Watch You Burn

by Amanda Searcy

  Allen doesn’t wait for me to decide. “She died from asphyxiation. An object one point five inches wide—like a belt or something—was wrapped around her neck. She wasn’t, uh”—he clears his throat—“sexually assaulted. Her ID and debit card and fifty dollars in cash were found on her body.”

  I can’t process this. My mind keeps skipping around. “What about her jewelry? Her necklace?”

  He flips pages. “Gold hoop earnings.” Through the phone I hear footsteps approaching him. Something slams down.

  “What did I tell you about making personal calls?” I can hear a muffled voice say.

  The phone goes dead.

  School is…awkward. The halls are quiet. We don’t know what to say. We don’t know what to do with our hands. Do we look one another in the eye? Or keep our heads down and pretend nothing happened? Whenever anyone makes a joke or laughs, someone glares at them.

  In homeroom, Teresa talks to us about expressing our grief. Emma bursts into tears and has to go to the nurse’s office. I roll my eyes. She wasn’t nice to Kara once in the time I’ve been here.

  By lunch, the rumors have started. Someone heard that a guy was seen hanging around the club. He didn’t belong there. He was scruffy, like he lived in the colony. He could have killed Kara. He probably did.

  The police aren’t commenting.

  But I have to believe the rumors are true. If it was someone from the colony, then it was probably random. There’s less I could have done to stop it.

  But Kara’s killer didn’t take her money, and the autopsy report said he used a belt.

  The belt from my dress went missing that night.

  Why can’t I remember more?

  After school, I feel numb. The world goes by in blurry flashes of colors. Ro’s being pissy to me. I’m being pissy to her, too, but my friend died. I have an excuse.

  I didn’t go to the clinic. I couldn’t sit at the table and look cheerful. I couldn’t see Ben. Everything hurts too much.

  * * *

  —

  The night before Kara’s funeral, the sirens blare. From my spot on the sidewalk that ends just beyond the Los Ranchitos, I see what must be every fire truck in town. The fire is close. It’s moving toward the colony.

  I weigh the lighter in my pocket. They deserve it.

  Orange flames jump over the tops of trees and race through the underbrush. Smoke and fluffy bits of ash blow over me, but I don’t move. I stand tall and watch it. Watch it eat away at the trees on its way to get Kara’s killer.

  “What are you doing out here, Jenny?” Dad grabs my shoulder and twists me around. “I went to your room, but you weren’t there.” The light from the flames shows me the fear in his eyes. I push my hands deeper into my jacket pockets.

  Dad loops his arm through mine and moves me along the sidewalk, as if we’re taking an evening stroll. But only I know how tight his arm clamps down. The force with which he moves me back to the Los Ranchitos.

  When we cross through the gate, a new man is standing there waiting for us. He has on a security uniform. He leans against a knockoff police car. Dad nods to him. “I’m not taking any more chances around here.”

  The security guard follows us to my room. Dad shoves me inside.

  Even after Dad is long gone and I’ve turned off my light, I see the shadow of the stationary security guard posted outside my door.

  * * *

  —

  I wish Ro had dressed me. That’s what I’m thinking as I walk into the church for Kara’s funeral. This dress feels wrong. It’s too tight, then too loose. It chafes. Dad and Monica offered to come with me, but I refused. The new security guard drove me. He’ll wait outside until I’m ready to go home.

  I walk down the aisle toward the box covered in flowers. The box that contains my friend. My friend who I was horrible to in her last days.

  Most of Riverline Prep has come. Some look sad; some look like this is the social event of the year. They point and whisper to one another.

  I hear my name. Doc waves me to where he and Teresa are sitting and pats the pew between them. He’s wearing a dark suit with a red tie. His hair is pulled back. Teresa, in her usual long skirt and loose blouse, half smiles and gives me a nod.

  As I sit down next to my teacher, it suddenly occurs to me that I’m back to having zero friends. Ben was my friend. Ro was my friend. Kara was my friend. But now…

  I glance back up at the flower-covered box. Guilt floods me. How can I be feeling sorry for myself? Kara will never have a friend again. If I had been a better one, none of us would be here.

  Emergency exits: I can’t even care right now.

  Doc glances over his shoulder. “I haven’t seen Ben in a week. I’m getting worried.” His eyes stop moving and focus on me like I’m supposed to say something reassuring.

  “Will you go check in on him after this? I know he’d like to see you.” Doc’s kind voice is pleading. I want to say no. But I can’t disappoint anyone else.

  “Okay.”

  Whispers fill the church as the next mourners enter. Mike Vargas walks down the aisle like this is an important business meeting. Cam shuffles behind him.

  Cam’s whole face is different. His eyes are glazed over and bloodshot. The skin around his mouth droops, but the rest of his muscles are held so tightly that I’m not sure he’s actually breathing.

  He looks the way I feel, and for a brief moment, I want to stand up and give him a hug.

  Mike Vargas walks to the front of the church. A man in the first pew stands up to shake his hand. The woman next to him clutches a tissue and accepts a kiss on the cheek from Mike. Those must be Kara’s parents. I turn away. I can’t look at them. I can’t see their faces. They remind me of other parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles at the funerals when I was seven. The ones where I sat in the front pew in an itchy black dress, flanked by my blank-eyed parents.

  I hold my head in my hands. Teresa puts a sympathetic arm around me.

  * * *

  —

  As soon as the funeral is over, I take off. I can’t go through the line and tell Kara’s overprotective parents how sorry I am. If I do, I might confess: I was there. I could have stopped it.

  I dash outside. The security guard perks up. “I’m going out with friends,” I tell him.

  “No. I’m supposed to take you straight home.”

  I pull my phone out and send a quick text to Dad. Even though he’s been watching me like he’s suspicious of something, he’s acting awkward, too. I know he’ll say yes to me being with friends right now.

  A few seconds later, the security guard gets a text. He pulls out a business card. “Call me when you need to be picked up.”

  I shove his card into my purse and walk back to the church. When I see him drive away, I make a quick turn to the right and keep going.

  I walk for a long time. Spring has set in. Baby birds chirp in trees that are starting to explode with leaves. Tulips bloom in beds along the nicer streets. The wind blows. Hard.

  The coffee shop is closed when I get there. The sign on the front says it’ll be opening late today due to a funeral.

  How many people knew Kara? She mostly kept to herself at school, but there was a part of her she didn’t tell me about—the part that didn’t care what her parents thought. It’s why she was drunk at the party and why she was at that club. She must have known more people than I realized. She knew Ben—really knew him—the whole time.

  I can’t forget that, even now.

  When I turn from the coffee shop, I see a woman walking out of Ben’s building. I dart toward her, hoping that when I climb the stairs, I’ll find Ben safe at home. She smiles and holds the door open so that I can go in.

  I knock on Ben’s purple door, but he doesn’t answer. I keep knocking until dread fills me. What if something
has happened to him? What if he’s lying cold and dead on the floor? I pull out my phone. Who do I call? The police? Doc?

  The door rattles as the dead bolt unlocks. It opens, and Ben stands before me. From the way he looks, I expect him to reek of alcohol—to have gone on a bender and crashed off the wagon—but he doesn’t. He moves aside to let me pass.

  His apartment is messy, but I don’t see any bottles, pills, pipes, or syringes. I turn back and look at him. All I see is grief.

  “Hey.” I don’t know what else to say. Seeing his face makes me feel like I’m being stabbed in the gut a thousand times. But I came here to do something.

  “I’m sorry.” I don’t give him a chance to respond. “I’m sorry about Kara. I saw you two coming out of the building together and I was blindsided. I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did.” I shouldn’t have treated Kara the way I did.

  The tears that didn’t fall during the funeral fall now. I make my way back to the door. I can report back to Doc that I have checked on Ben. I’ve apologized. There’s no other reason for me to be here.

  “Wait,” Ben says. “You saw us that morning?”

  My heart stops cold in my chest. Something about his saying it out loud brings the pain and humiliation back. I feel my face burn. I can’t look at him.

  “I saw her come into the coffee shop. You took her up to your apartment. She came out the next morning in your clothes.”

  Ben places both hands on my shoulders and gently turns me around to face him. “And you thought Kara spent the night. That we were together?”

  He wraps his arms around me in a hug I don’t reciprocate. It makes so much more sense now. When he pulls away, there’s relief in his eyes, but it quickly goes back to grief.

  “Sit down.” He points to the little couch—the one we almost kissed on.

  I’m feeling numb again. I don’t know what’s going on, but I sit. He positions himself next to me so that I can see his face.

  “I was never with Kara—not like that. She moved in down the street from my uncle’s at the end of middle school. She was a wreck. I was a wreck. We became wrecks together.”

  I shake my head. I still don’t understand.

  Ben takes a deep breath. “Cam started at Riverline Prep the year before I did. He made friends who were juniors and seniors. They drank and smoked and did any drug they could get their hands on. I wanted so much to be like Cam.” He laughs at the involuntary scowl I feel on my face. “He was different then. He was cool—like an older brother to me. He invited me to go out with him once, and his friends adopted me like I was their mascot.

  “One night on our way home from a party, the guy driving got pulled over for DWI. My uncle had to pick us up from the side of the road. He convinced the cops not to charge us with anything, but he was really disappointed in us. We were grounded for forever. Cam stopped partying. I…I couldn’t stop.”

  Ben’s eyes look off in the distance. I can’t help but take his hand and squeeze. He squeezes back and doesn’t let go.

  “Kara”—he chokes on her name—“moved here about then. We both were at Riverline. She found me during third period behind the dumpster with a bottle in my hand. She sat down and took the bottle from me. That’s the day we became drinking buddies.”

  Kara? She doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would get away with that—not given the way her parents treated her. Or maybe that’s why her parents treated her the way they did.

  Ben looks at me. “Does this make you uncomfortable?” It’s not a challenge. He’s asking. Yes, of course it does. But I shake my head. I want him to keep talking. I need to know. These are the things I wanted to know from the beginning. The things no one would tell me.

  He takes a breath to steel himself. I can tell that this story is one he’s told before. It’s smooth and emotionless, but when he talks about Kara, there’s something more there. Something hidden.

  “One day we ditched school. My uncle was working. Cam was out being the dutiful son. I’d scored some pills. We were up in my room. I’d already taken some, but Kara hesitated. Pills were something new for her. She held one between her fingers, and it was like something broke inside her. She confessed.”

  “Confessed to what?”

  Ben shakes his head. Even though she’s dead, he won’t tell me her story.

  I don’t want Ben to know that I might have been able to prevent Kara’s death, but I have information that he doesn’t. Maybe together we have all the pieces.

  “Before she died”—I blink hard to clear my eyes—“Kara got some strange pictures. In her locker and on her car. One of the pictures was from an ultrasound.”

  Ben sucks in a breath. Was that Kara’s secret? Was she pregnant? Did she have an abortion? Give a baby up for adoption?

  Ben grips my hand as if he’s drowning and I’m the only person keeping his head above water. He shakes his head, like he’s fighting with himself. Then he comes to a decision.

  “When they lived in Santa Fe, Kara’s mom was pregnant. After years of trying, something finally worked. The doctors wanted her to stay in bed. They lived in a massive house, so her parents hired a housekeeper to come during the day to clean, and to watch Kara. It went bad fast. The housekeeper accused Kara of stealing from her. Kara swore she didn’t do it, but the housekeeper was going to tell her mother.

  “Have you met Kara’s mom?” he asks. I shake my head. “She was obsessed with safety. She was always afraid something was going to happen to Kara. The housekeeper left a bucket out once, and Kara’s mom reamed her for creating a tripping hazard.

  “Kara wanted the housekeeper gone. After she had left for the day, Kara spilled furniture polish on the wood floor at the top of the stairs. She called her mother over to look at it and blamed the housekeeper. Her mother was furious and cleaned it up—but she didn’t get it all. A little while later, she was walking in socks on the wood, and she slipped.

  “Kara found her mom crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. She was in the hospital for a long time. She lost the baby.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Kara thought she had killed that baby.”

  “But it was an accident.”

  He nods. “The housekeeper was fired. The police were called, but they couldn’t find any evidence of a crime. Kara never told anyone what she had done. After she confessed to me, something changed in her. She started talking to Doc about her drinking. I wasn’t ready for that yet, so while she got better, I got worse. She was doing well for a long time. Until…”

  “Until someone found out what she did.”

  Ben rolls his lips under and looks away like he’s trying to stop himself from crying. “We hadn’t really talked in years. But that night, she was terrified. Someone had been in her house and left a bottle of lemon furniture polish with the word ‘killer’ written on it in her kitchen. Since I was the only one who knew, I was the only one she could come to. Her parents were out of town. She didn’t want to stay in her house alone, so she spent the night.”

  “Do you think the person who left her those strange pictures is the person who killed her?”

  Ben closes his eyes like he’s trying to maintain his composure. He nods.

  “Oh my God,” I whisper. “I was so horrible to her. I let her suffer. I left her to die.” Ben’s eyes snap open, and he jerks away from me, but I keep going. “I was at the club looking for her, but I freaked out. I left. I left without her.”

  Ben stands up. My head drops into my hands, and I block out the world with my fingers. I wait for him to yell at me and tell me to leave and never come back. It’s what I deserve.

  He sits back down. I feel his arm wrap around me. “Why was she there in the first place? Kara drank, but she would never hang out in a club like that.”

  Maybe Ben didn’t know the real Kara either.

 
“She posted a picture saying she was going to be there.”

  Ben’s quiet. His arm stays around me. I drop my hands from my eyes and stare at a sock lying in the middle of the carpet.

  “It’s not your fault. She started drinking again. She was getting reckless. Doc was worried that she was going to do something stupid. She told him she wanted to confront the stalker and get it over with. If I had known she was going to go through with it…”

  I look up at him. “You think she confronted him at the club?” Did she have a gun? A knife? How was she going to stop him?

  “I don’t know. But obviously she got the guy to come.” He chokes on the words. I turn until I can put my arms around him, and we hold each other on the little sofa.

  * * *

  —

  As the sun sets, we’re still entwined on the couch. A crappy old movie that neither of us is watching plays on the TV. I feel Ben’s heart beating, his breath warm against my neck.

  I don’t want this to end; every moment here makes it harder to leave.

  “I should go. My dad will be worried.”

  Ben sits up.

  Our eyes meet.

  I know what’s going to come next. We shouldn’t do it. We should find ways to deal with our pain separately.

  But I want this so badly—even more than I want to go out into the trees and pacify my searing scar.

  Our lips come together. It’s rough and desperate, as if we’re trying to pour all our hurt out in that kiss.

  I pull away. It’s the right thing to do. “I don’t want to mess up all you’ve worked for.”

  He threads his fingers through my hair. “I need this right now.”

  So do I.

  I have four missed calls from Dad, two from the security guard, and one from Allen. I don’t know how long I’ve been lying in Ben’s arms, but he’s asleep and it’s dark outside.