I sit, alone, in this cold dark shelter, soaked to my skin, unable to move - afraid of what awaits me when I climb from this hole. Is the history of my life, which has been an enduring question mark, being spelled out before me in beautiful longhand? And if not, why are the words on these pages consuming me like cancer? I sit, alone, at this waterlogged desk, in its matching chair, recalling how I got here.

~

Three years ago, two weeks past my twenty-first birthday, I was handed the keys to my uncle’s house. It came as a shock – “free and clear” were the words the man used. Uncle Nolan had lived in this house my entire life. Hell, he died in it. Nothing tragic or nasty, he just died. The only tragedy was that he wasn’t found sooner – the smell of his festered flesh lingers in the air. He’d been battling cancer, diabetes, and a touch of degenerative lung disease to round things off. Uncle Nolan wa something of a recluse, and in the end he refused any help from the family (not that they offered). I didn’t know him well – did anyone? – save for the few weekends my grandparents forced me to spend here as a child. He was a stubborn old ass, but there’s something to be said for writing your own ending; he died in his favorite chair in front of his favorite television set, probably watching an episode of his favorite program. That’s what he called them, programs. May ye rest in peace, I thought, as the ‘cha-chings’ played in my head.

Before the keys came into my life, I labored through my existence, desperately awaiting the moment my hard work would pay off. This epoch of struggles began the moment I escaped my mother’s womb and landed in the NICU, a full thirteen weeks shy of my due date. Four years later she decided life was too much to handle and ran off to California. It was my Uncle Nolan who found me the next morning, crying alone in our tiny Section 8 apartment. Mom had had no man to speak of and my grandparents became my legal guardians. The first few years of adulthood had not treated me any kinder, but there are no Intensive Care Units for stressed adolescents. Every month, I scrounged to make rent on the small two bedroom apartment at The Royal Palms that I co-leased with this guy I found on Craigslist – he was no friend, and those apartments were far from royal. I was maxed on loans and two years away from my Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Freeport State University – I had dreams of becoming a writer, like Uncle Nolan. The keys to his house represented the first break of my life; and in addition to the front door, I hoped they would unlock a fresh start for me.

It took two months after the funeral to settle his affairs. After scribbling my initials and signature on a ream’s worth of legal paperwork, I was handed the keys. The rest of the family was none too pleased that they landed in my hand, either. My uncle only owned two things of consequence in his entire life: this house (its consequence debatable) and a signed, first printing of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises – “stoppped” clearly printed on page 181. Both of these things, according to his will, he wanted me to have. The rest of it, the things scattered around the house, were split amongst his remaining siblings and my cousins.

Their distaste for me radiated as they came to collect his belongings – or maybe it was just the smell getting to them. They loaded their cars, trucks, and minivans with artwork from the walls, tools from the garage, pots, pans, and knives from the kitchen – each of them inquiring about the Hemingway as they did. “It’s safe and sound,” I’d tell them. They reminded me of greedy pigeons plucking around a café patio after brunch. Fat Aunt Gerti even snagged the cleaning supplies from the broom closet, along with the broom. Take the closet door as well, I thought. This scavengry lasted about a week until my family had taken the best of what Uncle Nolan had acquired over the years, and left me the things that I would eventually throw into a very large dumpster.

As I spent the next weeks scrubbing and fumigating, I often wondered why. Why had he left this to me? With a list of twenty-plus nephews and nieces and six siblings to choose from, why me? Was I his favorite nephew? Was it because we both shared a love for literature? Was it because my mother had been his favorite sister? Or because she’d abandoned me without word and he pitied me for it? Or could it be that he threw a blind dart and it landed nearest my name? Did it even matter, now that he was gone and I was moving my things into his bedroom? I had no way of knowing the answer – not then, anyway.

~

There were five items (sans the Hemingway) of Uncle Nolan’s that I managed to keep from my family of foragers: his bedframe (although his mattress was the first item to hit the dumpster), a nightstand, his dresser, the kitchen table set (which technically could be considered another five items, but let’s not) and the key. Not the key to the house, but one of an older variety – one that didn’t belong to the house, or any of the items within it. It was the kind of key you might find in a jar of 80,000 other keys in an antique shop: heavy, brass, with an oval ring at one end of a long shaft, and a small rectangle at the other. The kind of key that always evoked a sense of adventure in me as a child – surely it belonged to a chest of valuable treasure.

It was late October when I moved into Uncle Nolan’s house and it had gone without heat for months – no central heating in this ramshackle residence, only a series of wall units that needed their pilots lit. I discovered the key taped inside the small hinged door below the unit nearest my uncle’s bedroom. Judging by the dust, cobwebs, and brittleness of the masking tape holding it there, the key had been hidden there many years ago. Initially, after searching the house and finding no matching lock, I had little interest in the key and nearly tossed it, but a passing thought gave me pause – my uncle had made the effort to hide this key, keep it safe for God knew how many years; how could I simply toss it in the trash alongside my take-out containers from the night before? Instead, I tossed it in his nightstand next to my bed and there it stayed, forgotten, for the next three years, mixed in with loose condoms, a few bucks in change, and whatever book I was reading at the time.

~

In the three years that my uncle’s secret key kept my contraceptives company, my life began to take on a semblance of normalcy. I graduated from Freeport U, barely passing any class that didn’t involve reading or writing (arithmetic can go fuck itself), and found part time work at the Freeport Bee as a freelance journalist and novel critic. I mostly hated the work; it basically entailed writing shitty stories and reading even shittier ones – mom would be so proud. I think of her often and sometimes imagine she’ll be standing there when I open my door to a knock. But, of course, it’s always just my goofy neighbor, or the postman. My grandparents had been keen on reminding me that it was foolish to expect her return. It was for my own good, they said. I’m sure they did the best they could – God rest.

It took me every bit of those three years, but I also managed to turn Uncle Nolan’s house into my home. I spent every spare moment and dime I had working through a To-Do list the length of the Mississippi and had whittled it down to two final chores: ripping out the hideous carpet, which, for some reason, had only been laid in the master bedroom, and tackling the jungle in my backyard – all three quarters of an acre of it. I chose the yard next – or perhaps it chose me.

It wasn’t merely the size of the yard that overwhelmed me; it was the sheer mess of it. I hadn’t accomplished more than peeking my head back there since I moved in, and by the looks of it, my Uncle hadn’t done much more than that. It was littered with dead trees, overgrown bushes, knee high weeds, and ivy – oh, the ivy! It had spread like the plague and taken over every fence board and tree that it touched. The entire back third of the property resembled the entrance to an Amazonian rainforest. After a week of beavering through the weeds and grass, whacking away with my grass whip, I reached the Amazonian sector of the yard. It was in this brush where I found the next of my dear old uncle’s hidden secrets, and how I came to be sitting in this dark cavern.

~

The house my uncle left me was built in 1934, when Freeport was still a small mill town. Its first owners were the Stallwards. They managed the first and only (at the time) self-serve grocery store in town, Stallwards. But as major chain stores immigrated into town, the Stallwards emigrated out, leaving the house to the bank. My uncle purchased the deed in 1962 at the age of twenty-two with money he had received after publishing his first (and only) novel, “Foregone Conclusions.” The ticket price: a whopping $9,200, plus two years of back taxes. Uncle Nolan grew up during a whacky time in the good ’ol US of A and had spent years at school ducking under his desk or being herded into the basement with his classmates for nuclear bomb drills. The world was paranoid and, based on what I remember from American History, had good reason to be. Hell, even the comic books of his day were filled with ads teaching kids how to “duck and cover.” And so my Uncle Nolan, like many Americans during the Cold War years, built himself a bomb shelter in the backyard. My ivy-infested backyard.

Anyone who’s ever tried to eliminate ivy vines knows it involves a good deal of patience, and a good shovel. I discovered the shelter when, with one painful and jarring stroke, my shovel smashed into something very not like earth. My teeth chattered and my body rang like a tuning fork. The clank of metals colliding echoed in my ears for an hour. I bent and scraped away the loose dirt with my gloved hands; before long I’d uncovered the rusty metal hatch. My first thought was that I’d stumbled upon a long-abandoned septic tank and, in that case, really didn’t want to open that cap. But, because I am not so far removed from being an adventurous young boy, I had to know for sure. I grabbed the L-shaped hatch handle, held my breath, and turned.

It took some effort to lift the rusty metal door and when I peered inside, I staggered back in shock. What stared back at me wasn’t ancient shit and piss, but myself. The entire thing was filled with water and, besides my awkward reflection there, I couldn’t see a damn thing. Ripe with odor and filthy from my day’s work, I hopped in my Jeep and headed to Hal’s Hardware.

I lowered the cheap submersible pump from Hal’s into the dark water below my backyard and waited. And waited. And as darkness began to fall more quickly than my pump could suck, I retired to the house…and waited some more.

I dozed off some time after supper and dreamt of bombs leveling major cities, men and women running through the streets with tattered clothes and missing limbs. At 10:47pm I was jerked awake by a piece of shrapnel tearing me in half. My mind returned to the pump.

I grabbed a coat from the closet and flashlight from the garage. The crickets are chirping especially loud tonight, I thought as I made my way to the back acre of my yard. As I closed in on the shelter my steps began to make sloshing and sucking sounds, and by the time I got to the metal hatch, my sheepskin slippers were soaked through. The run-off from the pump’s hose had flooded the yard.

In two minutes, wet slippers would be the least of my problems.

I walked to the edge of the manhole and shined my light inside. I was surprised to find only a foot or so of water remaining. My heart fluttered and chills came over me; this was certainly no old septic. I felt the grin spreading across my cold face as my flashlight searched the room.

Attached to the opening of the shelter was a wooden ladder, inviting, no begging, me to come down. I had to go…perhaps only halfway to scope things out. My endorphins racing at full throttle, this couldn’t wait for morning.

Assuming this ladder to be nearly sixty years old and that the waterlogged rungs would turn to mush under my weight, I proceeded with caution. I lowered myself to my left knee and pressed down on the first rung with my soggy right foot. Surprisingly, it was solid. I pushed harder and the rung remained firm. I slowly lifted my left knee and joined my two feet together. If only I had stopped there. I lowered my right foot to the next rung and began to shift my weight to lower the left – half a second later I was lying up to my chest in 45 degree water, and my ass was throbbing in pain. The second rung had crumbled beneath my feet and sent me falling into darkness – my ass and the flashlight landing at the same time. I popped up almost as swiftly as I’d fallen and pulled the light from the water. Drenched to the bone, aching and cold, I removed my sopping jacket. I shined the light on the ladder and saw that it wasn’t just the second rung that had broken beneath me, but the next three as well.

“Well, shit.” I said through chattering teeth.

The shelter was about the size of my bedroom and the ceiling over seven feet tall. I let the light scan the concrete room; it looked as though my uncle was prepared to spend the rest of his life down here if it came to that. Every square inch of wall space was covered in cabinets and shelves, all labeled to indicate their contents. Inside the food cabinet was an endless supply of canned foods, ground coffee, bottles marked Potassium Iodide, vacuum sealed meals (expired 12/74), and a thousand jars of Skippy peanut butter. The shelter was stocked with drums of water – which made me chuckle, considering I stood in about 200 gallons of it – portable toilets, bleach, blankets, batteries, radio, television, cot – everything. I was in a perfect time capsule and had been transported to a completely different world. 1962 was no longer just a date in history to me, for a short time, I was living in it. As I spun around the room, my eyes landed on the thing that would change my life forever. Standing in a corner of the bunker was a beautiful oak, roll-top desk. And considering the aquatic conditions which it endured, for God knows how long, it was in astonishing condition.

It wasn’t the desk that would change my life, no, but the object hidden within it. The desk’s roll-top was down and locked. Immediately my mind raced to my nightstand drawer and Uncle Nolan’s secret key. And for the only time since, I was grateful I kept it. But after inspecting the keyhole, I quickly realized that that ancient key did not belong to this mid-century desk. I found the desk’s key resting safely in its top drawer. Unlocking the desk proved difficult; the lock’s bolt had rusted in place and my shivering hands lacked their usual dexterity. Eventually, I got the lock turned over and the door rolled up. Inside the desk, as if my uncle had known the shelter would someday flood, was a plastic bag, within another bag, within another, and inside it – a book.

~

I mentioned that my uncle had published the one and only novel, and that he used that money (and the trickling royalties over the years) to support himself for the last five decades. He continued to write over the years, but mainly short stories or things he kept to himself – nothing that ever came close to the level of success “Foregone Conclusions” had found. What was written in that thick, leather bound journal, with its gold scrollwork, and ivory pages certainly would have changed all that.

Written in my uncle’s longhand was the captivating story of a small-town girl named Jade.

~

Beautiful, intelligent, charming – Jade Henley was the pride of her parents and the envy of her brothers and sisters. In a family of fours and fives, Jade was a ten. Destined for more than the humble town where she was raised, she left for university in California at eighteen. There she found no shortage of new adventures, and new college boys to share them with. One such adventure was a new street drug called crack cocaine, and in 1985 it’d been all the rage on campus. As Jade’s addictions grew, subsequently, her drive and dedication to school waned. One evening, three weeks shy of finishing her junior year, and high as a kite, Jade and her man of the month were arrested in the nationwide sweep the authorities called the “crackdown on crack.” Shortly after she was dismissed from the university. With nowhere else to go, she returned to her meager roots; the radiance that once surrounded her all but burned out. Her hair was ratty, her face dull, her lips cracked like the desert floor, and her once stunning blue eyes dull and gray. But the family pride was shunned and turned away.

The only person to show her pity was Walt – an older man who, in secret and to his shame, had fallen in love with her long ago. Nearly twice her age, but nonetheless in-love, he determined to ger her clean again. In her brokenness, he came to control her, and love quickly turned to obsession. Then began his advances: playful at first, but forceful and heated in time. Until one dark and evil night, one that would haunt her dreams, she conceded and let him inside. Later she would wonder if he'd drugged her - or could her depression have been that dark? She could never be sure. Regardless, it happened only the once, but its impact was interminable; 201 days later she gave birth to a son. Ashamed, she never revealed her son's father to another living soul. Anyone who asked was told that he had been a "random" she met at the bar, and all believed her.

The post-partum that followed was as bitter a pill to swallow as any she had ever had, and it nearly killed her, but she knew for the sake of her newborn son that she must get out. In her first moment of clarity since leaving for California, Jade, now sober, gathered her son and their scant belongings and left Walt in the dead of night. She knew he’d never come after her, nor dare fight for custody of the child.

With their daughter finally clean, and because they pitied her bastard child, Jade was given refuge under her parent’s roof. With their support (and a little government assistance) Jade found work, and, eventually, a place of her own. Not long after, she met a wonderful man who loved and cherished her, and took her son as his own. One evening, the man surprised her with a beautiful sapphire pendant necklace and a promise to love her for the rest of his life. She wore it with pride and once again began to walk with her head held high, but her joy – and his promise to her – was short lived. The man was killed two weeks later in a horrible traffic collision.

~

It was in this moment that a thought first swept through my mind. But it would not stick, and as fast as it came, it left. I continued to read.

~

The man’s death left Jade in a desperate state. She prayed that Walt, the father of her child, might feel an obligation to help provide for his son. One night, she went to him – leaving the boy asleep at home. But Walt denied her request and was furious that she would taunt him by wearing “that filthy necklace” in his house. Argument turned to violence. Jade tried to run, but the twenty one years of youth she had on him would not overcome the strength of his anger.

He seized her, shoved her to the floor of his bedroom and grabbed hold of the closest item that would teach the lesson. As she attempted to rise, he swung the electric clothes iron as if he were Hank Aaron swinging a bat – it was homerun number 756. The blow snapped her neck and she died there at his feet.

As her blood pooled onto his bedroom floor Walt was struck with a flood of emotions and memories. Through tear filled eyes, he dropped to the wood floor and tried desperately to revive her, but there was no need; Jade’s blank eyes confirmed everything he already knew. Rudely, emotion gave way to reality at the sight of her spilled blood – covering her, covering him, spreading across the floor.

He set to work to erase every shred of evidence that she had ever come to him.

~

As I read what followed, under the light of my Eveready companion, I feel the sweat beginning to pool on my face; my breath becomes heavy and labored. Fiction no longer feels like fiction. And as Walt rolled out the carpet to cover the blood stains on his bedroom floor, I understand, and another vague, dim memory rushes to my mind. This time it sticks.

But it can’t be…it doesn’t make sense.

I know I must get up, move from this desk, but I’m afraid. Afraid to know for sure. Finally, I rise. I grab hold of the old desk, square it beneath the manhole and pull myself out of 1962, to face reality.

~

As I run through my house, stripping off soaked clothes, I glance at the last item on my To-Do list and hope to God I’m wrong.

~

Walt rolled Jade’s body, the gash in her head no longer weeping, into a dusty, timeworn linen. He emptied the old Civil War era trunk in which he kept his childhood train set, and tossed his stained clothes, bloody rags, and electric iron inside it. On top of these things he gently laid the dead woman; he swept her hair aside and kissed her broken forehead. As Walt began to lower the chest’s heavy lid, Jade’s golden hair caught his eye and carried him away.

He remembers.

He remembers the first time she’d gotten it cut and how bald she had been as a baby. He remembers her kicking and screaming in the back seat on the way to the salon that day. He remembers how she’d pinned it up herself on the first day of grade school and how pretty she had looked. He remembers it flowing in the wind under her helmet as he helped her learn to ride her bike.

Walt had been there her entire life, and he had loved her from the moment his mother first told him she was going to have another baby girl (at her ripe old age of forty-five).

Jade was the youngest of Walt’s siblings.

~

Holding the cut strip of carpet in my left hand, the razor in my right, I feel my wind leave me all at once. It’s hard to breathe, the air too thick. I can hardly see through welling tears. My heart feels like it’s punching a hole through my chest and my sobs won’t escape my narrowing throat. This isn’t real…it can’t be real. But these are blood stains.

And sitting in these smears of blood, I understand the truth. It is as if the vast world and all its secrets rush into me and transport me to my childhood. I see my mother standing over me, tucking me into bed: her sad but beautiful sapphire eyes, and the matching necklace that hung along her chest as she turns and leaves my world forever.

No.

I grab my uncle’s book and flip to its title page. I stare at the words written there. “Buried Treasure” By Nolan Walter Grey.

No.

NO!

I can’t breathe! I’m going to vomit. Every muscle in my body enraged. I am weak. Tired.

My mother.

My uncle.

My father.

My uncle. My fucking father!

~

Walt dragged the old chest through the dark halls of his house and through its back door. He knelt beside the crawl space access door next to the hose bib and pulled his evil deed into the darkness.

~

I run outside on weary legs. I kneel beside the small door and stare at the slow drips falling from the hose bib. I open the access and shine my light into the foreign land of wooden beams, cobwebs, dirt. I let my light scan from left to right, but the farthest corner is far too black to see. I climb inside, using my free arm to brush away the webs. Chills pour over my body and for a moment I think I’ll die down here. I take a deep breath, and another. My resolve returns and I continue into the blackness, hoping this is just a dream. I stop and gaze behind me; my world seems miles away, yet I’d barely crawled twenty feet. My gaze returns forward and I lift my light again. My heart stops. My fingers lose their strength. My flashlight falls. The light blinks out. Darkness.

My fingers slide desperately through dirt, a spider web clings to my face. I find and grasp my flashlight. I flick its switch. It does not respond. I bang its head on the palm of my hand. It does not respond.

“FUUUUUUUCK!!!”

~

After a hot shower, Walt took the keys to Jade’s car and drove it to the train station on the west end of town, where he left it with the engine running. From there, he walked eight blocks under the shadows of the night where he caught a bus and returned to his side of town.

The next afternoon he would drive his truck 50 miles to a strange town and pay cash for 19.3 square yards of carpet – enough for one bedroom.

~

Slowly, my eyes adjust to the darkness, and the faint light of the porch spilling in from the access door behind me is all I need to continue. And then I see the outline of that dusty old chest. I see the initials of the man I called Uncle scribbled on its side, and I decide then and there that he will never be my father. I crawl the last ten feet and stop. I begin to weep. I reach into my right front pocket and pull out that ancient key, hating it with all my heart. I squeeze it in my hand until I feel it burning there. Indeed, this old key belongs to a chest of valuable treasure: the most valuable treasure.

For the second time this night, I unlock my uncle’s dark, bitter secrets.

~

Crippled by the guilt and shame Jade carried over birthing her brother’s son, she never told a soul she was going to Walt that night. She tucked her son into his bed, gave him her last kiss and never came home.

Jade Henley’s car was found the next morning, abandoned and out of gas. The search began, but police found no leads. Her oldest brother, Walt, who spearheaded several search efforts, would never once be suspected in her disappearance and after several months, and a cold trail, authorities classified her as a missing person and ceased their investigation. Her family believed, and so her son was told, that the dread of responsibility had overcome her and she had run away. Back to California and back to her drugs, they all presumed.

All the while her body had been laid to rest just three feet below the room in which her son would someday sleep.

~

Written, in lieu of “THE END”, were the repentant and bitter words of my uncle’s confession:

I’M SORRY, BOY

~

The rusty hinges of this old chest creak for the first time in twenty years. I lift its lid and gaze within. Before my fear can pull it back, I reach my hand inside.

Wrapped within a dusty blanket is the woman who hadn’t run away from me when I was only four years old: my mother who loved me, Heather Elizabeth Grey, also known as Jade Henley. And catching the faint light from that small window are the hundred facets of the beautiful sapphire necklace worn around her neck.

The boy strikes the match and holds it before his face. It’s his first time; the flame hypnotizes him, takes him away for a time.

A shout rings in his ear; he doesn’t register any words, but they break his trance. He turns his head toward the big shouting mouth. Spit flies from thick, cracked lips. Yellow teeth, laced with white plaque, chew out inaudible words. He stares at the oversized canine tooth, protruding as if it belonged to some prehistoric sea creature. Snaggletooth, he thinks. He turns his gaze from the mouth, looks down and drops the match.

~

The halls of Arthur A. Prescott Middle School were empty, quiet. The only sounds were the quick, heavy falls of the boy’s oxfords.

Jake Lemieux hurried back to 24B, one hand wrapped around the base of his throbbing head, the other around the bowling pin which served as his class’s restroom pass. His eyes were wide and roving, wary of spectators. The thumping in his head and chest grew more violent with each step and as his sweaty palm grasped the brass handle of 24B’s door he wondered, could a kid have a heart attack? He gave one last look behind him and turned the knob, terrified of what came next.

As children will do, every student in Ms. Burke’s eight grade art turned their head toward the squeal of the door’s hinges. Standing there, half as tall as the open doorway, Jake felt the prick of each stare thrown at him, like one hundred darts on a dartboard. Every shot a bull’s-eye that screamed, it was him! He nearly turned to run, to flee for China perhaps, but Ms. Burke swiftly foiled his escape. “Jake, please take your seat. Class…up here.” Their stares returned forward, offering Jake a small reprieve.

He stepped inside, the door closed behind him. He set the pin on its shelf and began the walk to his front row seat, which now seemed miles away. Ever since his first day of school he’d elected to sit front-and-center, far from distraction and his less zealous schoolmates – a decision he greatly regretted at the moment.

“Trouble finding you’re tiny pecker, loser?” Jake was only mildly aware of what Sam Kilgore, a career back-row-sitter, had whispered. Sam’s best (and only) pal, David Williams, was tickled pink and added, “Frenchy’s got a micropenis.” Both boys laughed inaudibly, and discreetly slipped each other a fist bump. Micropenis was a new one for the duo and this their first attempt using it real-time. For them, it could not have gone better, though Sam wished he had been the one to say it.

Jake returned to his seat and as Ms. Burke went on explaining complimentary colors, he wondered if he’d somehow escaped the trouble he felt sure was coming. It went out. It had to. This respite would not last.

When the alarm sounded, the children buzzed, thrilled for the interruption in their lesson. Some students chimed along with the high-pitched whine, waaaaaaahhh! Ms. Burke quickly scanned the school’s calendar of events in her mind – the next drill was weeks away, what the hell are they doing in that front office? Her students shuffled in their plastic seats; papers and pencils fell, desk legs squealed out of true. Peter Foals ran to the wall of windows at the rear of the class. Ms. Burke called for the children to settle down but beneath this expression of authority Jake saw that she was as curious as the rest. For a moment he saw the little girl she had once been; that she was not so far removed from their side of the classroom. The children ignored her remonstrations.

Mr. Perry, Prescott’s campus monitor and custodian, sprinted past the classroom as if his ass was on...

“FIRE!” Peter Foals yelled.

Now, every student in the class bolted from their seat and joined him at the dusty row of windows, leaving their desks a scattered mess – every student but one.

Jake didn’t even turn around. He could not. Terror had frozen him in place. His eyes followed Ms. Burke who was desperately dialing the front office from the corded phone next to the white board. Her eyes caught his and all the world (along with his heart) stopped. Their exchange seemed to be the only movement in the entire universe; the alarm and the yelling children had paused and the only truth was those stony eyes staring into his.

She knows.

He dared not look away. He would watch her lips declare the truth, tell the office that it was him. Jake Lemieux is the culprit.

The intercom broke their stare and returned the universe back to motion. Their eyes turned to the small circular speaker in the room’s ceiling, as if looking at it helped with the hearing of it.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…PLEASE REMAIN CALM.” Ms. Burke returned the phone to its cradle; his secret safe – for now. “THERE IS A SMALL FIRE ON CAMPUS AND WE ARE WORKING TO EXTINGUISH IT PROMPTLY. FACULTY, PLEASE ESCORT YOUR STUDENTS, IN AN ORDERLY FASHION, TO YOUR DESIGNATED SAFETY ZONES. THIS IS NOT A DRILL…”

Jake had never said a swear in his life, but he’d thought them many times. He thought of them all now, each one screaming inside his head. Panic settled and he began to cry. He tried to fight the coming tears but as often happens in childhood, his body didn’t seem to give a damn about what he wanted. What he really wanted was to disappear –whatever was coming, he didn’t want be around for it.

Was it even possible for a person to disappear? Like really? He believed it was.

Some of Jake’s favorite moments with his father were spent watching a magic-man named David Blaine on TV – a man who could hold his breath for eighteen minutes, levitate from the ground below him, and disappear before a live audience. Twice, Jake had asked Jerry Lemieux if he could learn magic, to which the reply had matter-of-factly been, “it’s all bullshit, kid.” Jake did not believe it was that, but knew better than to ask a third time. He’d determined to learn regardless, and when the book fair rolled into Prescott’s cafeteria last fall, his small savings procured him a book far more valuable than its $10.95 sticker. He’d only made it through the first chapter of The Beginner Magician’s Handbook (which dealt with disappearing smaller items and card tricks – kid stuff) before his father found him reading it one night and took it away, drunk. “Do your homework! Learn somethin’ wortha damn!” Jake never got to the chapter on disappearing oneself. Damnit shit!

Thinking of his father now made him cry harder.

He watched as Ms. Burke ran past him, and through his lens of surging tears she became five or six Ms. Burkes – and each one knew what he’d done.

She stopped behind his desk and began her best shepherding routine. “Hey! You all know how this goes! Line-leader in front, Rear-holder in back. Now!” That name never failed to get the children going, and even now, when this was clearly not a drill, ‘Rear-holder’ rallied many giggles. “Quickly. And stop that!”

She turned to Jake, whom she noticed (with mounting interest) had not shared the others’ curiosity. “Jake, honey. Let’s go.” Is he crying? He slid from his seat and into the gap before the Rear-holder, the spot in line no child ever wanted. He did not much care this day.

Katrina Blevens, in a fishtail braid, led the class out of 24B as Ms. Burke made sure all students were accounted for. Like snakes slithering out of burrows, long, zigzagged rows of children meandered out of classrooms and into the halls of Prescott Middle. Every eyeball, young and old alike, strained to find the root of the uproar and those fortunate enough to be in buildings B and C would later tell those who weren’t how large the flames were. The accounts varied wildly, from ten feet to over thirty. Once again, Jake Lemieux did not look.

From Safety Zone 1, under the flagpole in front of Prescott Middle, Jake’s crying ceased and, even amid the chaos, calm was returning. Sitting in his classroom he’d wanted to disappear, and now, outside, amidst this sea of students dressed in the Prescott blue and white, he finally had. Just one sheep among many, he thought.

He tried to recount the afternoon’s events, but the harder he thought, the harder the pounding in his head became, and the farther away the memory seemed to get. His only recollections were the beauty of that flame, and that hideous snaggletooth chomping up, down. He reached behind his head and felt the growing goose egg at his occipital; it was painful to the touch, but did not seem mortal.

When each class reached its designated Safety Zone, and the halls were once again empty, the alarm ceased. Moments later, it was replaced by the long bellows of approaching fire engines and when those two trucks thundered onto 58th Street, the children cheered. For most, the unfolding events were the most exhilarating of their young lives. They all watched in awe as these heroes in heavy suits dismounted their engines and disappeared into the school. That’ll be me someday, thought most of the boys. I wish they would rescue me, thought most of the girls.

I hope this ends soon, thought Jake Lemieux.

It would not.

An ambulance arrived.

The men of the Freeport FD had the fire extinguished in a mere fifteen minutes. Normally, the fire would have been easily dowsed by the overhead sprinkler, but the often hung-over and always indolent custodian, Mr. Perry, had ignored the growing mound of paper towel wads that the young men of Prescott Middle had covered it with over the last two quarters (a fresh and very wet coat just this morning). By the time the fire had broken through the mound of paper and shattered the sprinkler’s glass trigger, Building C’s men’s room was already eighty percent in flames and had spread to the adjacent classroom. Later, investigators would conclude that the fire had been started in the restroom’s waste basket, which had stood overflowing since lunch period, directly beneath the restroom’s three paper towel dispensers. Scattered notebook paper, eight rolls of single ply, three reams of toilet seat covers, and the antiquated wooden stall dividers provided the rest of the fuel needed to produce the day’s inferno.

When the firemen reemerged, the children applauded their success.

Jake did not applaud; these men were in no mood for applause. He only observed with ardent awareness…

The fireman with the mustache takes off his helmet and approaches Dr. Wheeler, the principal. The other men continue to their trucks, two others speak to the men at the ambulance. Dr. Wheeler listens as the fireman whispers. He doesn’t like what he’s hearing. He slams his hand to his mouth and stumbles back, like an invisible man has shoved him. He looks down, away from the fireman. He seems sad, scared. In his other hand he holds a walkie-talkie, he stares at it. He looks back at the man with the mustache. He removes the hand from his mouth and speaks into the little radio. The man with the mustache puts a hand on Dr. Wheeler’s shoulder and the two walk side-by-side into the school. Two paramedics in dark blue follow, pushing a metal bed on wheels.

What is that for?

~

An hour passed. Some children stood while others sat. Some had been dismissed to their parents, some waited for their buses. Of those that remained, some were excited and some were agitated, but in that moment, all of the above were unaware that as of 1:17 this afternoon, the population of Arthur A. Prescott Middle School had declined by one.