Burn Read online

  The fire.

  His fire.

  His heart jumps and kicks into drive. Well, at least he has a pulse. He pushes the return button on the remote and stares at the screen, looking for himself in there. He recognizes the landscape of trees against the darkening sky, the shape of the boulders at the lip of the forest. He ran into the woods there, seeking cover. Like a rabbit chased by a wolf.

  He’ll never know that kind of fear again.

  The camera pans out and suddenly the trees stop and smoke rises from the ground. The remaining stubs of once-towering elms and poplars still glow with flame deep inside them. It looks like a graveyard. He recognizes the heaviness in his chest as sadness and he’s not surprised. He loved those woods but knew, even before today, that their loss was coming. Like knowing the cancer that’s got your dog will soon take him. You can medicate, but it just prolongs life, puts off the inevitable.

  The image on the screen shifts.

  “The fire is contained now.” A lady reporter stands with the woods at her back; the air is hazy with smoke. “But the loss is substantial. More than seventeen acres burned this afternoon, wiping out the dense forestry as well as the jogging path and children’s park.”

  The newswoman is replaced with the scene of a melted climbing wall, the dripping plastic carcass of a slide. The only things left standing are the metal poles and chains of a swing set, now blackened by the fire.

  “Those clumps of melted plastic were once children’s toys,” the reporter’s voice continues. “All in all, officials say about two hundred thousand dollars in damage was sustained. The forest will need replanting, the park and jogging path rebuilding. And that’s just the beginning.”

  The image shifts again, this time to a split screen focusing on a man sitting at a news desk and the woman reporter, who waves away the smoke in front of her face.

  “But no one was harmed?” the man asks.

  “No. No casualties.”

  “Any word on what started the fire?” the man asks.

  “Arson, Mike. Fire department officials are very sure of that,” she answers. “Apparently started in an abandoned car.”

  The guy goes on to say what a shame it is and then the news program moves into a commercial.

  Cameron presses the continuous surf button on the remote and lies back against his pillow. He slips his hand under the mattress and comes out with a book of matches. He brings them to his nose, inhales the sulphur smell. The effect is calming.

  He used to think about burning the school down, moving from bathroom to bathroom, lighting fires in the trash cans, in the trash cans in the halls, too, until the school was an oven and everyone on the inside was cooking. This was one of his favorite daydreams until he realized he was always pulling out one or two kids who didn’t deserve to die; until his dream was ruined by the escape of Patterson and the other Red Coats.

  Burning the school would not be one hundred percent effective. There’s no guarantee his problems would end there.

  He rolls off his bed and reaches under it for his collection of possible weapons. A pocket knife, a razor blade, a scalpel he took from his mother’s work supply, an ice pick. He throws in the book of matches and then folds the white hand towel around them and stashes it in his backpack.

  Patterson may not be at school tomorrow, but he will be back. And it’ll be the same scene, take two. Only Cameron’s not going to let Patterson or any of his chump friends make a bitch out of him.

  “You’re ours, Grady. . . . This is just the beginning.”

  No, I don’t think so, Cameron thinks. They’re no match for me now. I’m new and improved.

  THURSDAY

  10:10AM

  The drive to Pittsburgh takes two hours. Cameron listens to his iPod. Coldplay. Kid Rock. Eminem. He used to like this music but realizes now that they’re a bunch of whiners. He wants to take off his headphones and put himself out of his misery, but then either his mom or Robbie will talk to him, and he wants that even less. The only reason Cameron got in the car was because his father threatened to come all the way to Erie if he had to. And Randy stood over him, hands in his pockets, his tin star pinned to his chest. His gun clipped to his belt.

  Cameron wonders briefly if there is any way he could get Randy’s gun from him. There are school shootings all the time. They’re in the news for a few days and then it’s like they didn’t happen.

  He heard Randy tell his mom, after the last shooting hit the news, that there’ll be more of them. Cameron believed it even then.

  But Randy always wears the gun when he’s around; he never takes it off, never puts it down. Even when he’s not in uniform the gun’s holstered at his waist.

  Cameron wants to be in school today. He wants it over with. When his mom came into his bedroom this morning and handed him the telephone, saying, “It’s your father,” he knew not to touch it. Not to put it to his ear. The fear caught him around the throat and as soon as Cameron realized what it was, he knew the only way to master it was to face it.

  “What do you want?” Cameron had asked.

  Pause. His father’s face probably went all loose, surprised to hear his number-one son talk back to him.

  “You’re going to talk to your dad that way?” he finally asked, and his voice was like an elevator going up.

  “I don’t want to talk to you at all.” Cameron felt the fear in his body change to something more, like riding a roller coaster that pulled at the rails, thundering toward liftoff.

  “Well, you’re going to talk to me,” his father said. “You’re going to sit your ass in your mother’s car and drive two hours just to talk to me up close and personal.” Cameron could hear the breath dragging through his father’s nose, little bursts of it against the receiver. “If you didn’t go get yourself beat up . . .”

  Sissy boy. I’m not raising sissy boys.

  “. . . if you just stood up for yourself, landed one good punch, no one would mess with you.”

  Been there, done that, Dad. It had about the same effect as grease on a fire.

  “Cameron? Did you hear me?” Cameron let the silence stretch, felt his father’s anger pressing through the phone. “You get your ass in your mother’s car . . .”

  Cameron handed the phone back to his mother with his father still yelling.

  He wants to be in school. He wants to start all over again, almost. He knows enough not to expect everyone will forget the way Patterson put a big bull’s-eye on his back. Not right away. It may take a week or two.

  “Almost there,” his mom says, turning briefly to look at him in the backseat. “Your father’s anxious to see you.”

  She smiles like that’s a good thing. How can she think that? She’s desperate. She doesn’t know what to do with him and so it becomes a father-son thing. “Sometimes a boy needs his father,” she told him this morning.

  “He’ll help you work this out,” she says now.

  No, he won’t. But Cameron doesn’t say so. He turns up the volume on his iPod and stares back at her, his eyes flat, and watches her smile fade. She turns back to the road, her fingers white now on the steering wheel. Inside, he reminds himself: No fear.

  He is no longer afraid of his father. When you’re ready to kill or be killed, fear curls up like a dog and lies at your feet. You can feel it breathing, know it’ll wake up and howl at you if you don’t take control.

  His mom turns off the highway. The diner is built to look like it existed in the 1950s. You can park next to a speaker and order your meals brought to the car, or eat inside with a mini jukebox on your table. They do this, Cameron walking behind his mom and Robbie, stuffing his iPod into his coat pocket.

  His father is sitting at a booth drinking coffee.

  “What took you so long?” he asks.

  Cameron refused to get into the car, until Randy showed up. But his mom doesn’t say this. She doesn’t leave them with their father and take a booth on the other side of the restaurant, either, which is what she usual
ly does when their father wants to see them. She nudges Robbie so that he moves forward, prepared to sit next to their father.

  “Traffic,” his mom says.

  His father stands up and Cameron notices that Robbie is just two or three inches shorter.

  “Traffic? In the middle of a Thursday morning?” His voice is full of doubt and he stands with his hands on his hips waiting for an answer.

  His mom ignores the comment and takes Cameron’s arm. She wants him to slide into the booth ahead of her. She wants a fast escape if she needs it. Cameron gives it to her. He no longer lives afraid.

  Still standing, his father looks down on him. “You lose that mouth between Erie and here?” he wants to know.

  Cameron feels the shake in his knees. He presses his palms flat against his legs, tries to keep his feet from jumping, from pushing him up and out of the booth. He doesn’t run anymore, he reminds himself.

  No fear.

  “Well, Cameron? You want to give it to me now?” his father challenges.

  “Max,” his mother protests.

  Cameron doesn’t doubt that his father will hit him right here, in the middle of the restaurant, with an audience. He keeps his voice low, but steady.

  “I have nothing to say to you.”

  His father nods. “That’s an improvement.” He sits down. “I don’t like the attitude. I gave up a day’s work and drove three hours to take a look at you.” He does this now, his small eyes shifting over Cameron. “You look pretty good to me. You get in any jabs?”

  “A few,” Cameron lies. Out of the corner of his eye he watches his mother’s hands tighten around her purse.

  His father pins her down with his eyes. “He looks fine. What’s so damn important I had to take the day off of work?”

  “Cameron was very upset last night,” she explains.

  “You still upset?”

  “No,” Cameron says.

  “Boys get upset, Maureen. You never did have tolerance for that but that’s the way it is. Men get pissed. We blow off a little steam and it looks like hell is taking over. Then we’re fine.” He turns to Cameron. “Are you fine now?”

  Cameron nods.

  “You know how you’re going to deal with these boys tomorrow?”

  Cameron nods again.

  “Okay. End of story.” His father turns to Robbie. “No one messes with you, do they?” he says. “You take after your dad. More muscle than anyone’s willing to take on.”

  “That’s about right,” Robbie says.

  “Too bad you have your mom’s look,” his dad says to Cameron. “I saw it the day you were born. Knew it would come to this. What you want to do,” he suggests, “is take up some martial arts. Those guys are always small but they kick some mean ass.”

  “He needs more than that,” his mom says. “Talk to him.”

  “You want me to hold his hand, Maureen? He doesn’t want that. What Cameron wants is four inches and fifty pounds. That’s the way a boy thinks. It’s not going to happen, so I gave him the next best thing.”

  “Take a martial arts class,” his mother repeats, her voice rising.

  “Absolutely. They’ll teach him ways of protecting himself you haven’t even dreamed of. Ways that’ll make the other boys turn tail.”

  Cameron likes the image his father created. He would like to see that, Rich Patterson running away with his tail between his legs.

  “He has feelings about this, Max,” his mother presses. “What about that?”

  “He let them out last night, from what you told me. Over and done with.”

  His mother is beginning to realize what a wasted trip this is. A ring of white appears around her lips. Stress. This isn’t turning out the way she planned. Her great white hope, dashed.

  “You’re not going to talk to him?” she says.

  “I just did,” his father says.

  “And that’s it?”

  His mother stands up, pushes her purse under her arm, and tells Cameron and Robbie to get into the car.

  “What the hell?” his father says.

  “We’re not going to eat?” Robbie asks.

  “Not here.”

  “Damn it.” His father stands up but blocks Robbie’s exit. “I gave up a day’s work and drove all the way down here to have lunch with my boys,” he says. “We’re having lunch.”

  Cameron’s mom stands her ground. She turns her head slightly, keeping the boys’ father in her sights, and says, “Get in the car, boys.”

  Robbie climbs over the table, shrugging off their father’s hand, and gives Cameron a push. “Come on, let’s go.”

  To their father, she says, “We didn’t come for lunch, Max. We came for help.”

  “And I gave it.”

  Cameron’s mom turns and herds him and Robbie toward the exit. Cameron hears his father swearing. Hears him shout, “It’s never good enough, is it, Maureen?”

  THURSDAY

  5:30PM

  Cameron is sitting on the deck, balancing the blade of his pocket-knife against his jean-covered thigh. He’s not planning to hurt himself. He just likes holding the knife. He wants his palm to learn the feel of it, the same way blind people learn the feel of things.

  He got the knife when he made Eagle Scout. He did that at fourteen, a month before his whole life went to hell. Most guys don’t make Eagle until they’re sixteen or seventeen. It was a big deal. His father didn’t make it to the ceremony. His mom broke up with Randy the week before, but Cameron remembers taking the sash and the knife and looking out at all the parents and seeing Randy at the back of the room. Out of uniform, his arms crossed over his chest, the smile on his face looked about as comfortable as a sunburn. But he was there, and stayed until the ceremony ended, then left without saying anything to Cameron or his mother.

  He’s had the knife eight months. His mom had his name engraved on the steel blade and ever since it’s been in his dresser drawer, inside a piece of bubble wrap.

  He had forgotten he had it.

  The blade is sharp enough to cut through the thick denim like it’s air. It will slice easily though Patterson’s skin, into his throat. Cameron won’t have to hear the guy’s smug laughter, his taunting voice anymore. That’s why he’s going for the throat. Patterson will die quietly. And Cameron can forget what he did to him in the locker room. Forget it all.

  But even as a fantasy, Cameron is never able to watch Patterson’s death through ’til the end. That’s gotta change. He makes himself stand over Patterson until the guy’s eyes roll back in his head, until his hands fall away from his throat and lay at his sides, his fingers curled into a wannabe fist.

  “You’re dead, Patterson. You’re dead.”

  “You can’t get him off your mind, huh?”

  Cameron’s body jerks until he nearly topples the chair. His pocketknife falls to the deck and scuttles a few feet.

  “Sorry,” Randy says. “I didn’t mean to spook you.”

  Randy picks up the knife, pushes against the handle so that the blade snaps into its sheathing, then hands it to Cameron.

  “I didn’t hear you,” Cameron says. His voice is thick with defense. “I wasn’t spooked.”

  “Startled,” Randy corrects. “Are you planning some revenge?”

  Randy sits down in the chair next to Cameron’s, stretches out his legs, and crosses them at the ankles.

  “You want me to confess?” Cameron’s fist closes over the knife; the sweat from his palm makes it slick.

  “Before you even get a chance to knock the kid around a bit? No.”

  Cameron feels his heart slow. He strokes the smooth plastic handle of the knife with his thumb.

  “He’s bigger than me. Older. A junior.”

  “Yeah. That’s usually the way it goes. The kid probably has about as much courage as a field mouse.”

  “I think I can get a piece of him. I just haven’t tried yet.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  Cameron looks for sarcasm
in Randy’s face, but he’s serious.

  “You don’t sound like a cop,” Cameron says.

  “I’m not trying to be a cop right now.”

  “You sound like my father.”

  “I’m not trying to be him, either. Your mom said he wasn’t much help today.”

  “That surprised her?”

  “Not really. She was hoping, though, that your dad would come through for you.”

  “He never has before.”

  Randy nods. “Not from what I’ve heard.”

  “Mom talks bad about him?”

  “No. She doesn’t talk about him at all. Good or bad. She does things, though, you know? And I can guess how she feels from watching her.”

  Cameron does know. As soon as they got home today his mother went through the house, opening windows, taking down curtains and tossing them in the washing machine. He hears the vacuum cleaner in the living room. Next she’ll wipe down the bookcases and tables and the house will smell like a bushel of overripe lemons. Seeing his father has that effect on her — a need to clean.

  “Yeah,” Cameron says. “She won’t be done ’til midnight.”

  Cameron turns, lets his gaze fall on Randy’s profile. “Did she send you out here?”

  “No. I came up with this idea all on my own. I figure you need someone to talk to even if you don’t think so. You’re at that age now where all hell breaks loose inside your body.” He shakes his head. “I’d cut off a toe or two before I had to relive that.”

  “I’d give up an arm.” If it would change things. If it would drastically improve his situation.

  “Yeah, but later, when high school is just a memory, you’d want your arm back.”

  Cameron turns away, looks across the yard to the woods and follows the swooping ascent of a swallow with his eyes.

  I don’t think so. If losing my arm means Patterson never happened to me, no one calls me Cameron Diaz or fag or girly-boy, if I have friends again, losing an arm doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.

  “So if you’re not talking to me as a cop or as my dad, what are you doing?”