How to Set a Fire and Why

by Jesse Ball

  Before he left he showed me on his phone a video of some Pakistani soldiers beating a cow to death. It made me sad, but I also felt—how large the world is. There are many places and in some of them, people are beating cows to death for no reason. Meanwhile here we beat them to death out of sight and when they appear they are in neat cardboard packaging with tasty sauces.

  I said that Darius once punished a river for drowning his favorite horse. Maybe this cow was being punished.

  Stephan said he thought the cow was definitely being punished, but for what—who could say?

  He asked me for my telephone number, but I don’t have one—that was another embarrassing moment. He wrote his address on a piece of paper like it was 1990 and gave it to me. Jan is going to give a meeting at my house on Thursday, he said. My parents are away, so it’s fine.

  WORST THINGS

  Whenever I have done the worst things that I have done—it is usually because I thought about doing something, and then I thought, Lucia, you shouldn’t do that. Don’t do that, Lucia. Then, I think, maybe I am just saying that to myself because I am afraid of doing it (the thing). What I fear most is being a person who is afraid to do things. So, at that point, I force myself to do the thing. Later on, it turns out one of two ways:

  1. I was afraid to begin with, and it was good that I didn’t let myself off the hook.

  2. I wasn’t afraid to begin with. I had some difficult-to-parse but correct misgivings about whatever it was, and when I go ahead and do it, things turn out badly, specifically because I was right and didn’t pay attention to my feelings. This is when I do the worst things that I do. If someone else finds out about it, like my aunt, they say, why would you do that, with considerable astonishment. It’s obvious you shouldn’t do a thing like that.

  We had to do one of those stupid occupational tests on Tuesday. First, there was a very long multiple choice. Then, there was a one-on-one interview with a counselor. In this case, I think they could have brought in a clown and it would have been more effective. At the very least, I would have enjoyed sitting with a clown for a while not talking. If neither of us talked for something like two hours, I would let the clown win, I would talk, out of sympathy. But, if he gave up early, I would be glad to claim victory over an undisciplined clown. What am I even talking about? There wasn’t a clown—it was just a counselor, and the counselor asked me what my greatest weakness was. That’s when I said that I was a coward at heart, but a recovering coward. She asked what did I mean. I said that I did everything I could to mitigate the effects of my cowardice. Why is that a weakness? she asked. I said it was because I then ended up doing absolutely inadvisable shit, like jumping off a pier onto a grain barge, or pulling a biker’s ponytail at a hotdog stand.

  She asked what my greatest strength was. I said I was perspicacious. She pretended to have to go to the bathroom, but I could tell she was looking up perspicacious in her phone. That’s okay. I would have said it differently, but I think it is a beautiful word. I guess it is my vanity (my aunt would say so), but I like to think it is true, I am perspicacious. One thing about perspicaciousness is that it doesn’t have to be allied to traditional knowledge structures. It’s just good clean insight. I aspire to be a perspicacious person, like a carpenter who knows which one of the beams is important.

  The woman came back, and she had the results of my test with her. I was actually pretty eager to hear what it said. You might think these sorts of things are dumb, and of course I agree. However, they are mostly dumb when the results of the occupational test are someone else’s results. Everyone finds their own results to be really interesting. Same with personality tests, all tests having to do with our paltry identities. What fools we are! I include myself in that.

  Earlier, when I was waiting in the hall for my turn, Susan Dempsey came out, and she said she could be an architect, but also a performance coach. I don’t know who thinks that is a job.

  However that is—it made me curious. What weird thing might they tell me I can do?

  Lucia, said the woman, your results in some parts are very good, and in others, well, you didn’t even fill out all the questions.

  I didn’t think they could possibly test anything, I said.

  This test is put together by very qualified people, said the counselor. It is certainly capable of testing any number of things. Your results, well, you shouldn’t feel disappointed. The test doesn’t ever show the upper limits of what you can do. You are always capable of much more than what others expect. It is very important for you to remember that.

  I told her to cut out the bullshit. What did it tell me to be?

  She handed me the piece of paper, which said my highest match was 69 percent with a career as a truck driver. I guess she thought I would be disappointed, but I thought that was great. Of course, I want a job where you work by yourself. The inside of those truck cabs are nice, too! Very comfortable. You can have a kick-ass dog with a bandanna. Sure, it is a bit jittery drinking twelve cups of coffee or popping pills to make a long-distance run through the night, but every job has its dangers.

  She was looking at me very calmly. I don’t understand it, really, she said. Your scores in these parts of the test are very high. It must be a mistake of some kind.

  I don’t think it’s a mistake, I said. And you’re definitely right—the test makers are very good.

  Why do you say that? she asked.

  Well, it’s probably that—if someone scores more than a certain amount on the ability part, but then loses patience with the test and doesn’t finish it, then that person is likely to hate having bosses, and being in office environments. So, such a person should be a truck driver or a park ranger or something like that. It’s probably built into the algorithm for the test results.

  She said she hadn’t thought of that. Not finishing the test might be part of the test.

  EMPTY LOT

  Stephan came near me at lunch, which was surprising because it meant other people would see that he had talked to me. I figured that might be embarrassing for him. It could be people would think he was trying to get me to give it up, which guys are always proud about. If a guy is a pariah, there is no reason to ever talk to him, societally. But if a girl is a pariah, there is still one reason. How fucked-up is that?

  He said that his parents had come back. Apparently his mom got food poisoning in Tangiers. I said that was a lie. He said, yeah, it was because one of his dad’s patients was doing badly. They hadn’t been in Tangiers at all.

  I said, I didn’t think that Tangiers was actually a place. It was something like Camelot, but for drugs and sex. He started doing some misguided shit where he took out his phone to show me Tangiers on a map. I know Tangiers is real, I said. You are like four steps behind.

  He said we were going to meet at this empty lot, and he told me where it was. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.

  I told him I would go, but I wasn’t sure. Meeting two or three guys at an empty lot when no one knows you are there?

  I offered him some licorice, but he didn’t want it. I guess he’s one of those who don’t like licorice. I think 75 percent of people hate it, but the other 25 adore it. What else is like that? Trampolines? Tanning salons? Parrots?

  GYM

  In gym class, we were playing volleyball. Yes, I know, I told you I manage to avoid gym—but not always. I was stuck in gym and we were playing volleyball.

  That meant I had to wear gym clothes, which is awful. It used to be everyone would wear ugly baggy clothes, but now the pretty girls wear essentially spandex outfits. This makes it awkward for people who don’t feel like doing that. So, I wear long basketball shorts and a black tank top. I do that so people will know I am not wearing the same shirt I wear during the day. It is no joke—it’s a real thing. If I wore a white tank top, they would think I didn’t change, and I would hear about it. Kids are jackals.

  I mean, I like jackals more than kids, so the comparison isn’t fair.

  Th
e thing about this volleyball game, and the reason I brought it up is—Clarence Eames, who is huge, and really strong, spiked the ball on Jeanette Levy and broke the hell out of her fingers. It was really really good, because she is not a legitimate person and deserves every bad thing.

  She was crying and holding her fingers, and two of them were obviously bent the wrong way. The gym teacher tried to do some EMT business, but it failed and she just screamed louder. Eventually the nurse came, and then an ambulance. It was havoc, and I loved every second.

  While the ambulance was coming, I had a fantasy in my mind. In the fantasy I am wearing a doctor’s coat and just popping Jeanette’s fingers in and out and she is screaming. I hold the fingers delicately in one hand and I hold her hand delicately in the other. I don’t say anything, but my posture is like, I am being reasonable. Calm down, Jeanette.

  That makes it even funnier (in the fantasy) when she can’t stop screaming, because I am being a rock-solid medical professional—apart from the fact that I am, for reasons unknown, brutally reinjuring the finger as soon as I fix it.

  When I was finished with this thought, it was time to go.

  SATIE, ERIK

  I saw a film the week that I moved in with my aunt. It was called My Dinner with Andre. Nobody really likes this movie. I like it a lot, and my aunt likes it, too. She says it is a good weather vane: if people like it, you might like them. It’s possible, at least.

  The movie has some Satie music in it, which is the first I had heard of this guy, Erik Satie. There are basically two things I like to listen to. One is a kind of headphone thing for concentrating. You put the earphones on and there is a tone that sounds sort of far away on one side. Then it goes away and after a while there is a tone on the other side. It is supposed to make you focus better than anything. I got completely addicted to it, and I used it for a long time until it broke, and then I found out they don’t make it anymore. That was sad.

  The other thing I like to listen to is Erik Satie. My aunt has a record of someone playing his stuff—and we listen to that. She wants to put it on when we are doing things. I refuse that. I want to sit in the chair and do nothing when I listen to this music.

  By the way, I don’t think that it is the greatest music. Bach is definitely better. Aretha Franklin is better. Everyone is better, I get it. There is a lot of really good music. I am not going to argue with you.

  For me, though, I like to sit in the chair and listen to this Satie. I heard that he lived in a crappy little room in a boardinghouse, too, and was real lonely.

  I think he was simultaneously feted and unappreciated.

  But, that wasn’t even what I was going to talk about—I wanted to tell you about this scene in the movie where the main character goes to a house party somewhere on Long Island, and has to dig a hole in the ground for his own grave, and then gets put in a coffin and buried and then taken back out and runs through the night naked to a shining white tent where some ascendant adoration and joy fill him entirely. I think he said it was like being born. When I heard about this, I felt like I was entirely ready to give up being who I am and ready to try being someone else. The trouble is—the someone else you are okay with being isn’t anyone you know. So, who is it?

  FIRE

  Partway through second period, someone pulled the fire alarm. I figured it was just a prank. At Parkson, Will Scaffy used to get his older brother to call in bomb threats, and sometimes would pull the fire alarm himself until they got the ones that spray you to mark who did it.

  But, this wasn’t a prank at all. Someone had set fire to the music room. That is definitely not the room that I would have chosen, of all the terrible rooms at the school. Not that it mattered. I think just one or two chairs were set on fire.

  But, we all got to go stand in the athletic fields, which was horrible, because I had to stand next to Jamie Anderson and her hair spray is like nerve gas. I almost fainted once, honestly. And, I’m not a fragile person.

  The fire was not a bad one at all—but the principal decided to send everyone home, so the buses came early. I don’t get a regular bus, so I just waited for Lana to see if she would show up, but she wasn’t anywhere. This guy Rufus came up to me and asked if I knew who did it. I said why would I know. He said, he is asking everybody.

  I watched him go off along the line of buses, and yeah, he was asking everybody. There are people, there really are, who think that they could be detectives if they wanted to. When I talk to these people I want to say, if you could be a PI or a detective, you would be. Being a detective is too exciting to not do it. If you aren’t doing it, it’s because you couldn’t do it. So, stop telling me you could be a detective.

  Detectives are a special case, though. Not everything is like that.

  BEEKMAN

  You remember I had the argument with Beekman. He’s the one who gave me the detention that led to six detentions. Well, when I turned in my paper early, he was shocked. Seems like he had me pegged as a dunce. I still don’t think he thought it would be good, though. He probably thought I was trying to put one over on him by handing in a terrible paper early.

  I went into school, though, the next day, and Beekman comes up to me at my locker and he is raving about my paper. He says it is a really good paper. He says it is the best one he’s ever gotten. Okay. Take it easy, guy. It’s a paper.

  He goes off down the hall, and I figure it’s the end of it, but then O’Toole in math asks me why I can write such good papers but don’t do anything for him. He says I can’t leave class until I redo my last two tests, and he gives them to me again. So, I do the tests, and fill in the answers this time. I really wish Beekman hadn’t blown the whistle on me.

  It gets worse, though. The rest of that day was fine, but I guess Beekman talked to more people about the paper. He wanted to put it up for some kind of award. It was just too much.

  So, last period, everyone comes down to the auditorium to hear this speech that the principal gives about our civic duty and how setting fires is evil, actually evil, and that if anyone knows who did it, that person should come forward.

  I think that they should, actually. If a person is a jackass who wants to burn up the music room, where delicate Mr. Alphonse who is from Spain or France and barely speaks English but is the only really kind one in the whole place, he sits there in the music room with crappy pictures of Mozart on the wall and tries to patiently teach people the fucking oboe, if they want to burn that room up, ahead of the rest of the godforsaken place, then yes—clap them in irons, I say. The order of things matters.

  By the way, the principal was talking about evil, and I was thinking: how goddamned Manichaean this country is. Isn’t it obvious that the world is a meaningless place where there is a faint impression you can leave on each other by being compassionate, but not more than that? And even awful things just pass away? I don’t understand what evil is, and furthermore, I don’t think he does. Our principal would love to take the occupational test from the guidance counselor and find out that he should be a principal. That would suit him right down to the ground.

  I’m sorry for the digression. The point of all this is, after the auditorium speech—someone comes to the principal, another teacher, to talk about the paper that Beekman is blabbing about, my paper. So, the principal gets it in his head that I probably started the fire. He noticed that there was fire in the paper and a fire in the music room. He is basically a hero to himself.

  MEETING

  What does that mean? It means my aunt gets dragged down after school, and I am sitting in the principal’s office again, this time with Mr. Alphonse across from me. He is purposefully not looking at me. I think to myself—he really thinks I did it. I was shocked.

  I touch Alphonse’s knee, and I say, mon professeur, je ne l’ai pas fait.

  (I asked my aunt how to say it.)

  He smiles this really nice smile. It is like, I said something to someone and for once they believe me.

  The principal com
es over. What did she say? Then, he and Alphonse have some words off to the side and Alphonse leaves. The old man didn’t want to have anything to do with it, since he knows I’m not the one. The principal is showing Alphonse the paper, which he somehow has, but Alphonse won’t go with it. He says some shit in French and leaves. My aunt laughs. What did he say? I ask. Something about birds and donkeys, she says. I’ll explain later.

  The principal comes back and tries to be a tough guy with us, but I point out that I was in a class at the time the fire was set. He calls that teacher in over the loudspeaker, and she hasn’t left yet, luckily, because she is ninety years old and slow. It takes her twenty minutes to get to the office, but when she does, Ms. Cassidy tells him, yes, Lucia Stanton was in Chemistry at that exact moment. I give her a thumbs-up, but it only confuses her.

  So, I’m like, too bad, I guess your little witch hunt didn’t go as planned. For which I immediately got a detention until my aunt stuck up for me.

  Or, I guess she did. They told me to leave the room, and my aunt talked to him. When she came out, she said she threatened to make a big deal out of me being accused if he didn’t can it. How could he go after a poor girl like me who has done nothing?