Bonfires

by Amy Lane

  “Like you showed when you let two fags make out in front of the bonfire?” she taunted, and Larx’s whole body stiffened with violence.

  And then Eamon spoke, and Larx was suddenly alert to something more important than his need to actually hit a woman, something he deplored on a regular day.

  “How did you know about the boys’ kiss?”

  Larx’s head jerked back at the power of the question, and he saw Whitney stiffen too.

  “My daughter texted me,” she said with dignity. “Distraught.”

  Eamon nodded. “Well, we’ll check the phone records to make sure.”

  Whitney sputtered and fumbled for her phone and then stepped out of hearing distance from them—presumably to call her lawyer. Larx realized that for once, he would not be the center of Whitney Olson’s anger.

  Larx wouldn’t be at the sheriff’s station at all.

  “Eamon, when this is all cleared up, is it all right if I go to the hospital to check on Isaiah?”

  Eamon nodded. “Yessir, I think that would be a fine idea.”

  So Larx had a goal, something to sustain him through the next couple of hours. He also had Kirby, who was in one of the last groups to be searched and who was keeping an intermittent news stream with his father.

  “How’s it going?” Larx asked as he waited with Kirby’s group to be processed.

  “Isaiah’s in surgery now,” Kirby told him. “Apparently his dad was sort of a dick to Kellan. My dad’s trying to keep Kellan from losing his shit.”

  “Aw, hell—has anybody told Kellan’s parents where he is?”

  Kirby’s eyebrow must have been a legacy from his mother, because Larx had never seen that much sarcasm anywhere near Aaron’s expression. “Kellan’s parents? Begging your pardon, Principal Larx, but you do remember who we’re talking about, right?”

  Yeah. Oh shit. Kellan’s parents might not have come to the hospital if Kellan had been the one in surgery.

  “Oh damn,” Larx muttered. “He’s going to need a ride home.”

  And he couldn’t imagine how much that would suck. He looked at Kirby, and he and Aaron’s son had a meeting of the minds.

  “We should bring him home,” Kirby said. He texted furiously for a moment and then looked up at Larx. “He and Christi are friends too.”

  Larx pulled out his own phone and kept a tight rein on the what-ifs he’d been ruthlessly squashing since Joy’s first scream had shattered the night. What if Christi had been there? What if she’d been hurt? What if it had been Kirby in that bathroom? Oh God, what if?

  Instead of texting, he called, because he needed to hear his daughter’s voice.

  “Dad?”

  “Christi, hon, I hate to break up your sleepover, but I’m going to need your help. Someone’s been hurt.”

  He explained the sitch in short bursts, being more principal than dad, but he wasn’t aware of how much that difference was slipping until he heard Christi, voice fracturing, say, “Oh Daddy. I’m so sorry—yeah. I’m over at Schuyler’s—we’ll come to the hospital first and then go to our place, okay?”

  He had to laugh. He’d had hopes, him and Aaron, together alone.

  He should have remembered that part of being a parent was that you were never alone.

  “Yeah, hon. That sounds good. Give me an hour or two, though, okay?” He hung up and looked at Kirby. “And since I was your ride to school this morning, I guess you and me are going together.”

  “D’oh!” Kirby smacked his forehead. “I actually forgot. Geez… this has been the weirdest day!”

  Larx chuckled then, a strained sound waiting to break free into hysteria. He pulled himself together and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder instead. “It defies the laws of physics, gravity, and the space-time continuum,” he affirmed.

  And Kirby started laughing, and laughing, and laughing. Larx gave in to his permanent dadness and wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulder until he wiped away tears and caught his breath.

  The bonfire was down to the embers by the time they made it to the spotlight search, and Kirby was the last person through. Larx had Kirby wait next to him as he spoke with Eamon one more time.

  “I’m going to the hospital if you need me,” he said. “And if his parents haven’t come to get him, I’ll bring Kellan home with me.”

  “Any reason the boy’s parents wouldn’t be there to get him?” the sheriff asked perceptively.

  “Their son threw two touchdown passes at homecoming and they weren’t there,” Larx said, dragging a recently cleaned hand through his hair. “And he’s pretty sure they’re not going to get any warmer when they find out his boyfriend is in the hospital. I just….” Augh! This was where he got muddy. The line between your children and your kids—where do you draw it? “This has got to be the shittiest night of his life, Eamon. My house is going to have friends and safety. I would like to give him that.”

  Eamon nodded. “If I don’t see you tonight, I’ll be by your place bright and early to question him.”

  Oh God. Thank you for letting this nice man with the flashlight and the gray hair and the solid, solid presence see that this was okay. “Thanks, Eamon.”

  “I take it I’ll see Deputy George there too?”

  Larx blinked. “I assumed he’d be going home.” Because four kids crying in the living room—who needed the aggravation?

  But Sheriff Mills just looked at him, unblinking. “I would prefer to find him at your place drinking coffee in his pajamas, Principal Larkin.”

  “Uh….”

  “Because you’ve both had something of a day.”

  “Yeah, well, uh….”

  “And I think you both need caring for,” Eamon continued implacably. “I like to make sure my deputies have someplace to go when things go to hell. Someplace good.”

  “That’s, uh, yeah. Good idea. Good talk. Sure. Aaro… Deputy George will be at my place. Drinking pajamas in his coffee. Or something. Yes, Sheriff, good idea.”

  Eamon let out a tired laugh. “Larx?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Go meet your family and go home. We’ll take over. I hope the boys are okay. Both of them. You did good tonight—this could have been a multilayered clusterfuck, but it wasn’t. Some of that was George, but most of it was you. So, you know. If your school board gives you shit—about any of it? You bring me in. I’ll tell them a thing or two about shitty human beings and how you can’t always anticipate evil fucking bullshit, okay?”

  Larx nodded and wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, suddenly almost undone by the kindness of this authority figure.

  “Thanks, Eamon. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  Larx and Kirby walked tiredly down the forest path then, and Larx noted that somebody—probably the sheriff’s department—had strung lights from the trees before the kids walked back down to see their parents. The thought made him feel protected somehow, like he wasn’t alone watching out for them all.

  They were reasonably quiet as Larx drove the half hour to the small county hospital. Larx tried not to think about Isaiah in the ambulance, frightened and in pain. Or Kellan fearing for his boyfriend’s life.

  Funny how people don’t always think about the most obvious things until something strikes them just right.

  Because right then what Aaron really did for a living hit Larx in the solar plexus.

  Maybe it had been seeing Eamon draw his gun on a teenage girl. Or the fact that he was still wearing Isaiah’s blood. Maybe it was thinking about Kellan and how frightened he must be, but suddenly Larx was there, in the realization that Aaron wore a weapon, that he was expected to venture into danger.

  That one day Larx could be in an ambulance, praying to a nameless god for mercy on the boy he loved.

  He must have made a sound—or Kirby must have been thinking the same thing—because Aaron’s son spoke into the darkness.

  “Dad’s gotten hurt a couple of times. Once right after my mom
died.”

  “It’s like you read my mind,” Larx muttered.

  Kirby half laughed. “You’d be stupid if you didn’t think about it. I mean, Dad likes to play it off like it’s not important, but he puts on a gun every morning. He wears Kevlar. And this is gun country up here. So you think about it.”

  “How’d he get hurt?” Larx asked, almost afraid to ask.

  “Got sort of flung at a car,” Kirby said. “A few cuts, a few bruises. We stayed with our mom’s sister for a while.”

  “You have an aunt?” Oh, the things Larx did not know.

  “Aunt Candace—she comes up for Christmas sometimes. She never married, so, you know, floats around to her parents’ or boyfriend’s or whatever. She’s nice. Would totally approve of you, by the way.”

  Larx grunted, not sure if the kid was trying to make him feel better or just wanted to get on with the story. “So he got hurt?”

  “Yeah. I remember Aunt Candy came to pick me up from school, and I got really upset because, you know, she picked me up when my mom died, and….”

  He shuddered hard, and Larx thought he now knew what Kirby would be telling his therapist when he grew up.

  “You thought your dad wasn’t coming home.” His heart ached.

  “Yeah. And then Aunt Candy told me that he was fine, and he wanted me not to worry, and it was weird. You know, like one of those hypnotic suggestions? Because I was so freaked out that my dad was hurt, I was like in a really suggestible state. Candy said, ‘Dad doesn’t want you to worry.’ So I just stopped. And now, whenever I get really freaked out about him and what he’s doing and whether he’s going to come home or not, I remember ‘Dad doesn’t want you to worry.’ I don’t know why it works, but it does.”

  Larx tried it. Aaron doesn’t want me to worry.

  And felt just the same.

  “I think it’s powerful magic,” Larx said regretfully. “But I don’t think it’s going to work with me.”

  “Why not?” Kirby asked. “Is it because you’re too old?”

  Larx grunted, not even offended. “No. I think it worked for you because you felt cared for. Your mom before she died. Her sister. Your father. I think that’s like… what’s the word? A charm? A….”

  “Talisman,” Kirby supplied.

  “Your English teacher is heinously underpaid,” Larx observed. “But yes. A talisman. I don’t have one of those yet.”

  They pulled up in front of the hospital, and Larx found a parking spot. He killed the engine and leaned back in his seat, yawning. The dash clock said 2:30 a.m. God, he wasn’t used to going this long on this little sleep. What, did he think he was back in college?

  “Larx?” Kirby said softly.

  Larx shook himself. “Yeah, sorry. Let’s go find your dad.”

  “Okay. I just… I want you to know something.”

  Larx worked hard to be in the present. This was important to Aaron’s son. “Shoot.”

  “I hope… I hope my dad can give you the talisman or whatever, to help you not worry. It would be great to have two grown-ups to talk to again. Even if I’m supposed to be grown myself.”

  Larx smiled at him and slid out of the car. As they walked toward the hospital, he slung his arm around the boy’s shoulder, and Kirby didn’t object in the slightest.

  Heat

  ISAIAH’S FATHER was just as tall as his son, with thinning blond hair and muscle that had run to fat, and a drinker’s nose.

  Pete Campbell wore overalls and a T-shirt to his job as a drywall specialist and never saw any reason to change after work. He wore the overalls and the T-shirt and a denim jacket straight to his son’s game, and his wife, a once-lovely, slender woman with surprising height, wore jeans and a pink sweatshirt. When Aaron spoke to her, she would flicker her eyes to her husband before she answered.

  Pete’s first words—after “What in the fuck did you people do to my son?”—were “And why’s this punk kid here?”

  “Kellan’s Isaiah’s friend,” Aaron said reasonably. “We thought that when he came out of surgery, he’d want to see him.”

  “Boy’s not family,” Pete grunted. “But whatever.”

  Aaron and Kellan locked grim gazes for a moment before Aaron continued with his job. “Mr. Campbell, we’ve got people at the bonfire working to find out what happened—”

  “You were there! What the hell were you doing?”

  “I was talking to the principal next to the bonfire because it was damned cold,” Aaron said, hoping to humanize the situation. “And kids were going to use the bathroom. It should have been safe, if a little creepy, and it wasn’t. I’m just wondering if Isaiah said anything to you about who might not be happy with him after the football game tonight.”

  Aaron and Kellan looked at each other again, and Aaron shook his head grimly. This situation had such potential to explode.

  “Well, he did tell me he had problems with a girl,” Lizzie Campbell said, voice tentative. “He didn’t want to take her to homecoming, and she was getting quite insistent.”

  “Whole thing was stupid,” Pete muttered. “A date with a pretty girl—I still don’t get why he didn’t say yes.”

  “Because he didn’t care about her,” Kellan said. “And frankly she was a little crazy.” And he loves me. Aaron could hear the subtext loud and clear.

  “Did he tell you that?” Lizzie Campbell asked, flicking her eyes to her husband before smiling.

  “Yes’m,” Kellan said. “He did.”

  “He doesn’t tell us anything anymore,” she said wistfully. “I guess it’s because he’s getting older.”

  “He’s afraid of what you’ll say,” Kellan told her. “He… he’s growing into a different person than the two of you. He doesn’t think you’ll approve.”

  Pete stopped his pacing and turned toward Kellan with a deliberate slowness. “What in the hell does that mean?”

  “It means Isaiah loves me,” Kellan said, voice soft but firm. “What Deputy George is trying not to tell you is that me and Isaiah, we came out in front of the whole school at the bonfire tonight. We kissed, and our teachers came to congratulate us and tell us they had our backs. And it was great. But now”—he caught his voice as it tumbled—“now Isaiah’s fighting for his life, and we don’t know who hurt him. And we have to tell the deputy if anyone would have wanted to hurt him because he… he kissed me in front of the bonfire and the whole world saw….”

  Aaron put his arm around the boy’s shoulders and just left it there, warm and solid, as Kellan got himself under control and Isaiah’s parents caught up to what he’d just said.

  “My son did what!” Pete yelled, and Aaron stepped right up into his space.

  “We’re not doing this,” he said with all the authority he could muster. “Kellan just told you something hard for you to hear, but you know what? He’s right. Isaiah is fighting for his life. When he comes to, you can either be mad at him for being who he is, or you can be glad your son survived. He could die. Right now. Do you want him to die without ever really knowing who he was?”

  Please oh please oh please….

  “He was… is… my son is gay?” Pete asked, stunned. He turned and glared at his wife. “Did you know?”

  “No,” she whispered, face suddenly gray. Then she turned and glared right back. “How could I? You never let him speak at the damned dinner table! Why do you think he hasn’t told us? Everything that comes out of his mouth gets shouted down!”

  Pete floundered for a minute. “Lizzie, the boy gets ideas. Going off to college. He’s our only son—why would he want to leave?”

  “So he could be with me,” Kellan whispered, wiping his hand across his eyes. “Because my folks would rather kill me than let me be a fag.”

  And Lizzie Campbell surprised Aaron then, because she patted Kellan’s arm awkwardly and tried to calm him down while Pete just looked on in befuddlement.

  “My son has a boyfriend?” he asked, like the sound of the word was foreign on his tongu
e.

  “Yes, sir,” Aaron answered calmly. “Yes, he does. Now do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt him because of that?”

  “How could I?” Pete asked, all of the wind suddenly out of his sails. “When I didn’t know myself.”

  He sank down into his chair in a slow avalanche and watched as his wife tried to mother a shy and wretched Kellan, who was picking at the bloodstains on his clothes.

  Aaron sighed and flagged down an orderly for a pair of scrubs. He saved the poor kid from the fluttery ministrations of Lizzie Campbell and took him to the shower cubicle down in long-term care. The forensics team had already raked Kellan over—it was time to get the blood off.

  “I’ll be right outside your door,” Aaron promised. “Get washed and I’ll see if we can’t get you a sweatshirt, and you’ll feel a little easier as we wait.”

  Kellan nodded a quiet thank-you and disappeared, leaving Aaron to text Kirby to get the skinny on what was going down at the bonfire. According to Kirby, Larx was kicking ass and taking names, and Aaron felt a little swell of pride. He was something—clear-thinking, smart, funny even in the direst situations. Aaron thought wistfully that he’d like to see Larx sprawled, naked and sexy, joking in bed.

  It was a long night after that. He almost regretted being the guy on the scene, the guy who ended up with Kellan at the hospital, because he wanted to be doing something, anything, besides waiting to see if his son’s classmate was going to live.

  Kellan got out of the shower, and they went back to the waiting room. Aaron kept texting Kirby, and at some point Kellan fell asleep, his head tilting onto Aaron’s shoulder with so much trust Aaron almost couldn’t breathe.

  These kids trusted them, the adults, to keep them safe. Aaron felt his failure in the marrow of his bones.

  He had started to doze off, his dreams flickering between a chilly lakefront and a bloated corpse and a confused orange-lit darkness that covered Larx in blood. New footsteps clattering down the corridor snapped him awake with enough force that Kellan sat up blearily, rubbing at his eyes.

  “Deputy George?”

  Aaron blinked a couple of times and smiled. Larx’s daughter was wearing pink flannel pajamas with kitties and bunnies on them, her letterman jacket, and rainbow sneakers. Her girlfriend was wearing purple fleece bottoms with Snoopy and a Hello Kitty hoodie. Together they were the poster children for adorable, and they were holding two aluminum mugs steaming with what smelled like chocolate, and a plate of fresh muffins.