Burn (19 page)
Like a baby. A scared baby.
“I’m not coming back,” Cameron says again.
“You have to.”
12:35PM
SciFi catches up with Cameron in the hall.
“I’ve been looking for you all day,” he says.
“I just got here,” Cameron admits. He keeps walking, down tech alley toward their computer class. If it’d been up to him he wouldn’t be here, but his mom called Randy and Randy drove by the house in his cruiser. He practically tossed Cameron in the backseat then wasted no time getting him to school.
“Don’t I at least get a phone call?” Cameron asked.
“You think this is funny?” Randy demanded. “You think this won’t happen for real? Only you won’t be going to school, you’ll be going to jail.”
“What’s the difference?”
“In jail you’ll become some scum’s bar of soap.”
Cameron was quiet after that.
So there was a difference. Not much, but one he could appreciate.
“When are you going to realize I’m trying to help you? When are you going to start helping yourself?” he wanted to know.
“I am helping myself,” Cameron said.
“Jeffries thinks you have a death wish. He thinks you have your mind made up and there’s no changing it. You know what he thinks?”
“He told me.”
“
Jail.
He thinks you want to go to jail. Is that true?”
“I think that’s where I’m going.”
“You killed that kid,” Randy said. “That doesn’t mean you’re a murderer.”
“I know.”
“My mom wanted to keep me home,” SciFi says, snagging Cameron’s attention. “Statistically, this is the safest school in the nation right now.”
Cameron tries to process that as they push past a handful of kids knotted in the hall. He notices that some have black bands tied around their arms.
“What are those for?” Cameron asks.
“They’re in mourning,” SciFi says. “A lot of kids are wearing them.”
“No one liked Pinon.”
“I know. It’s screwed up.”
Cameron wants to take a good look at SciFi’s face. He wonders if he’s still bruised, if his teeth are fixed.
They slip through the door to their computer class and take their seats. Then Cameron turns on his swivel stool and looks into SciFi’s face. Not as dramatic as he was expecting. A faint splotch of lavender and robin’s egg blue is spread across his cheekbone, under his left eye, and into his hairline. Definitely an improvement over the last time Cameron saw him.
“Not so bad,” Cameron decides.
“I was a one-eyed Cyclops on Wednesday,” SciFi says. “And watch this.” He opens his mouth and pulls on a front tooth. It comes off in his hand. “This is temporary. I lost four veneers. My parents went through the roof. Made me spill names, called a lawyer, and now Patterson’s parents are footing the bill for a new set.” He pushes the temporary cap back in place. “Where have you been?”
Cameron shrugs. “Home.”
“You didn’t want to come back, huh? I don’t blame you. Patterson is a prick. What he did to you, and putting those pictures on the ’net, now
everyone
knows he’s a prick. Even if he does come back to Madison he has nothing and no one to come back to.”
Cameron feels a knife twist in his chest when SciFi brings up the photos. He tries to focus instead on the idea that Patterson is ruined.
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s out of control,” SciFi says. “The reason I look so good —” he stops and rubs a hand over his face, “is that his friends realized it, too. They came at me, pushing and pulling, swinging, and Patterson yelling. Some guy rolled under my legs and I went down like a brick house and Patterson was kicking me and foaming at the mouth. He was so red in the face he looked like he came right out of hell. His friends started backing off. I looked at their faces and saw it there. Patterson scared them. Some of them pulled him away, even before the cops got there.”
“Maybe things will get better,” Cameron says. “Maybe not.”
“They’ll get better. Patterson’s gone and we have a killer among us. It’s got to get better.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“We’re walking in a combat zone,” SciFi says.
“It’s always been that.”
Their teacher, Mrs. Marks, walks through the door with a stack of papers in her arms. She passes them out as the bell rings and then explains that, due to the tragedy they’re all experiencing, they won’t begin work on their next project — which she handed out on Friday.
“We’re going to read about software programs today,” she says. She passes out articles photocopied from a computer magazine. “I want you to write a brief statement identifying the value of each product.”
Her thoughts seem fragmented, at least to Cameron. He feels his mind drift. He thinks about Patterson at home, kicking back, laughing at the memories he has of Cameron, stuffed like a pig. He thinks about the locker room, the cops in there scraping DNA off the shower floor. He doesn’t know Marks is standing in front of him until she taps his desk with her knuckles.
“You weren’t here on Friday,” she says to Cameron. “I hope you’re feeling better. What happened, well, it’s inexcusable and I’m sorry for it.” Her face is soft. She looks like she’s about to cry. “The whole world is going crazy, isn’t it?”
She walks away but turns and says, “I paired you up with Elliott for the next project. I hope that’s all right. The two of you work well together.”
Then she drifts off, toward her desk, and Cameron feels like maybe she’s a little lost. A boat without a captain. And that’s how it is the rest of the day. Cameron’s Spanish teacher writes a page number on the board and asks them to work quietly at their desks. She doesn’t explain the assignment and no one asks questions. Cameron takes out his notebook and writes down the page number at the top. He scratches in the Roman numeral I, counts out ten spaces and then fills in the Roman Numeral II, planning to do both exercises, but then he’s back again, in the locker room, watching the cops collect ceramic tiles and poke through the shower drains.
4:00PM
Robbie is already home when Cameron walks through the door. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, a textbook open, but he’s not reading it and the paper in front of him is blank except for a large X carved by the sharp point of a pencil. His face is doughy, his cheeks rubbed pink. Cameron can’t let himself look at his brother too long. Doesn’t let himself think about what’s going on inside Robbie’s head. His brother is a worrier. Always has been. And for days he’s been walking around the house, sometimes at Cameron’s heels, saying nothing, but staying close.
“Mom called,” Robbie says, breaking into Cameron’s thoughts. “Twice. Where have you been?”
“At school.”
It’s four o’clock. He took the bus home, got off, and walked into the woods. March is almost over and that means that just about every tree has a bird’s nest in it, filled with eggs or babies who don’t know how to fly yet. He sat beneath a sugar maple with a handful of its green pods and separated their sticky joints, stuck his fingertips into their pockets, and wore them like feathers. He wants to fly away. That would be his superpower, if someone was handing them out. He’s almost there already. Sometimes, when he’s running, when the air is cool and snaps against his skin and he no longer feels his feet hit the ground, he’s almost there.
“Your lawyer is coming. Mom wants you to know that. The cops are coming, too. They’re going to take your fingerprints.”
The beginning of the end.
“Randy says all that’ll prove is you touched your own lock,” Robbie says. “The police think you killed that boy.”
“I know.”
“Did you?”
Cameron lets his gaze hit Robbie square in the face. He sucks up his brother’s uncertainty. Robbie wants to believe in him.
“You think I did?”
“No. But everybody else does. Even the newspaper is making predictions.”
“Yeah? What does it say?”
“It says the police have one suspect, another boy who attends Madison High.”
“And the police are coming here. So I must be it.”
“They have a warrant.”
“Yeah. Randy made them do that.”
“The paper says whoever did it will be tried as an adult. They’re going to try to do that.”
“Lethal injection,” Cameron says. He feels the slow burn up from his wrist, his veins on fire. Fire won’t be so bad. “What’s in that stuff?”
“Sodium chloride.”
“You’re a smart kid, Robbie.”
“It was in the paper. I don’t know what it does. I mean, if it hurts.”
“I think maybe it’ll burn a little,” Cameron says. “And then there’s nothing. You ever wonder what happens to birds who fly too high? You know, they break through the atmosphere and are suddenly in outer space?”
“They die.” Robbie is crying. “They suffocate and die.”
And maybe that’s how it is. The chemicals hit your heart, freeze it when you’re still alive and know it’s over, and you have that one moment to hold onto forever.
Cameron focuses on his brother, wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve and looking about six years old. Looking like he did when their father was raging and they were locked behind their bedroom door with their mother, praying the wood wouldn’t splinter.
“Don’t cry, Robbie. Everything’s going to be okay.”
6:10PM
Mr. Jeffries knocks on the kitchen door, then opens it and sticks just his head through.
“Hi. Your mom told you I was coming?”
He slips inside, carrying a leather briefcase too packed to close all the way. Cameron doesn’t get up from the table. He nudges his half glass of milk back and forth between his fingertips and watches his lawyer walk toward him in a kind of slow motion that’s really a trick of the mind. Cameron can’t alter the rotation of the world. The end is coming, and not on his terms.
“The police are pulling into the driveway,” Jeffries says. “They’re going to take your fingerprints. They want to ask you a few questions. I told them we’d listen. I didn’t promise answers.”
He sets the briefcase on a chair and sifts through it until he comes to a stack of yellow papers stapled together.
“I have a couple of questions, too,” he says. “The cops found a second blood type in the locker room. More specifically, on a single shower tile, on the combination lock, and in the hair of the victim,” he reads from his notes. “Could that blood belong to you?”
“Anything’s possible,” Cameron says.
Jeffries steps closer. “Turn your hands over.”
Cameron releases the glass and turns his palms up. There are marks on his right hand, a small circular bruise where maybe the spin notch of the lock pressed against his skin. Worse, between his middle and ring fingers there’s a purple gash now covered with a thin layer of new skin. Cameron watches the sun set in Jeffries’s face.
“How did you get that?” he asks.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell, remember?”
Jeffries sinks into a chair at the table. From outside come the sharp clicks of car doors slamming.
“Okay. We’re going to have to regroup,” Jeffries says. “For now, do exactly as I tell you.” He pauses, rubs a hand over his forehead, and pushes back his hair. “Unless stated on the warrant, you don’t have to show them your hands. So don’t. Keep your palms down while they roll your prints.”
Cameron sees the cops through the window before they knock. Good Cop and Bad Cop again. And Randy. He’s standing behind the other cops, in full uniform, his face about as flat as a plate. Cameron wonders why Randy doesn’t open the door. He never knocks anymore.
Jeffries stands up and moves toward them. “Don’t answer any questions without my approval,” he warns. “They ask, you wait for me to tell you it’s okay. Got it?”
Cameron nods. He pushes himself up until he’s sitting tall in his chair. His fingers curl into his palms and he taps his fists against his thighs under the table.
Jeffries opens the door and holds it wide and then the room is too full and the air is suddenly thin.
“Hi, Cameron,” Good Cop says. “How you doing today?”
Cameron looks at Jeffries.
“You can answer that.”
“Fine,” Cameron says.
“You have him on a tight leash,” Bad Cop says. “Why’s that?” He looks at Cameron. “You hiding something?”
“Shut up, Finney,” Randy says and walks around the two cops and takes a seat next to Cameron at the table. “Take the prints.”
Good Cop pulls the plastic box from his coat pocket and asks Cameron if he wouldn’t mind standing and walking over to the counter. Cameron waits for Jeffries’ nod and then rises from his chair. His legs are full of the tired that comes after running seven or eight miles at full speed. He shuffles to the counter where Good Cop is setting up.
“Let’s see the warrant,” Jeffries says. “And then you can take the prints.”
“We showed it to Randy.”
“Great. Now show it to me,” Jeffries says, and takes his place next to Cameron.
Bad Cop tosses the warrant to Jeffries. “You’re not going to like it,” he warns.
Cameron feels his gut clench but breathes through it. He watches Jeffries eyes shift as he reads, lifting several pages, taking his time.
“Fingerprints, blood, and house,” Jeffries says. “We’re fine with that.”
Good Cop takes Cameron’s left hand, rolls each finger through an ink pad and then onto a piece of paper that’s separated into a grid. Cameron holds his hand stiff, breathes through his nose, feels his pulse slam against the veins in his wrist.
“Loosen up.” Good Cop shakes Cameron’s hand, rolls his thumb over the paper, then reaches for his right hand.
“Not used to holding hands with a guy?” Bad Cop asks.
“Shut up,” Randy says again, his voice so tight Cameron thinks it might snap in two.
“You need to loosen up, too,” Bad Cop tells Randy. “You know what’s coming.”
“You’re not going to find anything,” Randy says.
“You’ve already been through the house?” Bad Cop asks. “We figured as much. Figured we’d find it super clean. That’s okay. The prints and the blood will probably be enough.”
Good Cop runs Cameron’s fingers through the ink and across the paper. He feels the cop’s fingers move on his palm, over the peeled skin of his healing cut.