Heathens

By Karlie Taylor

My high school is on fire. I saw it before I heard the news on the radio in Dad’s shed, constantly playing to ward off birds, or through the screeching of the scanner whose sharp tones could pull even dad out of a deep sleep. My bedroom, still covered in the posters of my youth, was dark like dusk or a noontime thunderstorm. The blazing, red numbers on the alarm clock broke through the darkness with a message for me, “It’s morning.”

The brown suitcase I brought was filled with my old clothes. There’s no need to be fancy when I visit home. I hardly ever bring makeup. Quickly, I dressed and wandered to the kitchen where I found no living soul. Quite shocking since my mother, stooped over because she’s tall and the kitchen countertops are low, can typically be found rifling through cabinets and rearranging their contents, a compulsive habit. She only touched the pantry when she read the obituaries in the press and found a familiar name.

In the dining room, there was a fly beating itself silly against a closed window framed by faded blue curtains. Buzz. Thunk. Buzz. Thunk. The pattern repeated itself over and over again. You’d think a fly, having so many eyes and all, would be able to see that it’s flying straight into a window and not into the openness of the outdoors. Maybe all those eyes didn’t leave much room for a brain. I opened the window to ease the critter’s misery and heard the creaking of the porch swing. Mom and Dad were outside, their eyes pointed westward. Dad’s face was pulled down into a frown and Mom’s hand rested on her heart. She shook her head between sips of coffee. 

I returned to the kitchen, grabbed a cup of the bitter drink for myself, and went outside to sit in the rocking chair across from my parents. The Western sky was dark enough that Dad turned on the porch light, but it lightened up the further East I looked. My parents didn’t seem to realize I’d joined them, so I rocked back and forth hoping either the motion or the sound would stir them. 

“It’s the high school.” Dad said keeping his eyes away from me. “Didn’t you hear the address go off on the scanner?”

“No.” 

The scanner was an ever-present figure in my childhood, almost like another family member. Dad worked as a dispatcher for twenty-something years and still knows where every street lies in our small town. When there’s a new voice on the radio, clumsily calling out codes, he grumbled about the man who trained him and how he would never let something like that happen. “Ra-flects poorly on you” he’d say.

Mom turned to me. “Mira Jane called this morning at six-thirty. Her daughter works at the school. Did you know that? Whitney’s a secretary, now. Can’t believe they hired her with her reputation.”

“Louise.” Dad dragged out her name to remind her to return to her original story.

“Oh,” Mom put a hand on Dad’s knee. An apology. “Mira said a group of kids did it.”

I leaned closer to her like my grandpa did when he and his friends gossiped at the gas station on Sycamore Street. “How?”

“Whitney told her they stole a teacher’s keys. Said it was probably one of those younger teachers or the more creative ones, the forgetful types. Also said the school knew it was happening, but they didn’t do a thing about it because it wasn’t a group of heathens that did it. It was the good kids!”

“No kidding?”

“Two football players, a choir boy, and a cheerleader! All on the honor-roll!”

I nodded and looked at the darkness. The only significant group I was a part of was the theater group. Every year I got a role, never the leading one, but I preferred it that way. When I wasn’t on stage, I got to sit in the white, concrete stairwell leading up to it. The dim lighting and the faint echoes of the performance made the location otherworldly, almost holy to me. I’d lean my head upon the wall and daydream about leaving town, or talking back to a teacher, or setting the school on fire. Those thoughts were natural, fine even, but they have to remain thoughts.

I took a sip of the coffee and nearly choked. It tasted like ash.

Karlie Taylor is a recent graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.