Burn

by Suzanne Phillips

  He can’t move. His heart is in his throat, thumping, crashing against his Adam’s apple until he feels like he’ll pass out from the pain. His blood is so hot, it’s shrieking, his mouth too dry to spit. He watches the others as their faces, some of them horrified, some of them gleeful, turn somber or smirking. Until everything blurs, like he’s looking through a window during violent rain.

  “Mr. Grady?” Mrs. Marks. Is she whispering, or is he too far off to really hear her? “Mr. Grady?” Louder. Angry.

  “Turn off those computers,” she orders. “Now. All of you. Mr. Grady, step out into the hall.”

  That’s the last thing he hears. Cameron is outside without knowing how he gets there. The sun glows behind a bank of heavy clouds, so that there’s no more rain, but no blue skies, either. He’s running. He feels the air burn in his chest. Feels it burst from his lips. He runs through long, wet grass, pushing through shrubs and between the thick trees that tower above and hide him, pushing, pushing.

  WEDNESDAY

  1:05PM

  Cameron strikes a match against the carbon and watches it flare to life. He breathes deeply through his nose, that first acrid black-smoke taste on his tongue, then flicks the match through the front window of the Chrysler LeBaron. The car is an old wreck. It used to be gold, but most of that paint has peeled off or was eaten by rust. Must have been in the woods for years, Cameron figures. A great nesting place for squirrels, field mice, anything small enough to burrow into the backseat cushions and close its eyes or birth its babies. Today, Cameron doesn’t see any animals. He can barely see anything in front of him. He wishes he could climb inside his head and rip out that last image of his humiliation. It’s not enough to tell himself he won’t think of it anymore, because it sneaks up and is right there, bigger than it was on the computer screen. It’s like a damn accident, the way people just can’t stop looking, no matter how gruesome it is. He’d rather shovel brain off pavement than see himself one more time, naked, stuffed with his own gym sock, with Rich Patterson’s foot on his leg, holding him down.

  “Peckerhead. Peckerhead.”

  His blood screams with the fury of it.

  Rich Patterson is a peckerhead. A loser.

  It doesn’t do anything for him, thinking it or saying it aloud to the trees and the whitewashed boulders surrounding him. Once, he spray painted Rich Patterson sucks dick onto a road sign. But that was over Christmas, in Syracuse, when Cameron and his mom and brother visited his grandparents. For a few days he actually felt good about it. But no one in Syracuse knows Patterson. No one here knows about the sign.

  Cameron lights another match, holds it under his nose. Too close. The smoke makes the small hairs burn and he feels it all the way down his throat, already hot and raw from the run here, from the screaming he did at the top of his lungs, his voice muffled by the thick leaves and columns of the trees: RICH PATTERSON SUCKS DICK! He wants to write it somewhere. Somewhere everyone in town will read it. Maybe on the overpass — there’s only one in this part of town. All the way here, Cameron screamed it and the fire still seethes below his skin. He still tastes it, as thick as blood in his mouth.

  Cameron flicks the match; it lands on what is left of the armrest inside the front door of the car. He wonders who drove this car. Who ditched it this far into the woods? Who wanted it that gone, that they drove it over the gnarled roots, the tall grass, the thick, scraggly arms of bushes grown into each other? What kind of life went on in the car? What kind of death?

  Cameron lights another match and this time, leans inside the car. He tears a handful of foam from the backseat and places the flame to the material. It lights up immediately. Cameron lets it burn in his hand until it’s a ball of fire. His fingers singe. He lays the coal on scraps of newspaper on the floor of the car, then tears another piece of cushion, lights another match, and ignites it. He keeps at it until flames jump in the front and backseats, touch the roof and spread. Until, like hands, they’re curling around the outside of the car, trying to pry their way out. To fresher air. To lick the towering trees and eat up the leaves, grass. Anything for fuel.

  Smoke billows from the car. Plastic melts, its sharp scent so close Cameron wants to gag. A whoosh of air, carrying fire, jumps from the car and Cameron falls back. A whole ceiling of fire is over his head. He lies in the grass and watches.

  This is fire. He created it. It’s his.

  It seems to jump from the car to a tree branch thick with new leaves, curls their edges, and spreads in every direction. That’s the beauty of fire, there’s not a thing in the world it doesn’t love. And it moves so fast it can trick the eyes.

  It’s almost too late when Cameron notices the fire is forming a circle around him. He jumps to his feet, dashes through an opening where the flames don’t meet, stumbles over rocks and the clinging branches of scrub. He turns and looks back at the fire, more than twenty feet tall, reaching well into the branches of elm and maple, lighting them up like no freakin’ Christmas tree he ever saw.

  “Whooooweeeee!”

  He hears his voice, its hoarse cheer. He stands at the rim of the fire, stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and grins full-faced at his creation.

  WEDNESDAY

  2:10PM

  In the upstairs bathroom Cameron shrugs out of his coat and lets it drop to the floor. He’ll have to trash it. The fire melted the Gore-Tex in places, making it shine like the skin of an apple. His mother would notice. He pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on top of his coat. Bad choice wearing a white T-shirt today, but then he didn’t know he was going to become a one-man army against Smokey the Bear. He laughs at his own mental joke, kicks the pile of his clothes aside, and strips off his pants. These he can keep. There are no markings, but they smell like fire. He picks up the jeans, buries his face in them, and inhales deeply. It’s in there, in the musty depths, all that power he unleashed in the woods. He can still smell it. He smiles, feels the jeans move against his face, take on the shape of his lips.

  He’s a firebug. He heard the term before and he likes it. A place to belong. Something he does well. He wonders if his mother would approve. Doubt it. But Mom, you told me to find something I like to do. He wonders briefly if Eddie Fain likes fire. If he carries matches, lights them just for the split second of acrid smoke, that calling it pitches into your blood. Come to me. Light up. Burn.

  Cameron looks at his reflection in the mirror. The skin on his forehead is seared, red and puckered. No pain, no gain, he thinks. He wouldn’t want the fire if it didn’t leave its mark on him. He never felt as close to glory as he did shimmying through the flames. When he almost didn’t make it. When the sky above him was a roof of unfurling red-orange waves. That beats a toasted fingernail.

  I have to do something about my hair, he thinks. It stands straight up on his head, the ends fried by the fire. He runs his hands over it, feels the crackle, hears, in his memory, the crackling of the fire, the pop and hiss of branches as they caught, burned, dropped to the ground.

  He carries a bigger punch than Rich Patterson. And has bigger balls, too.

  Hell, he faced down fire.

  He created a monster.

  And got away.

  He feels a zing shoot through his blood. Nerves. He’s starting to feel them now. Now that he’s home and safe. He holds his hands out in front of him. Steady. But his knee joints feel like mush, his throat like there’s a butterfly in there. He doesn’t know what time it is. How close his mom and Robbie are to walking through the front door.

  Move. Gotta move faster.

  In the woods, with the fire blazing, his brain was on speed. Felt like it, anyway. He didn’t have to think a thing, he just did it.

  Thinking is overrated.

  For months all he thought about was the next time Patterson would land on him. Those days are over. He is the man now. Patterson doesn’t know real power. But he will.

  Cameron feels the smile on his face spread painfully. The crusty skin on his forehead
pulls too tight.

  He notices the shake in his knees. The hum in his calf muscles. His legs are vibrating, like a plucked wishbone.

  He drops his jeans, tries to pick up the plastic garbage sacks he snagged on his way through the garage, but they’re slippery, or his fingers don’t work. He turns his hands over, looks. One blister, a tiny red balloon on the pad of his index finger that he got earlier, when he was just playing with matches. That’s all. But he’s losing feeling in his hands. Like a body part slept on too long.

  Get a grip, he tells himself.

  He doesn’t know how he could be high as a kite then suddenly scraping dirt. Unless it is like taking speed, and this is the downside. He’s coming off his high and these are the side effects. He stands for a minute more, gazing at himself in the mirror. It’s not so bad, he decides. The shakes are worth it. Definitely. But as he watches, tears stream through the black soot on his face, drip off his chin, make thin murky rivers in the sink.

  Maybe holding that kind of power in his hands was a little scary. But when he gets used to it, when it’s like a cop or a soldier wearing his gun, this won’t happen again.

  He turns on the water, keeps it running until his eyes are clear, his knees solid. Then he splashes his face, rubs the soot free, and then pushes his head under the faucet. He needs a full shower, and he’ll take one, but first he has to fix his hair, and it has to be wet in order to cut it. That’s what the guy at Super Clips does.

  WEDNESDAY

  4:00PM

  Cameron is toweling off his hair when he hears a knock at the bathroom door.

  “Cameron, it’s Mom. Open up.”

  He drops the towel and looks at his reflection in the mirror. His hair is about an inch long all over his head. All the sun-blond color is gone and at the root it’s dark enough it’s almost brown. No more Cameron Diaz. He wishes he had thought of it sooner.

  “Come on, Cameron. I want to talk to you.”

  “I can hear you,” Cameron says.

  He bends over and scoops up some hair, dumps it into the trash. He can feel his mother on the other side of the door. Thinking. What will get Cameron to come out?

  Not much. He’s his own man now. He’ll come out when he wants to.

  He watches the doorknob move, just sink a little as her hand rests on it. She doesn’t try to turn it.

  “I got a call from your school today,” she says. “I want to talk to you about it.”

  Her voice is thin, a notch below her normal. Her before-the-tears-come voice. In his mind Cameron hears his father yelling, “ ‘Get it together, Maureen,’ ” and feels like laughing. Used to be his father’s voice scared him. Made him want to hide. Not anymore.

  He wonders if it was Elwood who called. If she knows Cameron called Hart an ass. Or maybe the principal called about the photos. Maybe both.

  “Cameron,” his mom stretches out his name.

  Either way, what is she going to do? Nothing. His mom hasn’t punished them, not really, since they left his father. And what can she do about Patterson? Another big zero there. It’s up to him now. But he’s ready. He’s finally ready.

  He holds his hands out in front of him; they’re steady.

  The new Cameron Grady. Fast. Fierce. And ferocious.

  Talk won’t change what happened today, but action will.

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  “We have to.”

  Cameron doesn’t answer that. He bends for another handful of hair, brushes some off the vanity, and looks at himself again in the mirror. The haircut hasn’t changed him so much that he’s a new person. He’ll go to school tomorrow and everyone will know who he is. But they won’t call him Cameron Diaz.

  “Cameron, I went to the school today. I had to. The principal called, Mr. Vega . . .”

  Her voice is stronger. She waits for his response, but he’s not biting.

  “He told me what happened today,” she says. “That’s what I want to talk about.”

  Cameron doesn’t need to talk. He already has a plan. He’s going to kill Patterson and Murphy, and Pinon, too.

  He hates Pinon. Probably as much as he hates Patterson.

  More. Pinon watched him like he was an X-rated movie.

  Cameron’s going to get rid of them all. Then everything will be better. He can go back to thinking about normal stuff. He’ll even get his homework done.

  It’ll be like today never happened.

  Like in the movies, where they go in and cut out a scene that didn’t work. What happened today definitely isn’t working for Cameron. Cut and paste. It’s that simple.

  “Cameron, if you don’t open the door . . .”

  What, Mom? You’re going to break it down?

  He can’t do anything about the pictures, but the way Cameron sees it, people will forget. If no one’s around to remind them, people always forget.

  No one remembers the atomic bomb until someone comes along and says, “Remember Hiroshima.”

  It’s what the pictures don’t show that Cameron has to wipe out of existence.

  “You can’t stay in there forever,” his mom says. “I’ll be downstairs when you want to talk.” She pauses and Cameron feels the death in her next words before she even says them. “I saw the pictures, Cameron. Mr. Vega showed me the pictures and I want you to know the boys have been arrested. They’re in jail.”

  She saw the pictures. Vega showed her the pictures.

  An air pocket builds in Cameron’s throat, threatening to suffocate him.

  His mother saw the pictures.

  He unlocks the door, swings it open.

  His mother is standing at the top of the stairs, her hand on the banister. She turns toward him.

  “No! No, you shouldn’t have done that.”

  He’s crying. Again. Crybaby.

  That fast, he’s back to being a girl.

  Cameron Diaz.

  He feels all that anger and the can’t-do-anything-about-it hopelessness build inside him until he’s sure he’s going to burst.

  “Why did you do that?”

  Her hand lifts and flutters in front of her throat. “Look at the pictures? I had to, Cameron.”

  “No, you didn’t. You didn’t have to look at the pictures. He could have just told you what happened. He could have just shut up and not said anything and not showed you the pictures.” He’s standing in front of her, his fists balled up and shaking. “You definitely didn’t have to look at the pictures.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says, like that’s going to fix it.

  “But you can’t forget them, can you? You can’t get them out of your mind. You can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I want. That’s the only thing that’s going to fix this.”

  He’s screaming now. He hears it come back to him, high and sharp and nothing like in the woods when the fire was blazing and he was everything.

  “Hey!”

  Randy. Fuckin’ Randy in his uniform and his know-everything attitude.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing!” Cameron screams. “Right, Mom?”

  “Cameron.” She reaches a hand out to him and he backs away.

  “Nothing!”

  He’s tired of being a nothing.

  Tomorrow he’s going to fix that. Tomorrow, for just a minute, the world will go black and when he opens his eyes everything will be white. Like a clean piece of paper. He can start over. It’ll be just like that.

  “Cameron.”

  “Don’t talk anymore, Mom. Don’t say one more word.”

  He pushes past them, takes the stairs two at a time.

  He shoves the kitchen door open, steps out onto the deck in his jeans and bare feet, and looks around him. Everything’s the same. The too-quiet houses, bikes, Big Wheels and play sets in the yards, the trees tall and full and growing like a thatched roof over the world, the dogwoods blooming with pink and white flowers. Life. Nothing’s changed.

/>   WEDNESDAY

  10:00PM

  Cameron lies on his bed, above the covers, and flips through the stations on the TV. He refused to go down to dinner. Wouldn’t talk to his mother, or look at her, when she came up with a plate of food. She stood in the center of his room, telling him how sorry she was that the kids at school picked on him. Telling him he was probably right, she shouldn’t have looked at the pictures, but the principal handed them to her and she didn’t know exactly what she was going to see, and then it was too late.

  She put the plate on Cameron’s nightstand and sat down on Robbie’s bed, her hands squeezing her knees, and tried to wait him out.

  “I like your haircut,” she said.

  The lightness in her voice was forced. He felt her eyes in his hair, sifting through the short strands, looking for what was missing.

  It’s gone, Mom.

  “I hardly recognize you,” she admitted.

  I’m gone.

  He let her sink in the silence, counting the minutes on his alarm clock. She lifted her arms and let them drop, twisted her hands beneath her legs, tapped her toes, then surfaced in a fit of coughing. Three minutes, fifty-three seconds.

  She gave Cameron’s father a lot longer before she left him. But now she knows. She knows when she’s going to lose, when to cut her losses and run. And that’s what she did.

  “I hope you’ll eat something,” she said.

  She stood up. He felt her eyes on him, but not the usual burn when she’s checking his mental health.

  Then she turned and left.

  He doesn’t eat. She made chicken, a baked potato and broccoli. She forgot to bring him a drink and after a while he gets up and goes into the bathroom, dips his head under the faucet, and drinks. He returns to bed, scoops up the remote, and watches the flickering light from the TV as it spins through programs.

  He presses the surf button on the remote and continues his mindless search for nothing in particular. Then he hits on the local news, and for a moment the screen is alive with ribbons of red and orange flame.