Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (37 page)

But it contains atoms. Nuclei, protons, electrons. Atoms that under pressure could split, could break themselves in two.

And do what? Burn an entire house down?

I really don't know. I'm just thinking out loud, since there's no other explanation. The body is 80 percent water. Two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, over and over again. If a single molecule split apart, even just one under the pressure of grief—

Then what? Really, son, what are you saying?

Nick stopped.
Son.

I'm not saying anything, he said. Really. Forget I said anything at all.

Go on, Marcus said. Talk it out. Tell me what you think.

But Nick knew. A gauntlet thrown. An end.

It's nothing, he said. Just thoughts you have when it's late. When you've been up for hours and you can't sleep and houses are burning down only streets away.

The mind can tell you lots of things when you're tired, Marcus said. When you're hurting and don't have answers for that hurt.

Nick forced himself to talk about other things. About Sarah. About schoolwork. His brother and his mother, his father. He let the tableside clock recede to the end of the mandated hour. He released himself from the room and moved down the hallway. He stopped midstride. He didn't want to go back to his academic lab. Five minutes left of sixth period. He didn't want to stay quiet and curl inside of himself, what he thought Marcus's reaction would make him do. He wanted to hear himself say it out loud to someone who wouldn't turn away from him.

He knew where Matt would be. He walked to the makeshift math wing and waited outside of Matt's algebra classroom until the passing bell rang and caught him walking out the door just before his chemistry class, the same lesson Mr. Albertson had taught him and Zola that morning on wavelengths of light. Matt looked at him and his face changed and Nick understood that his own face was transparent, that Matt knew something was wrong, that something had been wrong for days.
Are you okay?
What Matt had kept asking him. What Nick finally wanted to scream and hear echo down the hall.
Can I talk to you?
was all he heard himself say. Matt nodded and followed him down the hallway. Through Timber Creek's side entrance. No one guarding the parking lot. No one making them return for the day's final period. The sunlight piercing Nick's eyes beyond the building's darkness and the dim lamplight of Marcus's office. Matt following close behind him, a comfort of nearness quieting Nick's fear to say it out loud. Matt following without question, across the parking lot to the silence of Nick's car.

ZOLA BIKED TO
the Local Beanery after school, a short shift from three until closing. She pulled her sweater off at the coffee shop, the afternoon far warmer than she'd anticipated, and relieved her coworker Darlene, a woman who attended night school and only worked days. Customers occupied several tables in the shop. A few people typed at laptop computers. A couple sat near the far window speaking in low tones. A lone woman sank into a stuffed armchair, a hardback novel propped on her knees.

Zola poured herself coffee from the shop's constant drip and leaned against the backside of the counter. She hadn't foreseen wanting this, a culprit. An answer and end to this madness. She'd seen Russ Hendricks in the hallway at the end of the day, had watched him come toward her walking in the opposite direction. The way he kept his eyes on the floor bulleted her heart that she'd wanted him arrested, held indefinitely by the police. He was a human being. Grieving. He was nothing but an explanation, an easy way out. Yet even still she'd wanted him as the resolution and the realization held a rabid mirror to her own hunger, predatory as an animal. She sipped her coffee. Dregs, the taste of ground beans. She closed her eyes and in the dark of them, grief welled up within her, a rolling wave.

Excuse me? Are you still open?

Zola's eyes opened and fell upon Mrs. Zimmerman. The mother of Josh Zimmerman, the sophomore who was killed, and his older sister Beth, who'd been into the coffee shop the week before. Zola always between them in age though she remembered Mrs. Zimmerman from the school's Halloween parade and the fall carnival each year, her face familiar among the parent volunteers. Zola remembered her from recent Homecomings as well, Josh and Beth both routinely on Homecoming Court, their mother and father escorting them down the football field track during halftime.

We're open, Zola said.

I'll have an iced tea, Mrs. Zimmerman said. I didn't expect today to be so warm.

For here or to go?

To go.

Zola filled a large plastic cup with ice. She placed it beneath the tea dispenser and tried not to look back at Mrs. Zimmerman standing alone at the counter. A mother. A woman she wanted to ask so many questions.
Are you scared?
The tea flooded the ice.
Are you waiting for your home to burn?
Zola set the cup on the counter in front of Mrs. Zimmerman, sealed with a plastic lid and accompanied by a wrapped straw.

How much?

It's on the house.

Are you sure?

It's our last brew of the day, Zola lied. If it's too weak, I wouldn't want you charged.

Mrs. Zimmerman smiled faintly. Thanks.

Zola watched her leave the shop, unsure if Mrs. Zimmerman knew who she was. That she'd gone to school with her children. That regardless of never knowing them well, they'd all grown up together. Zola wanted to ask what it was to lose a child. If she and her husband grieved in different ways. If only one of them wanted to know what had happened inside the school. If they both wanted to leave it behind, unknown. What they clung to, what they remembered from that morning just before they sent their teenagers to school. What Josh had said as he brushed his teeth. As he'd grabbed his backpack and stepped out the front door. What they regretted. What they took upon themselves. What they clutched tight in the darkest hour of the night, in the moon's soft light leaking through their bedroom window.

Zola watched Mrs. Zimmerman disappear from the shop until she lost her to the sun-gleamed cars of the parking lot. She felt something inside of her fissure, a crack. That no one could shield this woman, a mother. That Mrs. Zimmerman carried herself out into the streets, a city that offered no protection. Zola knew it: not
police. Not FBI. Not a critical mass of parents. Not anything in this world that could keep her from burning.

TYLER MET MATT
at his locker after the last period of class, long after Nick had pulled away from Timber Creek's parking lot and Matt had gone back inside. He hadn't gone to chemistry class. He'd only stepped inside the men's bathroom and sat in a stall listening to his own breath move in and out of his lungs until the bell signaled the end of seventh period and the conclusion of the school day. What Nick had said inside the sealed car: something impossible. The wind from the night's storm still howling all around them. Something Matt would never have believed if not for how crushed Nick looked, a revelation he'd clearly wrestled with for days. If not for how rational his approach always was to the process of research and evidence. If not for the lack of any other explanation, the police and the entire community running out of answers, the thin possibility of another accomplice the only logical lead left.

The flash point of human skin: cells sparking. Inside the chest, the organs, the heart. A burn spreading up a throat and jumping from a mouth to the curtains, to the thin sheets of a bed. Incineration. Nothing left. Not even fragments, a language neither forensics nor science could speak. Matt didn't know what he believed. He knew only that he didn't want Nick to be alone. He'd placed a hand on his shoulder and Nick shrugged it off and said he needed to get home. Matt had returned to his locker for his jacket and saw Tyler waiting for him against the cabinet's metal door.

Matt thought of the evening before him: a Thursday night. Home, then work, then home. If life would always be this way, a circuitry of moving among safe spaces while beyond the doors an entire community burned down. He grabbed his jacket and wallet and stepped out to the parking lot with Tyler beside him, the school grounds cluttered with security to ensure that everyone would get home. Matt watched a stationed officer check IDs at the parking
lot's exit and wondered how Nick had managed to escape school so early. If he'd said he was sick. If he'd told the officer last night's fire had occurred just past his street. A news van sat parked on the main road just past the lot, police barricading the immediate school grounds from media.

Where should we go? Tyler asked.

Matt felt tired. Honestly, I just want to go home.

Won't your mom be there?

Probably. But she won't mind. She'll be upstairs reading. We can stay in my room. She won't bother us.

Tyler climbed into the Fiesta's passenger seat and they traveled toward Matt's neighborhood, windows open, the wind blasting in and the sun warming their arms. Police cars lined the streets. Police parked at the curbs of homes. Police waited with their engines cut near intersections and stop signs. Matt knew what this was, the heightened security his father had mentioned the night before, patrol and protection augmented at three o'clock in the afternoon past the previous night's break in pattern. Though his father hadn't said so, he wondered if the police were running surveillance on Lewis and Clark's students: where they took themselves after school beyond view of administrators.

This is crazy, Tyler said, nodding at a national news van parked on the street.

I know, Matt said. My dad said we can expect this. An increased police and media presence. To protect the families, the ones that remain.

That sounds so morbid. Like everyone's just expecting them to burn.

Wouldn't you be scared? If you were them?

I guess. I'd probably leave town.

Matt hadn't thought to ask his father if this was a possibility for some of the families, if anyone had chosen to leave their lives behind for the safety and solace of elsewhere. His father wouldn't have
known, couldn't keep tabs on every family, though surely the FBI could. But Matt had seen in the paper this week despite the
Post-Dispatch
's preference to keep news of Caleb Raynor to a minimum that Caleb's family had left St. Louis for an undisclosed location, for protection and for the privacy of their own grieving.

I can't believe we're even in school this week, Matt said. My dad said they can't cancel any more class after last week, but this seems too big to ignore.

Damage control, Tyler said. He pushed his hand into the window's breeze. This must be a PR nightmare. The school just wants everything to remain normal and calm.

I'd hardly call mandatory counseling sessions normal and calm.

Did you go to yours?

It wasn't helpful. Was yours?

No, Tyler said. I went to the first one and just sat there. I don't feel like I have anything to talk about.

How has your family reacted to all of this? Matt asked. Have they talked to you about it?

Not really. My dad's always home late, after I've gone to bed. Third shift. We never see each other.

And your mom? Matt asked. He realized he knew nothing about Tyler's home life, that he'd never thought to ask.

She works days. She's home when I'm home but she barely says anything to me. You know the moms in commercials, the ones who bake cookies and serve after-school snacks and ask you about your day? My mom isn't that mom. Not at all.

Matt thought of his own mother. How she was. So much more than any representation of what a mother should be.

Anyway, it's fine, Tyler said. My parents don't really need to ask. I'm fine.

Matt couldn't imagine a home bereft of asking. Are you really fine?

I think so. As fine as anyone else.

A traffic light halted them, the flow of cars heavier for a Thursday: people leaving work early, police out, everyone in Midvale County seeking the safety of their homes.

I can't believe we've already been back almost a week, Matt said. I can't believe they're still having Homecoming and that it's tomorrow.

No shit. No one's going to go.

Are you going?

Tyler looked at him. Are you?

Probably not. I thought about it. Just to get away. Just to get out of the house.

Even if you did. Tyler hesitated. It's not like we could go together.

Why not? Matt wanted to ask instead: what they were to one another.

Because you know why. Yeah, it's not 1950. But people talk. People judge.

What, you think anyone cares? No one cares. Especially not now. Look around us. You think people will care that two boys are at a dance together?

Tyler turned away. I can't.

We can just go as friends.

I can't do that, either.

They pulled into the driveway, where Matt saw the Chevy Impala parked. His father was home. Too early.

Should I still come in? Tyler asked.

Of course. Matt grabbed his bag from the backseat. I just don't know why he's home. He's hardly ever home before dark.

Tyler remained in the passenger seat until Matt motioned him forward. Matt's parents knew enough of his life to accept him for who he was but they didn't know Tyler, a boy Matt had never thought to introduce to his parents, their relationship still so new, still hushed through the quiet back roads of so many summer nights. Matt's parents knew his truth, had let him stand inside it even with
his father's resistance. But speaking love, the first sparks of it, was something else entirely. Matt had asked his father only of investigation, of police terms and procedures. Nothing of what it meant to love someone. Tyler followed him into the kitchen through the garage, letting Matt take the lead.

Matt didn't expect to see both of his parents sitting at the kitchen table. As if they'd never left from the night before, as if an entire day hadn't transpired between the strange light of a pitch-dark morning and an afternoon of classes and school.