteria. Everything’s different.

  But it feels good, sort of. At least it feels good to be outside of the house. I can’t believe what happened. I can’t believe this is still happening.

  Are you scared? he asked.

  I’m fine. It’s scary, but I don’t feel scared. Not anymore.

  Nick glanced at Sarah, her shape small-seeming in the passenger seat beside him. A police car passed them, its sirens quiet but its speed accelerated.

  What changed? he asked.

  I guess I feel like I’m not in danger. I mean, look at so many people around us. All of these families. Their homes. I have no right to feel sad or scared.

  You can feel whatever you want, he said. Yeah, it’s good to be grateful. But I think it’s also okay to be scared.

  Are you?

  Nick pushed his hands against the steering wheel and thought of everything he’d looked up. Burn patterns. Which way fires swept. Origin of incendiary, single or multiple. Diagrams, photographs, testimonies of eyewitnesses. Natural causes, accidental causes. Unexplained causes, what he’d looked up last night. Another dead end, he knew. How nothing he found comforted him. How nothing offered resolution, any sense of control.

  Maybe not scared, he said. But something. I don’t really know how I feel.

  Nick felt her hand cross his thigh. About anything?

  He looked at her. I know how I feel about you.

  I’m glad we did what we did, she said.

  Me, too.

  He squeezed her hand to assure her he’d thought of it as much as she had, though he knew he hadn’t. He’d thought of sex before, less than other teenagers, he assumed, but still there all the same through long drives and long nights and the darkened corners of movie theater dates, Sarah’s body a living thing beside him. He wouldn’t take it back. But he realized sitting beside her in the car: it hadn’t changed his life. Not in the way movies and television shows told him it would. It wasn’t what he needed. What he needed was information, puzzle pieces aligning. Some kind of pattern to connect.

  I don’t have to be home yet, she said.

  Your mother’s expecting you, I’m sure.

  She’s not home today. Third Tuesday of the month, her book club. They didn’t cancel it, not even this month.

  Where do you want to go?

  Anywhere. Her hand moving higher on his thigh.

  He didn’t feel like going anywhere. He felt exhausted. But he didn’t want to turn away from her. He deviated from the path to her house and turned toward the frontage roads off the highway. He didn’t stop until they passed Lake School Park, a small public recreational area with an old schoolhouse and a playground and trails into the woods. Under renovations since they started high school, the park was always abandoned and they both knew it. He pulled into the park’s gravel lot, rocks and debris crunching beneath the Honda’s tires. His the only car there. He pulled into a spot obscured by tangles of overgrown branches and cut the engine and Sarah’s hand traveled up his torso to the side of his face, her mouth already on him before he pulled the keys from the ignition.

  He felt his pulse quickening despite himself. He opened the car door and led her to the backseat, the wind whipping around them, the car a shelter from the cold. He warmed his hands with his breath. She pulled at the button of his jeans. She unthreaded the zipper, steel teeth he felt unlock against his skin, and then her hand was inside the waistband and the wind whistled at the windows and she pushed herself onto him and then down, his jeans still halfway on. She pitched against him. He kept her fastened in his gaze, only closing his eyes when she leaned down and pushed her mouth to his. He felt his heart storming beneath the thick fabric of his jacket, felt every preoccupation trapped in his brain dissolve. He wanted her. Past a summer of waiting, past a single encounter in the solitude of her living room. Past so many nights of research, past key terms and evidence. She broke through all of it. He let himself want her, let himself escape his brain and fill his own body, the thunder of his own heartbeat. When he felt himself push past a threshold, she lay against his chest and he breathed in the soft condensation of the car against the cold glass. Over her shoulder, he could see through the windshield. The seclusion of overgrown shrubs and trees where they’d parked, knots of branches swaying in the wind. She whispered was that good and he nodded and spread a hand across her hair. The texture of every strand. The heat of her skin. His brain already orbiting back to his computer, his heartbeat receding. Branches knocking soft against the car’s glass.

  CHRISTINA LAY IN the filled tub of the bathroom she and Simon shared. The door locked, the ceiling fan whirring high in the corner, drowning out the television her brother watched in the living room down the hallway. She’d taken him to the community center after school and made him swim in the recreational pool while she turned laps in the roped-off lanes. She hadn’t wanted to let him leave her sight as much as she’d needed to feel water slide against her skin, her muscles ellipsing down the pool’s Olympic length. The center had been empty, only one other older woman circling through the lane beside her. Christina had swum sixty laps of freestyle and backstroke intervals, Simon’s legs just visible beneath the thick underwater blue if she angled her goggles toward the pool’s shallow end. She’d driven him home, her hair still wet, the scent of chlorine filling the car as they passed Jacob Jensen’s street. Police cars and yellow tape. She’d drawn herself a bath before her father came home and closed the bathroom door.

  She let steam fill the small bathroom. She filled the water to the bottom of the drain lever and lay back in the tub and let herself close her eyes. Pushed away a home’s flames ripping tears through the fabric of a dark night. The hot scent of charring intermingled with the stale smoke of Mr. Wilcox’s cigarette. Benji Ndolo’s front door sharding fire and wood. Christina wanted to be nowhere. With no one. She didn’t want anyone to need her, if only for the thin window of a bath. A brother who’d watched a house burn down in the night. A best friend with a grief-stricken temper. A rage she had every right to have, a library none of them had seen. A phone call Christina didn’t want to make to ensure again that Zola was okay. A police officer who’d demanded answers, nothing she could give despite a questioning that had lasted more than an hour. A mother standing alone in the darkness of her front yard, what haunted Christina in the bathroom’s thick steam: whether she could have done anything to change the igniting of a home and everyone within it. A mother. A father. A small brother. And only doorsteps away: a boy with a sharp mouth, a leg propped up on pillows. The satisfaction of breaking up with her first.

  Christina burrowed beneath the water, her knees poking through the surface. She toed the tub’s drain. She listened to the hollow sound of water leaking in slow drops from the faucet and watched them plink into the bathtub, concentric rings that rippled out across the
surface. What else she’d given Ryan, across two years of sex in his bedroom or the backseat of both of their cars: a quick finish every single time. What he’d never given her. What she’d told Zola in a moment of frustration and wished she could take back: that she’d never had an orgasm, only a partner uninterested in what sex meant for her.

  What she couldn’t believe she hadn’t tried herself across two years.

  The hum of the television down the hallway. The door locked. The ceiling fan hurricaning above her. Christina let her hands slide beneath the surface, down the water-slicked shape of her own body. Past the sides of her breasts, what Ryan had once joked were too small. Across the smooth plain of a lap-chiseled stomach. Muscled thighs. A shape Christina realized she was proud of, what propelled her through the water. Her hands moving farther. Christina closed her eyes and the fan whirred and she let herself clear her brain. A police officer. An ex-boyfriend. She let every tether of need slip away. A brother. A best friend. She kept her eyes closed, the humid air of the bathroom a blanket. She let herself be alone, her own secret, apart from what anyone else required. The faucet’s drip, a meditation. She let her breath quicken. She let her hands find her own pulse.

  LATE THAT NIGHT, after steaks and grilled corn and long after his parents had gone to sleep, Matt sat in his bedroom with his English textbook open in his lap, a cluster of Nikolai Gogol stories he was to read by morning. He tried to concentrate. The words blurred. He imagined instead his peers. Anger problems. Trouble making friends. Those most affected by the shooting. Those with troubled home lives or a history of abuse: how was there any way to know? He thought of Russ Hendricks, Alexis Thurber’s boyfriend, a junior known for so many fistfights and suspensions. He thought of Jeff Steffen, another junior who’d been Jacob Jensen’s best friend. A soccer player with a temper, a known asshole. A guy Matt’s manager had once escorted from Midvale Cinemas for throwing a soda at another patron, someone Matt couldn’t imagine burning down a house. And Caleb Raynor: beyond Eric Greeley, Matt had no clue who his friends were. He set down his textbook. He knew he’d have never suspected Caleb of what he’d been capable of doing. But even still, he couldn’t think of a single person at Lewis and Clark who could torch down a house with a family inside. He couldn’t imagine returning to school the next morning wondering if someone he passed in the hallways had stalked through the streets, found household materials to set a flame, watched four houses burn.