January 18th, 2011
The match sparked.
The fire arced passed me in slow motion.
I tried to catch it. My hands were moving so slowly.
The match floated passed serenely, falling onto the paper.
I tried to raise my hands to cover my face. They wouldn't move.
Fire. There was fire everywhere.
I fell forward...
Pain.
I yerked awake, trying to scream. This was wrong, it never happened,
I got my hands up in time.
Blinking, I felt the hospital bed under me, saw the white blurs round the head of my bed that were the curtains. After days of absolute darkness, it was strange to see light, instead of feeling it. I'd never known people could feel light on their skin before, and I wish I'd never learned it. In the dim light I lay back, letting my eyes drift to the only light in the ward, the ceiling mounted television. I prefered books.
My mother's books. They'd filled my locker with them, torn the pages out to crumple them, and when I opened it - I'd smelt the petrol a second before I heard the match. The last thing I saw was the locker going up like an inferno, feeling the blast of heat into my face, the taste of it, breathing fire, and my eyes...
I'd screamed.
My shriek had brought the teachers running, too slowly. Lying on the ground in darkness as someone kicked my in the stomach - Sophia, I guessed - someone pulled my hands from my face and hesitated. I'd thought they would help me. "No more books, Taylor," Emma's voice by my ear. "No scholarship. No way out. You're going to stay here in your place like the worm you are." My mother's writing, her life's work, my scholarship essay, all up in ashes, no way out, no way out of this
goddamn hellish place -
I'd awakened in this bed days later, my eyes bandaged. My hand was handcuffed to the bed, and it took another day for it all to sink in.
Dad had gone after the school for my injuries, but Emma had got there first. He was faced with the police coming after me: it was my locker, my papers, where the petrol had been. The school's lawyer claimed I had obviously been planning to burn the school down and mishandled accelerants. They'd pointed out that I was the only one who could have got to mom's books in our locked attic, and when I said I hadn't no one believed me. The boxes were still locked, but the books were all gone. Emma must have stolen them somehow. The school had Emma's testimony, and Sophia's and Julia's and Madison and the rest. The police tore our house apart and found my bullying journal. Dad was distraught, tried to claim it was proof someone else did it and that I was being framed. The school claimed it was motive.
I had visitors, mostly angry shouting men, or calm ones in suits, or white coats that all blurred together. Alan coming in with Emma, my best friend sanctimoniously saying she'd pulled me back when I dropped the match and to tell me I should be
grateful. I couldn't get away, I couldn't even see her, but I could hear her smirking as she spoke. I'd screamed at her to get out, refused visitors until they kicked her out. Aunt Zoe coming in, being so dreadfully kind and supportive. I'd trusted her, cried on her shoulder and told her everything and she'd told me it would be alright: that we were alone, that I could be honest. She kept asking me if I was sure, if there was anything else and each time there was because I could finally tell someone about the bullying and everything her daughter had done. I'd felt so good when she hugged me and left and then I heard her outside to someone, doctors or police:
'I'm sorry, you heard. I've done everything I can but she still won't admit it,' and them, assuring her she had done her best to make me take responsibility.
The world had spun. When I woke, I just couldn't talk. I wouldn't. Not to anyone. Not after
that. I'd spent time in the psych ward, for what they said was a nervous breakdown, before they released me back to the ward because they weren't equipped for my injuries. Not talking was apparently a psych matter, but there was no point. My words did nothing. I meant nothing. Things got better, I guessed. I didn't get the details, but suddenly the parade of visits from shouting men and angry women went away. So did the charges, something about inconclusive evidence and finally the handcuffs came off.
Five more days for the burns to heal, five days for the sluicing and extraction of ash and dust from under my eyelids and on my corneas. I'd been lucky, my hands had been up. I still had a face and eyes. Barely.
And finally, finally, last night the bandages came off.
It was so nice to be able to see
something, even if all I could see was hospital white for the most part. My glasses hadn't been replaced yet. My sight might change, and it had to wait until my eyes healed. Where I went from here I didn't know. If I didn't talk at all, maybe they'd put me back in the psych ward. Maybe prison was still an option. It would be better than Winslow.
The faint murmur in the background drew my attention. Just another news report, on the TV mounted in the ward to entertain us, without access to turn it off, or change the channel or show something actually interesting. The sound was down to not disturb the late sleepers, but enough I could hear it even if the picture itself was blurry. I stared at it anyway, enjoying the flickering colours and squinting to make out the scrolling text.
The journalist was standing on the shore just beyond the wrecks, nicely framed by the damaged boats, giving
another so-very-earnest live report on
yet another attempt to revitalise the area around Boat Graveyard. It was boring as hell, and twice as pointless. He droned on, telling us about a new initiative to curb criminal endeavours at the Boat Graveyard by sealing the largest ships so vagrants couldn't enter. Stop crime? They might as well ask the tide to turn back, be a modern day Canute. The container ship was, he claimed, planned to be removed, City Hall had applied for environmental grants... I laughed silently as the camera panned across the bay. It was election year again. When Brockton was ruins, that huge container ship would still be there. A quote came to mind, one of my mother's favourites, and I whispered it mockingly.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
There was a shout from behind the camera. The reporter looked behind him and panicked. The BBPD cops in the background, guarding the tape-line around the latest murder in the Graveyard ,turned to look and then ran. The camera shot went crazy as the cameraman fled, running up the beach to throw himself up onto the seafront road. The reporter was bundled over the barrier by a BBPD cop who pushed them to huddle down. Water splashed over them and then the camera raised shakily to the reporter's grey face as he peered over. He said nothing.
The long shot said it all. The long stretch of empty, pristine, sands along the entire curve of the bay. The water that had rushed in to fill the voids of the boats and splashed against the tidal defences, now trickling gently back out to sea. The huge cargo ship still lay at the entrance to the harbour. Of the rest? No sign.
My mouth opened slightly and all I could think to say was:
"Shit."
--
Poem quoted is "Ozymandius" by Percy Bysse Shelley
