The Burn Journals Read Free

matches on fire in gym and burned somebody's shirt up.”
    “That was you?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That was my shirt.”
    “It was?”
    “Yeah, why did you do that?”
    “I don't know, I was just playing around. It was your shirt? Maybe you could tell them that it was just an accident? What did you tell them?”
    “I just showed it to Mr. Huff and he said he'd take care of it.”
    “Shit. I wish I'd known it was your shirt.”
    “Yeah. What are you going to do? They took fingerprints.”
    “I don't know what I'm going to do. See you after seventh period.” I walk down the hall toward the cafeteria and I know that I'm completely screwed.
             
    At lunch, I sit near a few guys I know and eat my sandwich.
    “Did you hear about the guy who went to the doctor with a red ring around his dick and the doctor gave him lipstick remover?”
    “Dude, I heard Nick and Deanna did it in the ditch next to her house.”
    “Kevin told me that he fingered Sonja and she got her period all over his fingers.”
    “Did you hear about Jennifer L.? She got caught fingering herself in the bathroom.”
    I think about that movie we saw in English class, about the guy who's standing on the bridge waiting to get hung. As soon as the rope snaps his head back, he's dead.
    I wonder why all the ways I've tried to kill myself haven't worked. I mean, I've tried hanging. I used to have a noose tied to my closet pole. I'd go in there and slip the thing over my head and let my weight go. But every time I started to lose consciousness, I'd just stand up.
    I tried to take pills. One afternoon, I took twenty Advil, but that just made me sleepy. And all the times I tried to cut my wrists, I could never cut deep enough. That's the thing—your body tries to keep you alive no matter what you do. I've got to think of a way to kill myself that I can't turn back from.
             
    In Mrs. Parker's science class, I sit in the back with Sean and Moira. He's really funny and she's really beautiful, so we spent all of last quarter trying to make her laugh until she started going out with a guy in high school and I started failing this class. Now we just sit here.
    Today I stare at the black lab table and use my house key to scrape things into it. I scrape a big Ace of Spades into the black surface and wait to go home.
             
    I sit in the back of Miss Guppie's French class and wait for the office to call me in. I'm sure they will. They have to. I think about what will happen when I get home. Where the matches are, and where the gas can is, and how I'll blow into a million pieces like in the movies. I wait for them to call me in, but nothing happens.
             
    Mrs. Clagg's drama class is usually fun. We do theater sports, which is like improvisational comedy, and staged readings, but today we read silently from this play called
Arsenic and Old Lace.
I think it's just about the saddest thing I've ever read, even though I haven't really been paying attention.
    Fifteen minutes into the class, the hall monitor comes to the door with a note for Mrs. Clagg. She reads it and says, “Brent, you're to go directly to the office.”
    I say, “Okay.” I stand up and walk out of the room, but I can hardly feel my legs, they're so numb.
    It takes me a second to realize that the hall monitor is Chris, one of my friends from elementary school. We used to play soccer together, and I can't figure out why I didn't recognize him before. We walk down the hall and he asks me what I did this time.
    I say, “Lit some matches in gym.”
    “That was you? Oh, you're in deep shit, dude.”
    “I know,” I say, and I walk into the office.
    Mrs. Robins is the vice principal for the eighth grade and I go sit in a chair outside her office. Adam is already there, waiting.
    Pretty soon, she opens the door and calls him in and I sit waiting and my stomach gets tighter and tighter, like something is eating me from the inside.
    Finally Adam opens the door