Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down

by Anne Valente

  WE MET IN the courtyard at lunch. The day unexpectedly bright past the previous night’s storm, light beating down on the benches and brick. A late fall warm-up as Matt’s father had predicted before winter settled in, the sky cloudless and blue and the sun heating our sweaters against our skin. We met with our sandwiches, our vended sodas, our lunches barely packed.

  Russ Hendricks was released, Matt said. Last night. My dad said there’s no way he could have done it.

  So he was still at the station? Nick asked.

  That’s what my dad said.

  I saw Russ this morning, Christina said. Coming out of the first-floor bathroom. It’s like nothing even happened.

  No one knows he was questioned, Matt said. Unless someone else saw him being taken away yesterday, though I’m guessing no one did. Everyone was at lunch or in class. The police never released the information. He was just a person of interest.

  But not anymore, Zola said. What happened last night, that was way too early. My mother and I watched on TV and couldn’t believe it. She glanced at Nick. Did you see anything?

  The streets were blocked off, Nick said. My parents wouldn’t let us leave the house. And even if we had, we wouldn’t have gotten any farther than our front yard. The police had the whole neighborhood on lockdown.

  You wouldn’t have seen anything even if you’d made it down the street, Christina said. There were people everywhere outside Jacob’s house. Too much going on. It was hard to concentrate on anything with flames like that.

  Was Benji’s house the same? Zola asked. Did the fires look the same?

  I don’t know. Christina sipped a can of Sprite. I saw that right as it happened. I didn’t stand there long enough to watch the fire grow. But with Jacob’s house, the flames were already sky-high. I’ve never seen anything like it. The sound was deafening.

  I could hear the flames, Nick said. Even from a few streets over, if I opened my window.

  I still can’t believe this, Christina said. This is all so unbelievable.

  I know, Nick said. Which makes anything possible.

  Matt looked up from his sandwich, the tone of Nick’s voice strange. Matt wanted to ask again if he was okay but Christina spoke before he could.

  Did your dad say anything else? she asked him.

  Only that nothing was left at the house, Matt said. Same as the others. That police are increasing surveillance. That they’re still retracing Caleb’s path through the school.

  What difference does it make? Christina said. People are still dying and police are putting their efforts into the route a psychopath took two weeks ago?

  I don’t know why it’s important, Matt said. But my dad seems to think it is.

  It’s because they don’t know what the hell else to do, Christina said, her tone rising. They have to make it look like they’re doing something. It’s easier to go back over what they already know. She quieted her voice. I can’t believe they didn’t cancel class. I can’t believe they didn’t postpone Homecoming.

  Is anyone going? Zola asked.

  Sarah wants to go, Nick said. I promised I’d take her.

  I can’t imagine going at this point, Matt said.

  I’ll go if you go, Zola said. And you, Chris. You need to get out of the house. Forget what happened. We should all just be together to forget everything.

  I wrote another profile last night, Matt said. Alexis Thurber. I didn’t even know her but there was nothing else to do.

  I didn’t write anything, Christina said. I’m done. What else can we possibly say? What else is there to write or research or photograph? We’re putting together a yearbook. One that no one will ever want to read.

  Matt looked across the courtyard, at the faces of peers he’d shared a building with for years but barely knew. The same as Alexis Thurber. And Darren Beechwold, a sophomore he’d only seen on the sidewalks of Nick’s neighborhood. The same as Jacob Jensen, a boy he’d tracked so intimately for so many years that he felt like they knew one another, though Matt realized they’d barely ever spoken. He didn’t know anyone, didn’t know this school, this foreign facility, this place he was supposed to create a written testimony of memories for, an entire book his peers would read far into a future that felt as impossible as finishing an academic year, a strange school surrounded by strangers.

  HALFWAY THROUGH ACADEMIC lab, as Nick anticipated, he was called into his counseling session with the school therapist selected for him, a middle-aged man named Marcus. Nick hadn’t decided at the end of the previous day’s session if he would see Marcus again. But when an aide opened the classroom door and called Nick’s name, he let himself be guided from academic lab and down the hall toward Marcus’s small office.

  I’m glad you decided to come back, Marcus greeted him.

  I had a long night, Nick said.

  He sat on the couch and told Marcus that the previous night’s fire had occurred two blocks away and that he’d stayed up until the sirens receded, until the fire trucks extinguished the blaze and police relinquished their blockade of the streets. He mentioned watching out the front window with his parents and his younger brother. He mentioned the scorched smell pervading the neighborhood, the thick scent of smoke from so many types of fire: wood, chemical, electrical. Something toxic and nauseating and invisible but the only indication that anything had happened, that the fire trucks and sirens two blocks away were battling anything at all. He mentioned the reporters, how news vans had tried to navigate around the blockade. How one news team had set up camp at the end of his street, a microphone and a light Nick could see from his window.

  How did that make you feel? Marcus said. What was your reaction to a news team being on your street?

  They’ve been in our neighborhoods for two weeks. This is nothing new.

  But they haven’t been on your street. Does it feel different, that close to home?

  I guess it doesn’t feel any different. I feel like nothing can shock me anymore. What’s one more news van? What’s one more broadcast, even if it’s from my street?

  Do you feel safe? Especially given the news? I saw this morning that they’re still looking for suspects. Does this particular fire make you feel anything different, or raise any new concerns?

  Nick looked up. Does it raise concerns for you?

  Tell me what you mean.

  I mean that I know you’re trained in counseling, but has your training prepared you for something like this?

  Not necessarily. Grief, certainly. Anxiety and fear.

  But not a shooting. Not the ramifications of a series of fatal fires.

  Well, not exactly. But I’m here for you to talk about those things.

  I know. But I guess I mean that we’re in this together. All of us. That none of us knows how to handle this. You must be scared, too.

  I am, yes. I think we all are. But I believe these crimes will be solved.

  Nick watched Marcus, calculating his response. He thought of everything he’d been researching, what he hadn’t even been able to tell Matt. Something spontaneous. Something organic and chemical all at once, a body’s composition. Something heavy with a night’s darkness. Something laden with grief. He didn’t know if he could say out loud what he’d been trying to push from his brain for two days.

  How do you know they’re crimes?

  Tell me what you mean.

  I mean what if it wasn’t an arsonist? What if there wasn’t a suspect at all?

  Well, someone is setting these fires. Just like someone held a gun to your peers.

  Something’s causing the fires. But how do you know it’s someone?

  I don’t think I follow. What else could it possibly be?

  Nick didn’t meet Marcus’s eyes. What if it was something less premeditated? Not the shooting, but its repercussions. How the body processes grief. It must be something you know about.

  How the body responds to grieving? Of course. I’m well trained in physiological responses to extreme stress.

&n
bsp; Like what? Nick asked. You’d know better than anyone I’ve talked to.

  Beyond depression, of course, there’s an increase in harmful chemical levels and hormones. The body is in a constant state of stress. Heightened cortisol. There are disruptions to biological rhythms of sleeping, eating, digestion. Even circulation and breathing. Concentration and coordination can be compromised. The immune system can be damaged. The effects are huge.

  And what if the body went further?

  Nick hesitated. A chemical process, he told himself, the same as gas excitation. He had every right to say it out loud.

  What if grief changed the body entirely? he said.

  It can. There’s no doubt about that. But how does that relate to a rash of fires?

  Nick looked at Marcus directly. What if grief displaced atoms to the point of starting fires?

  Marcus’s pen halted on his notepad. Tell me what you mean.

  Think of atomic bombs. The slight shifting of a single particle. What if the body’s chemistry was completely realigned? What if sorrow pushed the body to breaking?

  The body isn’t radioactive, Marcus said. It’s not a test site for nuclear fission.

  But it contains atoms. Nuclei, protons, electrons. Atoms that under pressure could split, could break themselves in two.

  And do what? Burn an entire house down?

  I really don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud, since there’s no other explanation. The body is 80 percent water. Two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, over and over again. If a single molecule split apart, even just one under the pressure of grief—

  Then what? Really, son, what are you saying?

  Nick stopped. Son.

  I’m not saying anything, he said. Really. Forget I said anything at all.

  Go on, Marcus said. Talk it out. Tell me what you think.

  But Nick knew. A gauntlet thrown. An end.

  It’s nothing, he said. Just thoughts you have when it’s late. When you’ve been up for hours and you can’t sleep and houses are burning down only streets away.

  The mind can tell you lots of things when you’re tired, Marcus said. When you’re hurting and don’t have answers for that hurt.

  Nick forced himself to talk about other things. About Sarah. About schoolwork. His brother and his mother, his father. He let the tableside clock recede to the end of the mandated hour. He released himself from the room and moved down the hallway. He stopped midstride. He didn’t want to go back to his academic lab. Five minutes left of sixth period. He didn’t want to stay quiet and curl inside of himself, what he thought Marcus’s reaction would make him do. He wanted to hear himself say it out loud to someone who wouldn’t turn away from him.

  He knew where Matt would be. He walked to the makeshift math wing and waited outside of Matt’s algebra classroom until the passing bell rang and caught him walking out the door just before his chemistry class, the same lesson Mr. Albertson had taught him and Zola that morning on wavelengths of light. Matt looked at him and his face changed and Nick understood that his own face was transparent, that Matt knew something was wrong, that something had been wrong for days. Are you okay? What Matt had kept asking him. What Nick finally wanted to scream and hear echo down the hall. Can I talk to you? was all he heard himself say. Matt nodded and followed him down the hallway. Through Timber Creek’s side entrance. No one guarding the parking lot. No one making them return for the day’s final period. The sunlight piercing Nick’s eyes beyond the building’s darkness and the dim lamplight of Marcus’s office. Matt following close behind him, a comfort of nearness quieting Nick’s fear to say it out loud. Matt following without question, across the parking lot to the silence of Nick’s car.

  ZOLA BIKED TO the Local Beanery after school, a short shift from three until closing. She pulled her sweater off at the coffee shop, the afternoon far warmer than she’d anticipated, and relieved her coworker Darlene, a woman who attended night school and only worked days. Customers occupied several tables in the shop. A few people typed at laptop computers. A couple sat near the far window speaking in low tones. A lone woman sank into a stuffed armchair, a hardback novel propped on her knees.

  Zola poured herself coffee from the shop’s constant drip and leaned against the backside of the counter. She hadn’t foreseen wanting this, a culprit. An answer and end to this madness. She’d seen Russ Hendricks in the hallway at the end of the day, had watched him come toward her walking in the opposite direction. The way he kept his eyes on the floor bulleted her heart that she’d wanted him arrested, held indefinitely by the police. He was a human being. Grieving. He was nothing but an explanation, an easy way out. Yet even still she’d wanted him as the resolution and the realization held a rabid mirror to her own hunger, predatory as an animal. She sipped her coffee. Dregs, the taste of ground beans. She closed her eyes and in the dark of them, grief welled up within her, a rolling wave.

  Excuse me? Are you still open?

  Zola’s eyes opened and fell upon Mrs. Zimmerman. The mother of Josh Zimmerman, the sophomore who was killed, and his older sister Beth, who’d been into the coffee shop the week before. Zola always between them in age though she remembered Mrs. Zimmerman from the school’s Halloween parade and the fall carnival each year, her face familiar among the parent volunteers. Zola remembered her from recent Homecomings as well, Josh and Beth both routinely on Homecoming Court, their mother and father escorting them down the football field track during halftime.

  We’re open, Zola said.

  I’ll have an iced tea, Mrs. Zimmerman said. I didn’t expect today to be so warm.

  For here or to go?

  To go.

  Zola filled a large plastic cup with ice. She placed it beneath the tea dispenser and tried not to look back at Mrs. Zimmerman standing alone at the counter. A mother. A woman she wanted to ask so many questions. Are you scared? The tea flooded the ice. Are you waiting for your home to burn? Zola set the cup on the counter in front of Mrs. Zimmerman, sealed with a plastic lid and accompanied by a wrapped straw.

  How much?

  It’s on the house.

  Are you sure?

  It’s our last brew of the day, Zola lied. If it’s too weak, I wouldn’t want you charged.

  Mrs. Zimmerman smiled faintly. Thanks.

  Zola watched her leave the shop, unsure if Mrs. Zimmerman knew who she was. That she’d gone to school with her children. That regardless of never knowing them well, they’d all grown up together. Zola wanted to ask what it was to lose a child. If she and her husband grieved in different ways. If only one of them wanted to know what had happened inside the school. If they both wanted to leave it behind, unknown. What they clung to, what they remembered from that morning just before they sent their teenagers to school. What Josh had said as he brushed his teeth. As he’d grabbed his backpack and stepped out the front door. What they regretted. What they took upon themselves. What they clutched tight in the darkest hour of the night, in the moon’s soft light leaking through their bedroom window.

  Zola watched Mrs. Zimmerman disappear from the shop until she lost her to the sun-gleamed cars of the parking lot. She felt something inside of her fissure, a crack. That no one could shield this woman, a mother. That Mrs. Zimmerman carried herself out into the streets, a city that offered no protection. Zola knew it: not police. Not FBI. Not a critical mass of parents. Not anything in this world that could keep her from burning.

  TYLER MET MATT at his locker after the last period of class, long after Nick had pulled away from Timber Creek’s parking lot and Matt had gone back inside. He hadn’t gone to chemistry class. He’d only stepped inside the men’s bathroom and sat in a stall listening to his own breath move in and out of his lungs until the bell signaled the end of seventh period and the conclusion of the school day. What Nick had said inside the sealed car: something impossible. The wind from the night’s storm still howling all around them. Something Matt would never have believed if not for how crushed Nick looked, a revelation
he’d clearly wrestled with for days. If not for how rational his approach always was to the process of research and evidence. If not for the lack of any other explanation, the police and the entire community running out of answers, the thin possibility of another accomplice the only logical lead left.

  The flash point of human skin: cells sparking. Inside the chest, the organs, the heart. A burn spreading up a throat and jumping from a mouth to the curtains, to the thin sheets of a bed. Incineration. Nothing left. Not even fragments, a language neither forensics nor science could speak. Matt didn’t know what he believed. He knew only that he didn’t want Nick to be alone. He’d placed a hand on his shoulder and Nick shrugged it off and said he needed to get home. Matt had returned to his locker for his jacket and saw Tyler waiting for him against the cabinet’s metal door.

  Matt thought of the evening before him: a Thursday night. Home, then work, then home. If life would always be this way, a circuitry of moving among safe spaces while beyond the doors an entire community burned down. He grabbed his jacket and wallet and stepped out to the parking lot with Tyler beside him, the school grounds cluttered with security to ensure that everyone would get home. Matt watched a stationed officer check IDs at the parking lot’s exit and wondered how Nick had managed to escape school so early. If he’d said he was sick. If he’d told the officer last night’s fire had occurred just past his street. A news van sat parked on the main road just past the lot, police barricading the immediate school grounds from media.

  Where should we go? Tyler asked.

  Matt felt tired. Honestly, I just want to go home.

  Won’t your mom be there?

  Probably. But she won’t mind. She’ll be upstairs reading. We can stay in my room. She won’t bother us.

  Tyler climbed into the Fiesta’s passenger seat and they traveled toward Matt’s neighborhood, windows open, the wind blasting in and the sun warming their arms. Police cars lined the streets. Police parked at the curbs of homes. Police waited with their engines cut near intersections and stop signs. Matt knew what this was, the heightened security his father had mentioned the night before, patrol and protection augmented at three o’clock in the afternoon past the previous night’s break in pattern. Though his father hadn’t said so, he wondered if the police were running surveillance on Lewis and Clark’s students: where they took themselves after school beyond view of administrators.