Burn

by Suzanne Phillips

  “No,” Cameron says. “I’m okay.”

  “Well, I’ll go now,” his mom says.

  She doesn’t move, though, and stares at Cameron a long time. He starts to worry she’s going to do something he’ll regret. Like cry. Or try to kiss him goodbye. He takes a step back and she raises her hand in a small wave.

  “Goodbye,” she says.

  “He’ll be fine, Mrs. Grady,” the principal says. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Cameron turns his back and moves into the crowd of kids, feeling like an ant in an ant farm. The halls aren’t big enough and there are too many kids. He feels hot. Feels nerves pull tight inside him so that he’s walking on his toes, though he tries not to. He lets himself be pulled upstream until he reaches his history class.

  Even Hart is nice to him. Cameron doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like the way the other kids look at him, either. He stares at the whiteboard where Hart is writing dates and events, but feels the burn of eyes resting on his skin, wants so badly to turn and flip everyone off. Thinks Eddie would do it, no problem.

  Cameron shifts in his seat, just enough so he can see Eddie Fain at his desk. The kid is drawing on his arm. That’s one of Eddie’s great talents. If he could get his mind straightened out, art school would be a slam dunk.

  Hart walks away from the whiteboard with the suggestion that they use every available minute if they don’t want the assignment to become homework.

  Cameron opens his textbook. He scans the board for a page number, finds it, and paws through early American government until he arrives at a two-page spread of the justice system. Who does what, checks and balances . . . and then he loses focus. Feels the stares again, like his skin is about to blister, but when he finally gives in to the need and turns, he finds that most of the heads are down, looking at their books, or looking at the board.

  He feels the seat next to him fill up. It’s Eddie. He has a smile on his face that looks like pure vengeance. He rolls his arm over so Cameron can see the drawing. Patterson’s face, two-dimensional and so lifelike it’s frightening. Inserted in his mouth is a phallus, unmistakable, and when Eddie flexes his arm, Patterson’s mouth moves so that it looks like he’s sucking dick.

  Cameron laughs aloud. It’s so funny. So perfect.

  “I’m making flyers, too,” he says. “Going to paper the school with them.”

  “Mr. Fain, this isn’t a group assignment,” Mr. Hart says.

  Eddie returns to his seat. He doesn’t open his book and spends the rest of class either playing with his live art or staring out the window.

  When the bell rings Cameron’s paper is blank and Hart is standing over him.

  “Why don’t you hold onto that,” Hart suggests and hands him a piece of lined paper with something written on it. “I saw you were having trouble concentrating,” he says, “so I copied the terms from the board for you. Maybe you can work on that at home and turn it in on Monday?”

  Cameron accepts the paper, slips it into his notebook.

  “I’ve forgiven the quiz from yesterday,” Hart continues. “No need for you to make that up.”

  Hart’s voice has the irritating effect of making Cameron feel like his skin is splitting open. Cameron tunes him out, rises from his desk, and walks through the door, sure Hart is still talking.

  English is a total bust. Cowan heard about the photos and moved Cameron’s seat. First row, first desk. He’s right next to the door and spends the entire hour watching the hall. He doesn’t even pretend to read and she doesn’t push him. They’re twenty minutes into class when she asks him to step out of the room with her. He doesn’t budge.

  “Do you want to see the nurse?” she offers.

  “I’m not sick,” he points out.

  “No, you’re not.” She lifts her hands, tucks them behind her. “Well, if you need anything . . .”

  When the bell rings, Cameron is the first person out of the room. The halls are congested. He pushes through the kids; some move aside.

  The locker room is full of guys, pulling shirts over their heads, tying shoelaces. Cameron doesn’t remember ever entering early enough to walk into a flurry of elbows.

  “Grady!” The coach’s voice booms out across the rows of lockers.

  Cameron feels his spine straighten so much it nearly cracks. He stops for a moment, like he grew roots, then pushes himself forward. Finds his locker. Spins the dial on his combination lock.

  “Hey, Grady.” The coach is standing beside him. “My office.”

  “No, thanks,” Cameron says. Spins to the next number. The lock feels heavy in his hand. Cool. A dead weight that could do some damage. Why didn’t he think to grab it when Patterson was all over him?

  “It’s not an invitation,” the coach says.

  Cameron spins to the final number and pulls on the lock. Nothing.

  “Listen, Cameron,” the coach starts and Cameron feels his skin pucker. He hates the way the teachers are his friends now. Hates that it makes him feel like a sorrier piece of shit than he was on Tuesday. “I moved your locker.”

  Cameron finally turns, looks the coach in the eye.

  “Why?” he demands.

  “You want to talk about it in my office?”

  “No. I want to talk about it right here.”

  The coach nods. He looks over Cameron’s head. “You boys clear out.”

  Cameron doesn’t turn around. He hears locker doors slam shut, scrambling feet. Feels the warmth of too-close bodies give way to a cool absence.

  The coach looks right at Cameron and says, “Scene of the crime. I thought you wouldn’t want to come back here.”

  “Well, I do.”

  “My mistake.” The coach lifts his arms until his hands are on his hips, looks at Cameron a bit longer.

  “Forget it,” Cameron says. “You can’t win this one. I’ve had a lot of practice.” His father was king of the one-minute meltdown. Cameron had learned from the best.

  He puts his hands on his hips and pushes his chin forward and up.

  “I’m not trying to win anything, Cameron.” The coach steps back. “People been staring at you all morning?”

  “Mostly teachers.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re sorry about what happened. I’m real sorry. It happened right here under my nose. I feel a lot of responsibility for that.”

  Cameron shifts his shoulders, tries to loosen the tension. “Where are my clothes?”

  “I put them in locker seventy. Two rows over.” He checks his watch. “Join us when you’re ready.”

  Cameron finds the locker, pops the combo, and holds the lock in his hand. Titanium. They put that in the knees of professional football players. It’s that strong. That indestructible.

  He sits down on the bench, curls his fingers over the lock, wishes he had knocked Patterson’s head in with it. Feels the anger of missed opportunity slam in his veins so that his blood actually hurts with the knowledge that he had his chance and blew it.

  He reaches for his gym uniform, sees again the dark spot growing across Patterson’s back. He’s dreaming it was a bullet that put it there when he looks over toward the showers. A movement. Darkness. A dark head. He’s back in the moment again, Pervert Pinon peering over the half wall, watching him. He thinks he could crush the kid’s head between his hands. Thinks he could flatten his head, until everything Pinon is comes oozing out. Cameron’s guts twist painfully. Not because the image of a dead Pinon scares him, but because he feels it like a first breath. New life. His life.

  He doesn’t know his fists are curled until the lock is cutting into his skin. Doesn’t know he’s moving, flying toward the showers until he’s there. Pinon’s crouched behind the wall, looking up at him. Cameron doesn’t even know it’s real, not a dream, until his hand is around the kid’s throat. Until his hand with the lock comes down on Pinon’s skull. The harsh swack vibrates up his arm, almost knocks the lock from his hand.

  He lifts his arm again, brings it down with the same crush
ing force.

  Blood. Everywhere. He looks at his hands, dripping onto the white tile floor, the lock clenched so tightly he has to pry his fingers loose. He looks down at Pinon, blood pouring through the cuts in his head. He’s dead. Cameron stands over him, looking for his chest to lift. It doesn’t. He’s not breathing. He’s dead.

  Dead.

  Cameron’s body jerks; he drops the lock. He moves toward the lockers, stops when he sees he’s leaving footprints, bloody footprints. He needs a shower. He stands fully clothed under a spray of water and watches the pink runoff whirl down the drain. He looks over at Pinon’s crumpled body.

  He was a pervert. Cameron’s heart dips, then jumps into his throat, threatening to strangle him. He was a pervert. He was. He stands under the shower, crying and telling himself it’s the same thing as with the fire. Nerves.

  He doesn’t look at Pinon again. He strips off his clothes and bundles them in his arms. At his locker, he pushes his clothes into his gym bag, dries his body and hair with a towel, then changes into his PE clothes. From upstairs comes the muffled sound of basketballs hitting the wood floor.

  He’s late. Really late.

  He ties his sneakers. Shuts his locker and slides the combo through it. He climbs the stairs to the gym and stands on the sideline, hands dangling at his sides, watching a game in progress.

  “Grady!”

  Cameron turns toward the coach’s voice.

  “You’re over here.”

  Cameron’s legs are heavy and it’s an effort to shuffle along the sideline to where the coach is pointing. He pulls a blue jersey over his head, and takes position. He sucks at basketball. He probably won’t get much play. The kids never throw him the ball.

  FRIDAY

  10:35AM

  Cameron is the first one in the locker room. PE was a blur. He can’t remember any of it. He opens his locker but doesn’t change his clothes. He grabs his gym bag and heads back up to the courts, where the coach is collecting balls, pushing them into a mesh bag.

  “I’m going home,” Cameron says and walks past him.

  “Hey, hold on, Grady.” The coach jogs to catch up. “You want to talk?”

  “No.”

  “You at least want to change your clothes?”

  “No. I’m going to run the lake path. It’s good for me.”

  “It is,” the coach agrees. “But I can’t just let you leave school in the middle of the day.”

  “You’re not letting me,” Cameron says.

  The locker room door bursts open and several guys spill out, tripping over each other. Both Cameron and the coach watch them, their white faces, their mouths opening, stretching. Cameron can’t hear them, with the blood rushing through his head again, sounding like the pounding surf, but the coach does and takes off.

  Cameron pushes through the double doors and into the hall. It’s empty. The closest door to the outside is fifty feet to the left. Cameron slips through it.

  He keeps to the sidewalk, looking straight ahead, not turning even when he hears a horn blast, a guy yell out his store window, “You should be in school.”

  When he gets to the lake path he pushes his arms through the gym bag, wearing it like a backpack, and starts to run. It’s seven miles to home. It’s not raining, but the air is damp and sticks to him. He pushes his body through the motions until it remembers on its own exactly what it should be doing.

  I killed someone today. The thought curls around his brain, picks at it like a piece of flint. His head hurts. Hurts worse than it ever did.

  I killed someone. But it was only Pinon. The kid was a pervert.

  He shouldn’t have watched.

  Cameron feels his life spin away from him, looks up at the sky and sees himself cartwheeling toward the clouds.

  I took control. Today is the beginning.

  The thought bounces off his brain, slips through his fingers. He doesn’t feel in control. Control means calm. It means he’s ahead of the pack, he determines the course of his life.

  He thinks of Pinon, folded up like an accordion on the shower floor, washed in his own blood, and feels like heaving.

  He shouldn’t have watched, like I was a freak show. A porno freak show.

  Cameron holds on to that. It makes the world stop spinning. When he remembers the Pinon who peered over the shower wall, watching him, he remembers there was no other way. He did the only thing he could do.

  PART II

  FRIDAY

  1:00PM

  Cameron stands in Mrs. Murdock’s backyard, shovel in hand. He wants to finish the job he started here, at least get her garden ready for seed, but he loses focus. He’s been working on the same patch of dirt since he arrived, twenty minutes ago. It’s like he falls asleep standing and startles awake to find himself here, covered with mud instead of blood, living a nightmare.

  I killed a boy. Pinon.

  He’s not breathing normally anymore. He can’t breathe at all. It feels like a giant fist tore through his chest and pulled out his lungs.

  Why did Pinon have to be so annoying? Why did he have to be there? There to witness my shame. There all the time, snapping at my heels. There when the anger boiled out of me.

  He wants to forget Pinon; he knows he never will. He’ll always see the guy, rolled up like a pill bug, his blood mixing with water and washing pink down the drain.

  Cameron pulls air through his nose, hears the wet mucus, knows he’s crying. Like a damn baby.

  He can’t take back what he did.

  He can’t even say he’s sorry about it. There’s no one to listen.

  Cameron feels his body shake. Not just his hands or his legs, but his whole body shakes so hard he drops the shovel and when he bends over to get it, he sinks to his knees.

  I killed a boy. A kid like myself. How could something be that wrong with me?

  “Cameron?”

  Cameron hears her wobbly voice. It’s louder, stronger than usual. Mrs. Murdock must have been calling him for a while. When he looks up, she’s standing in the grass, leaning on her cane, her head bouncing like a bobble toy.

  “Are you alright?”

  Cameron wipes his face with his arm.

  “No,” he says. “There’s nothing right with me.”

  Her eyes flare and he can tell he startled her. He usually doesn’t talk about himself. He watches her gnarled hand twist in the pocket of her apron.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she says. “Sometimes the world gets ahold of us, doesn’t it?”

  “I think I’m going crazy,” he admits.

  “I don’t think so. You’re a good boy. I see that in you.”

  “I don’t feel good.” He hasn’t felt good in a long, long time. “I did something. I want to take it back, but I can’t.”

  “Sounds like a situation where you have to learn from your mistake,” she suggested. “Life is full of moments like that.”

  Cameron feels like he exploded in the locker room, and it wasn’t just anger that erupted from him, but the good parts, too. The parts of him he liked and he can’t even remember what they were. He only knows that he’ll never be that boy again.

  “It was a big mistake.”

  “Then there’s a lot to learn.”

  He doesn’t like thinking about what he’s lost. It makes him sad, and then angry. Like the two emotions can’t exist separate from each other.

  He doesn’t want to think about what comes next.

  “I won’t be able to finish.” He nods at the solid ground, where she wants to plant zucchini and tomatoes. “I want to.”

  She nods.

  Cameron picks up the shovel and heads to the hose. It doesn’t feel the same anymore, all the things he used to do. Rinsing the shovel, hanging it in the garage, climbing on his bike, pedaling into the wind, none of it. He isn’t Cameron Grady anymore. He hasn’t been for a long time.

  FRIDAY

  5:30PM

  Cameron sits at the table, folding paper towels into napkins.
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  “Make a few extra,” his mom says.

  She came home from work with an already-cooked chicken, poured wild rice into a pot she filled with water and set on the stove, then started a slaw salad. Cameron was at the kitchen table then, with Robbie, working out a math problem the long way so his brother could see every step. It was slow, but he didn’t feel the plucking at his skin to move, go faster, run, outrun the fear. He didn’t have that anymore. The boil in his blood, the bubbles rising to the surface and popping against his skin, were gone. The weight on his chest, that made every breath an effort, evaporated.

  He looked up. His mom stood in the door and smiled at them. She had a grocery bag in each arm.

  “What?” Cameron wanted to know.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I just like what I see.”

  “Great,” Cameron said, but it felt right. Robbie never did well with numbers and before this year, before Cameron’s life became a heap of twisted metal, he had helped Robbie after school. They sat at the kitchen table just like this and Cameron set up problems and Robbie solved them.

  Cut and paste. The thought stuck in his mind. It was possible to go back, to edit out what didn’t work and then stitch together the two sides. He was proof of that. This moment was proof. He was back to being Cameron Grady. He fit.

  “He’s a genius, Mom,” Robbie said. “I’m really starting to get it.”

  She walked around with that smile on her face another fifteen minutes.

  Robbie got up, closed his book, and went to organize his stuff for Monday. Cameron used to do that, too, get ready for school ahead of time.

  “How was school today?” His mother’s voice breaks through his thoughts.

  “I have history homework,” Cameron says. Mrs. Cowan gave an assignment in English, but Cameron can’t remember what it is. That was before, when his world was still cloudy, when he was hearing from a distance and even that was scrambled. “I need to read some of my English book, too.”