Burn (2 page)

He doesn’t want to tell his mother about it. She doesn’t know Cameron is still working on Mrs. Murdock’s yard. She’ll want to know why, when the job was finished weeks ago, and Cameron has nothing to tell her. Even he isn’t sure why he returns, except that whenever he thinks about not going back, he sees Mrs. Murdock’s face all bunched up with worry and he thinks about her shuffling around in her house all alone. She once told him that she had outlived all of her friends and Cameron thinks that’s a pretty sad place to be. Anyway, if he tells his mom this, she’ll get all teary on him. He can do without that.

He finishes the last muffin, stands up and brushes the crumbs from his shirt. He knocks the dirt from his jeans. He looks himself over for any other signs of what he’s been up to. Evidence. Randy is a cop and sometimes Cameron feels like the guy can figure him out, know everything that’s in his mind, just from looking at him a piece at a time.

Cameron takes the book of matches from his sock and stashes it under a rock. He checks every pocket, twice, then moves through the trees, pushing his bike. From the edge of the woods he looks at his house. There’s a light on in the kitchen window, his mother’s minivan is parked in front of the garage, and the garbage cans have been moved to the curb. That’s his job. His mother must have had Robbie do it because it was getting dark. That means he has to load the dishwasher, unless his mother is going out with Randy tonight. Then Cameron will make Robbie do it, and give him enough grief that he won’t tell.

Cameron stands a moment longer, looking at his house like he doesn’t live there. It seems normal, like all the other houses in his neighborhood, with bikes in the driveway and the windows lit up. Maybe it’s just he who’s different. He doesn’t feel like he belongs in this house; he doesn’t even feel comfortable inside his own skin. Most of the time, he feels like he could swallow a stone and it’d keep on going. Bottomless. Empty.

His mother is in the kitchen, washing lettuce in the sink, when Cameron walks in.

“You’re home,” Cameron says, wishing he could say something more. He used to hug her when he came home. But he’s fourteen now, a freshman in high school. And anyway, he doesn’t feel like something more.

“Home for a quick dinner.” Cameron’s mother looks over her shoulder at him. “I have to fill in for a few hours tonight — make up for my time off.”

His mother went with Randy to Philadelphia last weekend. A friend of hers stayed overnight with Cameron and Robbie.

“You’ve been gone awhile,” she says. “What have you been up to?” She places the lettuce on paper towel to drain, then catches him again with her gaze.

Cameron shrugs his shoulders. “Nothing. What’s for dinner?”

“Salad for me and Randy. You and Robbie are having mac and cheese and ham sandwiches.” She presses the lettuce between the pieces of paper towel. Her eyes never leave him and he feels like he’s pinned to the wall. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Really?”

He doesn’t like his mother looking at him like maybe he needs shock therapy.

“Really.”

He walks past her, scuffing his shoes on the tile floor because she hates when he does that and he hates that she worries so much about him but doesn’t have a clue. He notices that she waits a full five seconds longer than usual to tell him to pick up his feet.

“They are up,” he calls back to her, letting his foot streak across the floor one last time.

SUNDAY

7:00PM

Robbie is lying on his bed with the TV remote on his stomach. Cameron snatches it as he passes, changes the channel from Animal Planet to ESPN, and then reaches under his pillow for his stash of candy bars.

“Hey! I was watching that.” Robbie lunges toward the remote, but Cameron holds it out of reach.

“You’re too old for Mr. Rogers,” Cameron says.

“Sharks, dufus,” Robbie says. “I was watching a program about sharks.”

“Don’t you get enough of that at school?”

“This is homework.”

Robbie makes another move for the remote and Cameron raises his leg, plants his foot square in Robbie’s chest, and pushes him backward. Not hard. Just enough to put his brother on his butt, in the center of his bed.

Robbie’s hands curl into fists.

“Turn it back on,” Robbie says.

“Or what? You gonna tell Mom?”

“No.”

Robbie’s face turns pink, even his ears.

“Nice blush,” Cameron says, knowing it’ll make Robbie angrier and that he won’t do anything about it. “Don’t forget your lipstick.”

Robbie is in the seventh grade and is an inch taller than Cameron. He weighs more, too. Robbie takes after their father — he has shoulders to grow into. But he’s not a bully. He doesn’t lose his temper. Robbie is Cameron’s opposite: no matter how many times Cameron plucks at his Achilles heel, his brother doesn’t respond. Cameron hates that. Hates his brother’s self-control.

He hates that he doesn’t have more of it himself.

“I might tell her that you never made it to Scouts,” Robbie says. “That was a nice story you made up last night.”

“How do you know I wasn’t at Scouts?”

“I was at Danny’s, working on our science project in his garage. I saw you ride by. Where did you go?”

Cameron thinks about this. He was on his way to Keegan’s. He likes hanging out in front of the liquor store. Sometimes, if he’s there long enough, some guy will toss him a can of beer from his six-pack. Once, an old guy let him drink from his bottle of Jim Beam. Cameron drank so much that he couldn’t feel the ground under his feet the whole way home. But he had to hide in the garage until he could feel his feet again, and then swallow enough mouthwash so his mother wouldn’t know what he was up to. She never even guessed, just looked at him a long time across the dinner table, then said, “Did you get your homework done?”

So much for parental control.

“Where did you go?” Robbie repeats.

“ ‘Where did you go?’ ” Cameron parrots.

Cameron shakes his head, begins unwrapping a candy bar like it’s a banana. He takes a bite and rolls it around in his mouth.

“You ever heard of fun, Robbie?” Cameron asks. “It’s something that has nothing to do with school. Nope, you can’t find it anywhere near a place full of books and peckerheads.”

Robbie’s mouth, a lot like their mother’s, dips like a half-moon.

“They still picking on you at school?”

Cameron feels his skin burn and all over again he hates that his brother will never know anything about being the underdog. Robbie is too big to ever be messed with like Cameron is.

Cameron pushes himself up until he’s sitting on the edge of his bed. He rolls his shoulders back, feels his chest lift, his arms grow, and looks at Robbie to see if he understands.

No. Robbie’s face is soft, full of concern. Most of the time when Cameron looks at his brother he sees his father. Then Robbie ruins it; he puts a look on his face so different from anything his father ever shot their way that Cameron can’t mistake them. He feels his body loosen. Just like that. He can go from pure fight to nothing in ten seconds.

“What do you know about it?” Cameron asks.

“Just what Danny’s brother told me. He said you must have a hard time getting up in the morning when you know you’re going to get a beating.”

“Arthur is an ass. He got his ass kicked just last week.”

“He says that’s why he knows life must suck for you. It only happened to him once. He says it’s every day for you.”

Cameron sits up, holds out his arms, turns his face so Robbie can see both sides.

“You see any bruises?”

Robbie looks him over, his brown eyes slow and full of doubt.

“No.”

“I guess Arthur doesn’t know everything then.”

Robbie shrugs and lets the conversation go. “You gonna turn my show back on?”

“Well, since you asked so nice . . .”

Cameron aims the remote at the TV and turns back to Animal Planet and the great white shark that’s devouring a seal.

In his mind, Cameron plucks the seal from the mouth of Jaws and shoves a squirming Rich Patterson down the great white’s throat. It’s more Patterson than anyone else beating on him. And not every day. Sometimes it’s a hit and run, or Patterson puts him in a headlock and drags him down the hall talking crap. Sometimes Patterson is already pissed and his fists are heavier and he tells Cameron, “I want you to feel this tomorrow, girly-boy.”

Anyway, he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Robbie turns back to the TV and Cameron rolls over, rummaging deep between the mattress and box spring for his Ziploc bag of matches. Most of them he got from restaurants — IHOP, Friendly’s, The Green Café. He has one from 7-Eleven, another from a gas station, and an entire box of souvenir matches he bought on a class trip to a museum in Philadelphia. He takes the book from 7-Eleven and rips off a stick, then strikes it against the flint. It flares to life.

Cameron loves watching the flame jump as it sucks up pure, clean air and spreads down the cardboard. When the flame touches his fingertips, Cameron closes his mouth and breathes evenly through his nose. He watches his thumbnail turn black and smells the acid burn of human flesh as the flame ignites the tip of his nail. When he feels the first lick of fire against the pad of his thumb, he raises it to his mouth and squashes it against his tongue. He loves that. The burn. The smell and the burn.

The pain screams out of him like a tornado; he feels alive and happy to be. Lately, the only thing that makes him feel like one of the living is fire, and what it does to his body.

“You’re not supposed to play with matches,” Robbie says without turning to look at Cameron. He has a spiral notebook perched on his knees and is writing down facts from his show.

Cameron pulls another match from the book and strikes it into life. “You gonna add that to your rat list?”

“I don’t have a list.”

“Well you better start writing some of this down,” Cameron suggests, lofting the match through the air, aiming for Robbie’s back. “You’ll forget something.”

The match falls onto the mattress, snuffing out. Cameron lights another one.

“Did you hear me?” Cameron says.

He puts more wind behind this match, but it falls short of the mark. When Robbie shifts on the bed, the match slips under his leg.

“I’m not interested in the things you do.”

Strike.

“Yes you are. You worship me.”

Robbie looks at him over his shoulder. “You’re crazy.”

“That’s the way it works,” Cameron tells him, holding up the lit match, letting Robbie watch the flame glide down the paper and melt his thumbnail. “All little brothers worship their older brothers.”

“Someone forgot to tell me.” The flame grows larger and Robbie leans close and blows it out. “You’re dangerous,” he says.

“Ah. The respect I was looking for.”

Cameron smiles, watches the way his brother’s face puckers into a frown, and likes it. He worries Robbie — scares him just a little. Exactly what a big brother’s supposed to do.

Cameron lights another match and lobs it. It catches on Robbie’s flannel shirt. He waits until a swirl of gray smoke rises up from Robbie’s back and then says, “Little brother, you’re on fire.”

MONDAY

8:45AM

Cameron’s mother stops the van two blocks from the high school. The windshield wipers are on full blast and still all he can see are the brake lights from the cars ahead of them. Spring. In Erie, that means sudden thunderstorms and whitecaps on the lake. Before his parents broke up, they lived in Syracuse.

Cameron likes snow better than rain; he liked his other school more than this one. It’s been three years and he still doesn’t fit in here. His only friends were through Scouts, and most of them left the troop when they started high school. He sees them in the halls with new buddies. Some of them have gone completely to the other side and have become sport punks who line the halls during free period and pass the small kids between them like they’re volleyballs. Some of them call him Cameron Diaz or fag — even though he cut his hair months ago.

He does his math homework; it’s the one thing he’s really good at. Most of the problems he can do in his head, and if the teacher didn’t demand that he show his work, he’d have an A, easy. He pats his pocket, where his homework is folded and stashed along with a packet of beef jerky, a book of matches, and money for a drink later, if he can find a Coke machine where there are no predators lurking in the shadows. That’s how he plans his day — mapping out in his mind the fastest route to each class that places him in the least amount of danger.

He zips up his parka and pulls his wool hat over his ears.

“You don’t have an umbrella,” his mom says.

“I don’t need one.”

“It’s pouring.” She frowns. “You want mine?”

“No.”

“Then let me drive you all the way.”

“I’m fine.” Cameron pushes the door open and the wind whips a bucketful of rain through the opening. “I’ll see you later.”

The school is a two-story squat building with a row of stone steps leading to a wall of glass doors at the main entrance. Every window sits in a cement casing with some gothic-looking scrolls around it. On days like today, with the sky heavy and gray and the rain cutting sideways through the air, it looks pretty cool, from the outside — like some place a scientist might be cooking up the next Frankenstein monster.

There aren’t many kids grouped around the door. Just the Trench Coats. Goths or emos. Cameron can’t tell them apart. He thinks of them as the walking wounded, because the black makeup and nail polish, black clothes, and multiple piercings scream pain. They look kind of like he feels, and for a while he thought they might be it: the place he could belong.

But Cameron doesn’t want people knowing he’s hurting. He doesn’t think wearing it on the outside will help him any. He hasn’t noticed any of the Trench Coats feeling better and suddenly showing up at school in a pair of blue jeans, or even smiling, just once. And maybe it’s the way they’re stuck in their situations that makes him almost the same as them.

And like they know it, like they’re just waiting for Cameron to make up his mind for himself, they call out to him as he passes.