by Jesse Ball
As we walked, he told me a lot of stuff. Maybe he noticed I was nervous, because he told me that he was not going to do anything to me in the building, that I didn’t have to worry about that. He said I should stay outside and keep watch.
Keep watch? There’s no one here.
What is your name again? Lucia?
(I know he knows my name.)
Lucia, listen up: the first rule of setting fires is that someone should keep watch. Human beings are notorious for being where they aren’t supposed to be. Do you want your whole life to be ruined because some asshole is walking his dog and remembers your face? Such a pretty face, too.
He ran his hand through my hair and it creeped me out, but I didn’t say anything. I let him do it, I guess. We kept walking.
When we got inside, he took his coat off and put on a bright-colored jacket. I asked him why he would wear a bright jacket.
Afterwards, I get rid of it, he said. Obviously.
I still wasn’t sure that was the best idea—but I kept my mouth shut.
The field was uneven, so it wasn’t easy to cross it in the dark, and when I turned on my flashlight, Jan smacked me in the arm.
Off.
I shut it off.
He got a little ahead of me, and I ran to catch up.
Stephan just went home, huh.
He does what he’s told to do. The things Sco and me used to do to him when he was little, ha. Once we made him crawl through a thornbush. We told him it would be cool and he did it.
His brother’s in the army, yeah?
I don’t know. I don’t care about that guy. He can do what the fuck he wants.
When we got to the building, Jan took a bottle of something out of his backpack. Gasoline?
It’s like gasoline, he said. Something like that. Wait here.
There was a stoop next to where the street had been, so, I went up to the fourth step and sat down. I couldn’t hear anything from inside. The building had just swallowed him up. Any number of people could disappear into it.
I smoked. I waited. I smoked another cigarette, another cigarette. I would have smoked another, but it was my last. It must have been half an hour later when I heard someone running and Jan shot out of the building.
Book it, he said, and grabbed my arm. We set out sprinting across the field. I tripped two or three times, but got right up and kept going. Somehow Jan stayed on his feet the whole way. When we got to the other side, there was a huge pile of tires.
This should do, he said, and got behind it.
I don’t know what the fuck is in there, so I don’t want to be near it if a gas line blows.
Nothing
and
nothing
and
nothing.
I was looking into the black and breathing hard. I couldn’t even really see the building, just an outline of all the buildings where the darkness got lighter in the distance. Then, I thought I heard something, and WHOOSH!
That whole half of the world turned red. It was like a huge flame tongue erupted out of all the windows at the same time. It flashed away and I couldn’t see anything at all, and then a half second later, there was more, this time it was smaller flames that came, but they stayed, all along one line—about halfway up the building I’d guess.
Jan put his arm around me, but not in a bad way—it was a celebration, like you’d do with anyone. I didn’t mind.
Do you think there was anybody in there? Some vagrant sleeping?
I checked, said Jan. That’s what took so long. I wouldn’t do it for most places, but I don’t want to kill some homeless guy or leave him covered in burns. Come on, let’s get out of here.
We climbed down to the street, and after we’d gone a block or two Jan tossed his jacket in a sewer drain.
He looked at me and didn’t say anything, and then he did.
Now you’re in the club. You held it together. Most people can’t do that. I figured you’d be gone when I came out.
The school Arson Club?
Ha, no. There isn’t one. That’s just nonsense.
He waited for my bus to come (once per hour) and told me some more stuff, which I was eager to hear. He was suddenly really jovial. He kept touching my arm and relating little bits of nonsense. I think he was proud of himself for setting the fire. Truth is—I felt really good, too. The feeling of setting a fire is enormous, so even helping out like I did—I was in the clouds.
About the club, he said the way it works is—if you want to talk about the club, the actual club for the area gets members from the schools. Only two other people in my school were in so far. The rest were just wannabes like Stephan.
But now you, you can come to the real meetings, he said. And one more thing maybe you’ve guessed already—you can’t tell anyone you’re in. It’s the opposite. Now you tell them you’re done with setting fires, you’re over it. Got it? Give them the high hat. Since I’m a recruiter, I stay in the open. But now you’re behind doors. Don’t breathe a fucking word.
I got home, took my clothes off, got in bed and lay there in the dark. It’s pretty lonely being alone in a house—in one where you usually have company. I suppose that’s a moronic sentence. It’s lonely being alone, but I felt that way. I’m often alone and I don’t feel lonely, but going to sleep in that converted garage without my aunt there, it was terrible. I tried to pretend she was slumped in the chair. I propped up the blue blanket so it looked like it was covering something and it actually made me feel better. Then, I lay down again and thought about the fire.
I thought about that immaculate blankness. It had been too much for my eyes—my eyes had just given up.
I know it was just an abandoned building, but I felt like something had happened, a real thing for once. My aunt’s stroke had felt pretty real too. I guess real things happen all at once, and then you go back to the false parade of garbage that characterizes modern life.
Well, I don’t want to go back there.
Thinking something like that, I fell asleep.
AUNT
While I was waiting in the hospital for the elevator, I noticed a flyer for a psych experiment. It said it would pay one hundred dollars and it lasts fifteen minutes. Women eighteen to thirty-five with perfect eyesight.
I thought—why not?
So, after I saw my aunt, I headed down there.
My aunt, in case you are wondering, was still alive. I wasn’t going to have to go visit her in the hospital anymore, because they were to return her to the house soon. That meant I had a lot to do—cleaning up the place, getting some groceries (shoplifting some groceries), et cetera, but there was time.
She seemed in good spirits. She should have been, since I gave her the book I made—it’s not like it’s nothing!
She wanted to read it while I was there, but I refused. What an awful idea. There is no way to save face if someone reads your shit while you stand there. Much better to get out immediately. If they like it, actually, that fact can come up later or not. I would have stayed longer but I felt like I did my due diligence with the gift. Also, the hospital room smelled awful.
The study was being conducted in the psych department of the university hospital. That was in a different building, but the buildings are all connected, so I wandered around for forty minutes going this way on one bridge and that way on another until I found it. I pictured it like some old French movie where the shot is from far away and sped up, and you can see me through the glass bridges and windows going back and forth. Maybe I would be riding a bicycle some of the time for no reason, and being chased by a gorilla.
CORRINGER LAB
A girl in her mid-thirties wearing a lab coat answered the door when I knocked.
She was heavyset and had a voice like a man, which was sort of endearing. I don’t mean just deep—I mean, she sounded exactly like a man. It was neat.
Come in, she said. You are eighteen, right?
I showed her the license I stole from the girl at my school
. She is a senior, and turned eighteen in January, which put me in the clear.
Here’s a fact: no one really looks at IDs. I don’t know why they bother putting pictures on them. What they do is—they look at you and decide if they like you or not.
The researcher, Mary, told me to sit down. The room had a table and two chairs. There were some computers and a couch. There was a big whiteboard with some crap written on it—scientist handwriting, practically unreadable.
I leaned on the edge of the couch and waited.
You can sit down, she said.
No thanks, I said.
Your eyesight is perfect, yes?
Yes.
She gave me some forms to fill out. I did so, but had to look at the ID to remember the girl’s fucking last name. How stupid is that. I have a decent memory, but this was a Polish name with twelve consonants in a row. I bet you couldn’t remember it either.
Luckily the researcher wasn’t watching. When I gave her the forms she showed me into the next room.
Stand there, she said.
There was a circle drawn on the floor. I went and stood in it.
Images will show up on the far side of the room. Images of people in profile. You are being recorded. I want you to state, whenever an image appears, what you think the age and sex of the person being shown is. Tap your leg if you find them threatening.
For fifteen minutes, silhouettes flashed on the screen: thirties male unthreatening. Sixties male threatening. Infant female threatening. Et cetera.
Actually, I did try to do a good job. I like trying at things like that.
A loud beep sounded when the final image was done. The door behind me opened, and Mary came and gave me a hundred bucks cash in five-dollar bills. I love getting a thick pile of bills. Even though I hate money. Of course I do, I hate it. But I also like to have lots of it. Once, I had three hundred dollars at the same time, when I pawned my dad’s watch. They gave me three hundred singles. I said to the pawnshop guy, I’m not on my way to a strip club. He thought that was funny, so we had a good laugh for about three seconds. I mean, I was fourteen so he shouldn’t have laughed at all.
By the way, I wouldn’t have sold it if I thought my dad cared about the watch, but he told me once that he only wore it because his grandfather had given it to him. That might be a reason for him to wear it, but for me—not so much.
Mary opened the door for me to go, and I asked her if she would tell me what the study was about.
I don’t see why not. Don’t go telling people if you think they might come in, though. That would ruin the study.
Obviously it would ruin the study. I wouldn’t do that.
Good. So, identifying the silhouettes is meaningless. The actual experiment is: we change the temperature of the room to see how it affects your threat level. That’s it.
But how do you know which ones are threatening or not to begin with?
We run the study without the temperature shift until we have five hundred samples, average them, and then run it again, this time changing the temperature.
Why just women?
We do it with men and women, both. We did men already, now women.
What do you think you’ll find?
James, the PI, thinks men will be more threatened by heat, and women by cold.
What do you think?
He is usually wrong about things. But, we get interesting results, so that’s enough.
I laughed at that. She didn’t.
One more question. Sorry to take up your time.
Shoot.
Which of the silhouettes is supposed to be the most threatening one?
There’s one, do you remember, an old woman carrying groceries? It’s totally terrifying. Men especially fear it. Women are pretty afraid of the baby. They don’t actually tap their leg, but they start to and then stop.
CORRINGER LAB
I was waiting at the bus stop when I realized that my zippo was gone. What a pain—I had to backtrack, first to my aunt’s room, then to the study. When I got to the study, I could see Mary wasn’t happy to see me. I had to bang on the door to get her to answer it.
When the door opened, I could see there were three girls in the room who looked like triplets. I was a bit shocked, and I think Mary was trying to figure out if it would fuck up the study to have triplets in it, what with them being essentially the same person. They were wearing the same tricolor tube top with some sorority name on it.
Which reminds me: I don’t buy this thing about twins both getting to vote. To me, each group of DNA should get one vote. Also, twins shouldn’t both be able to hold political office. Otherwise, things could get weird—not in the short run, but in the long run, watch out! I mean, imagine if someone had identical septuplets and then all seven of them were appointed to the Supreme Court. I guess there are nine justices, so let’s say nonuplets then. You have nine identical twins, raised on some creepy farm and then carted out to be Supreme Court justices. What would that mean? It would mean essentially you have one person being the whole Supreme Court, for life! I ask you, would that be fair?
I’m just joking, I have a whole bunch of friends who are identical twins. They’re really nice if you get to know them.
Mary reached in her pocket, handed me my shitty lighter, and shut the door.
TEST
My aunt thought it was a good idea for me to go with Beekman and take the test. She is a straight shooter, you know, so what she said was:
I don’t think I will live out the year and then what will you do.
To which I said, aunt, don’t be a fool. And she said, who is the fool. I will be a bunch of soil and you’ll be living where?
So, I told Beekman I would go. On Saturday morning, he came and picked me up. His wife actually packed me a goddamned lunch with a pluot in it. She is a big fan of yours, he said.
The test center was at the admissions department of a local university, which I guess did this as some sort of helping gesture for Hausmann. Apparently a lot of schools countrywide have agreements like this. Hausmann was started because there are a large number of talented kids who go on to do nothing at all—they turn into misanthropes and huddle in shitty rooms. The idea was—reach these kids earlier, challenge them, some nonsense like that. My feeling about that is—doing nothing doesn’t necessarily prove your incapacity. It could be quite the opposite. For instance—I walk around and I am always identifying places, under overpasses, beneath pine trees in industrial parks, at the verge of people’s yards, or where a park building meets a factory and there is a dry spot, these are examples: I see these places, and I think, I could just stay in a spot like that and be perfectly happy. If I did that, it would look to other people like I had failed, but it sounds wonderful to me.
Beekman brought me into the building and introduced me to the admissions officer. Then he wished me luck and left.
Is he coming back? the woman asked me.
I hope so, I said. It is a long fucking walk.
She gave me a look and showed me into a conference room. You can take the test in here, she said.
A different woman, a psychologist of some sort, came in. She introduced herself. Her name was Tracy. I was a little nervous.
Is that your real name, I asked.
Yes, of course.
I just thought, maybe the test had started already. I figured maybe your name isn’t Tracy and I’m supposed to notice that. You look about thirty-four, thirty-five. That means you were born in a period when, uh, when Tracy was a pretty popular name. So, it is likely to be your real name. Although, it seems like maybe—since the likelihood of you having a likely name is unlikely, since there are all told more unlikely names than likely names, if you have a likely name, it seems like maybe you chose it to seem like it is your real name. Isn’t that so? Is this part of the test?
My name is Tracy, she said. Let’s get started.
Okay. So it’s not part of the test? How do I know when the test starts?
It hasn’t started yet. Calm down. Do you need a drink of water?
No.
The first part we’re going to do is the IQ test. Have you taken some practice IQ tests to get ready?
I told her I had not. I said why would I take a practice IQ test. It wouldn’t increase my IQ.
She said that it doesn’t increase your IQ, no, just your demonstrable IQ as tested.
I said that means the test is bad. There should be no way to increase your result on a good IQ test. It should be tricky enough to avoid that.
She said it is not tricky enough to avoid that.
You will probably be smarter than your result, then, she said. That’s too bad.
Which is a weird way of saying I’m going to mess it up.
When we got done with the IQ test, I got a break. They brought me an orange juice and a buttered roll and let me sit on a bench outside for twenty minutes. The university grounds are really beautiful. Universities always try that bullshit. They want you to think wonderful things are going on inside of them because the grounds are beautiful. In general, it is good to be suspicious of monetary displays. Large swaths of bright green well-watered grass—a thing like that is a huge lie.
