Bonfires

by Amy Lane

  “Dad?” Kirby said into the silence.

  Aaron dropped his arm. “Sorry. Just got tired all of a sudden. Go.” He made a shooing motion with his fingers. “Go play with the other kids, okay?”

  Kirby nodded. “Yeah. Look, I can get home tonight by myself if you need to go back and sleep or something.”

  Aaron shook his head. “No—I told Larx I’d help him clean up. I’ll probably be home after you. But check with me before you go, and I’ll do the same.”

  Kirby nodded and stepped away, and Aaron went to find Larx.

  He was surrounded by staff members, all of whom were smiling but none of whom were happy.

  “Did you know they were going to do that?” Yoshi asked as Aaron walked up.

  “Not a clue,” Larx said, sounding like such a choirboy that Aaron had his suspicions.

  “You knew it was something, right?” Nancy asked, eyes narrowed, and he shrugged, because she’d obviously hit home.

  “Yeah. I knew it was something,” Larx said. “I told them to own it or it was going to make their lives miserable. And they did. And now it’s our job to have their backs.”

  “Course,” Coach Jones said. He looked at his colleagues and rolled his eyes. “Gotta say, was a little proud to be part of this tonight. Making the school safe. Was like last week when we got all classy. I hope we can keep the good going, right?”

  And finally Larx let some of his guard down. “Me too. But you guys know the crap is going to start tomorrow at the dance, and it’s going to hit our phones in a big shitload. So, you know, maybe don’t check your messages until Monday, ’cause we’re going to need to save our strength.”

  “We should make a pact,” Nancy said, and they all stuck their hands in the middle, because apparently most teachers were like Larx and hadn’t matured since the seventh grade.

  Aaron watched them all vow solemnly not to check their voicemail during the weekend before shouting, “Break!” into the smoke-scented night. Then they split up to wander the crowd like the good supervisors they were, and no surprise, Larx gravitated to Aaron’s side.

  Where he belonged.

  “So,” Aaron murmured, “that was unexpected.”

  “The break? No. That was just us.”

  “The full-fledged support.”

  Larx snorted. “Oh, it was pretty now. Wait until the parents start savaging us like dogs. And the school board is going to have something to say, trust me. No—I know it looked like 100 percent support, but if we’re lucky, it was 60–40 at the split.”

  Aaron sucked air through his teeth. “Ouch.”

  Shrug. “They’re scared, Aaron. Change is weird. Always has been. The one thing I do know is that they want what’s best for the kids. And when you see something like we saw tonight?” Some of the armor dropped from his voice again. “Well, you think you know what the best thing is. But when you have a bunch of anxious parents screaming in your ear?”

  “You start doubting your judgment,” Aaron said, getting it. Cops couldn’t afford that. There had to be confidence in every action, because the government gave you a gun and assumed you knew what in the hell you were doing with it. Teachers didn’t have guns, they had their knowledge of human nature—and the belief that humans made mistakes.

  He was suddenly fiercely glad that he was a cop.

  “I know you get it,” Larx agreed. “Sorry. Just what we do.” Then, under the sound of merriment and the band playing Pink’s “Just Give Me a Reason,” he asked, “How bad was it?”

  Aaron shuddered, and even though they couldn’t touch, having him there was so… supportive. So warm. He used to come home from work and Caro would pour him a beer and they’d sit and talk about her day. Then she’d ask him, hesitantly, how bad it had been, and he’d gloss it over. But on the real bad days, she’d push, and he’d spill, and just knowing he wasn’t in his own head alone with the awfulness had made it bearable.

  “We don’t have an ID yet,” he said softly. “No face. Wasn’t a shotgun either—hollow-point .45. Was….” He shuddered.

  “Nightmarish,” Larx said softly.

  And then, to punctuate that thought, a scream shattered the darkness, shattered the hope around them.

  Shattered their hearts.

  Wildfire

  “THE BATHROOMS!” Larx shouted, sprinting toward the edge of the firelight to the back end of the field. He’d had to sign the acquisitions form for three Porta-Johns, and he’d gone all out for the little pedestal with the water basin in front. He’d hung a battery-operated lamp from the pedestal because he wouldn’t have wanted to be taking a crap back there in the dark, and it was easy to follow that beacon once they left the comforting orange of the fire.

  Aaron sprinted at his heels, making sounds that might have been “Let me go first,” but these were Larx’s kids, and that was so not going to happen.

  Larx got to the lamp and saw past it, to a figure struggling under the weight of a big, six-foot-plus limp body.

  “Isaiah?”

  From behind him, Kellan gave an anguished shriek. “Zay?”

  Kellan and Aaron were at Larx’s heels as he went to help the kid struggling under the body with the ungainly burden.

  Joy Bradley was a tiny girl, muscular but short, and as soon as Larx got there to help her with Isaiah’s body, she shrugged out from under the weight and left Larx and Aaron to help him to the ground.

  He was breathing, but each breath brought a shallow rattle of blood from between his lips. As Larx searched his body for the cause, he found his entire stomach was a big bleeding wound, and that now all of them, Larx, Aaron, and a softly weeping Kellan, were covered in blood.

  Kellan knelt at his head, touching his pale face with bloody hands and whispering to him, hoping to hear something back.

  Larx looked at the destruction of skin and muscle and viscera and tried not to throw up. He was the grown-up here. His kids needed him.

  “Aaron,” he rasped, “call the troops. Nancy!” he hollered, and the blessed, blessed woman ran through the crowd, unbuttoning her flannel overshirt as she came. “Nancy, you’ve got the training, I’m going to get out of your way. Tell me what you need and I’ll get it, okay?”

  “More flannel for bandages,” she stated tersely. “Water. Some to drink if he can. Blankets to keep him warm. One for Kellan too, ’cause the boy looks shocky. That’s a start. Go, Larx, now!”

  Larx had a mission. Oh, thank you, Nancy, he had something to do. Yoshi, go get water; Christiana, go get blankets; Kirby, round up flannel shirts and scarves. Everybody give their booty to Larx—he’d give the water to Kellan and have him try to moisten Isaiah’s tongue. He’d have Kirby rip the flannel up into bandages and give them to Nancy as fast as he could tear. He’d wrap Kellan in a blanket and leave the boy to his quiet tears, keeping Isaiah calm. He’d move Nancy when the bandages were all placed, and cover Isaiah with a big, fuzzy pink blanket with Minnie Mouse on it, and then kneel by the boy’s side and grab his hand, telling him it was all going to be okay, and he’d been brave tonight, and he had such a good future, and Kellan was right there, waiting to share it.

  He’d squeeze that hand and make Isaiah squeeze it back until Aaron lifted him bodily off the ground and told him to move because the paramedics were there and it was their job now.

  He’d wrap his arms around Kellan’s sobbing body and hold him and hold him and hold him, aware that he was crying too, in public, surrounded by his kids, and he couldn’t seem to stop.

  Aaron stood there, a steadying hand on his shoulder, until Yoshi stepped forward and led Kellan away, telling Larx they were going to the hospital, and to meet them there. Aaron, Larx, and the rest of the teachers began the roundup, making sure kids had rides home or could call their parents. Eamon Mills showed up, his awkwardly buttoned uniform testament to a night spent in bed, probably grateful he was too old to deal with the high school bullshit and shocked and saddened about it now.

  Eamon and Aaron conferred briefly and
brought Larx into the circle. Aaron had to leave and follow the ambulance, and after a searching glance and a brief nod, he did just that.

  Larx had never wanted to follow someone so badly in his life, not even when Alicia had to get a C-section with Christiana and they had Larx leave the room while they made the incision. But he couldn’t leave—he was the grown-up. The teachers, the kids—they needed someone familiar, someone kind. The sheriff’s department was the authority, the law. Larx was the order.

  Still, he was relieved when, just as Eamon began to speak, his pocket buzzed from Aaron.

  I’ll keep you posted. Hang tight. Text me when you’re done there.

  “Deputy George?” Sheriff Mills asked.

  Larx nodded. “Yessir. Told me he’d keep me posted on Isaiah.”

  “Well, we appreciate your staying here and making the kids feel safe. Now here’s what we’re going to do.” With that, Eamon told him that he and three of the deputies were going to guard the entrance to the bonfire glade and check the kids out as they left while two others kept the parents out on the school side.

  “You need to send a few teachers out front to tell the parents to wait, we’re making sure all the kids are safe.”

  “They won’t buy it,” Larx said. “You should probably check them out in batches and send them through. Parents will wait if they know kids are coming out.”

  “That is a very good idea. Okay, then—you send your teacher reps out, my guys will do a visual on the kids as they go out, and we’ll let the kids trickle through the walkway to keep the parents from causing a ruckus. I like this plan!”

  Eamon clapped his hands together briskly and gave Larx a kind wink, and that was the signal. They went to work.

  When they had some order to the madness, Larx and Eamon had a quiet conversation with Joy.

  “I just opened the bathroom door,” she said brokenly. “I just… he was leaning against it, I think, because when I opened it, he just… fell. Into my arms.” She looked at herself woefully, her letterman jacket covered in blood and the pretty green sweater she had on underneath irreparably stained.

  “Okay,” Larx said, trying not to think about the blood he was wearing like a spilled soda. “Joy, do you remember anyone else in the Porta-John area? I mean, other kids, other adults? Anyone?”

  “No, Principal Larkin,” Joy said. “I just… he just fell on me, and I couldn’t breathe, and I was so afraid I was going to drop him and—”

  The poor thing burst into tears.

  He texted Nancy to let Joy’s parents into the bonfire circle to collect her, and he gave them the district psychologist’s number, telling them to call that night and in the morning to make sure she got the message.

  He called Becky himself as they walked away, giving her the heads-up and warning her she’d need to plan to be at Colton pretty much all week. Eamon waited patiently until he was done and then started asking Larx questions based on what Joy had said.

  “So that girl discovered Isaiah—just opened the Porta-John door and he fell out.”

  Larx looked over to where two crime scene techs—all the department had—had taped off the bathroom area and the lawn to the bonfire circle. Any evidence brought into the bonfire circle had been trampled beyond identification by the time the department had arrived—Eamon had been the first one to admit it—and there was nothing to be done. It was only thanks to the quick response of the staff that the kids hadn’t all fled into the night.

  “Yessir,” Larx said, in answer. “She screamed, we looked up, and she was trying to hold him up.”

  “So the person who stabbed him was big enough to throw him back into the john and slam the door.”

  Larx thought about it and nodded. “Yeah. But strong—not big.” He hated thinking about this, but it was important. “The johns aren’t raised—Isaiah’s belly wound was low on his stomach. It had to be someone not that tall.”

  Eamon nodded. “Good observation, son. I hear ya. Okay, what angle was he falling out?”

  Larx closed his eyes and thought. “Forward. So he’d been leaning against the door until someone opened it.”

  “Okay. So if it’s someone small—with no leverage, like you say—they probably just waited for him to open the door, then got him in the stomach and slammed the door shut again.”

  “Yeah. We’ll have to see what the forensics says, but I’m thinking that may be right.” He knew where this was going. Larx and murder mysteries and crime shows—he should write his own book.

  “So we’re past the point of thinking this had to be a boy because it’s such a bloody crime,” Eamon said wisely. “Do you have any suspects?”

  Larx’s skin itched. He yearned for a shower, he yearned for his couch in his comfy little house, and he yearned to hear that his student was going to be okay. “There was a girl causing trouble with the boys,” he said. “That’s no guarantee she did this, but you may want to take an extra good look as she passes.”

  “We could go get her right now,” Eamon said, because that would seem logical if you didn’t know the sitch.

  “Her mom’s Whitney Olson,” Larx warned. “Dot your i’s, cross your t’s, and make sure you have hard evidence before you question her.”

  “Oh God,” Eamon muttered. “This. This situation? This boy was gutted like a deer because he dumped her?”

  “Eamon, did anybody tell you what Isaiah and Kellan did just before he was found stabbed?”

  Larx briefed him quickly, both of them watching as the students moved efficiently through the spotlight searches and disappeared down the path to their waiting parents on the other side.

  The parade was interrupted by Julia Olson’s shrill bitching as Deputy Parsons nailed her with a Maglite. Larx nodded at Eamon and the older man stepped forward, wielding his own Maglite and speaking to Julia in deep, even tones.

  “Little girl, slow and easy now. You need to take your hands out of your pockets.”

  Larx stared hard at the figure in the lights and his heart stopped. Julia was wearing her cheerleading sweater with a letterman’s jacket over it. Both things were white with blue trim. The jacket was thick felt and water retardant.

  But Julia’s looked like it had been trying to repel black cherry soda instead of water all night, and Larx’s stomach grew cold.

  “No,” she said shrilly. “No, and you idiots are making me late. My mother’s waiting for me and—” Her hands moved fitfully in her pockets, like she was clenching something there.

  Eamon pulled his weapon.

  In his entire life, Larx had never felt such horror. A weapon. On a seventeen-year-old girl. An ugly, deadly gun on a tiny little girl.

  Who might have a knife in her hand after committing a heinous crime.

  “It’s just my phone,” she sobbed, pulling her hands out with rabbit motions. Later, Larx would be consoled by the fact that if Eamon had been a lesser, more frightened man, he would have shot her, no questions asked, because what she was doing there—that was exactly what law enforcement feared. “See? My phone. My phone, and now my mother is going to sue you. She’s going to sue you and—”

  “Little girl,” Eamon said, weapon still drawn, voice still dangerous, “I’m going to need you to drop the phone and put your hands behind your head.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Julia sobbed. “You can’t arrest me because I didn’t do it. I swear. It wasn’t me.”

  But by now Julia was the target of six bright magnesium beams from the full account of county deputies in the area. And when she held her hands behind her head, they were crusted with bright white pocket lint, sticking to the foulness of dried blood.

  Eamon kept the beam trained on Julia while, very slowly, Jim Parks walked over and tightened the cuffs on her thin wrists. When he was done, Eamon pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and scooped up the phone, wrapping another bag around it and holding it carefully.

  As Jim started to read the girl her rights, they heard a high-pitched demand and what sounded lik
e a steamroller crashing through the underbrush.

  “How dare you!” Whitney Olson snarled. “How dare you!” The woman looked worse for her trek through the woods—her fashionable tracksuit was twisted around her body, and her hair hung lank to her shoulders. Julia, upon seeing her, let out a little whimper and, handcuffs and all, sank to the ground, sobbing.

  “Mrs. Olson,” Eamon intoned, holstering his weapon and turning toward the woman, “I suggest you go call your daughter a lawyer. A criminal lawyer, not a financial one.”

  “You have no right to detain my daughter. None at all!”

  “She’s covered in blood,” Eamon said in the overly reasonable voice one used when talking to a hysterical child. “A young man was stabbed here by somebody her size, somebody strong but not tall. And your daughter has blood all over her jacket.” With that Eamon whistled shrilly, and the two CSIs by the johns looked up. Eamon gestured to one of them and she trotted over, kit in hand.

  “I need you to process her jacket and shoes at the very least before we get her to the station. Oh!” Eamon handed her the phone. “And take this as well.”

  “Yessir. I’ll accompany her to the station for the rest of it.”

  “Thanks, Andrea. Call down to Placer County—they’ve got labs that we don’t. You’ll be taking samples down as soon as we get the boy too.”

  “Not a problem, Eamon.” Andrea glared sideways at a fuming Whitney. “Isaiah’s one of ours. We’ll take care of him.”

  Julia was led toward the cage lights with Andrea and Colton’s one female detective, JoBeth Frazier, the better to be processed, and Eamon was left going toe-to-toe with Whitney Olson.

  “I’ll sue you, Sheriff. I’ll sue the school, I’ll sue the whole fucking county,” Whitney snarled. “This is ridiculous. Half the school was probably covered in blood—I heard that faggot bled like a stuck pig when he got stabbed!”

  “I’m sorry?” Larx said, his temper hitting him hard in the gut. “Isaiah Campbell is a student here, and he’s fighting for his life, and you need to show some respect!”