Burn

by Suzanne Phillips

  She nods. “Good. We’ll start right after dinner. How about Spanish?”

  He knew it would come to this and he decided he would tell the truth. Or some of it, anyway.

  “I ditched,” he confesses. “I left after PE and went running.”

  He needed to clear his head. Needed to ditch the gym bag and his clothes that were covered with Pinon’s blood. That part wasn’t easy. He dove into the woods, crashing through the branches of trees grown too close together, and then dug a hole in the packed earth with his hands. He marked the tree, because he knew he’d have to go back.

  He watches his mother’s back grow stiff and she takes her time placing the big stirring spoon on the counter. When she turns to him he can see she’s ready to back him. Her face is soft and open. Willing to believe in him.

  “Has school been bad all year?” she asks.

  “Pretty much,” Cameron admits.

  Her lips fall into a flat line somewhere between anger and sadness. “I’m sorry, Cameron. I should have done something.”

  Too little, too late. But he gives her points for finally arriving.

  “What, Mom?” he asks. “Guys like Patterson run the school.”

  “It’s not supposed to be that way,” she says.

  “It’s reality,” Cameron says, then he shrugs. “Maybe it’ll get better. At least until Wednesday.”

  “Those boys aren’t going back to Madison.”

  They’ll be back, Mom, he thinks. That’s the way the world works. He went back. SciFi will be back. Patch them up and put them back on the lines. Patterson and Murphy will spend a few days planning the next attack, and how not to get caught this time. But they’ll be back and they’ll be ready to fight.

  He looks up from the paper triangle in his hands, lets his eyes touch hers briefly, then skitter away.

  The silence snaps in his ears like fire.

  Funny, that he doesn’t feel that pull anymore. It was with him all the time, the sulphur smell in his nose, the burn on his fingertips. But he hasn’t thought about fire since this morning.

  “It’ll get easier,” she says. “The first day back was probably the hardest.”

  “It started off bad,” Cameron agrees. “I feel okay now.”

  “Monday you’ll stay the whole day?” she asks.

  “I think so.” No promises. He doesn’t know what will happen.

  He might need to leave to clear his head.

  To find a foxhole.

  He figures the only way to stay alive now is to take the offensive. In this case, he knows there are plenty of Red Coats left and one might decide to take over where Patterson left off. He’ll be prepared for that.

  “Call me if you feel like leaving, okay? I’ll come pick you up.”

  He shrugs. If he leaves he’ll go running. By the time he got home earlier he had everything settled inside. His stomach had stopped heaving, his eyes had stopped tearing, and he had known life was all about the survival of the fittest.

  He wanted to kill Pinon. He wanted to live. Black and white. Gray is for the people who stand outside Wal-Mart holding up pictures of deformed lab animals and asking for signatures. Black and white. Life or death. Choose.

  “You want to get your brother? I’ll put dinner on the table.”

  FRIDAY

  10:45PM

  Cameron is in his bedroom, splayed across his bed, when he begins to feel the silence in the house. It touches his skin like snow flurries. At first, his body heat zaps them, until there are too many, until a storm hits and he’s sure he’s living inside a snow globe that someone’s shaking. The layers build against his skin, pinning him to the bed. He feels the cold so deeply that his body slows down. Less oxygen in his blood, less blood pumped through the heart. Hypothermia. Embalming fluid. So this is dead. Cameron feels nothing. Like lying in a coffin.

  Robbie walks in, closes the door, and stares at him.

  “You all right?” he asks.

  He’s asked that a lot since Wednesday. His big little brother really cares about him.

  Cameron finds this so funny his mouth opens: thunder. Not really laughter, but a dense sound, with blunt edges that knock into each other, erupts like a twister rising from his throat.

  It scares him; his heart kicks against his ribs looking for a way out.

  It scares Robbie. His brother’s voice rises above the sound he’s making. “Cameron?” He turns back to the door, opens it so that it bounces against the wall, and yells for their mother.

  There’s nothing she can do, Cameron thinks. Don’t you know, Robbie? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

  She runs into the room, her black hair airborne, and stops inside the door.

  Cameron’s still laughing. His body moves like something is coming out of his mouth, but he doesn’t hear it, unless that’s him. That sharp, shearing noise that could be scissors or hedge clippers, but not human.

  “What is it?”

  She sits on the edge of his bed, places a hand on his shoulder.

  “Cameron?”

  She shakes him, like that’ll get him to talk.

  I’ve had worse, Mom, and still kept my mouth shut.

  “Cameron? What’s wrong, honey?”

  He feels her hands on his face, rolling his head to the side so that he has to look at her. Dead man’s stare.

  “Stop this right now,” she says. “Stop it.”

  He can hear the panic in her voice, feel it tremble in her hands.

  “This is about those boys,” she says. “Sometimes our reactions are delayed. Sometimes it takes a while to catch up with us.”

  He believes that. He’s a killer. It’s just catching up with him now.

  “Remember what Randy said yesterday?” she prompts. “Delayed reaction.”

  She runs her hands down his arms. “You’re shivering. Robbie, get that blanket.”

  Cameron feels the wool descend on him, scratch his skin.

  “You’re better than those boys. . . . They’re cowards. . . . They pick on people because they don’t feel good about themselves. . . . You’re better than that, Cameron. . . . You’re going to be okay. . . .”

  No, he’s not. He’s not better than them. But he wants to be. He wants to believe her and he falls asleep listening to her talk, her voice drifting in and out of his brain like the melody of a song.

  SATURDAY

  8:30AM

  Cameron and Robbie are clearing the breakfast dishes from the table and stacking them next to the sink when the radio switches from an Alan Jackson song to the news. Charlie Pinon is the headline, though they don’t say his name.

  MORE SCHOOL VIOLENCE IN THE NEWS TODAY AND, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS ONE HITS HOME. THE BODY OF A YOUNG MAN WAS FOUND BEATEN TO DEATH IN THE BOYS’ LOCKER ROOM AT MADISON HIGH YESTERDAY AFTERNOON . . .

  Cameron stops in the middle of the kitchen, orange juice glasses clutched in each hand. If he looks down he’s sure he’ll see his heart beating through his T-shirt. It’s knocking as loudly as someone at the door and he wonders if Robbie or his mom can hear it. He looks at them, caught by the announcement coming from the portable radio.

  “Geez,” Robbie breathes.

  “Quiet.” His mother’s voice is tight, her hand twisted at her throat. “Quiet,” she breathes.

  POLICE SPOKESMAN MARTIN HOWER SAYS THE DEATH IS CERTAINLY CRIMINAL IN NATURE. QUOTE, “IT’S CLEAR THE BOY WAS MURDERED.” ANOTHER SCHOOL MURDER, THIS TIME HERE IN ERIE. HOPED WE’D NEVER SEE THIS DAY . . .

  The DJ can’t stop talking about Pinon. His voice is low, and a couple of times he has to stop and clear his throat, like he knew the kid personally and the loss is too much for him.

  THE POLICE ARE STILL ON SCENE, PROCESSING EVERY PIECE OF EVIDENCE THEY CAN GET THEIR HANDS ON. . . . THEY’RE ASKING THAT PARENTS HAVE THEIR KIDS VOLUNTARILY GIVE THEIR FINGERPRINTS. . . .

  Cameron tunes out the broadcast, moves himself to a point where he’s watching rather than living the moment. He’s finally gotten a handle on that
, too. Used to be his mind did that all on its own; now Cameron can lift himself outside his body, floating around, touching the walls, nothing touching him. Nothing. Not Patterson. Not Pinon and his bulging eyes, watching. Not Randy and his knowing so much about him.

  “What was his name?”

  His mom snags his attention. Somehow she snuck up on him, is standing nose to nose with him, pulling him back to life.

  “What?”

  “What was the boy’s name?”

  Cameron shakes his head.

  “They didn’t say.”

  Robbie’s voice is thin and when Cameron looks at him he notices his chest rising and falling, fast. Too fast. His brother is scared.

  “Cameron?”

  His mother’s voice presses against him, the sharp edge peeling through the layers of memory.

  “Did you know about any of this?”

  “Know about it?”

  “You left school yesterday,” his mom says, rubbing a hand against her chest like she’s trying to ease a tightness there. “That was good. That school’s not safe.”

  “The locker room isn’t, anyway,” Robbie says. “Did you see anything happen?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you leave?” Robbie asks.

  “I went running.” Cameron hears his voice rise a notch and turn hard. “What are you, junior cop?”

  “You left school to go running?”

  “That’s right. What’s your problem with that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If I’m going to the Olympics, I have to train.” Remember. “I’m a man with a mission,” he quotes Robbie from dinner.

  Cameron leaves the room. He pushes through the kitchen door and takes the steps down from the deck two at a time. He hits the gravel driveway with both feet. He needs to run. His heart is already stampeding in his chest. He sprints across the yard, into the trees, pushing through leafy branches and scrub oak. He doesn’t stop until the air turns heavy, smelling of the closeness of the lake and of something else. Ash.

  He draws in a breath and the air tunnels through his nose, dries his throat. There’s still ash in the air, kicked up by the wind. Cameron slows to a walk. Though he is still surrounded by trees, they feel thinner, the air around him paler and growing white.

  Cameron’s eyes fall on landmarks, clusters of wild cabbage that release a stink like that of a spraying skunk, a Japanese maple tree with a knot the size of a fist at eye level, an abandoned possum den. Then the woods stop abruptly. Cameron looks down at his feet, rubs the toe of his sneaker through soot two inches deep. The dirt beneath it is black. He digs through it with his shoe, piercing the top layer, looking for clay-colored earth. His ears begin to ring; his center of gravity tilts. He throws his arms out to regain his balance. His whole body feels like the chord of a guitar, plucked and vibrating but making no sound.

  The silence. No birds. No rustling in the bushes. No life.

  He looks around him, walking slowly, turning 360 degrees. The trees still standing in a ring around what could have been a gigantic campfire are all black. Patches of missing bark make them look like they caught a skin disease. Some trees still standing are naked. No leaves. Their scraggly arms stretch above Cameron’s head. The wind makes the limbs creak and close by a branch breaks loose with a crack like lightning and plummets to the forest floor.

  Cameron’s lungs expel a final breath and stop.

  He’s standing still, but the world around him is moving. The empty treetops, the sky where there should be oak and maple, spinning over his head. His stomach heaves. He closes his eyes, pushes the heels of his hands into them, hoping to stop the dizzy collapse of the world around him.

  It doesn’t work. He’s falling. The ground shifts under his feet and he throws his hands out again, grasping air.

  It’s the end of the world.

  Cameron’s body slams against something solid. His ribs ache. His lungs burn. The tips of his fingers press against the scabs on his forehead and he digs in with his nails. Not pain, but feeling. He’s alive. He opens his eyes enough that he can see a blank sky. A steady sky. He lets his hands fall to his sides and his eyes roll around in his head, touching again on the bony claws of leftover trees. Not moving. As still as time.

  The ringing in his ears fades to static. He hears the whistle of air in his throat; the fire in his chest cools. He pushes himself up to his knees and looks again at the empty sky, the charred stumps of trees poking out of the earth like talons. Then he wipes at the ash on his clothes, but all that does is smear it into the fabric. He gets to his feet, shoves his hands into his pockets, and doesn’t look up.

  Don’t look at what isn’t there.

  He walks until he reaches the epicenter. The old LeBaron burnt down to a black skeleton of few bones — even some of the metal is missing. No tires, the car sunk into the ground, the doors gone.

  “Hey, kid!”

  Cameron’s head jerks back. A man in a blue uniform, with a clipboard of papers that flutter in the wind, is walking toward him. Patches are sewn onto his sleeves, a badge is pinned above the pocket on his shirt. Fire Department.

  Cameron can’t move.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Walking.” He pushes the word past his lips without stuttering.

  “Walking?” The guy looks him over. “You take a fall?”

  “Yeah. I was running, lost my balance.”

  “Running?” His eyes look at Cameron’s jeans, sneakers, back up to his blue T-shirt. “I thought you said you were walking.”

  “I sprint and walk when I need to,” Cameron says.

  “You’re not dressed for a run.”

  For a fire cop the guy is pretty much a nothing.

  “I needed to get out of the house.” Fast.

  “Feeling the heat at home?”

  “It’s all about what’s happening at school.” Cameron looks the fire cop in the face and shrugs his shoulders. “My mom doesn’t think it’s a safe place.”

  “A lot of parents are thinking that right now.” He tucks his clipboard under his arm and rolls back on his feet. “You come here a lot?”

  Cameron nods. “I run the trails.”

  “You like running?”

  “I’m good at it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  Cameron tells him.

  “You have some ID on you?”

  “No.”

  “Where do you live?”

  Cameron gives the guy his address, but he doesn’t write it down, just looks at Cameron real steady and says, “I was going to come by and talk to you today. Your mom’s boyfriend tell you that?”

  “He said you might come by.”

  “You were here on Tuesday.”

  “That’s right. I was here on Saturday and Sunday, too.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “Walking.”

  “And sprinting,” the fire cop says, doubt all over his voice.

  “I run the half mile in two-ten,” Cameron says. “That’s a fact.”

  “You want me to write that down?” Anger whittles the cop’s words into shrapnel.

  “I guess you don’t like sports,” Cameron says.

  “I don’t like punk kids who set fires,” he says. “That’s what I don’t like. It’s good having a cop in the family, isn’t it?”

  “He’s not in the family.”

  Cameron gives the guy his back, walks a few feet.

  “We’ll be talking again,” the fire cop says. “Real soon.”

  SATURDAY

  2:00PM

  Keegan’s Liquor doesn’t get busy until dinnertime. Then the glass doors never really close, with people going in and out so much. Cameron leans against the side of the building, his hands pushed into his back pockets. He called out to a woman about his mother’s age, who held a bottle of booze in her arm like it was a baby and struggled with her car keys. She asked him if his parents knew what he was up to. Probably.

  No one’s come
in since. The sun is hot enough that sweat pools around his hairline, slides behind his ear, down his neck. He lifts the hem of his T-shirt and wipes his face. There’s ash in his clothes, from his fall in the woods, from his run through the underbrush still coated in soot. He left that fire cop standing at ground zero, searching for evidence he can use against Cameron. He wanted to tell the guy, Don’t waste your time. I’m going down. And for something much bigger than torching a few trees.

  Wind blows dust across the parking lot. The day has grown heavy with heat and the clouds overhead are a gray so dark they’re almost black. It’s not unusual to have dry storms in Erie. For lightning, in shades of green and pink and purple, to drop out of the sky and lie flat over the lake. It’s a whole lot of energy that has nowhere to go but down, and Cameron feels it pushing on his shoulders. His knees go soft. He smells the earth, too close and sweet.

  A green car with a Penn State pennant attached to the antenna pulls into the parking lot and hits the curb before it stops. A blonde girl jumps out of the passenger side, laughing. She’s wearing jeans and a short-short top. A butterfly is tattooed above her belly button.

  She looks like sunlight, Cameron thinks, bright and clean. He wipes his palms against his jeans and watches her move toward the liquor store.

  She seems to be floating.

  The words he wants to say knot in his throat. Buy me a beer? She’s at the door before he can draw the breath to speak.

  “Hey!” He waves at her and she stops and looks at him. “You want to buy me a beer?”

  “You want a beer?” she asks.

  “That’s right.”

  She curls her hand into a fist and props it on her hip. “How old are you?”

  “It’s one beer,” he says, like it’s no big deal.

  She thinks about it. “I wasn’t much older than you when I had my first drink.”

  “It’s not my first drink.”

  “Really, big guy? So what’s your beer?”

  It’s a quiz. One he can ace. Even if he never tried the stuff before, the TV is full of beer ads. He voted online for the coolest Super Bowl beer commercial in February.