Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (25 page)

Zola found herself with relief in a drab classroom for academic lab, the new library still in transition, a library that was at present no more than a room full of donated computers until books could be reconstituted. A notebook of graph paper rested on her desk beside a pad of notes she couldn't bring herself to open. Her trigonometry test had been postponed until next Monday, a third-period exam she had a week to study for. She didn't know if she would. If she could look at the lines and boxes of mathematical paper ever again. If she could graph a
y
-axis and the plot of its points without calling back from memory the leaving of a library desk for the cover of aisles, for the vellum of an oceanography book. Her remaining peers congregated in desks beside her, the room too large for them and spotlighting what they were missing, who was gone. Twelve casualties in the library. Three of whom had been peers in her own lab. Empty desks. Connor Distler. Jessica Wendling. Alexander Chen, sitting right across from her at the wooden table in the library. She glanced around the room. Soma Chatterjee sat on the far side of the room bent over his desk, his hair falling over his
eyes. Alissa Jankowski sat beside him, ears encased in headphones, eyes narrowed to slits as her pencil oscillated in quick strokes across a blank pad of white paper, surely an assignment for drawing class though who would teach it now? Who would replace Mr. Nolan? Zola's gaze landed on Derek Wilson sitting still with nothing on his desk. The Trailblazers' punter. His hands lay flat and Zola noticed them shaking. She wondered if he was imagining the Homecoming game, anticipating the pressure. If he was thinking only of the library.

Nick placed
Crime and Punishment
on his desk in English class, a book he'd finished across the gaping stretch of the weekend. They'd left
Moby-Dick
behind. Too massive. A book Mrs. Menda conceded they could leave in the past, half-finished and stained with a barricade of desks. She stood at the front of the classroom and led them through a discussion of the first chapters, of Raskolnikov's moral compass and his plan to kill. Mid-speech, her voice halted. Nick glanced up as she pulled her glasses from her face.
I'm sorry,
she said.
Perhaps this book isn't the most appropriate
. Nick couldn't imagine what she meant until he looked around the room, saw the pinched faces of his peers. Raskolnikov's motives, a plot devised from the cramped isolation of his apartment. Not unlike another home only two miles away from Lewis and Clark, a plan devised within the quiet desperation of a teenage bedroom filled with guns and ammunition.

John Sommers spoke up:
It's the canon. It's a book we should read.
Nick glanced at the bulk of him, biceps and quads that had pushed desks and the tower of a bookcase against a classroom door. Mrs. Menda looked from John's face to the faces of every other student in the room.
Is this okay?
she asked, and everyone nodded, some reluctantly. Nick felt his heart flash. A different classroom. Caleb Raynor all the same passing by the window of the doorway. As Mrs. Menda resumed class discussion Nick imagined the steady pulse of his own chest, strong and ordered but jolted by the terror of
memory, out of synch for a moment from the cadenced clockwork he'd known across an entire lifetime.

Matt sat in world history, the class he'd skipped the week before for the cool tiles of a bathroom, a cleaned slate with no stain or attached memory of violence. His eyes swam across his textbook, a chapter on the Ming Dynasty, an era he knew nothing about except that it had been considered great. He closed his eyes. Imagined Tyler's body. Imagined the ripple of his abdomen, the muscles beneath his shirt that his hands had pressed against inside the bathroom. The cool of the tile, the heat of his skin. The gun and the blast and his feet balanced on the edges of a cracked toilet and Caroline Black disappearing to the carpet and Tyler to the hallway. Tyler was here somewhere within the walls of Timber Creek, a second-period class he didn't even know, he realized. He never even knew what class Tyler so often skipped for the refuge of the library bathroom. Mrs. Albers asked Brian Meismer to discuss the expansion of European trade in the sixteenth century and Matt sank back into his seat, Brian a star pupil who would talk for the remainder of the class. Matt glanced out the window to the same browning zoysia grass that populated his own backyard. He'd sat with his father at the kitchen table through the weekend when he wasn't at the police station working overtime. He'd sat beside him in the home office, a chair at the corner of the room while his father sifted through reports, photographs, so many documents Matt couldn't name. He'd finished
Slaughterhouse-Five
. He'd wanted to be in his father's company, in the presence of something being solved even if his father couldn't tell him. He'd wanted to sit beside progress. He'd wanted to know something was happening, that something was under control. His father could only tell him what would give away nothing to confidentiality. His father and a team of investigators hadn't ruled out arson but had no suspects. They continued to retrace Caleb's path though Matt knew nothing of why this mattered, what a path of gunfire could reveal about an outbreak of house fires. But he sat
beside his father anyway as he worked and pretended to complete his homework.

Brian Meismer prattled on about the expansion of European trade and the Columbian Exchange, which brought crops and plants to China, a digression Matt prayed would at once end and go on forever. He didn't want to talk. He had no reading response. He'd done virtually no homework across the weekend, only finished one book. He glanced at Jodi Hernandez beside him picking her cuticles, then to his other side at Greg Sheth, his eyes fixed out the window. Matt wondered what the past week had been like for them, how they'd filled their time at home without school. If they'd watched the walls or lain in bed, if they'd numbed themselves with hours of television and movies and newscasts. He wondered if the weekend had held fear for them: if they'd woken up each morning expecting a new fire. If they'd exhaled relief that nothing happened, that they could awake Saturday and Sunday to a cloudless sky without smoke.

Matt sank down into his seat. His mother at home, alone for the first full day since she'd first heard the news. He imagined her running errands, hands gripping the steering wheel, putting away tomatoes and lettuce and sliced cheese in the kitchen. He imagined her at the animal shelter, replacing the guinea pigs' water filters with gentle hands. He imagined his father in his office at the police station bent over so many photographs and lab reports. He'd learned only one new thing across the weekend, sitting in his father's office all of those long hours: the Ndolo house. Same as the others. Nothing left. His father in his office flipping through blank autopsy reports filled with nothing but ghosts.

WE HAD NO
intention to meet. We'd planned nothing, hadn't even spoken to one another across the weekend. But we gravitated toward one another regardless during lunch, every junior eating together,
the lunch hour broken down by class in a cafeteria too small to accommodate nearly 1,200 students.

Christina found Zola sitting in a corner of the cafeteria at a table near a large window, light streaming in through the glass and highlighting flyaway strands of her hair. A thermos sat upon the table in front of her, black bean soup poured into a small cup that Zola sipped. Christina had packed nothing and wasn't hungry but slipped quarters into the soda machine for a Hawaiian Punch that would busy her hands. She sat beside Zola and popped the can's tab, the punch flat and thick and too sweet.

How was class? Christina asked. Peers found seats around them, a muted chaos.

Fine. I just had chemistry, then academic lab and trigonometry and history. Nothing exciting. We barely talked about anything. You?

Same. The assembly, then French. Then English, academic lab. Honestly, I'm ready to go home.

Zola poured more soup into her cup. She didn't know what else to say. She glanced around a cafeteria that wasn't theirs, people moving through the food line and the salad bar with trays and cartons of milk.

Did you call him? Zola asked, tired of small talk. Did he call you?

What, Ryan? I told you, I'm done.

Just checking in.

You don't have to check up on me. I'm fine.

Are you? Zola asked, a conversation she wanted to force, to break something open between them until she saw Nick and Matt across the cafeteria making their way toward the table. She glanced at Christina, whispered quickly, Are you sure you're okay? Christina only nodded before Nick and Matt were upon them, their trays on the table.

Hey, Matt said, his voice lost to the clatter of the room. He speared a fork into his lunch, a thin slab of turkey covered in
translucent sauce. No one spoke. Nick ate his salad, a mound of lettuce he'd piled with diced ham and small squares of hard-boiled egg.

How was everyone's morning? Matt asked, trying again.

Really? Zola said.

If you have something to say, Matt said, then go ahead and say it.

I don't have anything to say. I don't want to be here at all. Do you?

Look, let's not do this, Nick said. Let's just sit. Please.

Fine, Zola said. Speak, Nick. Go.

I don't want to talk about anything, either. I don't want to talk at all. I just want to sit and eat and forget that we're even here.

Come on, guys. Stop. Christina set down her punch, its aluminum clanging against the table. She reached toward Nick. How was your weekend?

Nick looked away. This is stupid.

How was your weekend, Nick? she said again. Her voice insistent. She pressed her fingers into the skin between his knuckles, pushed against the bone.

He pulled his hand away. He refused to look at Christina but his shoulders lost their tension.

It was fine, he said.

What did you do?

I watched a lot of television. I spent time with my parents and my brother. We went to the movies. We saw
School of Rock
. We went to get out of the house.

Were you working? Christina asked Matt.

I wasn't there. I already offered him a free ticket last week that he didn't take.

Christina looked back at Nick. How's Sarah?

She's fine.

Is she feeling better? Matt asked and Nick nodded.

That's all fine, Zola interrupted, but what did you really do this weekend?

Zola, Christina said.

No, really. What did you do this weekend, Nick? Because I can tell you, I spent the weekend sitting on my back porch just staring into nothing. I tried television. I tried books. Nothing works. Movies? Nothing at all works.

Christina started to speak, but Nick held up his hand.

Fine. You want to know what I did? You really want to know? I looked up fire investigation. How the body burns.

Of course you did, Zola said. As if we'd talk about anything else.

You're the one who asked.

No, I asked you to say something real. I forgot that for you real means only what you can find on your computer.

I'm preoccupied, Nick said. Big fucking deal. We all are. He nodded toward Christina. I spent all weekend trying to figure out what the hell she saw outside Benji's house. And you know what I found? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing that was useful.

Christina's eyes fell to the table and her half-empty can of punch. A sweetness that bubbled back up, the taste harshly saccharine, a nausea simmering inside her and pushing against the back of her throat. She looked around the cafeteria: people clustered at tables, not enough chairs even with the lunch hour divided by class. People sitting cross-legged on the floor against walls. People balancing their lunch trays on their knees. People sitting alone. People making small talk. People spilling through a space that was never meant to house an entire high school.

Let's not do this, she whispered. Please. Let's just talk about anything else.

But when she looked back at Zola, at Matt, at Nick and his half-eaten salad, she saw it in their faces. There was nothing to say. That they were here. In this strange building when two weeks ago they hadn't been. That there had been gunfire and so many flames and a vice principal who'd broken down before them. And in their
silence, a lack of disbelief: that nothing anymore in this world seemed impossible.

WE AGREED TO
meet after school. To try again. To talk about anything else but school, the yearbook, every fire. To be who we'd once been, meeting at coffee shops or Midvale County Park or each other's homes after school for no other reason than wanting to be near one another. After our remaining periods of PE, we changed in bathroom stalls, those of us in gym class who'd sat through the rest of the day in our own dried sweat, the bathrooms bereft of showers and lockers. We sat through English, Spanish class, through art and business electives. We made our way home when the final bell rang, a rush of fall air that nearly choked us when we passed through the doors of Timber Creek and past the security guards and out to the parking lot, air that was fierce and angry and bracing and welcome.

We promised to meet elsewhere before our parents came home and found us accountable again, liable to speak of school and our classes and how the first day back could have possibly gone. We agreed to meet at Zola's house, Zola the only one of us with a completely empty home, Matt's mother back from the animal shelter and Christina's and Nick's brothers home from school. We agreed to meet despite Zola's reluctance, the storm of her mood unshaken.
Whatever we talk about,
she'd said at the lunch table,
I refuse to talk about yearbook or the fires.
A demand left hanging in the cafeteria's air amid the ringing of the lunch-line cash register and the hum of soda machines.

We gathered in her living room, slanted light already disappearing, the days growing shorter and the nights longer. We crowded on the couch and two recliners. Zola poured us lemonade, spiked with nothing, though Matt asked. She set our glasses on the coffee table and left out the pitcher, a hospitality without warmth.