Bonfires

by Amy Lane

  Larx narrowed his eyes. “Chop-chop?”

  “I’m Asian. I can say it.”

  “I will beat you when I get you back here. Soap in a sock—they’ll never see a bruise.”

  Yoshi laughed in spite of the fact that his eyes were shiny and red-rimmed and in spite of the union rep trying hard to usher him away. “You do whatever you want with me when you get me back—but you’re gonna get me back, asshole. You’ll never live with yourself if you don’t.”

  And then he was gone, and Larx was left with Fred Embree, trying not to flip the guy off.

  “For the record, I think it’s highly doubtful the school board will allow Mr. Nakamoto to negotiate for his job back—”

  Larx snapped. “Get the fuck out of my office. They’ll get him back when their entire district threatens to quit, because they don’t have the balls to explain to the union why they put him on leave in the first place. Now go. Go. I don’t have fucking time for you!”

  Fred left, glaring, and Larx narrowly avoided sticking out his tongue. He was so fucking furious he could hardly speak.

  He spent five minutes pounding his desk with his fist, and ten minutes ranting to Nancy over the phone as she sat in her office, trying to prepare for her day.

  “Larx—Larx!” she hollered finally. “Look, we’ll have an emergency staff meeting after school, and we can get people to sign a petition. We threaten to quit. Whatever. We’ll brainstorm. Yoshi’s well loved, and 90 percent of us think this is bullshit. They can’t lose 90 percent of us. It’s fucking November, for sweet Christ’s sake. Who in their right mind is going to move halfway between bumfuck Truckee and Ta-hell right before the goddamned snows? They’ll have to bus the kids to Placer County because they’re fucking idiots—I will go to the goddamned media before that happens, okay?”

  Larx grunted. “The media,” he said, perking up. “That’s an option too.”

  “See? And Yoshi’s got protection—there are gay rights legal groups that can add some lawyer power. We can fix this, Larx. I’ll call Tane, you call Edna with the union—we’re not helpless.”

  That had been what Aaron had said.

  Yoshi had damned near banked his career on it.

  Larx wasn’t helpless.

  He could fix this.

  But still, he had to find a teacher willing to take over Yoshi’s zero-period class, and when that was over, he trudged into his own class, trying hard to remember what they were doing.

  Oh. Oh hell yeah. They were writing up their lab reports from their experiments the day before. Thank God. No lectures, no lab supervision—just go from table to table and help whoever needed him.

  He could do that in his sleep, which was a good thing, because once again it had been a late, restless night and a shitty, crotch-of-dawn morning.

  And he missed his goddamned run.

  He’d be able to wander around the classroom and work off some extra energy. Fantastic. As long as he didn’t dwell on how sad it was that this was the best news he’d heard since…

  Well, since Aaron kissed him weeks ago.

  Okay.

  Aaron. Loved him. He was going to have a big family again.

  Perspective, Larx thought, grabbing his briefcase a little tighter and soldiering on into his room. It was always good to have.

  “OKAY, SO he’s still using his credit card?” Eamon said, looking at Aaron in concern.

  Aaron nodded, nibbling his lip. “Actually, at that nice little resort outside of town. The room is paid up until tomorrow, and there are charges regularly at the restaurant.”

  Eamon looked at the list of charges Aaron had just gotten from the credit bureau. “Someone’s getting the free continental breakfast,” he speculated. “Anything else?”

  “I sent Warren and Percy out to bring in whomever is in Room 32,” Aaron said grimly. “And checked in with the people at the Olson house, making sure Whitney hasn’t flown the coop. By all accounts, you can hear her screeching from the curb.”

  “You’ve been a busy bee,” Eamon said mildly. “Any reason you were here so early?”

  Aaron grunted. “Had to go home last night,” he confided. “Larx got called into an early meeting about his vice principal.”

  “Oh no,” Eamon said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “They didn’t really do what I think they did?”

  “He texted me about ten minutes ago. The staff is gathering together to figure out how to fix it. He’s pissed.”

  Aaron ached for him at the same time he fiercely missed his company in the mornings. He’d taken a short run, but it just wasn’t as much fun without Larx. Kirby had fed the chickens and collected the eggs, and then, without a word, they’d both packed overnight bags.

  “Last night sucked,” Kirby said with a grunt. “I don’t even want to talk to people all the time. It’s just good to know they’re in the house.”

  “So, chicken coop weekend?” Aaron said with a sad little smile.

  Kirby looked at him and shrugged. “If it doesn’t work, we move back. They don’t have a lot of computer room—I may end up coming here to study. But….” Kirby looked around the house. “I know it’s stupid, but I miss the crap out of Maureen.”

  “Not Tiffany?” Aaron asked, sort of hating himself for letting that happen.

  “Fine. Sure. Maybe Tiffany.” Kirby met Aaron’s eyes then. “Look, Dad? I’m eighteen in January. If it turns out that being a stepbrother isn’t my thing, I can move back here and be all hermity and mean. I’m not worried about me. I’m not worried about you not loving me anymore. I guess I should be. Kids at school whine about their stepparents all the time. But I’m not. I’ll be okay. But you and Larx—you’re… happy. Kids worry about growing up and being happy. You’re happy. I don’t think it can be a bad thing, you know?”

  Aaron thought about the night before, when Larx had been small and sad and human, not his bigger-than-life Larx self at all. And how Aaron had needed to choose Kirby.

  Kirby was saying he didn’t have to choose.

  “How much is this going to cost me at Christmas?” Aaron asked suspiciously.

  Kirby grinned. “I already have Maureen’s old car. I’ll have to come up with something really good.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Aaron said, suddenly sober. “I mean, it’s been a quick five days.”

  Kirby counted on his fingers and then grimaced. “Oh my God, is that all it’s been? Okay. Fine. You can have a whole week. Jeez, it’s not like you’re going to live that long anyway!”

  Aaron scooped a throw pillow from the couch and threw it at his head. And then hugged him hard, because God, who wouldn’t give thanks for a kid like that?

  And now, standing in the squad room, wishing hard for a snack since he’d gotten there an hour early, he was starting to see how this getting-to-work-early thing might pay off.

  “Well, I’d be pissed too,” Eamon said, breaking into his thoughts. “I don’t know what people are thinking right now.”

  Larx did. “They’re thinking that Whitney Olson is bad news,” Aaron said shortly. “And she was complaining about the gay kids, so that’s where we’ll put our attention.”

  Eamon gave an evil chuckle and scratched the graying hair under his cap. “I think they should be thinking that Whitney Olson is a murderer, and maybe they should find another team.”

  At that point, Warren and Percy burst through the doors of processing, an unhandcuffed woman standing between them. She was in her late thirties, not a stunning woman, but well cared for. Thick, straight brown hair, a wide-hipped build that she obviously kept in check with exercise and probably a strict diet. The most remarkable thing about her was her eyes, wide and brown and direct, and she spotted Eamon and Aaron as soon as she walked in.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, the model of composure. “Are you two in charge?”

  “He is,” Aaron said, pointing to his boss. “But I follow his orders.” He ignored Eamon’s gentle snort. “I’m sorry to interrupt your morning, uh—�
��

  “Lori Anne,” she said quietly. “Lori Anne Beresford. Does this have anything to do with Carl?”

  “Carl Olson?” Aaron asked carefully, looking at Eamon.

  “Yes, sir. I’m….” And for the first time she seemed to lose her poise. “I’m the skank whore,” she said in apology. “The homewrecker. Carl was going to leave his wife and we were going to run off together, you see?”

  Aaron struggled for breath. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s a soap opera.” She shifted from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable and worried at the same time. “But he went to talk to his wife and maybe get his daughter to come with us, and he hasn’t come back.” She swallowed, and Aaron saw that her clasped hands were white, and her jaw was tense enough to send a vein throbbing in her forehead.

  “When did you last see him?” Aaron asked.

  “Thursday morning,” she said. “Around eleven o’clock. He was going to check his daughter out of school and then go talk to his wife.”

  Aaron’s brain started working overtime. They’d checked some of the local hidey-holes for Whitney Olson’s car, but there were just too many of them to comb through in two days. Even Colton’s recently developed suburbs featured three- or four-acre yards, most of them with big-assed trees in the middle. Hiding a car, or a seventeen-year-old kid, was easier in a small town than most people assumed.

  “I’ll call the attendance office,” Aaron said briskly, pulling out his phone. “Let’s see if she got there.”

  He had his phone in his hand when it buzzed, and he was surprised to see it was one of the extensions of the high school.

  “It’s like they read my mind,” he mumbled. “Deputy George,” he answered. “How can I help you?”

  In his entire life, he could only remember his vision turning icy, crystal blue once—when he’d gotten the call that his wife had died.

  And now, listening to Nancy, it was twice.

  LARX BIT back a yawn and listed the requirements for an A+ lab on the whiteboard. “Okay, all,” he said, turning around. “I know it’s not the most exciting class in the world, but I’ll rent the circus next week. For now, it’s time to buckle down and write up your labs for yesterday’s experiment. Yesterday was fun, today is not so much. If you want I can put in my old people’s music and we can chill.”

  “Can we listen to our own?” Michelle asked from the back.

  Of course.

  Larx had never been a stickler for rules like this one. If the kids were listening to Larx at the appropriate time, he didn’t mind if they listened to something else when they were working quietly.

  “Yeah, why not. Remember, if I can hear it as I’m walking back and forth, it’s too damned loud, okay? Your hearing may be the first thing to go, but you don’t have to chase it out with whatever crap you kids are listening to now.”

  The kids laughed a little, and everybody pulled out their books, their notes, and their writing utensils. Normally a day like today would be the perfect time to grade something, but Larx headed for his desk with every intent of getting on his computer and cooking up a plan. An appeal to the media first—because Heather might go there if he didn’t, and they couldn’t afford to have public opinion against them—then an appeal to the teachers, and then a plausible petition, as well as a plausible action to take if they didn’t reinstate Yoshi. He had lots of things on his list that had nothing whatsoever to do with the kids in the room. For the first time, he was starting to see why he might have to let go of this class, eventually—but not now. Right now, he really needed the basic purity of teaching to give him faith for the fight ahead.

  When he got to his desk, he turned around one last time to make sure they really were doing what he’d asked of them, and that’s when he saw her coming in through the door in the back of the room.

  He opened his mouth to say her name, but then he noticed everything at once.

  Her clothes were a mess—dirty, sweat-stained, askew. It looked like she’d run out of the house in her pajamas and a sweatshirt and had been living in them for the past two days. He could smell her from the door, like she’d had to pee in the woods and had maybe caught the hem of her pajama pants once or twice.

  Her hair—usually impeccable—was in a tumbling, greasy topknot that tangled around her ears and fell in her eyes.

  Her miserable, red-rimmed, darting, panicky eyes.

  In her hands she carried a black Sig Sauer. Larx only knew what one looked like because he’d had to take a gang seminar back when he worked in Sacramento, and it was America’s favorite handgun.

  “Julia?” he asked courteously, walking up the aisle between the tables to talk to her. Christiana and Kirby sat in the front. Don’t hurry, but pass them, pass them, pass them, pause, look the girl in the eye. Tap Kirby on the shoulder. Gesture behind your back. Go. Go. Go.

  “Julia?” he said again, voice gentle. “People are looking for you. Would you like me to take you to them?”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she snarled, still cradling the gun. From the corner of his eye, he watched as his daughter and Aaron’s son stood up slowly and walked toward the door.

  “Well, like I said. Worried. Can you tell me where you’ve been for the last few days?” The next group of kids to his left stood up in a rush, and he gestured, keeping his movements small. And keeping his eyes locked on Julia, who seemed fixated on him as well.

  “In my car,” she sniffled, because that made everything clear. “And I didn’t know where to go. Everybody knows me.” She looked up at Larx and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I couldn’t even go to McDonald’s.”

  “So you must be hungry?” He took a step to his left, and Kellan was in the next row. He very quietly got up and left. Larx could hear the rustle of papers, of pens, as kids put their stuff down and got up to leave. They all seemed to be taking their cue from Kirby and Christi, bless them all, but Larx wasn’t going to count on anything until the girl put down the big, ugly gun.

  “I’m so hungry,” she sighed.

  Larx looked down at Christi’s backpack—she packed herself a lunch every morning. “Uh, I can get you a PB&J if you want,” he said politely. “Here—” He held his hands out and knelt for a moment. “Uh, going to unzip the pack, okay?” He showed her the inside of the backpack—which was a disaster of assignments she’d gotten back already and hadn’t filed—and pulled out the ridiculously cute Hello Kitty lunchbox she’d reclaimed from a pile of donations to Goodwill. “See? Food.”

  He unzipped the lunch box, grateful that her attention had been focused intensely on him when he saw the last of the kids disappear out the door.

  He handed Christi’s lunch to Julia and glanced up at the doorway in time to see Christiana stick her face back in the doorway, looking at him in agony.

  He shook his head slightly and mouthed, “Love you,” at his daughter before turning back to the girl with the gun.

  Julia had torn through the sandwich, and he handed her the apple slices automatically. While she ate, she held the gun sideways, pointed toward the wall, her arms pulled up to her stomach while she ducked her head and ate from her hands like a raccoon.

  “Julia,” Larx said, keeping his voice even, “where did you get that?”

  “This?” She gestured casually with it, the muzzle pointing up toward her face, then out toward Larx’s chest, then back to the side. “This? My mother gave me this. Isn’t that awesome? I… I didn’t even know we had it until….” Her voice broke and the apple slices fell down. Larx pushed Christi’s bag of tiny Oreos into her hand, already opened, and she cradled the bag against her stomach with her gun hand and used the other hand to lift them dispiritedly to her mouth.

  “Until when?” Larx asked softly.

  “Dad was….” Julia stopped, stared straight into space, and said, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  Her eyes were flat and dead, and Larx watched as she tightened her hand on the gun.

  “We don�
�t have to talk about anything you don’t want to,” he said fervently. “What… what do you want to talk about, Julia?”

  “I… everyone says what a great teacher you are. I… what a good guy you are. But you never liked me. How come?”

  “You tried to blackmail me for a better grade,” he said, wondering if this was one of those times in his life he really should have lied.

  “I wanted an A,” she said, munching. “Why wouldn’t you give me an A?”

  “Because you hadn’t turned in the work or passed the tests,” he said. Sweat trickled down his spine. “Did you… uh, were you planning to make that class up? It was, uh, two years ago, but I think I could find my materials—”

  She scowled at him. “No,” she muttered. “That’s stupid. Just… tell me something. When my mom met with you and got pissed because you wouldn’t change my grade, what did you think?”

  “Julia,” he asked after his heart thudded in his throat, and he tried, once again, to figure out if the truth was going to get him killed, “what is this about?”

  She slipped, made eye contact, and then looked past him again. Her jaw locked and her chin trembled, but she kept her voice flat. “My mother,” she said softly, “is not a nice person.”

  He took a big breath. “No,” he agreed. “Not from my end.”

  “But she always fought for me,” Julia said, eyes still vacant. “Kids would talk about how their parents didn’t trust them, didn’t care. Mom always fought for me.”

  “You do what you can for your kids,” Larx said, searching past her, making sure Christiana, Kirby, and Kellan were all staying well clear of this room.

  “But my dad….” Julia’s body gave a hard shudder, and her hand tightened on the gun. Larx heard the click of the safety disengaging, and his water dropped into his bladder with a giant whumpf.

  “What about him?” Larx asked softly. He knew. He’d known in his gut from the beginning, but he’d had no words.

  “He came back to fight for me,” she said, and her eyes stayed flat. But they also filled with tears. “And he was changing, and packing. Told me to change and pack too. And I was in my room, looking around, wondering if he’d laugh at me if I brought… this big stupid bear. He used to buy me all these big stuffed animals. Even… my car. A big one in the front of my car. And… and Mom came home.”