“You don’t like thinking of yourself that way.”
“Would you?”
“No.” He writes a few notes. “This Patterson boy, he had it out for you?”
“I guess so.”
“Did he go after Pinon, too?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it a case of, ‘no one was safe’?”
Cameron shakes his head. “Mostly it was me and Pinon. A couple of times I saw him pushing around someone different.” Cameron tells him about SciFi and Jeffries makes a few notes, then asks, “But he had his favorites?”
Cameron nods.
“I hate dirtbags like that.”
Cameron hears the angst in Jeffries’s voice and guesses that, being as short as he is, he was probably messed with in high school, too.
“Did you see Pinon on Friday?”
“I answered this already.” Cameron shifts in his chair, stretches his legs out under the kitchen table.
“You spoke to the police. Now you’re talking to the man who’s going to save your ass.”
Cameron doubts it. It’s too late to save him. There’s no going back. When soldiers return from battle their lives are forever changed.
“Yeah, I saw Pinon on Friday. He was hiding in the showers.”
“You see anyone else? Hear a door open, maybe, while you were dressing? Hear people talking?”
“No. None of that.”
Jeffries frowns. “It would help if you remembered one of those things.”
“It didn’t happen.”
“Right.” He looks down at his notepad. “Did you ever have an altercation with Pinon?”
“No.”
“Even anything small?”
“No.”
“Ever see anyone other than Patterson pick on Pinon?”
“A lot of people picked on him.”
“All of those Red Coats?”
“I guess.”
“The police have your combination lock. They believe it was used to kill Pinon. Why wasn’t it on your locker, like everyone else’s?”
“I guess I left it off.”
“That’s not good enough,” Jeffries says. “Unless you have a death wish.”
He doesn’t get it. He’s already talking to a dead man.
“I was changing lockers,” Cameron explains. “Going back to my old locker. So I guess I left it off so the coach could make that happen.”
“Do you remember exactly where you left it?”
“No. On the bench?”
“I don’t know.” He sets his pen down. “You remember for sure that you didn’t see or hear anything else in the locker room, but you don’t remember what you did with your lock?”
“That’s about right.”
Jeffries nods. “Do you ever feel like you’re not a part of this world? Disconnected, maybe?”
Cameron stares at him.
“Your mom’s boyfriend, the cop, thinks you’re suffering from a dissociative disorder. Something like post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“Soldiers get that,” Cameron says.
“That’s right. People who lived a long time with domestic violence, too.”
“Yeah. Maybe I have a little of that. A little of living but not feeling it.”
“You’re going to see a psychologist,” Jeffries decides. “There are some good ones, but your mom will have to take you to Philly for that.” He tears a blank piece of paper off his pad and writes down a name. Then he consults his BlackBerry and jots down a phone number. “Don’t talk to the police again without me. Not even your mom’s boyfriend.”
He hands Cameron the slip of paper.
“Go to school tomorrow,” Jeffries says. “Like it’s just another day.”
Monday
8:42AM
The street in front of the school is swarming with teachers, Elwood and his better half, Mrs. Maroni — the girls’ counselor, Vega and the vice principal, all of them bent toward car windows, mouths and hands moving.
Cameron sits in the passenger seat of his mother’s minivan, listening to Mr. Ferguson, the shop teacher, explain that all students are expected to go to the auditorium first. They have counselors, specialists in trauma, waiting there.
“We want parents to stay, too,” Ferguson says. “For as long as you can.”
“I plan to,” Cameron’s mom says.
Ferguson walks away from the van and to the car behind them. Cameron turns in his seat and watches the shop teacher bend at the waist and lean into his announcement.
“I don’t like this school,” she says. “It’s not safe.”
No kidding.
“Do you think you could ever feel safe here?”
Cameron shrugs. Watches the drizzle spray the windshield, the slow lift of the wipers on intermittent. Three seconds. The wipers lift every three seconds.
The truth is, he won’t feel safe until Patterson is dead. And nothing that’s happened, nothing the police have said, that his mom or Randy have promised, has changed that.
“I’m going to find a place to park,” his mom decides.
She pulls into the heavy line of traffic, tapping the brakes every yard or two. When they pull even with the parking lot Cameron notices cop cars, two with bars on the roof, though they’re not flashing, and several unmarked cars with lights on the dashboard. Were they still in the locker room? Was Pinon still in there, his body slumped against the wall, his eyes open, watching? He feels an ache in his kidneys. His breath whistle in his throat. He has to go to the bathroom. Now.
“Mom —”
“I don’t know how they plan to fit all of us into the auditorium. Students and parents?” She pulls on the steering wheel, making a sharp cut into a vacant space between a police cruiser and an SUV.
Too close. They were too close to the cars, to Pinon, too close to the school.
“Mom!”
It’s too late. Cameron feels a flood of hot liquid squirt between his legs. He stares at his lap, the growing stain on his jeans. He can’t stop himself. He tries to put a mental vice on his bladder, but it doesn’t work.
“Cameron?” His mom’s voice is sharp, startled.
“No.” He looks at her, helpless.
“It’s okay, honey,” she says. “You’re scared.”
Her hands wring the steering wheel, the knuckles growing white.
“Delayed reaction,” she says. “Remember?”
A car horn blasts and Cameron jumps in his seat.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says.
“Do you remember, honey? Being attacked the way you were is something that you’ll deal with in stages. Randy said it could even be like those sneaker waves that catch you by surprise. It’ll feel like you’ve been hit from behind.” She leans toward him, her eyes questioning. Even she has trouble believing herself. “Right, honey? This is all about the attack. Those boys will go back to prison. They’re not coming to this school again.”
Cameron wants to tell her. He wants to confess, not just about Pinon, but all the stuff that’s happened. The way Patterson walked through the halls, sniffing him out. Patterson has a nose for fear and Cameron was afraid of him. Afraid, but he refused to give into it. He wasn’t like Pinon, running scared. Isn’t that something to be proud of? He never ran. He opens his mouth, but the words pile up in his throat. He coughs like he’s choking on a chunk of food. Tries to gasp for air around it and feels his mom’s hand hit his back.
“Cameron?”
The alarm in her voice reels him in. He pulls in a breath, coughs again, then eases back into his seat.
“Take me home,” he says.
She stares at him. “Mr. Jeffries says you have to go to school today.”
“I can’t go like this.” His hands spread out over his lap.
“I’ll take you home and you can change.”
She puts the van in reverse.
“I’m not going back,” Cameron says.
He takes another gulp of air and stares out the window. His
throat is raw but the fear is ebbing. He feels it loosen its hold on him, draw back until it’s just a speck of black in the center of his heart, just waiting to bloom again.
The Toyota in line behind them brakes and Cameron’s mother pulls them back into traffic. They’re letting people park in the staff lot and on the football field, but his mom turns the van around and heads back to the street, where a campus security guard is waving cars into the lot. He stops them and his mom rolls down the window.
“There’s parking in the rear lot,” he says.
“We’ll be back,” his mom says and closes the window.
She turns left into the street and accelerates. There’s no traffic heading west.
“Are you cold?” She leans over the console and turns the heat up. “You’re shivering,” she says.
His pants are cold and stick to his skin and the smell of piss sears his nose. He pissed his pants.
Like a baby. A scared baby.
“I’m not coming back,” Cameron says again.
“You have to.”
MONDAY
12:35PM
SciFi catches up with Cameron in the hall.
“I’ve been looking for you all day,” he says.
“I just got here,” Cameron admits. He keeps walking, down tech alley toward their computer class. If it’d been up to him he wouldn’t be here, but his mom called Randy and Randy drove by the house in his cruiser. He practically tossed Cameron in the backseat then wasted no time getting him to school.
“Don’t I at least get a phone call?” Cameron asked.
“You think this is funny?” Randy demanded. “You think this won’t happen for real? Only you won’t be going to school, you’ll be going to jail.”
“What’s the difference?”
“In jail you’ll become some scum’s bar of soap.”
Cameron was quiet after that.
So there was a difference. Not much, but one he could appreciate.
“When are you going to realize I’m trying to help you? When are you going to start helping yourself?” he wanted to know.
“I am helping myself,” Cameron said.
“Jeffries thinks you have a death wish. He thinks you have your mind made up and there’s no changing it. You know what he thinks?”
“He told me.”
“Jail. He thinks you want to go to jail. Is that true?”
“I think that’s where I’m going.”
“You killed that kid,” Randy said. “That doesn’t mean you’re a murderer.”
“I know.”
“My mom wanted to keep me home,” SciFi says, snagging Cameron’s attention. “Statistically, this is the safest school in the nation right now.”
Cameron tries to process that as they push past a handful of kids knotted in the hall. He notices that some have black bands tied around their arms.
“What are those for?” Cameron asks.
“They’re in mourning,” SciFi says. “A lot of kids are wearing them.”
“No one liked Pinon.”
“I know. It’s screwed up.”
Cameron wants to take a good look at SciFi’s face. He wonders if he’s still bruised, if his teeth are fixed.
They slip through the door to their computer class and take their seats. Then Cameron turns on his swivel stool and looks into SciFi’s face. Not as dramatic as he was expecting. A faint splotch of lavender and robin’s egg blue is spread across his cheekbone, under his left eye, and into his hairline. Definitely an improvement over the last time Cameron saw him.
“Not so bad,” Cameron decides.
“I was a one-eyed Cyclops on Wednesday,” SciFi says. “And watch this.” He opens his mouth and pulls on a front tooth. It comes off in his hand. “This is temporary. I lost four veneers. My parents went through the roof. Made me spill names, called a lawyer, and now Patterson’s parents are footing the bill for a new set.” He pushes the temporary cap back in place. “Where have you been?”
Cameron shrugs. “Home.”
“You didn’t want to come back, huh? I don’t blame you. Patterson is a prick. What he did to you, and putting those pictures on the ’net, now everyone knows he’s a prick. Even if he does come back to Madison he has nothing and no one to come back to.”
Cameron feels a knife twist in his chest when SciFi brings up the photos. He tries to focus instead on the idea that Patterson is ruined.
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s out of control,” SciFi says. “The reason I look so good —” he stops and rubs a hand over his face, “is that his friends realized it, too. They came at me, pushing and pulling, swinging, and Patterson yelling. Some guy rolled under my legs and I went down like a brick house and Patterson was kicking me and foaming at the mouth. He was so red in the face he looked like he came right out of hell. His friends started backing off. I looked at their faces and saw it there. Patterson scared them. Some of them pulled him away, even before the cops got there.”
“Maybe things will get better,” Cameron says. “Maybe not.”
“They’ll get better. Patterson’s gone and we have a killer among us. It’s got to get better.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“We’re walking in a combat zone,” SciFi says.
“It’s always been that.”
Their teacher, Mrs. Marks, walks through the door with a stack of papers in her arms. She passes them out as the bell rings and then explains that, due to the tragedy they’re all experiencing, they won’t begin work on their next project — which she handed out on Friday.
“We’re going to read about software programs today,” she says. She passes out articles photocopied from a computer magazine. “I want you to write a brief statement identifying the value of each product.”
Her thoughts seem fragmented, at least to Cameron. He feels his mind drift. He thinks about Patterson at home, kicking back, laughing at the memories he has of Cameron, stuffed like a pig. He thinks about the locker room, the cops in there scraping DNA off the shower floor. He doesn’t know Marks is standing in front of him until she taps his desk with her knuckles.
“You weren’t here on Friday,” she says to Cameron. “I hope you’re feeling better. What happened, well, it’s inexcusable and I’m sorry for it.” Her face is soft. She looks like she’s about to cry. “The whole world is going crazy, isn’t it?”
She walks away but turns and says, “I paired you up with Elliott for the next project. I hope that’s all right. The two of you work well together.”
Then she drifts off, toward her desk, and Cameron feels like maybe she’s a little lost. A boat without a captain. And that’s how it is the rest of the day. Cameron’s Spanish teacher writes a page number on the board and asks them to work quietly at their desks. She doesn’t explain the assignment and no one asks questions. Cameron takes out his notebook and writes down the page number at the top. He scratches in the Roman numeral I, counts out ten spaces and then fills in the Roman Numeral II, planning to do both exercises, but then he’s back again, in the locker room, watching the cops collect ceramic tiles and poke through the shower drains.
MONDAY
4:00PM
Robbie is already home when Cameron walks through the door. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, a textbook open, but he’s not reading it and the paper in front of him is blank except for a large X carved by the sharp point of a pencil. His face is doughy, his cheeks rubbed pink. Cameron can’t let himself look at his brother too long. Doesn’t let himself think about what’s going on inside Robbie’s head. His brother is a worrier. Always has been. And for days he’s been walking around the house, sometimes at Cameron’s heels, saying nothing, but staying close.
“Mom called,” Robbie says, breaking into Cameron’s thoughts. “Twice. Where have you been?”
“At school.”
It’s four o’clock. He took the bus home, got off, and walked into the woods. March is almost over and that means that just about every tree
has a bird’s nest in it, filled with eggs or babies who don’t know how to fly yet. He sat beneath a sugar maple with a handful of its green pods and separated their sticky joints, stuck his fingertips into their pockets, and wore them like feathers. He wants to fly away. That would be his superpower, if someone was handing them out. He’s almost there already. Sometimes, when he’s running, when the air is cool and snaps against his skin and he no longer feels his feet hit the ground, he’s almost there.
“Your lawyer is coming. Mom wants you to know that. The cops are coming, too. They’re going to take your fingerprints.”
The beginning of the end.
“Randy says all that’ll prove is you touched your own lock,” Robbie says. “The police think you killed that boy.”
“I know.”
“Did you?”
Cameron lets his gaze hit Robbie square in the face. He sucks up his brother’s uncertainty. Robbie wants to believe in him.
“You think I did?”
“No. But everybody else does. Even the newspaper is making predictions.”
“Yeah? What does it say?”
“It says the police have one suspect, another boy who attends Madison High.”
“And the police are coming here. So I must be it.”
“They have a warrant.”
“Yeah. Randy made them do that.”
“The paper says whoever did it will be tried as an adult. They’re going to try to do that.”
“Lethal injection,” Cameron says. He feels the slow burn up from his wrist, his veins on fire. Fire won’t be so bad. “What’s in that stuff?”
“Sodium chloride.”
“You’re a smart kid, Robbie.”
“It was in the paper. I don’t know what it does. I mean, if it hurts.”
“I think maybe it’ll burn a little,” Cameron says. “And then there’s nothing. You ever wonder what happens to birds who fly too high? You know, they break through the atmosphere and are suddenly in outer space?”
“They die.” Robbie is crying. “They suffocate and die.”
And maybe that’s how it is. The chemicals hit your heart, freeze it when you’re still alive and know it’s over, and you have that one moment to hold onto forever.
Burn Page 15
