and I should probably stop speaking about him that way, and if he was the only one who'd gotten hurt that day, then yeah, I'd probably be eulogizing him by now. But he wasn't the only one, so to me he's still a hateful little turd, because I haven't been able to forgive him for what he goaded out of me that day."
She set the prayer bell down, too sharply, metal on wood.
"I had my hair in ponytails, and he seemed to think that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. He told me I looked like the ass-end of two horses. He started yanking on one and wouldn't stop. And I was so mad, you know? Something stupid like that, as an adult, it's just an annoyance--you tell the guy to piss off, you throw a drink in his face. But when you're eleven, all that anger and humiliation...they're so pure. So consuming. It feels like your world's coming to an end. So I guess what must've happened is, on some level, I decided to take the rest of the world with me...
"He started to burn," Liz went on, and could still hear the kid screaming, a climbing note, up up up, until it could've ruptured the eardrums of dogs. "It only took a couple of seconds before he was engulfed. Then he was running. A couple of seconds later his front door started to burn...then the rest of their house...and then my family's house...and it just kept going. I was standing in the middle of all this chaos and didn't know what to do, because no matter which way I turned, the chaos spread that direction, too. It was feeding on itself by that point. Because of me, the entire block looked like a jet crashed into it. Thirty-two people were dead before it was over. Twenty-five neighbors, three firemen...plus my mom and dad and brother. And one hateful little turd, too, I guess we have to count him."
She gauged the look on Cam's face, pale on his best days and now somewhere near the color of a mild cheese.
"Sorry you asked?"
He shook his head and mouthed the word no.
"Good. Don't be. And another thing: Understanding is fine out of someone, I appreciate understanding. But no pity. That's another thing you can eat up when you're eleven or twelve, but it's been a long time since pity does anything other than bug me."
"You don't have to worry," he said, and stuttered out a laugh. "I haven't quite gotten over the self -pity part yet, so it's not like I've got any to spare right now."
He really could be an asset here. A lot of potential, and it seemed almost irrationally important that she play a role in helping him realize it. For most of the twenty-three years since her childhood went up in flames, keeping her own head straight had been a full-time job. It felt good to be directing those intentions elsewhere for a change, toward someone who needed the same kind of salvage operation. You didn't have to be a firestarter to self-immolate.
"Is that wrong?" he asked then.
"Feeling sorry for yourself? Sometimes no, sometimes yes. I can't tell you when the transition should happen. The things inside us that make us so different, they take an adjustment period, and that can last years, because it seems like we never start out in a place that's conducive to it. But just going from personal experience...? If you're at a point where it even occurs to you to ask if it's wrong to feel sorry for yourself, then, yeah, maybe now it is."
He was resting both forearms on the table. Two arms, two wrists, one hand. She tried to imagine the resolve it must have taken to line up the hatchet in that space between the bones and perform the amputation--it had required more than one blow. And she wondered how it felt to him after the point of no return, when he saw that his orphaned hand and his bleeding stump had parted company at last. If it felt as though half a curse had been lifted.
The most hopeful thing about it, which no one seemed to have recognized? Before making the cut, he'd improvised a tourniquet out of a canvas strap from a leaf bagger, and used it to cinch off his forearm. He'd wanted to
She set the prayer bell down, too sharply, metal on wood.
"I had my hair in ponytails, and he seemed to think that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. He told me I looked like the ass-end of two horses. He started yanking on one and wouldn't stop. And I was so mad, you know? Something stupid like that, as an adult, it's just an annoyance--you tell the guy to piss off, you throw a drink in his face. But when you're eleven, all that anger and humiliation...they're so pure. So consuming. It feels like your world's coming to an end. So I guess what must've happened is, on some level, I decided to take the rest of the world with me...
"He started to burn," Liz went on, and could still hear the kid screaming, a climbing note, up up up, until it could've ruptured the eardrums of dogs. "It only took a couple of seconds before he was engulfed. Then he was running. A couple of seconds later his front door started to burn...then the rest of their house...and then my family's house...and it just kept going. I was standing in the middle of all this chaos and didn't know what to do, because no matter which way I turned, the chaos spread that direction, too. It was feeding on itself by that point. Because of me, the entire block looked like a jet crashed into it. Thirty-two people were dead before it was over. Twenty-five neighbors, three firemen...plus my mom and dad and brother. And one hateful little turd, too, I guess we have to count him."
She gauged the look on Cam's face, pale on his best days and now somewhere near the color of a mild cheese.
"Sorry you asked?"
He shook his head and mouthed the word no.
"Good. Don't be. And another thing: Understanding is fine out of someone, I appreciate understanding. But no pity. That's another thing you can eat up when you're eleven or twelve, but it's been a long time since pity does anything other than bug me."
"You don't have to worry," he said, and stuttered out a laugh. "I haven't quite gotten over the self -pity part yet, so it's not like I've got any to spare right now."
He really could be an asset here. A lot of potential, and it seemed almost irrationally important that she play a role in helping him realize it. For most of the twenty-three years since her childhood went up in flames, keeping her own head straight had been a full-time job. It felt good to be directing those intentions elsewhere for a change, toward someone who needed the same kind of salvage operation. You didn't have to be a firestarter to self-immolate.
"Is that wrong?" he asked then.
"Feeling sorry for yourself? Sometimes no, sometimes yes. I can't tell you when the transition should happen. The things inside us that make us so different, they take an adjustment period, and that can last years, because it seems like we never start out in a place that's conducive to it. But just going from personal experience...? If you're at a point where it even occurs to you to ask if it's wrong to feel sorry for yourself, then, yeah, maybe now it is."
He was resting both forearms on the table. Two arms, two wrists, one hand. She tried to imagine the resolve it must have taken to line up the hatchet in that space between the bones and perform the amputation--it had required more than one blow. And she wondered how it felt to him after the point of no return, when he saw that his orphaned hand and his bleeding stump had parted company at last. If it felt as though half a curse had been lifted.
The most hopeful thing about it, which no one seemed to have recognized? Before making the cut, he'd improvised a tourniquet out of a canvas strap from a leaf bagger, and used it to cinch off his forearm. He'd wanted to
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