After the Fire

by Robin Gaby Fisher

  “Before she left, I told her that if she wasn’t dating someone else when I got better, I would be there to take her back.”

  But Alvaro knew it would be a long time before he could put the fire behind him. His wounds were still healing and he faced years of surgeries to keep his scarring under control and his limbs from constricting. Pain was still part of his everyday existence and would be for the foreseeable future. As sorry as he had been to see Angie leave, he knew that letting her go had been the right thing to do. The passionate girl with the thick copper hair would be a hard act to follow. Angie had been his first and only love. She was smart and gregarious, and always challenging him. She wrote poetry, and she sang and danced. She was good for him. “And she’s beautiful,” Alvaro said, bowing his head. “To me, she’s beautiful.”

  Chapter 26

  Shawn awakened that brisk January morning feeling unsettled. It was the one-year anniversary of the fire. Sometimes it felt as if it had happened yesterday. Sometimes, it seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Through his own fierce determination, Shawn had healed faster than anyone had expected. Although his hands would always be severely scarred, he had relearned to use them, and his facial scars were beginning to fade. A month earlier he had been discharged from therapy, three months ahead of schedule. He wanted to put the fire behind him.

  But three boys were still dead, and his roommate struggled every day of his life. As much as Shawn would have liked to lock himself in his bedroom and sleep the day away, or go someplace far away and just try to forget everything, he owed it to them to be present at a memorial service commemorating the anniversary.

  Shawn drove to the Seton Hall campus with conflicting feelings of pride and dread. Pride in himself for hurdling so many obstacles over the past year. Pride in Alvaro for winning over death. Dread that he would have to face the parents of his dead classmates. How would his mother have felt had she lost him in the fire? He could only imagine the suffering of the families of Aaron Karol, John Giunta, and Frank Caltabilota. He didn’t want to think about it.

  Wearing a Yankees cap and a large gold cross around his neck, with his mother on his arm, Shawn strode into Walsh Gymnasium holding his head high. He had stopped wearing his gloves over his scarred hands most of the time. He knew people were watching. There’s Shawn, they were certain to be saying, one of the kids who was burned.

  The campus was dressed for the somber service. A large wreath with white roses and lilies was propped in front of a memorial bell tower that had been dedicated to the three dead students. A banner in the gym read, “We will never forget those who were lost. They will be with us forever. God is watching over this time of remembrance.”

  Alvaro, flanked by his parents, walked in a few minutes after Shawn and joined his former roommate and his mother in the front row of seats, which had been reserved for the victims and their families. He was still frail, but gaining strength. He looked around the gym. It was filled to overflowing. At least a thousand people had crowded onto the bleachers and into folding chairs, and everyone was wearing small metal lapel pins in the shape of a blue ribbon. John Giunta had been a friend. He missed him. Why did this have to happen? he wondered. Why did my classmates have to die?

  Shawn and Alvaro had heard the rumors swirling around campus — that fellow students had set the fire. They had read the newspaper stories saying investigators believed it was arson. And they wondered why no arrests had been made. Still, they felt almost no bitterness.

  A week earlier, they had had a rare discussion about it, at Saint Barnabas, where Alvaro was recovering from surgery to loosen the leatherlike scars on his neck, which had limited his head movement.

  Somehow the conversation had turned to the fire. “I don’t know who set it, so there’s nobody to be angry at,” Shawn said. “I don’t know how I’ll react if there is a name. You can’t go around hating someone you don’t know. But whoever did this, I don’t think they were trying to hurt anybody. It’s like getting hit with a stray bullet. They weren’t aiming for me.”

  Alvaro nodded. He used to think a lot about the fire, he acknowledged, and to wonder how it happened, but he didn’t much anymore.

  “I used to get mad because these kids did something so stupid,” he said. “I think they probably lit a fire and it got out of control. Something little got real big. I still get mad when I think about the three boys who died. It makes me feel sad to think of how much their families are hurting. But the kids who died are in heaven now, so at least they’re safe.”

  “That’s true,” Shawn had said.

  Shawn thought back on that conversation with Alvaro as he waited for the memorial service to begin. What’s the sense of being angry? he thought. It won’t bring the dead boys back. Or erase our scars. He remembered something Alvaro had said: “Sometimes I think I am one of God’s angels, sent down to do good. Maybe to help people who are not as strong as I am.”

  Monsignor Robert Sheeran walked to the microphone, and the gymnasium fell silent.

  “This has been a year of brutal loss and terrible consequences,” he began. “Our families have lost more than we should ever have to. But you have not lost everything. You have not lost the blessings of each other nor the friends that stand by your side.”

  Shawn looked at Alvaro. Alvaro looked back. They had talked often about moving back on campus one day and had decided they probably would, but only when Alvaro was better and they could live together again. From that first day at Seton Hall, when Alvaro had picked Shawn out of all the other freshmen milling around campus and told his parents, “I think he’s going to be my roommate,” he had known theirs would not be an ordinary relationship. “There’s something different about me and Shawn,” he had later told a friend. “I don’t know what it is. We don’t even have to talk. I sense his strength, and it makes me strong, too.”

  Sometimes I think I am one of God’s angels, sent down to do good. Maybe to help people who are not as strong as I am.

  Monsignor Sheeran continued to speak. “One year ago, our hearts were broken wide open,” he said. “But now listen to the sound of our hearts healing.”

  Shawn bowed his head. “Let it be,” he whispered in quiet prayer. “Let it be.”

  Chapter 27

  After eighteen months of stonewalling by the two prime suspects, investigators went to court to get a warrant to bug Joey LePore’s house.

  The Essex County prosecutor’s office had recently gotten a tip that LePore’s mother, Maria, had allegedly spoken to a friend about her son’s involvement in the fire. The tipster wasn’t a typical citizen. He was Thomas Ricciardi, a Mafia hit man and now a professional snitch. Eight years earlier, Ricciardi, who had admitted to playing a role in nine murders, had been convicted of beating an associate from the Lucchese crime family to death with a golf club. Facing forty years in prison, he flipped, offering to tell the federal authorities everything he knew about the mob in exchange for a plea agreement that would lock him up for only ten years instead of life. Since then, Ricciardi had been a valuable tool for the government. With his help, the feds had been able to put away members of the Lucchese, Colombo, and Genovese crime families.

  In the middle of his ten-year sentence, Ricciardi sent word to the Essex County prosecutor that he had information about the Seton Hall fire. Investigators met with him at the federal prison where he was being held, and a deal was struck. The prosecutor’s office would do whatever they could to cut time off the five remaining years of Ricciardi’s federal prison term in exchange for his information.

  Ricciardi told prosecutors that his brother, Daniel “Bobo” Ricciardi, was dating a woman who was friendly with Joey LePore’s mother, and that he believed Maria LePore may have discussed her son’s role in the fire. The story was enough to persuade the judge to issue the warrant to place a hidden listening device in the house on Woodbine Road in Florham Park, a leafy bedroom community in one of New Jersey’s wealthiest counties.

  Investigators quiet
ly broke into the LePores’ home on the eve of the Fourth of July, 2001. They had nothing to lose. They had conducted 220 interviews and taken 150 sworn statements, and they were still no closer to an arrest than they had been on the day of the fire. Joey LePore had steadfastly denied he was even in the third-floor student lounge the night the fire broke out. Sean Ryan had never spoken to investigators after that first day in the South Orange police headquarters. And their friends weren’t talking, either.

  While the LePores enjoyed a summer afternoon in New York City, detectives placed the bug in their kitchen and a tap on their phone before slipping back out without leaving a trace.

  All that was left to do was sit back and listen.

  Despite what they had been through together, Shawn and Tiha found themselves drifting apart. Two years after the fire, they decided to go their separate ways. Four months later, Tiha contacted Shawn to say she was pregnant. Why is this happening now? he wondered. Now, when we’re both so young and trying to concentrate on school? We said we would stay friends, but do we want to be a couple again?

  As it turned out, Tiha was having the same anxieties. She and Shawn had started out as friends, and she had hoped they would always be friends. But it had only been a few months since they decided to break up. She had been enjoying college life and meeting new people and all of the other adventures that had come with this new chapter in her life. She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to go back.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked Shawn.

  On a perfect spring night in May, Shawn and Tiha sat down together to discuss their options. The talk was cordial and warm. They decided to stay close but to raise their child apart, and they parted that night with a hug and a vow to always be kind to each other, for the sake of their child.

  That fall, Shawn was driving to a friend’s birthday party in Manhattan when Tiha called to say she was having contractions.

  “I’m on my way to the hospital,” she said. “Can you meet me at Saint Barnabas?”

  “I’m on my way,” Shawn replied, making a sharp U-turn at the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel and racing back toward the hospital.

  Tiha’s labor was hard and long. Shawn held her hand and wiped her forehead with a cool cloth, trying to soothe her. Both of their mothers were there. Almost twenty-four hours after Tiha called Shawn, she was finally ready to give birth.

  “Push!” the doctor said. “C’mon now, Tiha, you’re almost there. Push!”

  Tamir DeShawn Simons was born a few seconds past five o’clock on October 27, 2002. The first thing Shawn saw was the black ringlets that covered his son’s tiny head. They looked just like his curls before the fire. This is the best moment of my life, Shawn thought as he looked at his son. It hadn’t been that long ago that Shawn had lain in a coma, two floors down, the promise of a future uncertain.

  Shawn looked at Tiha through his tears.

  “I promise that no matter what happens between us, I will always be there for my son,” he said.

  Tiha smiled. “I believe you,” she replied.

  It was a promise Shawn knew he would keep.

  Panic pricked at Alvaro’s skin when he realized what had happened.

  He had ventured out a few times lately, always at his friends’ insistence, but tonight he hadn’t wanted to go. Why, he wondered, had he let them talk him into coming to a dance club, anyway? He was too afraid to approach girls. He was certain that he would be rejected, or that he would make them feel so uncomfortable, they would feel they had to talk to him. He didn’t want that.

  His friends wouldn’t take no for an answer, though. He needed to get out and start living his life again, they said. They would be there for him. They would walk him to the bathroom, walk him to the bar. Wherever he went, they would shield him from the stares of strangers.

  But now he was in the middle of a pack of writhing dancers, under flashing colored lights, alone and terrified. Somehow he and his friends had become separated.

  The summer air was thick with humidity, and the club was thicker with cigarette smoke. Alvaro felt as if he might suffocate. A red exit sign shone in the distance, and with his head down, he made his way toward the open door. A big, bulky bouncer stood in front of it, expressionless, staring straight ahead. “You can’t go out this way,” he said sternly, never even looking at Alvaro.

  Alvaro stood to the side of the bouncer, closer to the door and the outside air. If he started to hyperventilate or it all just became too much, he could duck out the door before the security guard caught him, then wait in the dark of the parking lot for his friends to come out.

  A Marc Anthony song blared from the loudspeakers. Alvaro, clad in his usual blue Mets baseball cap and an oversize sports jersey, tried to concentrate on the lyrics, but it was no use. He was certain everyone in the room was staring at him, and he fought the urge to run and hide. Maybe it was dark enough in the club that no one could see him — see his scars, anyway. He dared to take a quick look around for his friends. Sure enough, a girl was staring at him. He looked away. If she’s still looking, I’m out the door, he thought. He glanced back at the girl. She was pretty, very pretty, with melancholy eyes and long auburn hair, like Angie.

  She beckoned him with her finger. Did she really?

  He turned to look behind him, but no one was there. Only the wall.

  She beckoned him again.

  He pointed his finger at his chest. Me?

  The girl nodded, and before he had the chance to run out the door, he saw that she was gently pushing her way past the people on the dance floor, headed straight for him.

  Alvaro felt streams of perspiration drip from his forehead and down the side of his face and neck. His baseball cap was damp and he couldn’t catch his breath. Two and a half years had passed since the fire, and he was far from healed. His torso was still so raw it had to be wrapped in gauze to keep his wounds from becoming infected and to prevent blood from oozing through his clothing. His face, arms, and hands were a red and brown patchwork of thick scars and skin grafts. Alvaro thought he was ugly.

  The petite girl stood there, looking up at him. “Hi, I’m Paula,” she said. “You’re Alvaro, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat nervously and looking from the girl’s eyes down to his feet.

  “I went to high school with your sister Shany. You were two years ahead. You probably don’t remember me.”

  “No,” Alvaro quietly admitted.

  She remembered him, though. All of her friends at John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson twittered about Shany’s older brother. Alvaro is so hot, the girls would say, and Paula would agree because he was.

  “I heard you were burned,” she said. “My mom read stories about it in the paper.”

  “Yeah,” Alvaro replied.

  “Do you mind if I stay and talk to you?” she asked.

  “No. That would be fine.”

  “Do you want something to drink?”

  “A water would be good.”

  “Okay. I’ll get us two waters,” she said, heading for the bar. When she returned, the two sipped bottled water and tried to think of things to say.

  “Would you like to dance?” she asked finally.

  “Uh . . .”

  “Oh, c’mon. It’ll be okay.”

  “Okay.”

  The music played on and they started to dance, right there by the open door, away from the crowd dancing under the flashing lights. It was the first time Alvaro had held a girl in his arms since before the fire. He had feared he never would again. Paula felt good in his arms. She fit perfectly. One song turned to several songs. An hour passed. Then two.

  Alvaro’s eyes were closed. All of a sudden, he felt like he was riding on a carousel. It was the two of them and the room was spinning around them, just like in a dream sequence from a movie. For a moment he forgot where he was. For a moment he forgot he was burned.

  Then the music stopped and the room lit up. Last call, announced someone.

&
nbsp; “I gotta go,” Alvaro said, avoiding the girl’s gaze under the bright lights that signaled closing time. “Can I call you sometime?”

  The two exchanged numbers.

  “I’d really like to talk again,” Paula said.

  Yeah, sure, Alvaro thought, then quickly answered: “Me, too.”

  He did.

  Chapter 28

  Alvaro was falling in love.

  He knew it, knew it as surely as he could know anything. But what about Paula? The question was keeping him awake at night. He couldn’t sleep for worrying about whether she could really love someone who had been through what he had.

  It had been Paula who called him after they first met in the dance club. She told him she went home that night and dropped into bed without even changing into her pajamas. She kept her cell phone beside her in bed, wishing he would call. When she awakened the next morning, her stomach quivered with excitement, thinking they had spent hours on the telephone talking about everything and nothing. But she quickly realized she had dreamed the conversation. She had even checked her cell phone to make sure he hadn’t called, but there were no messages and no missed calls. After stewing awhile, she made up her mind to call. She didn’t care how pushy or desperate she looked. She really liked him.

  “I had to talk to you again,” Paula had said when he answered her call.

  Since then, they had spent almost every day together. When they weren’t taking a drive or watching TV in his room, they were talking on the phone. One week had passed, then another.

  Alvaro knew Paula liked him. She had told him many times that he was the sweetest boy she had ever met. But could she love someone like him? If she couldn’t, wouldn’t it be better to know now? But did he really want to know? Did he want to know the reason if she couldn’t love him?

  Finally he decided he had to act. Pulling up his shirt so that she could see just a glimpse of his gnarly, knotted stomach, Alvaro took a deep breath and asked, “Do you think you can handle this?”