Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (24 page)

Students Return to Class; Fires Remain a Looming Question

MONDAY, OCTOBER
20, 2003

ST. LOUIS, MO—Despite concern over a rash of house fires that occurred throughout last week, killing three families of students who perished in the October 8 shooting at Lewis and Clark High School, school resumes today at Timber Creek Recreational Center, a district facility located two miles from Lewis and Clark. In order to maintain 1,120 hours of class time, the allotted amount required by the state of Missouri to complete an academic school year, the Midvale School District made the executive decision to return Lewis and Clark's near-1,200 students to classrooms today. Security will be on hand to ensure that students make it safely to class and will remain on campus throughout the day in the form of Midvale County sheriff's deputies and parent volunteers.

Police are still investigating the most recent fire, which occurred late Thursday night in the 2300 block of Conway Terrace in Midvale County. The home belonged to the family of Benji Ndolo, a freshman at Lewis and Clark whose life was claimed in the October 8 shooting. Benji's parents, Andricia and Henrico Ndolo, 41 and 47, perished in the fire alongside their second son, Daniel Ndolo, 11. Midvale County police are working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine a cause for this incident as well as two other house fires that occurred last week, all afflicting the homes of student victims of the Lewis and Clark shooting. The Midvale County Police Department instated a mandatory curfew late last
week due to the fires occurring after dark. Midvale County Sheriff Albert Corcoran issued a brief statement late Friday night that police are still investigating the possibility of an arsonist, though he declined to comment further on the cause of the fires. No additional fires occurred through the weekend.

Lewis and Clark students will return today to classes that resume the curriculum interrupted by last week's shooting. Counselors will be on hand for students who need additional support. David Sykes, vice principal of Lewis and Clark High School, will assume the duties of principal in the wake of losing Principal Regina Jeffries in the shooting. Students who left backpacks and personal items in Lewis and Clark High School, which is still under police investigation, will receive new school supplies upon arrival at Timber Creek.

MONDAY MORNING CAME.
We knew it would. A leaving of our homes for the doorstep of school past a weekend we thought might never end. A weekend of too-hot showers, blistered water to melt the week from our skin. Of tweezing eyebrows, shaving stubble, clipping nails, everything that didn't belong. Of raking backyard piles, of standing beside dewed clumps of leaves. A weekend of the final funeral, Alyssa Carver, the last of our lost classmates to be buried. A service none of us gathered any last gasp of fortitude to attend late Sunday afternoon, one that followed a memorial that morning for the entire Ndolo family. Ceremonies we evaded to sit on our couches, to watch the start of the World Series, to see the light beyond the windows shift as dusk crept slowly down the sky. A weekend of inertia, a curfew imposed. A weekend of stealing apart from one another, a lack of phone calls, of burrowing in.

We awoke before dawn on Monday to our parents already seated at our kitchen tables, a night longer for them than our own insomnia, the giving away of their children back to the world. We sat beside them. We read the paper. We chewed the burnt crust of toast. We saw the name of our school written across the front page of the
Post-Dispatch,
a glaring limelight we never asked for or wanted. That we would return to school. News outlets squeezing what they could from a story that lacked sensation, no fires across the weekend, no reporters rushing to the scene. We learned from the paper that
certain parents of our lost peers had formed an association regardless, a barrier against the possibility: Parents for Home Protection. Their homes a target. That some had joined, others choosing to be left to their own private sorrow, those who came together promising one another the certainty of a neighborhood watch, a promise taken into their own hands if everything else was beyond their control. We skimmed other headlines: new Al Jazeera tapes, allegedly from Osama bin Laden. A nuclear stand-down with North Korea, the potential withdrawal of thousands of U.S. troops from South Korea. Two games of the World Series, the score tied. Marlins: 1. Yankees: 1. And Iraq: Spain pledging $300 million toward the government's reconstruction while a roadside attack in Fallujah left a convoy burning.

We pulled on sweaters. Hoodies. Jackets. Sneakers. We grabbed our textbooks, those of us who still had them, who hadn't dropped them in hallways or beneath desks, who hadn't left our belongings behind in lockers. We climbed into cars. We stepped onto buses. We trekked down the sidewalks of our neighborhoods, the trees almost bare above us, cold morning light winking down through the spindles of branches. We made our way to Timber Creek. Streets we knew, but to the parking lot of a new building. A building we only knew in other contexts, classrooms unimaginable apart from the D.A.R.E. workshops and peer counseling we once attended. We couldn't fathom walking in, finding our new lockers, sitting down in classrooms that were never ours. We couldn't envision listening to teachers talk of algebra formulas and the tilt of planets as if we never stepped away from Lewis and Clark, as if we could gather ourselves back together from empty halls, as if we could forget the sound of a sawed-off shotgun.

But we did. We closed our car doors. We let our shoes find the pavement beneath our cars, our bikes, the school bus steps. We found Timber Creek's entrance guarded by sheriffs and volunteer parents. We were handed tote bags of complimentary supplies.
Nylon sacks of pencils, erasers, lined notebooks, ballpoint pens. We passed beneath hand-painted banners:
WELCOME BACK, LEWIS AND CLARK.
Signs made by parents, friends of families, a community of volunteers. We stepped into the building. We found our lockers, assignments that had been emailed from the district. We hooked our jackets, thumbed through supplies, shed the weight of our bags. We took only what we needed. A literature book. A biology textbook lined in grocery paper. We passed down the hallways, the light harsh, the walls blank except for a United States map here and a bulletin board lined with autumn trim there, hangings placed in haste to make us feel at home.

Christina slipped through the hallways quickly, though she knew Ryan was still at home, knew he wouldn't return to school for weeks and that a tutor would bring him assignments until he was healed. She wondered what her peers knew, what they'd heard of a broken window, whether everyone knew they'd broken up. She found her seat in a corner classroom where her advanced-algebra teacher, Mrs. Gornick, stood at the front blackboard writing out the quadratic formula.
Minus B. The square root of B-squared minus 4ac, divided by 2a.
Devon Leary entered the room and sat beside her, a football player who'd burned their crescent rolls in eighth-grade home economics and earned them a B-minus. He glanced at her across the aisle of desks. Hey, he said. His demeanor usually cocky but this morning his manner was somber, his eyes cast down. Christina acknowledged him and he turned away, looked toward the front of the classroom in silence. Jen Chandra filed in. Charles Pool. No one spoke to anyone else.

Matt saw Tyler stooped above a drinking fountain, his mouth meeting a stream of water. Matt walked past with his English textbook clutched to his chest, hating himself for noticing the curve of Tyler's throat and the way his eyelashes lilted above the fountain. He pressed himself into his English classroom, sterile and hollow, its walls fluorescent white. Mrs. Brooks sat at the front of the room,
glancing at each student who passed through the door. Susan Waterson. Jeremy Lechaux. So many people, so many peers who had separate memories of fleeing a school, different images they worried in their brains like a bead. Matt thought of the profile he'd written of Jacob Jensen. He hadn't spoken to Jacob in years despite still knowing the schedule of his high school classes, a far-flung supergiant, knew it in the way that amateur astronomers knew constellations and phases of the moon. He knew Jacob had been in trigonometry class, second period, though he knew nothing else of Caleb's path.

Zola found the chemistry room, a basement class retrofitted into a laboratory. No windows. Beakers lining makeshift counters along the walls. Desks arranged in pairs, a system of lab partners that remained intact between schools. Mr. Albertson stood to the side of the room setting up flasks of fluid color. Test tubes. Eyedroppers. A cluster of safety goggles on the counter. He looked at Zola when she walked in, the most awkward of all of her teachers, a man who she sensed cared deeply for his students but lacked every social skill to connect or make conversation. He motioned to the seating chart he'd placed on the front desk. She found her seat near the back of the classroom and waited for her lab partner, Sejal Chaudry, another junior who was in nearly all of Zola's classes on Lewis and Clark's honors track. A girl Zola appreciated for her sense of humor and eternal good mood. A girl who shared snack bags of Cheez-Its and Fritos beneath the desk when Mr. Albertson looked away. But when Sejal walked in her expression was sober. She avoided Zola's eyes and it was then that Zola remembered: Justin Banks. Sejal's boyfriend. A name on the list. A boy Sejal had just begun dating, a boy who'd asked her to Homecoming only days before Caleb Raynor rampaged through the halls.

Nick walked into the chemistry classroom two minutes after the buzzer sounded, a temporary bell for a new school that was nothing like their former signal. A digital sound, only one of so many things that felt foreign. Nick took a seat in the back of the room beside his
lab partner, Dennis Carroll, and didn't think to look for Zola. The only class they shared.
It's just the first day,
Mr. Albertson said to the room.
All of this is new. It will take everyone time to know where we are.
Dennis leaned in close, his hair unwashed. The room's harsh light bore down upon them. Nick closed his eyes and saw only the artificiality of a computer screen, the sheer frustration of finding nothing. He'd kept looking across the weekend. He couldn't help it. The classroom's PA system buzzed above them.
Attention, students and teachers.
The intercom crackled.
In lieu of first-period classes, a school-wide assembly will be held in five minutes. Teachers, please lead your classes now to the gymnasium on the ground level.
Nick looked up at Mr. Albertson, who stared back at the class, a Bunsen burner in his hands. He set down the coil and waved the room toward the door.

Pack up your things, he said. We'll start this experiment tomorrow.

Nick fell in line down the hallway beside Zola. She acknowledged him with a nod. They moved with the stream of students pouring from other classrooms into the hallway, a flood that made clear, everyone together, how much smaller a building Timber Creek was than Lewis and Clark. An improvised space: for how long, the administration wouldn't say. As long as investigation and cleanup and bagging evidence would take. And beyond that, the possibility that no one would want to return, that even with replaced carpets and windows and so many bulleted walls the entire building would have to be razed, a memory no one could keep.

Nick followed Zola to the gymnasium that had housed state tournament basketball matches, games Nick had attended with his family before he ever entered high school. Bleachers stretched toward the rafters on all four sides of the court, seating filling with students and the metallic clang of their shoes. Nick took a seat beside Zola. He scanned the gym for Sarah, knew she'd be coming from art class. Knew mornings were once her favorite, drawing followed by choir. Knew she'd surely imagined again and again what
it would have meant for Caleb Raynor to breach the school during first period instead, the art classroom his first aim after gunning down Principal Jeffries and her assistant. Nick hadn't seen Sarah through the weekend, a strange distance given the weight of what they'd done. They'd talked on the phone. They'd spoken in code of their secret,
sex
and
making love
still extraordinary in their mouths. But they'd remained within the cocoon of their own homes, Sarah sounding better but still anxious, as if an interlude of lost virginity was only a brief distraction from the rising gravity of returning to school.

A hush fell across the gym. Echoing coughs. The scuffle of sneakers against metal risers. We watched as Vice Principal Sykes rose and took his place behind a microphoned podium and then his voice boomed across the gym, the volume too loud,
Good morning, everyone
followed by the screech of feedback. He adjusted the microphone. Someone shuffled behind him and checked the sound levels. We regarded him in his suit and straightened tie. We'd seen him at Principal Jeffries's funeral, head bowed in sorrow and surely imagining the duties he'd take over when school resumed. We waited for him to address us, a speech we wondered if he dreaded. A role impossible to take. He began again:
Good morning, Lewis and Clark. And welcome to your new home, Timber Creek.

We were welcomed in iterations, so many variations of the same words. We were told that despite hardship, we would persevere in collective strength toward a better year, a bright future. We were told that counselors were on hand, this week and throughout the year, for those of us who needed them. We were reminded of available supplies, extra textbooks, copies of everything we left inside other hallways. We were told that the Homecoming game would take place at Highland Trails this Saturday, a rival school, and that the dance was still scheduled for Friday night in this gymnasium.

We sat as the lights dimmed. We watched Vice Principal Sykes light a single candle. We heard his voice break as he held its light
in his hands, as he told us his job would be impossible in replacing Principal Jeffries but that he would do his best for us. We watched as a projection screen lowered, as her face appeared on-screen behind him. We watched a slide show scroll through the faces of twenty-eight students, our peers. Three teachers. Four staff and administrators. A procession without music and without the face of Caleb Raynor, his memorial absent. We heard the shuffle of clothing throughout the gymnasium, the wiping of shirtsleeves and jackets. We heard sniffling. No sobbing. A lack of open sorrow. We listened until the lights came back on and the screen retracted and Vice Principal Sykes stood blinking back at all of us.

I know there is uncertainty, he said. I know there's still so much we don't know. But we are here for you. All of us. Every single person in this administration and school. We're here to get you through this.

And though we knew by
uncertainty
he meant the fires, a threat still licking through our streets, a portent his words could do nothing to extinguish, for a moment we believed him. All together. For a moment, the gymnasium our shelter.

WE FOUND OUR
second-period classrooms after the assembly. The class we'd dreaded across the entirety of a week, the same peers and the same period Caleb Raynor had interrupted and destroyed. What spun as a planet, a spiderweb, the tight threading of a loom through our brains. Threads that caught our thoughts like netting, that pulled us back in looped waves to a Lewis and Clark room where our lives divided into before and after, where we hid or trembled or quietly lost the core of ourselves.

Christina found her classroom quickly, a small second-floor room fitted to the size of her French class. She sat with Henry Park, her speaking partner, and tried not to think of watching his face as they hid beneath their desks. Mr. Broussard said nothing other than that class would reconvene with the continuation of learning
to order from a menu. He wrote several phrases on the blackboard:
Je vais prendre. Des
not
les. Merci, garçon.
Christina imagined her brother in physical science class, somewhere downstairs, somewhere safe and immersed in the study of planets. Henry began to ask her questions from across their pushed-together desks:
Avez-vous choisi? Voulez-vous voir les plats du jour?
She could think of nothing to say in response, nothing related to ordering food. Henry continued:
J'aime toujours le plat du jour. Quelle surprise!
She understood him. She hadn't seen him at the pool. She wondered if he'd swum at all during the past week, if the water polo team had also postponed its practices. She thought to respond but her brain caught on the word:
toujours
. Always. That humans did this. That they made words.
Always.
Ryan at home. Elise Nguyen in the ground, a funeral Christina had been unable to make herself attend. The great madness of the human race. That we created terms for impossibilities.