I'd Give Anything(44)

“Gray’s truck!” I said to Kirsten.

The red trucks strung themselves along the curb like a train, throwing light brighter than day onto the burning roof. From a distance we could see water blasts, ladders telescoping into the sky, firefighters moving around in what, from that distance, looked like, and maybe was, a calm, purposeful, almost choreographed manner. The crowd we stood at the edge of got not quiet, but quieter, watching. I don’t know how long Kirsten and I stood that way, mesmerized by the movements of the firefighters, but suddenly, a thought struck me, and I grabbed Kirsten’s arm.

“CJ,” I said. “He never came back.”

Kirsten looked at me, dazed, and then snapped to with a gasp.

We searched, hand in hand, spinning through the crowd, calling his name. When I remember it now, it’s like we were on a merry-go-round, a scary one. Faces lurching in and out of focus, big then small. Dizziness. My own voice banging around inside my head. No one seeming to hear us. No CJ. No police officers to tell. I don’t know why. They must’ve been there by then. No help coming from anywhere. And then a screeching-halt moment, when I said to Kirsten, horror hollowing my voice, “Oh my God, his sax!”

Her eyes widened.

“That part of the building isn’t on fire, is it?” she said. “It isn’t, is it? Is it?”

But we didn’t know, did we? How fire moves? Does it rush around inside walls? Stampede down hallways? Could it have been stealing through the interior of the school all this time without our knowing?

There were other things we could have done. Other courses of action we could have taken. But we were the fearsome foursome—CJ, Kirsten, Gray, and Zinny—a complete set, and all we could think was to get to Gray to get to CJ, and then we were running headlong through the darkness—pound, pound, pound—toward the trucks and the glow and the smoke. It makes no sense that no one caught us, but no one did. It makes no sense that we found Gray almost right away, at the side of a truck, unfolding a great ribbon of hose. Under his helmet, his face looked older, slashed with shadow.

“What are you doing here?” he said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Winded, we panted out our story and saw our worst fears reflected in Gray’s eyes.

“I’ll go,” he said.

“You?” I said. “What? No. Tell your dad.”

“He’s on the roof,” said Gray, talking fast. “I’m going. No one else will be able to find the furnace room, and it will take too long to tell them where it is. And if I tell them, they won’t let me go. I’m going.”

He reached someplace inside the truck and there was a long-handled ax in his hand.

“Go back to the field,” he said. “I mean it.”

And he sidled his way along the side of the truck, then broke into a run, his head down.

Kirsten and I didn’t go back to the field.

“I want to stay,” said Kirsten, starting to cry. “Until CJ’s back.”

I nodded, and we made a break for a row of trees maybe fifty yards away, on the edge of the parking lot, and sat against the trunks, inside the shadows of the branches.

“Let them be safe, let them be safe, let them be safe,” said Kirsten, hoarsely, over and over and over, like a chant.

I scooted close and put my arm around her shoulders.

“Let them be safe, let them be safe, let them be safe.” She beat out the words to the rhythm of her sobs.

“Let them be safe, let them be safe, let them be safe . . .”

She was still saying it when Gray’s father fell off the roof.





December 4, 1997




2:00 A.M.



Gray’s father has been dead for five days.

Gray’s stepmother told us Gray won’t see anyone. He won’t speak. He hasn’t said a word since it happened.

Gray’s father is dead, and Gray is unreachable and shattered by sorrow maybe forever, and nothing could get worse, nothing could happen to make things worse, and then, tonight, something did.

I will write this down once. I will write it down and rip out the pages and take them to the woods and burn them. Like a rite. Like magic. Like witchcraft. I will burn the pages and the thing that happened will be gone, erased from history. It takes up so little space. Not a night. Not even an hour. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes weighs almost nothing, a tiny wedge of time I can pinch between my thumb and forefinger and scatter like ash. Fifteen minutes can only ruin everything if you let it.

And I won’t I won’t I won’t I won’t





And I won’t I won’t I won’t

Avery whispered into the open book in her hands, whispered to Zinny and Kirsten and CJ and Gray, “What? What happened?”

In a rush, she flipped through the rest of the pages in the journal. Then, again, just to be sure. All empty, blank as snow. Not a sentence. Not a wisp of pencil sketch.

She read the final written-on page again, then ran a finger down the ragged edge where the next page had been torn out.

She imagined Zinny, the trees towering over her, the smell of the match, a corner of the page catching fire, the orange flame eating the page, turning the white black, turning it to nothing.

Zinny, working magic.

The journal had been in the suitcase Avery’s grandmother had left her, hidden underneath the rest of the books so that she’d only found it this morning. Found it and read it straight through.