“Earth to Nate?” Johnny said. “I said his car’s here and there’s lots of stuff to play with.” Johnny pulled an ax from where it hung on the wall. He kicked one of several red jugs, and it thudded dully. Adam’s black Mustang glowered at them under fluorescent lighting.
“But we want to make it seem like an accident, right?” Tom said. “Like with the Pharaoh?”
Nate wasn’t sure. No one searches for culprits or assignations of blame when weather is involved. In addition to cover, storms supplied plausible explanations for all kinds of damage. Under the guise of a storm, they could take something from Adam. But at the same time, Nate wanted to make him afraid. He wanted to make sure the bully would think twice before hurting anyone ever again.
“We could clog his exhaust pipe,” Johnny said.
“What’ll that do? Like wreck the engine?” Tom asked. “Or send fumes into the car? I mean, we don’t want to kill him…right?”
“We could use the gas on the garage,” Owen said. He pointed to the red jugs. “People would blame the lightning?”
“They can run tests to know the difference,” Tom said. “They’ll know it was set on purpose.”
“But if you want to send a message to Adam, to stop hurting people or whatever, then send a message,” Owen pressed, echoing Nate’s own thoughts. “If it looks like an accident, how’ll he know he’s being punished?”
Nate remembered what he’d decided on Halloween, that pain had to be burned away. “Let’s see what else we’ve got,” Nate said. He liked the idea of setting the garage on fire, but Tom would need convincing. His friend was right about them being able to run tests for accelerants. Nate just had to figure out if this mattered to him.
Johnny and Tom followed him to the rear of the garage while Owen stuck by the door.
“Gotta say, I kind of think O has a point,” Johnny said once they were on the far side of the garage.
“Arson?” Tom said. “I was just thinking we were going about this all wrong.”
“So you’re chickening out.” Johnny shook his head. “Shocker.”
“What if we go through Adam’s computer and—”
“Owen said you’d do this,” Johnny said.
“Get into his email and—wait. You were talking about me with Owen?”
Nate couldn’t see Owen from where they stood, but Tom wasn’t exactly whispering.
“He told me you didn’t get it,” Johnny said.
“Get what?”
“The point. When we were alone we let people get away with hurting us, but now that we’re not alone we can finally hurt them back. Nate knows what I mean.”
In the fluorescent light, Tom’s face flushed yellow.
“You were never alone, Johnny,” Nate said.
“Right.” Johnny looked away and snorted. “It’s a nonstop twenty-four-seven-share-a-thon with you.”
“How many times have you slept over at Tom’s house when you’ve had a problem with your dad?” Nate said.
“Forget it, Nate. None of that really matters,” Tom said. “Not when you’ve finally found someone who gets you.” He stalked away from them. Tendrils of sediment filtered from the ceiling as the garage door slammed shut behind him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings,” Johnny said.
“Really.”
“But you know he doesn’t get it. I’m glad he doesn’t. But you do. I saw it in your eyes on Halloween when we trashed Lucy’s house,” Johnny said. “You’re hurt, but the pain makes you strong. And I think you like it.”
In the distance, Nate heard Tom shout something, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying.
“Someone’ll hear him.” Johnny shook his head and started for the door. Nate followed, but Tom burst back into the garage before they’d gone more than a few steps. Panic had thrown his eyes and mouth wide open. The night behind him wasn’t as dark as it had been.
Outside, the grass blazed. A sheet of flame masked the house and clawed at the sky.
Nate and the others rushed toward it. The fire that glistened along the house’s siding was a liquid thing. It ebbed and surged with the rhythm of the wind and a pulse of its own. It didn’t seem real.
Owen stood in front of the inferno. His wide silhouette seemed to contract against the curtains of flame. The two red gasoline containers lay on their sides near his feet.
Tom pushed the larger boy, shouting something Nate couldn’t make out.
“We gotta get out of here,” Johnny said. Rain lashed his face.
Nate tried to remember if he’d seen any extinguishers in the garage, but it was already too late. The fire had found the roof. He was surprised that the house was going up so easily. Surely the siding had been wet, but perhaps none of that mattered when gasoline was involved. It was important to remember how many things he didn’t yet know.
Ahead of them, Tom shoved Owen again. But the big guy didn’t seem capable of doing anything but stare dumbly at the flames.
The house, being in the foothills, would be visible to the whole town, and it wasn’t late enough to hope everyone was asleep. Nate pulled Tom away from Owen.
“We have to go.” He had to shout to be heard over the deepening stir of the inferno. The heat of it was like a slap to the face.
“But the fire.” Tom pointed wildly.
“It’s too late.” Nate knew they had to get away. They had to get away now. Even so, he found himself drawn to the crackle and blaze of the burning house. The ramshackle home with its broken shutters and stained siding had been ugly and had only uglier days ahead of it. Cloaked in the spikes and whorls of glorious flame, the place had been given a last chance to be beautiful.
In a sudden gust, the wind peeled burning shingles from the roof. He and Tom covered their faces as the flaming wedges showered them. Nate heard a gasp of ignition and saw the grass at his feet come alive with indigo flame. Owen must have spilled the gasoline as he doused the sides of the Deckers’ house. It had pooled into a teardrop on the lawn and Nate stood in its center.
The fire was strange. It rippled like water and lit the stalks of grass from the bottom up, crisped like upside-down birthday candles. Its midnight flame undulated like the lake on a spring day as seen from a great but rapidly dwindling height. Its smell was not very different from the barbecues he and his family once enjoyed along the shore. The scent of it thick around him, Nate could see his father at the grill. One of his hands tended the burgers and the other was on Nate’s shoulder. Nearby, his mother ran the beach behind Gabe as he tried to tease flips from a kite. She shouted instructions to him, but they both laughed too hard to get it right.
Then Nate was on the wet lawn, fallen hail digging into his back, the taste of charcoal and grass in his mouth. Tom had pushed him down and away. He rolled Nate from the puddle of flame as Johnny swatted at his legs. There was shouting, but Nate couldn’t find words in the noise. There were tears in his eyes, but they weren’t from the pain.
“Say something!” Tom screamed.
“We have to go,” Nate whispered. Johnny and Tom pulled him to his feet. His ankles hurt. In the amber glow, he saw his jeans were charred and his socks were black.
“I didn’t mean to,” Owen said. He sounded as bewildered as the rest of them must have looked. “I thought I’d burn part of the wall, you know, like a lightning strike.”
Tom helped Nate to the road as Johnny pulled Owen away from the burning house.
“Psycho, totally insane, pyromaniac—” Tom hissed into Nate’s ear as he helped him walk.
“Wait.” Nate bent to roll up the cuffs of his jeans. They were stiff and still searingly hot. His hands came away from them black.
“They’re ruined,” Tom said. “You’re going to have to throw them away. Somewhere no one can find them. It’s evidence. Jesus, there’s evidence everywhere. We’re going to reek of smoke. I didn’t hear any fire alarms go off, but they can see those flames anywhere in town. We probably only have a couple minutes until—”
Nate rolled his cuffs and let Tom talk. His sneakers were ruined, too. Plastic oozed from them like oil paint. He’d gotten burned only in a narrow band between his shoes and jeans, but it was agony.
“I’m sorry, guys,” Owen said. “Jesus. I’m so sorry.”
“Can you walk?” Johnny asked Nate.
They jogged a route to avoid the main thoroughfares. The firehouse siren sounded as they neared the residential streets. A police car, lights whirling, sped through an intersection a few blocks away.
“Oh, God,” Tom said. “What if my dad gets called in? I told him we’d be at Johnny’s house. Should we go there in case he checks up on us? Or Nate, should we go to your house instead? We could tell Grams there was a change of plans.”
“We stink of smoke, Tom,” Johnny said.
“We can’t go to anyone’s house,” Nate said. He turned back to the foothills where flames teased the sky. “We have to stick with the plan. We have to go back to the Night Ship.”
One day he would understand that when you flee one thing, you’re running into the arms of something else.
—
WHEN THEY WERE out of the rain and finally able to rest, the Night Ship felt like home. They’d set up a makeshift camp there soon after Halloween. Nate rolled onto one of the foam sleeping bag pads. His singed ankles were screaming.
“We’re not getting in trouble covering for you, Owen,” Tom was saying. “This isn’t an all-for-one, one-for-all kind of situation.”
Johnny sat next to Nate. “Can I see your legs?” he asked.
Nate had hoped to postpone the moment he had to examine the burns in good light, but he propped himself on his elbows as Johnny got a lantern. Johnny turned the light onto Nate’s shins and hissed. They’d been boiled red, utterly smooth where the hair had been scorched. Blisters spilled from raw skin like clusters of insect eggs. It was appalling, but Nate had survived worse.
“How bad does it hurt?” Johnny asked. His face was tightened into a knot.
“Not bad.” Nate was actually only a little uncomfortable at the moment. Adrenaline, maybe. Pain only came when his socks or jeans brushed against his burned skin.
“I’m so sorry, man,” Johnny said. “You’re supposed to run a burn under water, or something, aren’t you?” He stood up and went to his backpack, shunting aside clothes and bags of chips. “Maybe this’ll help.” He produced a bottle of water and a T-shirt.
“Okay,” Nate said. The damp T-shirt felt like razor blades against his skin, but the chill of the water smoothed away some of the discomfort. “Thanks. That does feel better.”
“If we run out of water, we can always get some from the lake.”
“No, no, no. Not from the lake.”
“Okay, okay. No worries, buddy. You’re the Storm King,” Johnny said. “Not a problem.”
“Tom, I’m sorry!” Owen said. “I thought you guys weren’t going to end up doing anything, and he had to be punished, just like Nate said. I didn’t mean for the whole place to go up.”
“Calm down,” Nate said. Johnny helped him to his feet. “Both of you.”
“But we wouldn’t even be in this—” Tom began.
“It’s done, Tom. It happened. Now we have to figure out what to do about it.”
“They could still think it was lightning,” Johnny said.
“Did you leave those empty gasoline jugs on the lawn?” Nate asked.
Johnny’s face froze in horror, and Tom banged his forehead against the bar counter.
“They would’ve figured it out anyway.” Nate limped closer to the bar. “Like Tom said, they can tell if a fire’s accidental or not.”
“Why don’t we just tell them the truth?” Tom said. “If the gas jugs are still there, then so are the fingerprints. Well, one of our fingerprints, anyway,” he said, turning to Owen.
“We need to stick together,” Nate said.
“I don’t know, man.” Johnny held his head in his hands. “I wish we’d just stayed home.”
“It would have been fine if Owen hadn’t gone full pyro and burned a house down,” Tom said.
“Enough, Tom,” Nate said. “I’m the one who wanted to go after Adam.” He had to remind them why they were here. “Even if he gets expelled for the fight, it wouldn’t make up for what he did to us, or what he did to Lucy. Think about how much trust it took for her to send him those pictures. What kind of a monster takes that gift and turns it into a weapon? He has to suffer for that.”
Tom took a step backward, and Owen’s eyes bulged. Johnny’s hands slid over his mouth. Nate was confused by their reactions until he realized that his friends weren’t staring at him. He turned to see Lucy Bennett standing in the nightclub’s entryway. Her wet hair was slicked around her face in ropes.
She walked into the Night Ship. She looked up at the ceiling and through the two-story windows. “I was there,” she said.
“What?” Johnny’s voice creaked like a rusted gate.
“At the Deckers’,” Lucy said. “When Owen poured gasoline on the wall. When the fire went up around Nate. I was worried about your legs,” she told Nate.
“I’m fine,” Nate said. He tried to absorb the fact that she was here and speaking to him, and already knew their secrets.
“You just had to take one step to get out of the fire, but you didn’t.”
Nate didn’t know what to say.
The light from the lantern cast shadows under her cheekbones. Her wet hair made her look somehow new. “I was going to run away,” she said. “I was so close. When he sent out that email and—I just couldn’t face anyone today. I had to think, so I started walking. But the storm…there’s something about a storm, isn’t there? Something safe. Do you know what I mean?”
Nate knew. He found peace in the storms, because that was when the world pulled aside its mask to show its true face. Life was a maelstrom from which any respite was an illusion. The fury inside Nate was at home where the horizon blistered with lightning and the world shook with thunder. In a place like that everything made sense.
“I guess I’d been heading for Adam’s all along. Maybe I wanted to do something to him, too. But you beat me there. I could hardly see you in your black coats, but that’s why you wear them, isn’t it?” Nate realized that he was the only one she was talking to.
“I almost ran to you when the grass caught on fire around you. I kept thinking you were going to move, but you didn’t. It was so strange, Nate.” Her eyes pooled with light as she looked at him. “You had your hands in front of you like you were reaching for something. And you looked so sad.” She turned to the others. “Then you all ran. The garage was open and the lights were on. It was all wrong.” She shook her head. “I know where they keep the gas. I put one of the jugs back in there, and then threw the other one in the woods. Had to make it look like someone tried to cover it up.”
Johnny looked confused. “But why—”
“I wiped down everything I could,” she said. “The jugs, the door to the garage, the light switch. I made sure the door locked behind me.”
There are moments when you realize that everything you know about a person barely amounts to the most superficial of impressions. Nate discovered that this dripping girl whom he’d spent hundreds of hours contemplating was a wondrous stranger. What else might be there, just under her lovely skin?
“I don’t get it,” Tom said. He put both his hands on his head and began walking in a circle. “I don’t get what’s happening.”
“What’s happening is that Lucy made an obvious case of arson look a little less deliberate,” Nate said. “Remember, only the Deckers’ prints are in the garage.”
“You’re saying that—”
“The police might blame them.” Nate turned to Lucy. “They wouldn’t be the first people to burn down their own house and do a crappy job of hiding it. If nothing else, it’s enough to confuse everything.”
“Mr. Decker’s been having money problems,” Lucy said. “His
stores haven’t been doing well. They might even lose their farm in Gracefield. I overheard a phone call a couple weeks ago.”
“Motive,” Tom said, nodding. “A nice way to get insurance money. And a storm’s a good time to set a fire. All kinds of things can happen in a storm.”
“You might have saved us.” Nate didn’t know if Mr. Decker would really get blamed for setting fire to his own home. He didn’t know if he wanted that to happen in the first place. But maybe Lucy had muddied the waters enough to shift any blame away from them. “Thank you.”
“We’re even now,” Lucy said. She was right in front of him. “I heard you. I know you did it for me.”
Thunder detonated above them. It shook the pier like a quake. Lucy rested her cold palm against his wet face. When she touched him, Nate understood something he’d overlooked in all the months since April. He and Lucy were two halves of the same disaster. They were as conjoined as lightning and thunder.
It was strange to be surprised by something that felt so inevitable.
From the beginning, this was the collision they had been hurtling toward.
She kissed him. On the broken dance floor of the Night Ship, in front of his friends and all the pier’s ghosts. The kiss was only a brush of lips against lips. Less a kiss than a promise. Nate felt this in the voltage that sang through him when the tip of her tongue grazed his mouth and in the way her hand tightened on his bicep.
It was a promise in the way that all beginnings were a promise. Nate found that it was easy to forget himself in the ecstasy of this beginning. In its rush, he could forget that a person was comprised of all of the things that had happened to them, and that life’s equations of pain must find a balance. He could forget how the universe stacked chance upon chance in a way that can turn the smallest of things into the most momentous of events. He could forget that he was hunted by shadows, and that even on its brightest day life was really a storm.
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