Burning (4 page)

The book begins when he is at a school far away from his family—a sleepaway school. Right there we know that something is wrong. What kind of a family sends its children away for an education? My people, we understand that the
best education is gained from living and working
with
the family.

In the very first chapter Holden says this: “It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.”

I read those words and then closed my eyes and tried to create that sensation:
Terrifically cold. No sun out or anything
. I ignored the line of sweat trailing down my back under my hair and pictured in my mind a place that was terrifically cold. Fantastically cold. If I sat still enough I could almost feel it.

And then I considered the next part:
You felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road
.

For this, I opened my eyes. In front of me the faded strip of highway broke the desert into two nearly identical sections, running for miles in either direction until it disappeared. Almost without intending to I stood, my skirt billowing about me, and stepped to the edge of the highway. Behind me I heard Stefan beginning to cry and Violeta singing to him an old melody we had been sung ourselves as children.

A faint wind stirred my hair. It felt almost like a hand at my back, urging me forward. To feel like I was disappearing, just by crossing a road … to become invisible … the possibility of invisibility appealed to me. Always in my life I was seen. Everywhere I was watched, weighed, valued, measured.

I transferred my weight to my right foot, extending my left out over the asphalt.

And then far off in the distance, but growing each second,
came a vehicle from the direction of that broken little town, Gypsum. I hesitated, then brought my left foot back and settled it next to my right.

The horn honked as the car grew closer. It was my father’s Jeep, which we had towed behind the motor home.

The men had returned.

“Lala,” called Romeo as he hopped down from the backseat of the Jeep. He was handsome; that, no one would argue with. He wore his dark hair combed back from his brow, and his smile seemed to be hiding something, some secret he wished he could tell me. “I brought you fruit,” he said, holding out a paper bag.

Happily, I reached for the bag—but Romeo pulled it back, just out of my reach.

“A peach for a peach,” he said. “Just a little kiss?”

My breath caught in my throat. I did not know what to say—how to react, where to put my hands or my eyes. I felt like a fool, reaching out for the bag Romeo was withholding.

But my sister saved me. Violeta must have heard him, for she walked up to us and swept the bag from Romeo’s hand. “Oh good,” she purred. “I have been craving something sweet.”

I saw a flare of anger ignite in Romeo’s eyes, but he rearranged his mouth into a smile. “Anything for my baby nephew,” he said.

“It might be a girl,” Violeta said. “I think it is.”

“Either way, it will be a beauty like its mother,” said
Marko. He swept his arm around Violeta and kissed her, murmuring into her mouth, “I missed you.”

I recalled something else that Holden Caulfield said—“You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn’t any brains.” Watching my sister swooning in Marko’s arms, I made a little silent prayer that I would never be as ridiculous as Violeta.

And then my gaze glanced over to Romeo, watching his brother kissing my sister. I knew with sudden cold clarity that my prayer would be answered.

I was only home for about ten minutes after Pete dropped me off before I had to get out of there. My mom was up to her elbows in the newspapers she was using to wrap our dishes and Pops was out in our one-car garage separating the tools worth packing up from the rusty saws and loose nails that had hidden for years in the dusty corners. The old motorbike still leaned against the far wall.

It blew my mind that Pops insisted on clearing out the garage so thoroughly. When he was done, there wouldn’t be a loose nail or lost drill bit in sight. But it wasn’t like he was getting the place ready for new tenants or anything. We were the last family this house was likely to see.

That was just the kind of guy Pops was, I guess. Honest. Hardworking. Full of integrity. My mom liked to tell me and James about Pops back in the early days, back before his years in the gypsum dust had turned his skin chalky and pale, back when he was robust and strong, back before lines were carved in his face like a road map to nowhere.

“I fell in love with your father during the first track meet of freshman year,” she told us. “He was faster than any of the other boys—upperclassmen included. But when Bobby Carter tripped over his laces and fell down on the track, it was your father who helped him up. He lost the race that day, but he won my heart.”

It was impossible to know if Mom’s story was the truth or an insipid morality tale meant to teach me and James that there’s more to life than winning. Pops would just smile when she got to talking about his greatness, and I knew from years of trying that no amount of pressure from me would make him confirm or deny her story.

I probably believed the story when I was a kid—maybe until I was twelve or so and running in earnest. After I won three blue ribbons at my first meet, I knew there was no way I would have slowed for Bobby Carter unless he was having a full-on seizure. I would have leapt over him and kept on flying.

Nothing against the Bobby Carters of the world.… It’s just that you don’t earn full rides for dusting off skinned knees. And watching Pops rearrange his garage for the last time, it seemed pretty clear what the long-range outcome of that kind of selflessness was.

I shouldn’t blame Pops for what had happened with the mine. It wasn’t his fault that the housing market had taken such a dump; how could Pops have predicted what would happen when he linked our lives to the gypsum company all those years ago?

Still, it was anger I felt as I watched him swipe his push broom across the hard-packed dirt floor of the garage. I hated myself for it.

“Hey, where are you going?” my mom called as I let the screen door slam behind me.

I didn’t answer. I was already running.

It didn’t take long to lap our town. It was basically a rectangle, all the streets perfectly straight and flat. North–south, the streets were numbered: First, Second, Third, and Fourth. That was it. East–west, the streets were all named after flowers—pretty ironic out here in the desert, where anything other than a cactus flower had to be trucked in from a less arid climate and fiercely protected, watered every day all summer long.

There went Apple Blossom, followed by Bluebell, then Crocus followed by Dahlia, and finally Freesia. I guess there aren’t any cool flower names that start with E.

My normal run took me over to First Street from our house on Bluebell; from there I ran up to the corner of First and Apple Blossom before I began my grid pattern: down Apple Blossom, right on Fourth, right on Bluebell, left on First, left on Bluebell past our house, and so on, back and forth until I’d weaved my way through the whole town. Most of it was residential—about a hundred and twenty houses—with the few stores and our churches clustered on First Street, which was really just State Highway 447 renamed for the length of the town before it widened again
slightly after Freesia. Freesia was home to a couple of small apartment buildings.

People in town were used to seeing me on my runs. Usually they waved at me and called out things like “You’re gonna get heat stroke running on a day like this!” But today the few people I did see barely acknowledged me with more than a lift of the chin.

They’re just busy arranging their lives into cardboard boxes, I told myself. It’s nothing personal.

Still, I felt a twinge. The line was clear—there was me, Ben Stanley, going off to college—and then there was them. The good people of Gypsum. Off to … well, nowhere I’d want to go.

On First Street I saw Pete leaning against his truck, waiting outside the Gypsum Store for Melissa to get off work. It was almost six o’clock, quitting time. Pete’s hand shot up in a wave. I waved back but didn’t break stride.

Pete and I numbered among the seven seniors of Gypsum High’s last graduating class. There was Hog Boy, too, and then the four girls—Allison, Becca, Hannah, and Cheyenne. Pete’s girl was going to be a junior, so she’d be transferring to a new school in the fall. Her folks were moving her to Reno. I wondered briefly how she’d take the transition from small country school to big city high—and it occurred to me that Pete must be pretty worried, too. Reno High: school population 1,800. That makes about 900 guys. Maybe half of those upperclassmen. Say 450 potential dates for Melissa. I wondered if those numbers were part of the reason Pete had been so itchy with Hog Boy out at the factory today.

I know Cheyenne had done the math when I got my acceptance letter from UCSD. She and I had dated off and on—mostly on, I guess—since sophomore year.

The numbers didn’t look good. UCSD’s student population made Reno High look like a pond, and I’m pretty sure the fact that it’s located in a California beach town didn’t make Cheyenne feel any more confident about the chances of the two of us surviving a long-distance relationship.

And honestly, a long-distance relationship—with Cheyenne, with anyone—was the last thing I wanted. What I wanted was to earn my scholarship. I wanted to run hard, I wanted to study hard—I wanted to make UCSD glad they’d handed me a golden ticket. I sure as hell didn’t want to end up married and stuck in Reno like I was pretty sure was going to happen to Pete.

So it hadn’t been all that hard for me to turn down Cheyenne’s suggestion that we “take our relationship to the next level” by sleeping together. Of course I
wanted
to sleep with Cheyenne—what guy wouldn’t? She was cute enough, her pretty brown hair smelled good, and she had this way of tilting her head and saying my name like it meant something … I don’t know, something
great
.

It had been in April that she had asked—“Do you want to do it?”

We were already fooling around. It was at her place, on a Friday night. Her folks had driven into Reno to get supplies at Costco and she was supposed to be watching her little brother Gabe. But he didn’t really need watching—the TV and Wii pretty much kept him busy.

We were on her bed, kissing and stuff, and I was hard, really hard, and kind of pushing against her thigh, my hands up under her shirt.

My first reaction was crazy joy—was she kidding? Did I want to do it? It was all I wanted, in that instant, all I had
ever
wanted.

But then I remembered why I’d come over to her house that night in the first place—to tell her my news, my good news, the best news I’d ever gotten. That UCSD wanted me. And I remembered the look she’d given me when I’d told her about it. She’d smiled, but it was flat, not a real smile so much as a quick upward jerk of her lips. Under the smile there was something else—anger, maybe, or jealousy?

And then suddenly it seemed a little suspicious that it was this night, of all the nights we’d been alone together, that Cheyenne finally wanted me, too.

I felt cold then, a little shiver, and my dick went soft and I mumbled something about having to get home.

After that, I was real careful not to be alone with her again.

Sunset in the desert is a beautiful thing. The mountains lose all their dimension; they look like a flat black shadow on the horizon. Above them the sky looks unreal, like spilled paint mixing together, red and orange and blue and gray all swirled and striped. The size of it—all of it, the sky, the mountains, the flat expanse of the desert itself—it does something to me. It makes me feel small, but in a good way. Like whatever
happens to me, it doesn’t matter so much. No matter how bad I blow it, the desert isn’t going anywhere.

I sprinted the last long block, all the way down Freesia, my arms pumping and my hands cutting through the air so fast they felt like a blur. My feet were hitting the ground but I didn’t feel them. I felt the burn in my chest, the good, real feeling of a hard run, and I raced against the fading fire in the sky.

I wasn’t in a hurry to wake up the next morning. It was Tuesday, which meant we now had six days before we had to vacate. I lay in bed with my pillow over my eyes and listened to the sounds around me.

James was awake already. He and I shared a room, twin beds on opposite walls with a desk separating them, an overcrowded closet stuffed with all our crap. My eyes were still closed, but I could tell from the sound of a heavy box being dragged across the floor that James was moving his shit around.

James. What kind of twelve-year-old boy wants to go by
James
? How about Jim, or Jimmy, or Jim-Bob? Not for my little brother. It had to be James, or he wouldn’t answer.

I waited until I heard him open our door and head down the hall to the kitchen before I threw back my sheet and sat up.

I felt kind of angry with myself for spending the last few days I’d be with my family doing my damnedest to avoid them. It wasn’t that I wouldn’t miss them; I
would.
Maybe that was the point—maybe I was weaning myself off them.