Burn
Copyright © 2008 by Suzanne Phillips
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: November 2008
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN 978-0-316-04097-6
Book design by Alison Impey
Contents
I am blessed with the world’s best editors. Thank you to Nancy Conescu and Harriet Wilson for their unrelenting support.
Thank you, also, to Jerri Borkert and Tamra Winchell, my first readers, for their thoughtful criticism.
3:20PM
Cameron’s mother’s new
family
thing is that you have to tell her everything you did with your day. Last night at dinner he made up an entire Scout meeting.
That
wasn’t hard. He knew they were going to work on slipknots and plan community service. He told his mother he thought he would put in some volunteer hours with Parks and Recreation. He likes being outside. He thought his mother would buy it, not suggest he work at the old folks’ home.
“They really need someone to come in and talk to the seniors. Read them books. That kind of thing,” his mother pressed.
“Or change their diapers,” his younger brother, Robbie, said, and would have laughed until he choked on his chicken, but Randy, their mother’s boyfriend, gave him something to think about: “You want to help him, Robbie? You’re going to need some volunteer hours for Boy Scouts.”
Robbie stuffed his mouth full so he didn’t have to answer.
Their mother leaned closer, tapped the table to get Cameron’s attention.
“What do you think?” she asked.
She smiled, but when Cameron didn’t return it, the corners of her lips fell flat. She’d looked like that a lot, when she was still married to Cameron’s father. Unhappy. Disappointed. Afraid.
Cameron’s stomach twisted into a fierce knot, and he hated that. She was counting on him to come through for her. She didn’t want to worry about him. If it was possible, she’d tuck him into one of her envelopes — bills, coupons, Cameron — and then flit around the house, her office, the grocery store, thinking everything was okay. But it wasn’t.
He was mad all the time. Felt it burning beneath his skin. He probably had a higher body temperature just thinking about school, Rich Patterson and his jock punks, and his father, whom Cameron still wanted to hate but couldn’t.
“Well?”
His mother’s fingers drummed on his forearm. Cameron shook himself out of his thoughts, tried to push down the fire smoldering inside him.
“We’re supposed to look for something that’ll be a good fit,” he told her. Really, the key word was challenging. At the last Scout meeting Cameron actually had attended, they were told to find a new interest, something that would make them think and test their abilities. But talking was something Cameron wasn’t good at. At all. Even talking to his mom was getting hard.
“Cameron, I want you to do something that puts you with people,” his mom said. “You spend too much time alone.”
“I’m never alone,” Cameron protested. “I go to school with a thousand other kids.” None of them were friends. None of them were anything like Cameron. They all belonged. They were players or gamers or geeks. And Cameron didn’t fit with any of them. He was a runner. Too bad sports were ruined for him. His grades weren’t good enough now to even try out for the track team. “I don’t even have my own bedroom,” he finished.
“You had more friends last year,” she pointed out.
That was before ninth grade happened to him. The first week wasn’t so bad; he blended in. He and his buddy Steve had two classes together (science and Spanish); they ate lunch, checking out each table in the cafeteria for the hottest girl. Steve went for legs; Cameron liked the girls who wore too-small T-shirts and put lip gloss on, even in the middle of class.
But everything changed when he went to sports orientation. His whole body clenched like a fist just thinking about it. They held the orientation at night and his mom was late getting home from work, so they were late — just a minute or two — getting to the gym. Cameron didn’t like walking into a meeting already in progress, didn’t like being the only thing for people to look at, but he didn’t have a choice. He was almost to the empty spot in the bleachers, his mom right behind him, when the coach with the microphone tried to direct them to the girls’ gym. Cameron felt his whole body explode with fire. Spontaneous combustion.
He wanted to blame his mom (most of the boys had their fathers with them), but he knew it was his hair, which he had grown out over the summer and was streaked blond by the sun, and his body, which was too small and thin for a guy in high school.
Cameron turned and faced the coach, his whole body stunned and refusing to find cover. The coach stuttered an apology, making the whole thing worse. Then Cameron scrambled into the bleachers and tried to hide.
But it didn’t end there. The next day, Rich Patterson, a junior and an offensive lineman on the varsity football team, found him. Cameron was walking upstairs for first period when an arm, all bunched-up muscle, curled around his neck and pulled him to a stop.
“Looky here, guys — it’s Cameron Diaz.”
And that’s what everyone called him now.
The third week of school, Cameron found his name carved into the bathroom wall: CAMERON DIAZ LOVES STEVE FINELLI. Cameron stared at it while his stomach crawled up his throat. He stared at it until everything turned red, like he had looked at the sun until his eyes fried. He didn’t try to scratch it out; he couldn’t move. The tardy bell rang but didn’t shatter his paralysis. It was the first time he had skipped class. For three days he worried about other guys seeing it — seeing it and laughing and thinking he was gay.
He didn’t tell Steve about it, but someone did. Steve stopped having lunch with him — stopped going to the cafeteria, period. And he found somewhere else to sit in class, clear across the room. When Cameron called him at home, Steve hissed, “I’m no fag, Grady. Stay away from me,” and hung up.
So Cameron went back into the bathroom, a nail he brought from home in his pocket, and was going to scratch out their names, but someone already had. And in black marker someone else had written
FAGS
with an arrow pointing toward where the names had been.
Cameron was ruined the first week of school. His mom didn’t understand: in high school there were no second chances.
“I told you, high school is different.” You could actually turn invisible there, but never when you wanted to.
“Not that different. Everyone makes friends the same way. You find someone who likes to do the things you like and, presto, you’re friends.”
“That’s not how it happens. Not now.” Not ever.
“You could have joined football with Steven.”
“I’m not good at it.”
“How do you know?”
“I weigh a hundred pounds. I’d be roadkill before halftime.”
His mother’s face got that look of concern, where her nose scrunched up and her eyebrows became one big bird of prey. Cameron didn’t like the look, mostly because it made him feel bad, heavy in the chest and like his Adam’s apple was too big for his throat.
“Then what do you want to do?” she asked.
Cameron shrugged.
“I want you to have something you like to do,” she insisted. “And people you like to do it with. Friends are important.”
“Because you had a whole bunch of friends in high school?”
“No, because I didn’t have any,” she said. “Well, I had one friend. One good friend, but that didn’t happen until tenth grade. High school can be a lonely place, Cameron.”
His mother’s fingers swirled around the edge of the salad bowl. She only did that when she was nervous.
Cameron could deal with lonely, but the kids he went to school with, the kids who
ran
the school, were brutal. They roved in packs, flushing the vulnerable out of their shells, cornering them, and taunting or beating on them. Every time he walked through the doors, it was like crossing into enemy camp. He watched his back, spent as little time as he could in the halls, and tried to get through the day without using the bathroom. He stayed away from places where ambush was easy.
“Cameron?” his mom prompted.
“I’m not lonely.”
“Well, you have Scouts,” she said, picking up her fork. “I guess that’s enough. For now. But I want you to do your volunteer hours communing with something other than trees. Seniors are mostly forgotten. I doubt anyone else in the troop will think to volunteer there.”
No kidding. “What would we talk about?”
“Laxatives,” Robbie suggested, and chuckled.
Randy ignored him. “You could read them the newspaper,” he said, dropping his napkin on the table and giving Cameron his full attention.
Cameron didn’t look at him; he felt his skin get tight, like he was standing in hot water. It’s not that he didn’t like Randy Stewart. He just didn’t feel comfortable around him. His mother was always breaking up with the guy and Cameron didn’t know if he was supposed to like him or not. So he never spent more time with him than he had to. Never talked to him unless Randy started the conversation.
“I don’t read the newspaper,” Cameron said. He put enough ‘mind your own business’ into his tone that he hoped Randy would pick up on it.
He did. He smiled at Cameron like any offense was forgiven and suggested, “You can start with the sports page. That’d be painless.”
Probably. If he stayed with it. If he started going back to Scouts regularly. It wouldn’t be too bad, reading about baseball and March Madness. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at Randy.
“Maybe,” Cameron said.
“You’ll ask?” his mother pressed.
“Yeah.”
5:00PM
Cameron cuts through the woods on his way home. It’s faster and there’s enough space between the trees and rocks that he can push his bike through. He knows these woods like he knows his backyard. When he was a little kid he built a fort here, he and his friends. They smuggled chips and sodas from their houses and sat out here telling made-up monster stories and trading baseball cards. But that was a long time ago.
Cameron finds a boulder with a flat surface, lets his bike drop into the grass, and opens the plastic wrap around the package Mrs. Murdock gave him. Banana-nut muffins. They’re still warm and Cameron lowers his face and breathes in the sweet steam. He sits down, plucks the nuts from the tops of each muffin, and tosses them into the brush for the squirrels. Then he eats the muffins, all three.
Mrs. Murdock bakes while Cameron is working in her yard. She moves around her kitchen, slow but determined, and he tries real hard not to look at the window where she sometimes stops and peers out at him. Mrs. Murdock treats him like she would her grandson, if she had one. He wishes she did. Cameron doesn’t want to disappoint her, but he knows he will. He doesn’t know how to make people happy. He was assigned to Mrs. Murdock by his Scout leader. The project was supposed to last four weeks and end in February; it’s March 11th.
Cameron put in his community service hours, but Mrs. Murdock’s yard was a jungle and it took weeks just to cut back the overgrown bushes and trim the trees. Today, he put new boards in her fence and mowed her lawn and she spoke to him about turning over a small patch of dirt in the back corner for a garden. So he supposes he’ll be back next Sunday, too. And that’s how he spent his afternoon.