I'd Give Anything(43)

I’d give anything. But I can’t. No one can.

Now, two days after it happened, it feels like time to piece that night together, all those impressions that aren’t just scattered but whirling and screeching and flapping like giant black birds of prey. I will try to put the night into sentences, to patch those sentences into an order. It won’t change what happened. It won’t fix a thing. But that’s what I do. That’s how I bear witness.

During the football game, with nearly two thousand in attendance, not just from Lucretia Mott or Cole but from all over, our school began to burn, the wing that holds the theater and, beneath that, a floor down, the gym where the ninth graders have P.E. I don’t know how long it took, whether it smoldered for a long time first and then crept over the floors and theater seats or whether it arrived in a burst and tore through the place, scrambling up the stage curtains and walls to eat away the roof in chunks.

It was during the third quarter. I don’t remember the score, but I know we were losing by enough to have the LM side scared. At halftime, the marching band had lacked its usual high-stepping zest, all except for CJ, who, despite Gray telling us to go ahead and cheer on our team, hoped with every fiber of his fierce and scrawny being that the LM Owls would get pulverized. CJ was practically dancing across that field, his sax bright as the sun under the stadium lights.

Later, when he walked up to rejoin us in the stands, I saw that he had his arm stuck straight up over his head and was brandishing his giant “#10 Is the Man!” sign like a sword. I also saw that, while he wore his hooded sweatshirt and winter jacket on top, he still had on his band pants.

“It’s kind of nice to know that some things never change,” I said to Kirsten.

“Sorry about the pants there, Seege,” said Kirsten.

“Thieving bastards,” said CJ. “But at least we’re still losing.”

I don’t know how much time passed—not much—before CJ got a weird look on his face, lifted his nose in the air like a bloodhound, and said, “Do you smell smoke?”

I didn’t really, but then a few minutes later, I did. And right then, the refs stopped the game and the announcer’s voice came on telling us to please walk, not run, in a calm, orderly manner through the west exit of the stadium and down the hill to the lower playing field, even though the announcer himself sounded anything but calm. He sounded like a guy who’d expected his biggest challenge of the evening to be pronouncing the players’ names correctly and who was teetering right on the edge of freaking out. But some people, including CJ, Kirsten, and me, followed his instructions, even as chaos was breaking out on every side.

We’d had fire drills a lot over the years, but those were based on the premise that the fire would take place during the school day and that students, guided by teachers and administrators who all knew the drill, would be evacuated from the building. But this was totally different: nighttime; the stadium; the place full of little kids and old people and people who had never been to LM before the night of the game; too few people in charge. And there were so many people there, lots of them pretty riled up because of the game, so nothing went the way it was supposed to. It wasn’t a stampede; no one trampled anyone underfoot, but it also wasn’t calm or orderly. People blurred by, some of them pulling kids by the hand. Some of them were laughing. Some of them were running. Crowds bustled and jostled out both gates of the stadium, and, once out of the gates, people flew off in different directions, some of them running, probably thinking they’d get into their cars and go before the fire trucks arrived.

My heart was beating fast, and I took hold of Kirsten’s gloved hand, but I wasn’t really scared, not yet. I wasn’t even that scared when we began to see the smoke, pale gray, billowing in roiling clouds against the dark sky, because the building had to be empty. It was Saturday, and everyone who was there was watching the game, even Mr. Jones and his staff. I’d seen them standing at the fence near the snack bar. Still, as I walked between Kirsten and CJ, near the back of the crowd pouring down the hill to the field, the cold stinging my cheeks, I sent up a tiny prayer—even though I’m not sure there’s even a God up there—that said, “Please let the building be empty.”

Then, suddenly, like a high whining wind, I heard the sirens and, layered over them, CJ’s voice saying, “Oh shit! I’ll be right back!” Before Kirsten and I knew what was happening, he wheeled around and took off like a shot.

“Meet us at the lower field!” I shouted, and CJ, still running, raised his hand into the air in a thumbs-up.

“Typical CJ,” said Kirsten.

“Probably going back for his sign,” I said. “Because it’s important to have your pep sign when the school is burning down.”

“Someone will stop him and make him turn around, and CJ will give that lucky person a long lecture about free will or freedom of speech or some such thing, till they’re ready to throw him into the burning building and lock the door,” said Kirsten.

When we joined the shivering, noisy, energy-buzzing throng at the lower playing field, we had a clear view of the theater wing in the distance, the entire top of it shrouded in storm-cloud smoke. That’s when things got fragmented in my mind. I remember kids running around, dodging through the thick crowd, laughing and screeching with glee like they were at a Fourth of July picnic. I remember sirens charging the air with wildness, the fire trucks passing close enough to splash us with red and white light. I didn’t see Gray’s face, but in a moment of clarity, I saw the number on one of the trucks—98, our graduation year, that’s how I remember it—and I remembered that Gray was working with his dad that night.