Burn (17 page)
“And nothing else happened?” Randy asked. “You didn’t see or hear anyone else in the locker room?”
Cameron shook his head. “I didn’t see anything. Just what was going on inside my head.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to separate that from what’s really going on.”
“I don’t have that problem.”
“You’ve never felt disconnected?” Randy asks. “It’s not unusual for someone who’s been the target of abuse to lose focus, drift from reality. It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder. We see it a lot in people who suffer from domestic violence.”
“You mean because Dad was violent? You think maybe I check out when things get tough?”
“I’m just saying it’s common.”
Cameron shakes his head. “When Dad hit us, after a while I just put myself somewhere else when it was happening. Is that what you’re talking about?”
“You say you have no problem separating dream from reality?”
“I might have a little bit of that,” Cameron says. “Sometimes I watch my life happening like I’m in the audience and not living it.”
Randy nods. “Does that happen a lot?”
“I can’t control it. I don’t even know when it happens, just suddenly I’m seeing myself from the outside.”
“And not feeling what’s going on inside?”
“Sometimes I don’t feel anything.”
“Do you know a boy named Charlie Pinon?”
“Yeah. He’s a perv.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He hides out in the showers and watches us.”
“You’ve seen him do this?”
Cameron nods.
“Was he doing it yesterday?”
“He did it every day.”
“The coach said he wasn’t good at sports. That he didn’t always make it to class.”
Cameron shrugs. “I don’t know about that.”
“You know he’s the boy who was killed?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“It was either him or me,” Cameron says.
“What does that mean?”
“We were Patterson’s favorites.”
“You think Patterson did it?”
It never would have happened if Patterson didn’t exist.
“Patterson wasn’t in school,” Randy points out. “He was suspended.”
“Patterson runs the school.”
“Did you see him on campus yesterday?”
“I didn’t look for him.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Your PE lock is missing,” Randy says. “It’s not on your locker.”
“It’s not missing. I have it.”
“You have your lock?”
“Yeah. I didn’t put it back on. The coach said he’d move me back to my old locker.”
“Where is the lock now?”
“In my backpack.”
“Where’s your backpack?”
Cameron was going to say here, in his bedroom, where he always keeps it when he’s not in school. But then he sees the last minutes in the locker room play out in front of his eyes. He grabbed his bag, stuffed with his jeans and T-shirt, slammed the locker door shut, ran up the stairs to the gym.
“It’s in my PE locker. The new one.”
Randy nods. “We have it,” he says. “We went through it. The lock isn’t there.”
“You went through my backpack? You’re not allowed to do that!”
“It was left at the crime scene and taken as evidence.” Randy pins him with his eyes. “You had a lot of sharp objects in the bag. A razor, a scalpel.”
Cameron nods. “I thought Patterson was going to be in school.”
“What we’re you going to do with them?”
“Protect myself.”
“You don’t know what happened to your lock?”
“No. You do,” Cameron guesses.
“I think it was used to kill Pinon,” Randy says. “A combination lock was found close to his body. There’s a number on it. The coach keeps a list of all lock numbers and combinations.” He pushes aside his notebook. “The number matches your lock.”
4:00AM
He wakes up out of breath, a fist locked around his throat, and realizes he’s still stuck in his dream. A dream where he died. He knew it was coming and didn’t run. It passed through him, stealing the air from his lungs, silencing the scream that burned his lips.
Cameron lies still in his bed, eases his fingers from their twisted grip in the sheets, and waits.
He thinks about all the things he’ll miss. His mother moving around in the kitchen. She hums when she cooks and taps the spoon against the counter keeping time. Robbie’s face. There’s something a little off with having a soft, believing face and a body as big as his. It makes Cameron think there is hope. The view from his bedroom window. Treetops all the way to the lake.
He draws a breath that stabs him in the chest.
Cameron realized last night, after talking to Randy, that his life is over. He was right from the beginning, there are no do-overs.
He slides out of bed, gathers his running clothes, and changes without turning on the light. Robbie is sleeping, the air whistling in his nose. It used to be his brother flopped around in bed, caught up in nightmares that featured their father, painted red, taller than he really is, and swinging hands that were iron mallets or ax blades. But time has been good to his brother. Cameron doubts he’ll ever stop dreaming about his father. He was too old when his mom finally left him; his memory is solid.
He slips out the door, down the stairs, and through the kitchen. On the deck, with the sun burning the edge of the night sky, he’s able to make out the lighter shadows of chairs and tables, and walks around them. His footsteps stir the gravel in the driveway, but the sound is no louder than a whisper.
He wonders if, when he dies, he’ll be able to come back, live among his family, unseen but close. The ghost he didn’t want to be.
The air is cool, cleans out his lungs. He walks until he finds the woods and then uses his hands, in the deeper shadows under the trees, to feel his way to the trail that winds through the park and down to the lake. Owls hoot at one another. He disturbs a flock of bats that squeal and wheel off against the black night. When he reaches the trailhead it’s light enough that he can see the mist of his breath in the air.
He doesn’t have to speak to his body. His knees lift and his legs follow through like the pistons of a train. He wants to feel the burn in his lungs and the moment of takeoff. He doesn’t let his mind drift to images of him bursting through tape, to the feel of a gold medal around his neck.
Dreams are a thing of the past.
He wonders what Pinon dreamed of. Did he want to move the world forward in some way? When he wasn’t jumping at Cameron’s heels or being pushed around between Red Coats like a ball in the paws of a Doberman, or lurking in the showers, he was in class smoking everyone else. He was easily a better math student than Cameron. Was he going to use that to make a dent in the world?
Cameron doubts it. It takes courage to go the distance. Confidence. Pinon didn’t have it. Not an ounce of it.
He killed Charlie Pinon. He makes himself hold the thought, just Pinon, pushing Patterson and his flunkies, and his own anger and fear down and out, and seeing only Pinon in his mind. A small kid, like him, with arms thinner than Popsicle sticks. And no friends. Cameron’s breath bottles up in his throat; he runs through it. He wipes the mucus from under his nose, not slowing.
At the beginning of the year, Cameron felt sorry for Pinon. He even covered for him once, standing in the way of a tide of red while Pinon streaked into the restroom and cowered in a stall, standing up on the toilet and shaking so much the toilet seat clattered. By Christmas, Cameron thought to himself that someone should put the guy out of his misery. It was an idle thought. Not something he ever planned to be a part of. But in the end, Pinon bothered him. Even looking at the guy filled him with anger. Pinon on the outside was what Cameron felt like on the inside: small and weak. He hated looking at the kid and seeing himself. He hated that the Red Coats thought he and Pinon were the same breed of scared.
Cameron runs through a patch of sunlight. As the trail slopes downward he catches his first glimpse of the lake, the water the color of steel. There are others on the trail now. Bikers pass him, a mother pushing a jog stroller. His eyes focus on a pair of runners ahead; he picks up his pace, lengthening his stride, planning to overtake them, blow past them, run until his heart explodes in his chest.
1:30PM
“Let’s sit down,” the cop, the one with the tie that’s braided like a noose, says and points to the couch.
Cameron takes the chair and watches Randy walk around the coffee table, settle into the end of the couch closest to him. The two cops stand a minute longer, both looking at Cameron, silent and accusing.
Cameron returns their stare. He’s not afraid of them. Name, rank, and serial number.
“You’re a sophomore at Madison High?”
“Freshman,” Cameron corrects them, knowing they already know this. It was a lame attempt to challenge his honesty.
“Freshman.” The cop writes it down in his notebook then asks, “How do you like school?”
“I don’t,” Cameron admits.
“There’s nothing wrong with that. A lot of kids don’t like school,” Good Cop says.
Cameron doesn’t respond. He lets the silence build and though his shoulders begin to ache, he knows now is not the time to move them.
“You have a good man on your side,” Bad Cop says, nodding toward Randy.
“That’s what he tells me.”
Cameron’s mom enters the room with a glass of soda on ice and places it in front of Cameron.
“You might get thirsty,” she says.
She looks at the cops, her face stiff. She folds her arms over her stomach and seems to grow a few inches.
“Nothing for us,” Bad Cop says.
“That’s good, because that’s exactly what you’re getting.”
She turns to Randy and places a hand on Cameron’s shoulder.
“Let me know when they get around to asking about the attack on Cameron.
The crime against my son,
” she repeats and turns back to the cops. “It happened on Tuesday, in the boys’ locker room.”
“We’re aware of it, ma’am. I believe arrests were made in that case.”
“Arrested and released,” Cameron’s mom says.
“That’s the law,” Bad Cop says and tweaks his noose-for-a-tie. “Last I heard, the D.A. plans to take the case to court. You’ll get your justice.”
His mom knows this. Cameron heard her on the phone, talking to the D.A., twice last week. She doesn’t like the law that allows violent criminals on the street and when the D.A. told her that’s the reality, she hung up on him.
“The thing I keep asking myself is will Charlie’s parents get justice?” Bad Cop asks.
His mom’s face turns to stone.
“You can speak to my son for ten minutes.” She checks her watch. “Not a minute more.”
She walks out of the room and even Cameron can feel the temperature go up. This isn’t the first time she’s defended him. Before they left his father, she stood in front of him and Robbie, her skinny hands reaching behind her, pushing at them, trying to get them to run out the door to safety. They never left her.
“Your mom’s a good one to have in your corner,” Good Cop says.
“You’re wasting time,” Randy barks.
“You took a beating last week,” Bad Cop says. “Did it make you mad?”
“Yeah. I was pretty much pissed off all week after that.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“But you planned to do something,” Good Cop says.
“Yeah. I was going to kill Patterson. I wanted to, anyway. But he wasn’t at school.”
“Want isn’t the same thing as intent,” Randy points out.
“And intent isn’t commit. We know it,” Good Cop says.
“We found weapons in your backpack.”
“I know.”
“Where did you get the scalpel?”
“I took it from my mother’s work bag.”
“She’s a doctor?”
“No. She works in the lab at the hospital, though.”
Bad Cop nods. “Straight blade razor. What were you going to do with that?”
“Ask another question,” Randy says.
“I want to establish intent.”
“You already did.”
“Your teachers say you were angry and non-communicative on Friday,” Good Cop says.
“Okay.”
“You agree with that?”
“I was angry.”
“How many times do you want him to say it?” Randy asks. “Move on.”
“You fought with your PE coach?”
“It wasn’t a fight,” Randy corrects. “It was an argument.”
“You had an argument with your PE coach on Friday?”
“Yes.”
“What was it about?”
“He changed my locker and I didn’t like it.”
“What did you do about it?”
“I told him I wanted my old locker back.”
“Did he agree?”
“He didn’t disagree. He said he was sorry he had acted without asking.”
“Did you suit up for PE?”
“Did the coach say I did?”
“Answer the question.”
“You know the answer.”
“Answer the question, Cameron,” Randy says.
Cameron sighs. “I suited up for PE on Friday.”
“You get there on time?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I was talking to the coach. By the time we were done I had two minutes to change.”
“The coach says you got to the gym when play was already in motion.”
“That’s right.”
“So you were about ten minutes late?”
“Maybe five minutes late.”
“The coach says it was closer to ten.”
Cameron shrugs.
“Move on,” Randy says.
“Why did it take you so long to dress?”
“I was pretty steamed about the locker change. I guess I sat a while thinking about it.”
“What were you thinking?”
“That I didn’t like it.”
“Why?”
“I wanted everything back to normal,” Cameron says. “I wanted to forget about everything and no one would let me.”
“You wanted to forget that Patterson and his friend attacked you?”
“That’s right.”
“Did they touch you? Your genitalia?”
“That’s it,” Randy says, standing up. “We’re done.”
“No,” Cameron says, “we’re not done.” He stands up and moves in front of Randy. “They didn’t touch me. I told him that, too.” He jerks his finger at Randy. “And I don’t want anyone thinking they did.”