This time we hung out in one of the new construction sites, after we watched the old security guy do his rounds and disappear back into the trailer. We climbed up onto the second floor and found a shadow to hide in, right in the belly of the beast. A beast with an insatiable appetite. In 2011, the xʷməθkʷəýəm learned that a 108-unit residential condo development was being planned for c əsnaʔəm. The following year, an intact burial of an adult ancestor was found at the site. Developers wanted to move it. Seven hundred burial sites had already been removed. The xʷməθkʷəýəm people fought hard to have the land honored as the national heritage site it was supposed to be. Eventually they won, which is funny, because it was always their unceded ancestral territory.
The condos are coming for us too. I wonder what will come next.
I’d bought us some beer, thinking I’d need the liquid courage to tag the mall, so we cracked them.
“Are you going to leave your boyfriend?” Diezl asked.
“Why?”
“Because he’s a dick, and because you can.”
“You want to run off together?” I asked, poking his leg with the toe of my shoe.
He looked at me then, and I felt awkward, like something intimate was happening. Not romance — more like we were brother and sister.
“I can’t go anywhere,” Diezl said. “You’re lucky. You have options.”
“You’ll have options soon. After graduation?”
“No, I won’t.”
I tried to read his expression in the gloom. Everything always seems so dire to teenagers, but you’re not supposed to tell them that. He didn’t want to say goodbye, even when we walked back to my place, so we sat on the front steps for a few minutes before I got worried Ben might wake up and find us.
Oh shit, now I remember his eyes in the porch light. Green. And so sad.
A half hour later the tea lights are done; only the piña colada candle is burning. I’m just sitting, trying to get ahold of things. Ben comes out of the bathroom, dressed for a run. Maybe he’s finally going to get his shit together. He kicks his runners toward the front door, opens it, and comes back.
“Where were you last night?” he says.
“Aren’t you going for a run?”
Ben moves closer. “Any new hobbies?”
“Huh?”
“Skateboarding?”
“What?”
Ben narrows his eyes a little and motions toward the front door with his lips. “C’mere.”
Diezl’s backpack and skateboard are piled on the step.
“Weird,” I croak, avoiding Ben’s gaze, “I’ll take them out to the garbage.”
His grip tightens on the knob, and I realize how tuned in I’ve become to his every move. “Leave the board. Maybe I’ll take up skateboarding.”
“Okay, I’ll get rid of the bag. Put some coffee on.”
He just stands there and watches me. “Any new boyfriends?”
“Don’t be stupid. Put some coffee on.” I nod toward the kitchen, but he doesn’t move.
Dead spaces look different in the daytime. Light filters in from cracks and holes I never would have noticed at night. The smell of Diezl’s body is stronger now. I cover my mouth and take the bag over to him. Pull the zipper so hard it catches on the fabric and sticks, so I just yank on the thing until it rips open. Dump out the spray cans, let them roll across the floor.
At the bottom of the bag is Diezl’s sketchbook. In the front pockets there are some smokes and a five-dollar bill, but nothing else. I open the sketchbook.
Diezl had shown me some of his art before: doodles and tattoo designs, and increasingly elaborate versions of his tag, incorporating stars or sometimes flames, depending on his mood. On the last page, BURN AFTER READING is drawn in an elaborate script. I close the book. Lay it on Diezl’s chest.
“Okay, buddy.”
Ben’s standing in our backyard holding two mugs. “What were you doing?”
I don’t have to answer him. Maybe I’ll just drink the damn coffee and not say anything.
But he scoots in front of the door. His eyes are brown and wounded, but he turns everything to rage.
“You need to get out of the way,” I say.
“Taryn!” he shouts after me. “Taryn, what the hell?”
A mug whizzes past me and hits a wall that’s in such bad shape, it makes a sizable dent. But when I return fire, with a pitching arm that seems to belong to someone else, my mug smashes into the fridge.
“Whoa,” Ben says. We look over each other’s shoulders at the carnage. Coffee everywhere.
I open the cupboard over the sink, where we keep the booze. Sambuca definitely lights up pretty good; I’ve done a few flaming shots in my time. Oh, and Bacardi 151, that shit is high-test.
Ben keeps saying my name over and over, and I don’t think he knows for sure whether he should be pissed off or scared. I rip a dry dishcloth in half and stuff the pieces in the bottles, leaving a little wick. There’s duct tape in the cupboard under the sink. A lighter on the table.
“Taryn, Jesus fuck.” Ben grabs both my arms with his death grip, nails dig in. “You’re being crazy.”
“Let go.”
“Taryn, put those fucking bottles down.”
“Let go.”
“What were you doing in that house?” Ben’s expression slides toward fear and his grip loosens a little. I try knocking my forehead against his nose. This definitely gets results, but it stuns me a little as well.
“Holy shit, I will kill you, you bitch!” Ben trails after me into the backyard, but he moves slowly, his nose bloody. He’s not going to kill anyone — he’s so full of shit.
I look around to make sure nobody’s close by, and of course nobody is. Dead neighborhood is dead. I turn the Sambuca bottle upside down to wet the wick, and I light it. It flares up, but not as much as I’d expected.
I should say something good, but all I can think of is, “Bye, Diezl.” Toss the bottle in the window, and do the same with the 151.
Ben stands beside me wiping his nose. “It’s not going to work.”
“Shut up.”
We watch a little bit of smoke pool inside the window, then dissipate.
“Taryn, I don’t know what you’re trying to prove—”
“Lift me up.”
“What?”
“Lift me up!”
Ben blinks, but offers a foothold and I take it, peering into the window. I’d expected an explosion, huge flames, something like a movie. The dead house seemed to absorb the fire; all I see is a scorch mark around a couple of paper bags. Diezl’s body sucks energy from the light — reaches out and demands action.
Below me, Ben’s voice is a bloody burble: “Alcohol’s not flammable enough.”
“Thanks for the tip.”
Ben doesn’t follow me back inside. He doesn’t follow me into the basement, where the hot water heater has been leaking onto the cement floor for weeks, maybe months. All those cold showers. Half underground, it smells like sweet rot. There are layers of dust and dead spiders on the crap we’ve been storing down here, trying to make a living home in a dead neighborhood.
I pull back an old tarp where the jerrican should be, and see the legacy of the rat poison we left out in the winter — a nest of dead bodies peeking out of a hole in the concrete. Ben doesn’t see this, but I do.
Shake that jerrican like it’s an adversary — only half full. I’m going to need a lot more gasoline.
Wonderful Life