Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (28 page)

CHRISTINA WAS THE
first of us to hear the news.

She'd gone to bed just past ten, her family asleep and the house silent. But when she lay in bed, she kicked at her sheets and stared at the ceiling. Wind pushed against the double-paned windows of her bedroom and she sat up, crossed the room to her desk. She'd thought all night of what Matt had said, that there was nothing left in any home but smoke and ash. Had thought of it all evening through episodes of
The Twilight Zone
that she and her father had watched about the last man on earth, a talking doll, a gremlin on the wing of a commercial flight. Through her window a full moon rose above the roof of her neighbor's house. Her limbs felt agitated. Her hands itched to pick up the phone. The receiver so close, just on her nightstand, close enough to dial Ryan's number.

She imagined him at home, leg propped up, his picture frame shattered and his window broken. She felt no remorse.
I was here
. She'd wanted to scream it at him instead of launching a rock.
We were something.
As if it mattered anymore. Her French homework lay on her desk: Timber Creek's classrooms, the lack of light, the bare walls. French class. Algebra. She couldn't imagine doing it all over again tomorrow and on Wednesday and every day from here. She envisioned her afternoon English class, the only class that contained an empty desk. Alexander Chen. His desk vacant. Christina
knew Alexander had been in the library. She knew he'd been only feet from Zola hiding in the stacks.

Christina pulled a pen from the desk drawer. First shapes. Triangles, hearts. She could have written a profile for Alexander. She knew she would have to eventually. She pressed her fists into her closed eyes and in the darkness saw the blue of a pool. Elise's funeral. What she hadn't had the endurance to attend. A profile she knew would be the worst, the hardest to write. She dragged her pen across the page and let herself spell nothing more than the letters of her own name. Elise's wet hand tagging hers in the women's medley relay. Elise on the way to meets, the stereo currenting through the car on the breeze of wide-open windows. The letters in Christina's notebook began to take the form of a sentence, the first she could think to write:
Elise Nguyen, a junior at Lewis and Clark, was well-known for her academic achievements.
The start of a profile. The blandest of openings, the staid language of formality that the yearbook required. A tone she didn't know if she could keep. A tone of decorum she and Elise had never used between them.
Had.
A verb tense strange on her tongue. A past tense that only two weeks ago had been the ever-present now, a girl keeping pace with her breathing through the water. The words came. She listened to nothing but the sound of pen pulled across paper. A gentle sound. A meditation. Nothing but the smooth ball of a pen and rough paper and the full moon and the quiet of her room.

And then a siren: faint and far, the familiar sound of a car being pulled over for speeding. The background din of the suburbs, an everyday noise, as accustomed as the constant hum of the highway beyond her neighborhood shuttling toward the heart of the city. But then one siren became two. Then three. Then a compounding of louder sirens: the approach of an ambulance, drawing nearer.

Behind it, the unmistakable horn of a fire truck.

Christina felt her body go numb. Felt every ounce of energy she'd summoned to write about Elise escape her. Felt her hand
drop the pen, a thud against her desk. She looked out the window and saw nothing, just the dark of her street and the moon hanging high, oblivious. And then a single police car whizzed past, its lights dimmed, no indication of emergency but for its speed.

Christina—

Her father's voice at the cracked-open door, his face pale and stricken in the hallway. She knew he'd been asleep only moments before and knew immediately in the wake of the past week: how thin the sleep of a parent.

Something's happening, he said.

Simon? she could only think to ask.

He's already up, her father said, and motioned her from her room and down the hallway, where her brother was sleepy but awake on the living room couch, the bay window's curtains wide-open on the illumined flash of another police car racing past.

Dad, what's happening? Simon said.

Let's just stay here, her father said. Let's stay right here until we know.

He sat on the couch beside Simon and waved Christina toward him, his arm curved into the shape of welcoming. She was sixteen. She was not a child. She crossed the living room and let his arm encircle her, one around her shoulders, the other around Simon. Another police car drove by, then an unmarked van moving too fast for a residential street. Christina leaned into the warmth of her father's shoulder, his heartbeat palpable through the thin cotton of his shirt. The harsh trumpeting of a single fire truck multiplied to the dissonant chorus of two then three and they saw through the window the lights of their neighbor's house turn on then those of the house to the left and to the right, and then Christina saw Mr. Wilcox emerge onto his porch.

The Wilcoxes were their neighbors directly across the street: the neighbors who gathered their mail when they were out of town, the people her father discussed rogue thunderstorms and long winters
with. Christina had written them thank-you notes every year for the candy apples and king-size chocolate bars they set aside for her and Simon on Halloween. She knew the Wilcoxes still spoke of this to her father, even now, how Christina's notes had always been thorough even in the wide penmanship of first grade and how proud the Wilcoxes were that she'd joined the yearbook staff, how they'd always known she'd be a writer. Christina glanced out the window as Mr. Wilcox walked across his front porch and stepped onto his lawn, his wife visible in the window behind him.

Stay here, her father said. I'll be right back.

Christina and Simon watched out the window as their father walked across the lawn and met Mr. Wilcox at the sidewalk.

Whose house do you think it is? Simon asked, and something ached in Christina's chest. That in only a week they'd come to expect this. That somewhere close, someone was burning.

I don't know, she said. She scanned her memory for who lived closest and within seconds she zeroed in on Jacob Jensen. A boy she barely knew beyond sharing elementary school classrooms, beyond Matt having once admitted to a crush. A boy whose mother she recalled seeing at Principal Jeffries's funeral, a mother only two streets away.

Jacob, Christina said. Jacob Jensen. He lived on Walnut.

Echoing already in her brain: lived. Everywhere the past tense.

The soccer forward? Simon said.

The sirens grew louder. Through the window Christina could see Mr. Wilcox gesturing down the street. Christina watched her father nod and turn back to the house.

Richard thinks it's two streets over, he said when he returned.

Jacob Jensen's house. Christina glanced up. On Walnut. It has to be.

Her father grabbed his coat from behind the front door.

Stay here, he said. Richard and I are going to walk up the street to see what's happening. Lock the door behind me. And don't go anywhere.

Can we come? Simon asked.

I don't think that's a good idea.

Christina sat forward. Dad. Can we come? I need to see.

She didn't know why she'd said it, didn't know what it was she needed to witness. She'd already seen Benji Ndolo's house. She knew what a home looked like in flames.

Her father hesitated. I don't want you to see anything.

What haven't we already seen? Christina asked.

Isn't it better for all of us to be together anyway? Simon said.

Her father sighed. Fine. Follow me closely, but if there's any danger, we're coming home immediately.

Christina pulled on her coat and they stepped out the front door, the air nipping her skin. The moon shone bright, a hole shot through the sky. Wind gathered leaves at their feet as they met Mr. Wilcox at the sidewalk.

Family outing? His voice gruff. He'd been a smoker as far back as Christina could remember. She recalled so many afternoons playing in the yard while he stood on his porch with a cigarette, a fixture of her childhood.

We figured it'd be best to stay together, her father said.

They walked down the sidewalk, Christina next to Simon, Mr. Wilcox and her father side by side in front of them. Christina pulled her coat tighter, hands stuffed into her pockets, and Simon kept his gaze down as they walked, hair falling across his eyes. No more police cars rushed past, the street empty though people gathered on porches. Some of her neighbors spilled into the street. Mrs. Skinner, a retired postal worker who lived alone three houses down, moved beneath a streetlamp toward the noise. Mr. and Mrs. Rosenstein, an elderly couple five houses down, stood near their mailbox and leaned into one another. And Mr. Edwards, a young father whose wife and two toddlers were surely somewhere inside their house, stepped onto the sidewalk ahead of Mr. Wilcox, his flannel pajama pants poking down like stalks beneath his coat.
Mr. Wilcox lit a cigarette and Christina watched the smoke escape into the air, the scent of tobacco mixing with the faint scent of ash. At the end of their street, Christina saw the reason for the lack of traffic. A flashing police car sat parked at the intersection, blocking cars from entering or exiting the neighborhood. Christina's father glanced at Mr. Wilcox, his face filled with uncertainty. They turned anyway down Cumberland, on toward Walnut, an immediate right up ahead.

As soon as they rounded the corner, Christina saw it: six fire trucks, two ambulances, more police cars than she could count, and Jacob's house in the middle of all of them. On fire. The flames rose high above the row of houses lining the right side of Cumberland. As they moved closer Christina's father stood in front of her and Simon, his body their shield. They stopped well before the intersection of Walnut and Cumberland, the street blocked off and filled with emergency vehicles. Mr. Wilcox ground his cigarette into the sidewalk. People crowded around on porches and on their lawns, some of whom Christina recognized in passing and others she was sure she'd never seen. A skinny woman in foam curlers, the kind Christina remembered her mother sleeping in when she was a little girl and her parents were still married. A teenager in street clothes, about her age, someone she'd never noticed who surely attended one of St. Louis's many private schools. A young couple who looked to be in their early twenties, not much older than Christina, the woman in a thick bathrobe and the man in a tracksuit. How was it that these people lived one street over, that she'd shared a neighborhood with them for years and never noticed them? What was it that made them a community? What drew them from their homes to the sound of sirens, to watch the flames reach the full moon, to watch a life burn?

Did Jacob have siblings? Simon asked.

I don't think so, Christina said. His mother lived alone.

A team of police officers passed them on foot, carrying
barricades to block off the street. Christina's family and Mr. Wilcox were pushed back behind barriers along with everyone else in the street, onto the sidewalk and the lawns of homes along Cumberland, but Christina could still see firefighters. Their suits iridescent, caught by moonlight. She saw a hydrant ripped open, water bursting down the street's gutters. Fire trucks parked at angles, a maze of flashing lights and sirens. Firemen spilling between them, hoisting ladders, dragging hoses ballooning with pressure. And people pushed to the sidelines beside her, some of them with cameras, some shouting questions at the police. She watched the flames serrate the sky. So much dark around them. The moon glaring back down, a puncture wound above them.

How the hell are they going to put something like that out? shouted Mr. Wilcox, his voice lost to the crackle of fire and the growing surge of water. No one answered him. Christina couldn't believe the heat, even from another street over. She took in the scent of burning, a campfire smell but also something else: something chemical beyond wood and paper, the burning of plastics and wire and human hair.

Dad?

What is it, Chris?

She couldn't look at him. Do you think she made it? Jacob's mother. Do you think she made it out?

Her father met her eyes and looked away. Another police car edged past them, lights flashing, siren howling through the barricades.

Christina felt the fabric of her brother's shirt beside her, the rise of his shoulders as he breathed. She watched the water rush down the street and pool in the gutters, so much water it began to foam. She glanced around at the faces beside her, so many people, neighbors she'd never noticed. She wondered who lived here and who'd been driving past and stopped to see what was happening. She wondered who didn't belong. She remembered a police procedural she'd once
seen, a bad television drama where a witness investigator alerted a courtroom that arson suspects stayed in the crowd. Christina looked around. Blank faces standing in the grass, upon porches. She had no lens of detection, nothing within her that knew the face of arson.

She heard glass shattering and watched a firefighter on a ladder smash a second-story window. Smoke funneled out, trapped air escaping from the home. Christina closed her eyes and imagined a bedroom, the second floor of any two-story residential home. Jacob's mother settled into flannel sheets, a thermal blanket. Asleep as a flame stalked across the bedding, or else awake and waiting. Parents for Home Protection. If she'd joined, if she'd already known for days she was in danger. If they all were. Christina opened her eyes and glanced at her father. At Mr. Wilcox, lighting another cigarette.

Would they know it, if it came for them?

The flames climbed higher above the treetops and Christina watched the fire crack against the sky and wondered if it was only a matter of time, not just the families of those who had lost someone but every single one of them. A thought. A wave of guilt. Her face reddening in the dark. A high school killer. An arsonist. An entire marked community. Christina watched the firefighters aim every hose at Jacob's house, a futility she already knew, and wondered how long it would take for all of Midvale to burn.