Authors: Brent Runyon
The day before we got caught, Mrs. Loftus threatened the whole class with in-school suspension if we didn't tell her who did it. She said, “Class”—she has the world's most annoying lisp and she's always using words with S's in them—“class, someone has been stealing school supplies from my supply closet. Whoever you are, you have a conscience. You're not kleptomaniacs.”
I raised my hand and asked what a kleptomaniac was. I thought maybe that would throw her off the trail, but it didn't. She knew it was us.
That night, I got dressed up in my best outfit, a black blazer, black silk shirt, black dress pants, and a black tie, and lay in my bed listening to Warrant's
Cherry Pie
album. I took my knife from its hiding place between the mattress and the box spring and held it against my wrist. When the music got really loud, I sliced as fast as I could and bit my lip from the pain. I hung my arm between the two twin beds pushed together from when my brother used to share the room with me and let it bleed. I was surprised when I woke up in the morning. My blood had clotted into the carpet. I had to find a Band-Aid big enough to cover the wound and told my parents I'd scratched my wrist on a locker.
We got three days in-school suspension for stealing and my parents were pissed. They grounded me for two weeks with no TV. They said, “We've never been so disappointed in you.”
I wonder how they'll feel when I get expelled.
I see Stephen in the hall on the way to lunch. I pull him out of the way of the crowd and say, “I'm in big trouble.”
“Why?”
“I lit a book of matches on fire in gym and burned somebody's shirt up.”
“That was you?”
“Yeah.”
“That was my shirt.”
“It was?”
“Yeah, why did you do that?”
“I don't know, I was just playing around. It was your shirt? Maybe you could tell them that it was just an accident? What did you tell them?”
“I just showed it to Mr. Huff and he said he'd take care of it.”
“Shit. I wish I'd known it was your shirt.”
“Yeah. What are you going to do? They took fingerprints.”
“I don't know what I'm going to do. See you after seventh period.” I walk down the hall toward the cafeteria and I know that I'm completely screwed.
At lunch, I sit near a few guys I know and eat my sandwich.
“Did you hear about the guy who went to the doctor with a red ring around his dick and the doctor gave him lipstick remover?”
“Dude, I heard Nick and Deanna did it in the ditch next to her house.”
“Kevin told me that he fingered Sonja and she got her period all over his fingers.”
“Did you hear about Jennifer L.? She got caught fingering herself in the bathroom.”
I think about that movie we saw in English class, about the guy who's standing on the bridge waiting to get hung. As soon as the rope snaps his head back, he's dead.
I wonder why all the ways I've tried to kill myself haven't worked. I mean, I've tried hanging. I used to have a noose tied to my closet pole. I'd go in there and slip the thing over my head and let my weight go. But every time I started to lose consciousness, I'd just stand up.
I tried to take pills. One afternoon, I took twenty Advil, but that just made me sleepy. And all the times I tried to cut my wrists, I could never cut deep enough. That's the thing—your body tries to keep you alive no matter what you do. I've got to think of a way to kill myself that I can't turn back from.
In Mrs. Parker's science class, I sit in the back with Sean and Moira. He's really funny and she's really beautiful, so we spent all of last quarter trying to make her laugh until she started going out with a guy in high school and I started failing this class. Now we just sit here.
Today I stare at the black lab table and use my house key to scrape things into it. I scrape a big Ace of Spades into the black surface and wait to go home.
I sit in the back of Miss Guppie's French class and wait for the office to call me in. I'm sure they will. They have to. I think about what will happen when I get home. Where the matches are, and where the gas can is, and how I'll blow into a million pieces like in the movies. I wait for them to call me in, but nothing happens.
Mrs. Clagg's drama class is usually fun. We do theater sports, which is like improvisational comedy, and staged readings, but today we read silently from this play called
Arsenic and Old Lace.
I think it's just about the saddest thing I've ever read, even though I haven't really been paying attention.
Fifteen minutes into the class, the hall monitor comes to the door with a note for Mrs. Clagg. She reads it and says, “Brent, you're to go directly to the office.”
I say, “Okay.” I stand up and walk out of the room, but I can hardly feel my legs, they're so numb.
It takes me a second to realize that the hall monitor is Chris, one of my friends from elementary school. We used to play soccer together, and I can't figure out why I didn't recognize him before. We walk down the hall and he asks me what I did this time.
I say, “Lit some matches in gym.”
“That was you? Oh, you're in deep shit, dude.”
“I know,” I say, and I walk into the office.
Mrs. Robins is the vice principal for the eighth grade and I go sit in a chair outside her office. Adam is already there, waiting.
Pretty soon, she opens the door and calls him in and I sit waiting and my stomach gets tighter and tighter, like something is eating me from the inside.
Finally Adam opens the door and kind of half smiles at me as he walks out. Mrs. Robins is still sitting behind her desk and she calls out for me to come in. She's wearing a red dress that I can't stop staring at.
She says, “Do you know why you're here?”
I say, “I don't know. I'm not sure.”
“Do you want to take a guess?”
“Um, the thing in gym?”
“Yes, the arson in second-period gym on Friday. Do you know anything about that?”
“No. I don't know anything about that.”
“Did you see what happened?”
“No, I didn't see what happened.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No, I don't know who did it.”
“Brent, if you know anything or if you were somehow involved, it would be much better for you to say so now. It would be much better. So, do you know anything?”
“No. I don't know anything.”
She stares at me for a few seconds. “Okay, you can go.” I get up and walk out of the office.
She knows that I did it.
When seventh period is finally over, I run to my locker and put all my books inside. I won't need them anymore. I grab my lock-picking set and a spare Ace of Spades that I have lying around.
At the end of the hallway, I can see Stephen talking to Megan, the girl we both have a crush on. I walk up to them and say hi. She smiles at me and I try to smile back. He looks a little suspicious.
I don't really want to say anything, I don't want to tell them what I'm going to do. I hand him the Ace of Spades and say, “Good-bye,” and I walk away. I hope they'll be happy together.
I see my friend Jake at his locker and give him the lock-picking set. “Use them wisely,” I say, and head toward the bus.
Laura walks with me down D hall. She says, “Hey, I heard you set that fire in gym class.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I'm going to set myself on fire.” She stops at her locker, and I keep walking.
On the bus ride home, I sit by myself. I lean my head against the cold glass window and try not to think about all the stupid things I've done, all the bad things I've done, and all the pain I've caused everyone.
My brother is playing basketball outside the house when I get home. He's shooting free throws.
I rebound the ball for him and throw it back. I don't want to take any shots. I tell him the whole story, about what I did and what they're going to do to me. I don't tell him what I'm going to do to myself.
When I'm done talking, he says, “That sucks,” and I go inside the house. I don't have to write a note anymore. Craig knows everything.
I walk out to the shed to get the gas can. I bring it inside to the bathroom at the top of the stairs because that's the room with the most locks. I go back downstairs and get the matches from the kitchen.
I take off all my clothes and put on the pair of red boxers with glow-in-the-dark lips that my mom bought for me at the mall last weekend. I bring my bathrobe into the shower and I pour the gasoline all over it. The gas can is only about a quarter full, but it seems like enough.
I step into the bathtub and I put the bathrobe over my shoulders. It's wet and heavy, but there's something kind of comforting about the smell, like going on a long car trip. I hold the box of matches out in front of me in my left hand.
I take out a strike-anywhere match and hold it against the box.
Should I do it?
Yes. Do it.
I strike the match, but it doesn't light. Try again.
I light the match. Nothing happens. I bring it closer to my wrist and then it goes up, all over me, eating through me everywhere. I can't breathe. I'm screaming, “Craig! Craig!”
I fall down. I'm going to die. I'm going to find out what death is like. I'm going to know. But nothing's happening.
This hurts too much. I need to stop it. I need to get up. I stand. I don't know how I stand, but I do, and I turn on the shower. I'm breathing water and smoke. I unlock the door and open it. My hand is all black. I walk out. There's Craig with Rusty, our dog, next to him. They have the same expression on their faces.
Craig yells something and runs downstairs. I think he's calling 911. I'm following him. He hands me the phone and runs off. There's a woman on the phone asking me questions. I try to tell her what's happened, but my voice sounds choked and brittle. There's something wrong with my voice.
The woman on the phone says the fire trucks and ambulances are on their way. Somehow she knows my address. Craig is gone now, gone to get Mom, and Rusty is hiding somewhere. Smoke is coming from the bathroom upstairs and I can see that the whole room has turned black. I look down and see my flesh is charred and flaking and the glow-in-the-dark boxer shorts are burnt into my skin.
The woman on the phone says everything is going to be all right, and I believe her. She has a nice voice. She keeps asking me if I'm still on fire and I say, “I don't think so.”
I'm walking around the kitchen, waiting for the ambulance to come. I can see my reflection in the microwave. Where's my hair? Where did my hair go? Is that my face?
We used to put marshmallows in the microwave. We used to watch them get bigger and bigger and then shrink down.
“Oh God, just tell them to get here, just tell them to get here, okay?”
She says, “It's okay. They're coming. They're almost there.”
“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.”
“It's okay, that's okay.”
I can hear the sirens in the distance now.
I say, “I want to lie down. I'm going to lie down.” It hurts to talk. I think there's something wrong in my throat.
“You can't lie down.”
“But I have to.”
“Okay, you can lie down.”
The men are here. The firemen are here. They're putting me on a plastic sheet. They say I'm going to be okay. One of them puts something over my face. That feels good. That feels so good. The cold air feels so good going into my lungs.
What are they talking about? What are they saying? They're giving me a shot. They say it's going to make the pain go away. Make the pain go away.
I'm looking at the faces of all the men who are gathered around me. Their eyes are so blue and so clear.
I turn my head and see Craig in the front hall. He's yelling and punching the walls. He's angry.
And my mom is here, and she's smiling and saying she loves me, and her eyes, which are green like my eyes, are the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
I'm being lifted. They're rolling me through the front door, down the path, and into the ambulance.
I wonder if anybody in the neighborhood is watching. I don't want them to know.
I can feel that we're going to the ball field down the road, where I play soccer, and I hear something about a
helicopter—that should be fun. I'm so tired. I keep trying to close my eyes and sleep, but this woman with red hair is yelling at me to stay awake.
I'm outside now, and people are running. It's windy and the mask over my face smells like plastic and I'm so tired.
And now we're flying, but I can't see anything because I'm lying down and that woman is still yelling at me to stay awake, and I wonder where my mom went, is she here? I don't think she's here.
I was in a helicopter once in Hawaii, we flew over volcanoes and along these big cliffs and saw waterfalls. It was beautiful.
We must be over Washington, but I can't see the monuments or the White House or anything. This is probably the only time I'll get to fly over the city like this unless I get to be president someday, but I don't think I'm going to be president.
That woman is still yelling. Please stop yelling. I don't want to stay awake, I want to sleep. Why won't she let me sleep?
I wonder if I'm going to the hospital near where my dad works. I could get a ride home with him later, oh, but he's in Arkansas or something. I wonder where he is.
I try to say something, ask the woman with red hair if my mom is here, but I can't move my mouth, and my throat is dry from all the cold air they're making me breathe. I'm so cold. I wish I had a blanket or a sweater. I guess I do have a blanket, but I'm still so cold. Maybe when we get to the hospital, they'll give me another blanket or a pair of sweatpants. My body hurts, everything everywhere hurts. I close my eyes.
Something's different, I'm outside again. It's windy. No, it's not. I'm in an elevator, I can tell because of the doors and the lights. Who is that woman talking to me? How does she know my name? She looks like that other woman on that TV show I saw.