Nine

by Zach Hines

  “Well, I am a curious person by nature. And quite often I find myself in a position of great access,” Nicholas said calmly. “I’m particularly interested in discovering truths. Such as in the case of your poor mother, for instance.”

  “What do you mean?” Julian said quickly, almost frantically. “Do you know something about what happened to her?”

  “I just know that there has to be something more to the story. More than what was said officially. An upstanding Lake employee who became retrograde so quickly? It is simply too . . . aberrant.”

  More to the story. Julian swallowed, his throat hard and tight. “What do you want from me?”

  “Now, please,” Nicholas said gently. “Don’t be angry with me. I don’t mean to open old wounds. I just want you to know that I understand.” Nicholas’s eyes searched Julian’s for a connection.

  “Understand what?” Julian asked.

  “Why you are the way you are. People might talk about you. ‘Oh, he’s the only One in the school, blah blah, he’s afraid of death, blah blah, he doesn’t get the joke, he’s so boring.’ But that’s bullshit. Quite obviously. Indeed, I respect you,” Nicholas said.

  “You . . . respect me,” Julian repeated, incredulous.

  “Oh, very much so,” Nicholas said. “You get it. You get the absurdity of the world. How could you not? After all you’ve been through . . .”

  A memory of his mother burst into his mind. It was during her final days on Life Eight. Julian was grabbing at her hospital gown, begging her to remember him. But she could only look down at him, her green eyes ghostly, empty. He pushed the image from his mind and noticed that his hands ached—he was clenching them, his too-small thumbs turning white. Julian wanted to run, he wanted to flee. But he had already come too far. He knew he had to see this situation to its conclusion.

  He had to look at what this was.

  “You get it better than most of the kids here who claim to be Burners,” Nicholas continued. “The point of the club, all along, was to make a statement. A protest against this ridiculous way we have to live our lives. But somewhere along the line it just became a big party.” Nicholas gestured to the gurney containing Amit’s Three corpse.

  Julian tried to swallow, tried to loosen his stiffening throat.

  “Listen,” Nicholas said. “There is something I want you to know, Julian. And please don’t take this the wrong way. Understand this is coming from a place of deep respect.”

  “All right,” Julian muttered.

  “Like I said, I have certain access to information that I get in my position. So, trust that I know what I’m talking about when I say this.”

  Nicholas leaned in close and put his hand on Julian’s shoulder.

  “Burning, Julian, is not optional, as much as you may hate to hear that. There is no question about it.”

  Julian finally managed to swallow. “I know,” he said.

  Nicholas smiled. “I have a personal motto I swear by . . .” He put his arm around Julian. Julian could feel his warmth, his scent, which was now heady and dizzyingly botanic, like overly ripe roses that were about to die on the vine.

  Nicholas lowered his voice. “You must seize your life by its neck, and choke it to death. It’s the only way to win.”

  Julian suddenly felt hot all over. His head started throbbing. His mother’s blank face manifested in his mind again, strobing in and out to the rhythm of his pounding blood. Her face was a hollow mask. Her eyes were cloudy and unseeing. Julian had to leave. Now. He stood up.

  “Thanks for your advice. But I have to go,” Julian said.

  Nicholas rose from the sofa to look him in the face.

  “That’s fine, but I want you to understand something before you go. Anyone who remains a One as long as you have . . . that’s not luck, or stupidity, or fear. Julian, in my world, you could be big. You could be bigger than me.”

  Julian sucked in a hard breath. His head throbbed.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that the Burners need someone like you, Julian. And someone like you, who is out there wondering about things you can never know . . . well, you might need the Burners in return. We have a way of making things happen.” Nicholas turned to Amit’s Three corpse.

  “For example, this body should be in the morgue warehouse or processed in the dust house. But here it sits. Why? Because I have connections. Those connections might just help me find out more about what happened to your mother, Julian.”

  Julian was frozen to the floor.

  Nicholas stepped close to him. “You don’t need to prove anything to me. I know you’re ready. Just come see me whenever you know you are.” Nicholas tipped his glass to Julian as if to toast, and then walked away.

  Julian was overwhelmed. He felt that heavy black ooze inside his stomach roil with heat, like a surge of magma boiling out of the earth. He felt the fire of it rise in his chest until his breath became short. He had to get out of there. Now. He willed his legs to move.

  He went to exit through the back door, through the kitchen.

  There he encountered Amit, alone. He was eating a plate of cake. Not a slice, but the entire cake. He was shoveling it into his mouth with his bare hands. At first, Julian thought maybe Amit was trying to burn by overeating. But no, that’s not what this was. Tears streaked Amit’s cheeks. Amit was crying as he ate, the frosting smeared over his glistening face.

  He noticed Julian watching and looked up. After a moment, he said, through sobs, “I can’t . . . I can’t taste anything.” Watching Amit stupidly stuff cake into his mouth, Julian felt a terrible, palpable sadness. He pushed out the kitchen door, letting it slam behind him.

  When he turned the lights on in his car, he discovered a cat sitting calmly in the dirt in front of it. That same cat from the Row. Entirely black, except for a white spot around its right eye. It just sat, still and unbothered, in Julian’s headlights. It cocked its head at Julian, studying him. Almost like it pitied him.

  Julian laid into the horn, but the cat barely registered the noise. He honked again and again, and finally the cat stirred and slunk away into the shadows. As he watched it disappear into the dark elm forest, that hot black ooze that had been coursing through him all night filled him up completely with heat, permeating every inch of his being. It was a burning fire of despair, he realized—despair for this disposable world.

  It flowed through him that night as he drove home. It flowed through him as he lay awake. As he sat at his window looking out over the fence to the scrapyard, at the burned-out husks of cars, at the aimless arcs of old tire tracks in the dirt.

  It flowed through him as he looked in on his father’s room, at his father and Rocky sleeping in the same bed, his father’s arm around the boy.

  Watching his brother sleep, he felt the despair finally began to dissipate. As it cooled and faded, Julian discovered a simple, sudden understanding left behind in its place. He embraced it as if it were a revelation. Growing up, like burning, wasn’t a choice. It was always there, waiting to happen to you.

  There was only one thing you could do about it.

  Nicholas’s voice rang in his head.

  You must seize your life by the neck and choke it to death.

  The next morning, Julian found himself standing in front of a school poster. It was hanging in the hallway outside the orchestra room: Rebirth is a natural part of life. If you are worried or have questions, please see your guidance counselor.

  It was 7:00 in the morning. Julian had not slept at all last night.

  “Good morning,” a voice said from behind him.

  Julian turned. It was Nicholas.

  “Well. I’m here,” Julian said.

  Nicholas grinned.

  “Come on in, then. I have some fresh coffee.”

  Chapter 12

  AS HE SAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF A VAN TRUNDLING THROUGH downtown Lakeshore, Julian leaned his head on the window and calmed himself by focusing on the streetlights. They
cast pools of sickly yellow, pockmarking the empty city roads. It was nearly 11:00 p.m., and they would be approaching Lake Tower any moment now. The streetlights became long, blurry lines in Julian’s vision.

  The streaks of light shimmered as if oscillating between reality and unreality, and as Julian focused and unfocused on them, he escaped from the tiny, suffocating space of the van and these kids he didn’t know at all—kids he had total contempt for until a little over one week ago, when he met Nicholas outside the orchestra room and joined the Burners.

  The lights jarred a memory: he was a child, perhaps eight or nine years old, together with his mother in the garage, the hazy afternoon light leaking in through the windows. A rattan chair came into focus. A large black cat sat upon it. The image of this cat resolved in his memory, becoming clearer . . .

  It had a distinct patch of white surrounding its right eye. . . .

  Wait. Was this the same cat Julian had seen in the Row? The same cat that seemed to be waiting for him outside Amit’s party?

  In his memory, it sat on the chair, looking at young Julian inquisitively, its tail flicking back and forth.

  His mother said she had found him wandering around outside. “This is the smartest cat I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet,” she said, stroking his head. “He hangs around the Lake all the time. Everyone on my team slips him food. But how the heck did he end up here? We live twenty miles away.”

  Julian knew that she must have continued talking, that the moment must have led somewhere else, to something else, but he had long ago lost where it went. The only clear substance left behind from that memory was the cat with the white eye patch, sitting atop a chair. Intense and imperious, it watched almost as if it knew that, years later, he would be all that remained of this memory.

  That cat . . .

  It couldn’t be the same cat.

  Could it?

  Julian rubbed his eyes and pushed it from his mind. More recent images were quick to flood into its place. First was the moment from last week, when Nicholas had led Julian into the orchestra room for his first Burners meeting.

  He could feel his heart thudding in his chest even now, the same way it did when Nicholas had escorted him inside and sat him in the front row. He could feel again the pinpricks of anxiety on his face when Nicholas had looked at him slyly during his speech that morning. Nicholas talked about the power of the spectacle found in a well-executed burn.

  It felt like the sweat was still damp on Julian’s forehead, the same as it was when Nicholas had put his hand on his shoulder and led him over to Franklin, and the three of them had spoken about how Julian was special, being the only One in the academy, and how they were going to plan the biggest burn anyone had ever seen. “After this,” Nicholas had said, grinning, “everyone will want to be a burner.”

  It wasn’t long until Nicholas and Franklin were discussing with conspiratorial glee the most dramatic way to execute You Never Forget Your First Time—the most outrageous way to pop Julian’s One. When they had hit upon the idea of the Tower, Julian initially had objected. He’d tried to say no because this seemed risky—the Tower was in downtown Lakeshore. It was home to the Lake Department headquarters for the three counties that shared this particular Lake, a population of almost two million—but Nicholas said that was why it was such a compelling stage.

  Fine, Julian had argued, but the downtown district was full of Sevens, Eights, Nines. . . . All crimes in high-numbered areas were compounded, punishments exponentially harsher.

  But to this, Nicholas had snaked his arm around Julian’s shoulder and spoken with a calming, quiet poise. “Just put your trust in me,” he’d said. “Everything will work out.”

  Julian didn’t have much choice after that.

  Because in the midst of all his excitement about Julian’s burn, Nicholas had promised to help him discover what had happened to his mother. He had promised Julian access to the truth saying, “You buy truth with trust.”

  That was the bargain. And so Julian had accepted.

  Soon enough, these dark plans, these hushed conversations, these morning Burners meetings and evening sessions out on the bleachers all conspired together to deliver Julian to this moment. To this very seat in this van, to this position, with his head on his arm, watching the lights blur past him, wondering how he got here, how he could have possibly traveled so far from the boy who would not burn to become the boy who would make the most spectacular burn the school would ever know.

  The van pulled to a stop in an alley sandwiched between the Tower and the Adirondack Bank building. Franklin was driving, Nicholas was in the front seat. Clayton was beside Julian in the back. All of them dressed in black. The two back-seat benches in the van had been removed, forcing Julian and Clayton to sit awkwardly for the ride, bracing against the windows or holding on to the door handles.

  Julian looked at the empty floor where the seats used to be—soon enough, that was where his lifeless body would lie. He stared at the floor unblinking, rubbing his chest. This was the only chest he had ever known. The only body. Soon it would be . . . shattered. Exploded. Nothing at all recognizable as what it was—what he was—right now.

  How could he do this?

  Was the first one the hardest?

  Did it get easier to throw them away?

  The group pulled on ski masks, and the plan conjured on the bleachers was finally set into motion. As Nicholas suited up, he looked Julian in the eye and smiled. “My,” he said. “Subterfuge certainly is exciting, isn’t it?”

  Julian opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out.

  Nicholas used the map on his phone to review with Clayton where to place the cameras in the park across the street. Once he was satisfied, he turned to the rest of the group and smirked. “It’s banzai time.”

  Nicholas, Franklin, and Clayton hopped out into the alley. Julian hesitated for a moment, but Nicholas flashed him a reassuring smile as he beckoned Julian out of the van. Julian complied.

  The stench of trash and stale oil hit Julian with a smack. With the inescapable feeling that this would be his last few moments inside this body, all of his senses became heightened. The shadows of the downtown buildings loomed over him. The distant wash of traffic filled his head with static. As the group moved through the alley toward a back entrance to the Tower, they passed through panels of moonlight that shone through gaps between the buildings. Julian’s focus caught the individual motes of dust floating through them.

  Clayton hid in a shadow near the main road until the coast was clear, then he dashed across the street to the park, a bag of cameras slung over his shoulder.

  Then Nicholas produced the linchpin for the entire plan from his back pocket: an official Department of the Lakes keycard. Nicholas’s father, of course, was the director of the Lake in Lakeshore, so no one asked questions. With Nicholas, everything seemed possible.

  He swiped the card at the back door. A pneumatic lock hissed, and the door swung open to a bright, fluorescent stairwell. It was like looking into the sun: Julian had to turn away. Suddenly, two rough hands—Franklin’s—gripped his shoulders and pushed him into the stairwell, behind Nicholas.

  The three of them took the stairs up thirty flights. At first, they took them two steps at a time, in a light jog, but after fifteen flights, they slowed considerably. Julian’s calves ached, and a sour smell of sweat clung to the crew as it made its way surely and determinedly to the top. Julian panted like a tired dog, to which Nicholas responded through wheezing breaths, “No one said it would be easy, huh?”

  Finally, the door to the roof swung open, and Julian and the two other boys limped out, exhausted and sucking in huge breaths of the bracing night air. Julian felt a familiar arm wrap around him, and he was gently turned around.

  Nicholas’s face was cut with a long grin, his teeth gleaming white against the night sky. His bangs were matted against his forehead by the wind. He said four words to Julian in a small, gentle voice: “Don’t think. J
ust jump.”

  Time slowed as Nicholas led Julian to the ledge of the biggest, most iconic building in the state. It slowed until all Julian could feel was his chest, rising and falling in rhythm as he stepped toward the precipice. As he peered over the drop, time became a viscous matter that surrounded him like jelly—delaying the cheers and calls from Nicholas and Franklin, which arrived at his ears as muffled booms.

  He closed his eyes and tried to think of his mother, but she came to him abstractly. She was just a word. “Mother.” Just letters. He tried to summon her image, but instead, what came to him was that damn cat: it sat, perched on a chair in their garage, lost somewhere in the past but still watching him even now, as if through time and space.

  Julian shook the cat from his mind. How on earth could that cat be his last thought in this body? He wanted a last thought that was momentous—something deep and meaningful. As he peered over the edge, as his head spun from the height, Julian reached inside himself, searching for anything. But there was only that cat with its white eye patch and its piercing gaze and its flicking tail.

  Nicholas’s hand was tighter on his back now. Pressing him. He had to do this.

  Oh well.

  Julian held his breath. He leaned forward.

  His body slipped into weightlessness, and his mind retreated into a blank as the rush of wind whipped against his face, forcing his eyes closed. He could sense his feet tumbling over his head, his guts lurching inside him. All he could hear was the whistling sound of his plunge.

  Then a brief, terrible explosion of shattering pain. A torture of enormous depth; a cosmic rending of reality. A tearing of his self from his sanity. One last, piercing “fuck you” from the world.

  But, in an instant, the moment ended.

  And just like that, he was gone.

  Chapter 13

  JULIAN OPENED HIS EYES, AND THEY STUNG. HE OPENED his mouth, and his throat filled with water. He kicked his legs frantically as he looked up with burning eyes—it was blurry, but there was light above him, darkness below. He reached for the light, pulling his arms down in hard jerks. After several thrusts, he burst to the surface of the Lake.