How to Set a Fire and Why

by Jesse Ball

  It seems there was a period when they were apart—he was in the army and she was still in school. He would write her letters, she would do the same. This letter was a paper airplane that was inside an envelope. I imagine she took it out and it must have been pretty exciting. No one has ever sent me a letter, certainly not with a sweet paper airplane in it.

  So, the letter says on the outside:

  just in case the letter doesn’t get all the way to you, I gave it some wings so it could fly the rest of the way.

  Which is pretty terrible, but is the kind of thing a guy might write to his sweetheart when he is sitting in a barracks somewhere.

  The letter on the inside is just him going on about how pretty she is and how much he misses her, and about the books that she sent him, which he read, and all the things they will do when he gets back. He lists a ton of plans they must have made, and I think it is really sad, because I know for a fact that he died early in that next year, so they must never have gotten to do most of those things.

  Now,

  when I was crying at the hospital, they took me up to her room, and I thought, definitely she isn’t in there, because I could see the bed and it looked empty, but when we got over to it, I could see she was there. With the hospital clothes she just looked really small. She was asleep and the nurse gave a sign that meant—don’t wake your goddamned aunt because she almost died. The nurse was a really fat Puerto Rican guy. We went out into the hall and he turned out to be one of these nurses who knows everything. He even asked me stuff about what my plans for the week were and gave me good advice about not having a guardian around.

  Regarding my aunt, he said—she had a stroke. Now, she is asleep. Her condition is stable. We don’t know any more than that yet. There will be a bunch of tests.

  If her condition is stable, I said, doesn’t that mean you’ll just release her? We don’t have any money and we have no insurance.

  He said somehow the no money no insurance thing wasn’t known at the hospital yet, so I should shut up and see how much care she could get before it got cut off. I gave him an I’ll-keep-mum-soldier-salute, kissed my aunt on the cheek, and headed to the elevator. While I was waiting there, he came and found me. He had a sheet that listed visiting hours, phone numbers, other data.

  I dropped the paper and knelt to pick it up. When I got to my feet, he was looking back at me.

  She might be really changed, he said. Think about it.

  LUCIA SERIES

  When I was sitting at home by myself, I decided to write a series of descriptions for my aunt. I could bring them in to her at the hospital so she would feel like she knew what was going on outside.

  Maybe one would be about the garden, one would be about the house. One could be about my school, one about buses, because I really like them. I don’t know. I kept thinking it was a dumb idea, but it stuck. I was sort of pretending that I would be able to see my aunt again, that I would go back to the hospital and she would be there in her body. But, obviously, there was no guarantee of that. My mom is an example of this—one day she left her body and I have never seen her again.

  When I say that, I don’t mean that she actually went somewhere else. What I mean is: the shitty little cells that cluster together to muster up in sum total the person I used to know are now clustering in some inferior way and the person I know cannot ever be found.

  My mother isn’t even really in my memory—because it constantly erodes. Everything is falling apart all the time.

  People love to say it to you like it counts:

  Oh, Lucia, she will live on in your memory.

  Sometimes they’ll even touch your arm at the same time like they’ve earned it by saying something poignant.

  The whole thing about people living on in memory is a crock of shit. The best you can do is try to remember what you can, and include the memories in your routines. But, sometimes that makes the real memories fade faster.

  We’re just running down a fucking slope carrying these little flags, and one by one we get shot and we slump and our little flags are in the mud and no one picks them up. No one is going to keep running with your flag. Lucia, no one cares about your flag. I tell myself that. When you fall down it’s over.

  TELEPHONE

  I called the school and told them I was spending the day at the hospital. Immediately on hanging up the phone I realized this was a big mistake. If my aunt dies and the school knows, and now they know, then it could mean some kind of institutional business. I mean, they can’t send me away anywhere, I don’t think so, but—better to keep it all quiet as long as possible, and here I go calling them when I don’t need to.

  Why not just fail to show up on Monday, and then on Tuesday bring a forged note? I think I called because I wanted to tell somebody what had happened. The sad little individual that I am wanted to hear somebody feel bad about how bad it was for me and wanted to hear a voice wish me well. That’s what happened. The lady at the main office, who I hate, she is really terrible (I see her talking on her cell phone outside the school entrance when I eat lunch there by myself sometimes—and she is just abominable), this very lady is the one who answers the phone (of course she is, she is the receptionist), and she listens to my pathetic retelling of my aunt’s stroke, which I feel bad about even as I do it, and she says, essentially, oh my little bird, you poor dear, oh you frail thing, of course don’t come to school. I’ll let everyone know.

  It didn’t make me feel any better—in fact, I felt a bit worse, because she thought she had hung up the phone, and maybe a second later I heard her talking to someone else in the office about how she was going on break and could someone replace the toilet paper in the office toilet for once.

  AUNT

  I went to see my aunt and she was talking. First thing, I said maybe you should pretend to be in a coma so they can’t release you.

  She said, it was fine. Someone from the soup kitchen, a woman my aunt has never liked, came to visit and is paying for all her care. She showed me a card the woman brought. It had a Jesus face on it (Shroud of Turin style). I guess she has a ton of money stuffed in a mattress or something, and is really kind. My aunt was kind of sheepish about it, because she thinks she is a good judge of people. Let me tell you—no one is a good judge of people.

  I said, now you have to live.

  Why?

  You have to live so you can get the chance to be nice to her.

  Right, my aunt said. I can live a little longer.

  I asked her how long she was going to be there for. She said a week at least, because they had been finding some other things that were wrong with her. That’s the trouble with the hospital—they find all the things that have been killing you forever, and that you are okay with, you’re okay with those things slowly killing you, but then they find them and get rid of them, and then other things replace the things you were fine with, and you are not fine, not fine at all with the new things, and so you die, slowly, in utter misery, just the way you would have before, only before you were pretty okay with the manner of it, but now you’re not.

  I told her my idea about writing some descriptions for her. She said she liked that idea, but I should make sure not to ham it up. She wanted good clean descriptions, no sentimentality. I was a bit offended, I said, who died and made you king, of course I won’t fucking write you sentimental descriptions just because you had a stroke and shat yourself.

  It isn’t anyone’s fault what they do at a time like that, my aunt said. The ambulance ride was really bumpy.

  I asked her did she really shit herself and she said no.

  LUCIA SERIES

  I got out my notebook and practiced doing typography. I realize it isn’t real typography. It is just me drawing some letters, but I tried hard and made it look pretty good.

  I figure I will assemble it all and have it actually printed up on cardstock and give it to my aunt. She likes real books.

  The cover proof I made looked like this:

  1 G
ARDEN

  The garden is a pathetic little plot of nothing. Someone once laid stone down to serve as a walkway, but the stone has long ago cracked apart until now it must always fail at its mission, which is to give a person a place to put her feet when she walks there.

  The beds, which are raised, or are supposed to be raised, are often broken open on one side or the other, that is, the wood boxes are broken, and the earth has crumbled out and fallen, so the raised beds slump here and there to the ground, crowding or occluding the path.

  The choice of plants has no overall rationale. Essentially, the person who plants a plant in this garden does not think about any of the other plants when she does it, she thinks only of the plant she is planting and whether she likes it.

  To say that this gives the garden a motley appearance would be a pretty far-fetched compliment. In fact, it makes it not seem very much like a garden.

  The garden may be seen from the windows of the converted garage. It may be seen from the bench that abuts the garden just before the converted garage. It may be seen from the space where an automobile once parked next to the converted garage. It may also be seen from any of the twenty windows of the huge house that stands before the garden. Most of those windows are covered with curtains and blinds, however, so in reality, no one ever looks out of them, and that is partly because the landlord lives in only a few rooms of the house and has the rest shut up to preserve it, as if that were a thing.

  A person can use the garden by: reading in the garden, playing an instrument in the garden if she has a musical instrument, singing in the garden, sitting in the garden, speaking to a friend in the garden, if she has a friend and that friend is dear enough to be permitted to see the garden, or walking in the garden. Walking in the garden is not much of a walk because the garden is fairly small.

  Certainly, you can’t call the garden the gardens as some people do (regarding their own large garden).

  The garden is poorly kept. The garden is full of dead things. The garden does not get as much sun as it should. When you are in the garden you can still occasionally hear noise from the street. The garden is inexpert. It appears abandoned.

  In sum: the garden has excellent character, and it knows all the right people.

  2 THE BUS

  The person is rare who enjoys taking the city bus. Yet, here she is. Here I stand before you, an actual enjoyer of city buses.

  The reason is this: for a person who rarely has privacy, the city bus gives you a place that can’t be taken from you—a place where you can sit and read or write, or if you are lucky listen to music on headphones, and not be bothered (too much). For someone who already has the book she wants to read, it is like a library on wheels.

  The bus has an awful smell. The seats of the bus are vile and you always feel that you are going to catch ill from touching them. The people who ride the bus collectively smell worse than other people. The bus drivers will not always treat you nicely, though sometimes they appear to be absolute saints.

  The back of the bus, contrary to popular opinion, is not the best place to be. It is far better to be near the front. Why? People who vomit and leak tend to go to the back. It is also possible to have people steal your shit while you are on the bus and this happens more often at the back.

  When not to ride the bus—

  do not ride the bus at rush hour because you will have to stand. Standing on a bus is not an experience I am prepared to defend. Late at night is the best time.

  I once took a bus and the driver forgot he was a bus driver. He drove the bus somewhere he wasn’t supposed to and didn’t stop at the bus stops after a while. Finally someone confronted him. He said he had a lot on his mind, and to give him a break. I thought this was a legitimate defense.

  One of the other riders called him a fucko, and the others agreed, which has to be the first time anyone has gotten a consensus with the word fucko.

  3 ABANDONED WATER PARK

  This is a place you have never gone to, and to which you never shall go. It is full of young people who are extremely drunk. I understand that your understanding of what it is to be young is different from what I think it is, probably more accurate, and also full of supporting identifiers that I cannot recognize. Still, picture this abandoned water park as being crammed to the gills with the stuff of life.

  That it is abandoned means: it is not being used against you, like the rest of the city.

  That it is full of people who are drunk means: you can understand what they are doing and why and you don’t have to fear them as much as when you wonder what they want. You can wander through the water park observing things.

  The water park has lots of construction area lightbulbs in plastic cages strung on lines all through it. The man who lives there thought of this as a cheap way to make things nice for people.

  Many of the ways to go from one place to another in the water park are broken. Walkways are broken. Ladders are broken. Slides are broken. Bridges are broken. There are fences where you wouldn’t think they would be. It is a bit of a maze.

  If you want to be able to get around the abandoned water park without help, you need to get there when you are still sober, and you need to get there when it is still light.

  The best situation at the water park is to have some friends with you and to go away from them and then to hunt for them and find them and then to go away from them and then to hunt for them and find them. In the meantime, you meet other people, many of whom are not worth talking to, but some of whom are okay.

  Sometimes you are in the going away from them part of the instructions, and then you are surprised because you have fallen out of sync and one of your friends comes and hunts for you and finds you, and as it turns out, that is just as good.

  You should have: licorice, a cup, a flashlight, a notebook, and a screwdriver.

  You must never under any circumstances fall asleep in some far-off part of the abandoned water park. If you are tired, you should find the opera singer who (apparently) sings all the time during the day at the abandoned water park, and ask her if you can lie down on their couch.

  Really, though, if you are tired, you should go home. The abandoned water park is the sort of place that attracts rather decent people, so it is likely someone will take you where you need to go.

  That’s enough of my descriptions for now. I’ll put some more in later.

  How things stand at this point if you haven’t been paying attention:

  I go to Whistler High School; everyone hates me, except Lana and maybe Stephan (and some other people whose response to being school-victims is to try to uselessly band together). I like Lana.

  My mom is in a mental hospital. My aunt is in a real hospital.

  I spend most of my time thinking about joining the Arson Club, which I will do, and I am writing a pamphlet about setting fires. I have not actually set any fires yet, but I can do a better pamphlet about it anyway than some people who (maybe) have.

  So—

  Jan canceled the meeting with me and Stephan. He did this by just not going, which is the best way to cancel an appointment, I have found. That means Stephan went there alone and wandered around like a moron for two hours looking for us.

  The other day, I went there and wandered around happily knowing I wasn’t looking for anyone. But Stephan, he went and wandered around in the dark like a moron feeling he’d been tricked. That’s a comparison of our two experiences. I am not being superior—if our positions had been switched, I would be the one scrabbling around in the dark like a mole rat. Or, actually, not like a mole rat. Mole rats are really great at being in the dark. They are totally content there. It is hard not to feel some fondness for them.

  Stephan was a little mad that I hadn’t gone, and he was being a bitch about it. So, I told him about my aunt’s stroke, and my aunt’s stroke trumped his irritation. He apologized immediately. I guess he has pretty good manners.

  He said he called Jan and we would meet in two days. I said okay. H
e said, did I want to go today to burn something. I said, I was really busy, but I would go to the other meeting, so he should make sure to go to that.

  He said, of course he was going to fucking go to that. That was his meeting that he got me invited to. I said, fine, if you think so.

  That’s how things are with Stephan. He doesn’t reassess things often enough. I think he is still pretty immature.

  ENGLISH

  In English class, the teacher, VanDuyn, announced that we were going to do a creative writing module. Someone asked what that was. The teacher said he was going to teach us to share our thoughts and ideas in fiction. A bunch of the kids got really stressed out, I guess because they think that their thoughts and ideas are completely worthless. Ordinarily, I would stick to the party line and say that everyone has useful stuff to say, but this group of kids, I don’t know. I think probably they were right to be stressed out.

  So, VanDuyn had everybody take out their laptops. If you don’t have a laptop, he gives you a block of paper. One girl, Maya, has no laptop because she has broken three of the school laptops. She takes them to the fourth-floor bathroom and throws them out the window. No one knows why she does it, but when she does she gets a lot of credit from everyone. It is really funny. She pretends it is an accident each time, but she still gets in trouble. So, Maya and I got blocks of paper, is what I’m saying, and everyone else had a computer.