The Burning Man (11 page)

Just when Kieran thought he couldn’t stand another second, the barrage of abuse ceased. He heard one of his tormentors hock up a thick, juicy loogie, and he felt it splat against his temple, dripping down his cheek. Then he heard receding footsteps and the sound of the trash can being dragged away from the door.

Then, nothing.

He waited for a second, then another. Waiting to see what would happen next.

Still nothing.

He risked a glance through his protectively held arms. He was alone in the bathroom.

He got slowly, painfully to his feet. His body felt like a bag of rocks and broken glass. His poor heart was thumping desperately like a trapped rabbit. His flannel shirt was stained and smeared with blood, so he took it off and threw it into the trash. He didn’t want to look in the mirror, but he couldn’t help himself.

His lower lip was twice the normal size, with a raw, bleeding split. He had a fat mouse under one eye that was going to blacken fast, and his chest and sides were blotchy with red, shoe-shaped marks where he had been stomped and kicked. This was going to go down in his personal history as the worst beating of his life so far.

He ran water in the sink and splashed it on his stinging face, washing away the spit clinging to his cheek and the blood crusted under his nose. But he couldn’t wash away the anger. The hot, impotent fury that made him want to put his fist through a wall and smash everything in sight.

Particularly Brent and Tyler’s faces.

He ran back to his room, grabbed a clean shirt and his coat and got the hell out of the dorm. No way of knowing when the bullies might decide to come back for more.

He had a wool cap in his pocket and pulled it down low over his eyes so the other students wouldn’t see his bruised face, and headed over to the math and computer science building.

It was one of the newer buildings, built in the late seventies. Kieran thought it looked like it had been borrowed from the set of a British science fiction series about a future utopia where people of all colors and creeds wear togas and enjoy peaceful intellectual discourse. It looked kind of like a pair of concrete igloos connected by a glassed-in walkway. Students called it “the Tits.”

It was one of Kieran’s favorite places on campus, because guys like Brent and Tyler wouldn’t be caught dead there. They contented themselves to snigger at the building’s silhouette from the football field.

Once inside, Kieran ducked into the empty solid geometry lab and sat down at one of the metal worktables to pull himself together. There was a large spindly model of an isotropic vector matrix sitting in the middle of the table, and Kieran picked it up, turning it over in his hands.

All he could think about was Olivia.

He didn’t want to go to class or to lunch or really anywhere on campus, because he didn’t want Olivia to see his bruises and know how weak he was. He’d really tried to help that girl, tried to do the right thing like he knew Olivia would have wanted. But in the end it was all for nothing.

He was a failure.

A weak, useless loser who can’t even protect himself.

“Oh, hey.” A male voice came from the doorway. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

Kieran looked up and saw Mr. Bennett, the geometry teacher. He was short and chunky with thinning, light-brown hair and glasses. He didn’t have a pocket protector in the breast pocket of his white button-down shirt, but he may as well have.

“Man,” he said when he saw Kieran’s face. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Kieran said, setting the geometry model down on the table. “Same old same old, you know.”

“I do,” Mr. Bennett said, coming forward and sitting down beside him. “Believe me I do. You know, this may come as a shock, but I wasn’t always the studly chick magnet you see before you today. In fact, I used to get my butt kicked all the time, back in high school.”

Kieran laughed and shook his head.

“Hey, look,” Mr. Bennett said. “You can report this if you want to. I’ll back you up on it.”

Kieran frowned and was surprised by how much that expression hurt.

“I can’t,” Kieran said, raising his hand to touch his burning eyebrow. “That will only make it worse. You oughta know that. Guys like them, they can do whatever they want and never have to pick up the check.”

“Okay,” Mr. Bennett said. “But trust me, it does get better. Maybe not perfect, but better.”

“Thanks,” Kieran said. “I’m just gonna stay here by myself for a while, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” Mr. Bennett said. “Take as much time as you need.”

Olivia sat in the library with a neatly organized stack of books on the long wooden table in front of her. It was a warm, cozy sanctuary from the bitter New England winter, all rich, polished wood and worn leather and the musty perfume of foxed paper.

She was restless, and eagerly looking forward to the spring and summer, when her favorite outdoor activities— like mountain biking, track, and skeet shooting—would start up again. But for a displaced Florida girl still unused to the cold, spending the evening in the warm library suited her just fine.

The books were all about Allan Pinkerton and the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. She was supposed to be doing research for a social studies paper, but her mind kept wandering back to Kieran.

She hadn’t seen him at lunch or dinner, which seemed odd since they always sat together. And if you missed meals at Deerborn, you were stuck eating out of the rec hall snack machine. It wasn’t like you just popped out for a burger. It was a twenty-minute drive into town, and even though Kieran had a car, one his mother had bought him, seniors were normally only allowed off-campus on the weekends.

They usually saw each other briefly between sixth and seventh periods, too, as she was leaving her chemistry class and he was heading up to the biology lab for his senior science project. He hadn’t been there, and Olivia had to leave to make seventh period english lit.

She was starting to worry about him. She’d even stopped by the school nurse to see if he might have been sick, or having problems with his heart.

No one had seen him.

Then, as if summoned by her thoughts, Kieran appeared from behind a tall bookcase. He wore a black knit cap and was slouching in his oversized black parka, looking like a turtle trying to pull its head into its shell. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and the narrow strip of face that was showing between the coat’s turned-up collar and the rim of the cap was a lurid rainbow in every shade of bruise.

One eye was swollen completely shut. The eyebrow above it was crusted with a scab, and so was the bridge of his nose.

Olivia got to her feet in an instant, thorny, complicated emotions surging through her body.

“Kieran,” she said. “What the hell happened?”

“You smoking in the library, Liv?” he asked, with a shaky and unconvincing laugh.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, frowning.

He gestured to the narrow burn scarring the maple syrup finish of the antique table where her hand had been seconds before. Funny, she hadn’t noticed a cigarette burn when she sat down, and from the smell, it had to be recent.

But she shook her head, and turned back. She was way more worried about Kieran.

“Don’t change the subject,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek. “Who did this to you?”

He pulled away from her, his one good eye shiny with stifled tears.

“I didn’t even save her,” he said, tears spilling over. “I wanted to, but...”

He turned and slammed a fist into the impassive wooden flank of the nearest bookshelf. A book on the classification and evolution of the phylum
Cnidaria
tumbled to the floor and landed open to a weirdly beautiful illustration—jellyfish reproductive organs.

“Whoa, hey,” Olivia said. “Take it easy.” She grabbed his hand to stop it from hitting the shelf again, and led him over to one of the chairs. He sank into it, and she took a seat beside him. “There’s no point in putting any more stress on your heart.”

With that she put her hand in the center of his chest. She could feel his heart thumping like a wounded bird trying to get off the ground. She wanted to pull him close and promise him she would never let anyone hurt him again, but she hesitated, unnerved by the sudden strength of that desire.

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened,” she said instead.

As the distraught Kieran told his story about the drugged girl who had been with his dorm-mates, Olivia could feel a terrible cold fury brewing inside her. That girl could have been Rachel. Or anyone. Privileged scumbags like those two needed to be made to answer for their actions, and face the consequences.

“According to Mr. H,” Kieran said. “They told him that she was a friend from town who had too much to drink, and they were letting her sleep it off in their room so she wouldn’t have to drive. But I know them. There’s no way those guys just let her sleep.” He pushed shaking fingers through his hair. “The worst part about it is that I have no idea who she was or if she’s okay. When I woke up the next morning, she was just gone. Like she’d never existed, and I got the crap kicked out of me for nothing.” He looked away. “I couldn’t save her.”

“You tried,” Olivia said, gripping his chin and turning his face back to her. “It took a lot of courage to stand up to those guys. You did the right thing.”

“But they got away with it!” Kieran shook his head, frowning. “What’s the point of doing the right thing if the bad guys win anyway?”

“Look,” Olivia said. “This isn’t the first I’ve heard of something like this going on with those two. Chelsea is always telling me these awful stories, but none of the girls are ever willing to press charges, because they don’t want their parents to find out they were drinking.” Olivia stood and turned away, the bare bones of a plan forming inside her head. “Maybe we couldn’t do anything to help that one girl, but I have an idea for how to put those losers out of business, and for good.”

She reached into her backpack, took out the tiny tape recorder she used to record lectures and make notes to herself. She set it on the table in front of Kieran.

“There’s a welcome-back party in the recreation hall tonight. Chelsea and Stacia are organizing it, so you know there’ll be drinking going on. I’m sure Brent and Tyler will be there sniffing out drunk chicks for their own private parties.

“I’ll make sure they pick me,” she added.

“What?” Kieran asked. “Are you crazy?”

“I’m not really going to get obliterated,” Olivia said. “I’ll fake it. I’ll hide this tape recorder in my boot and while I’m with them, I’ll try to get them to say something I can take to the police. And even if I can’t, if they try anything with me, I’ll be happy to report them. I don’t have parents to disappoint, so I’ve got nothing to lose.”

“If they try to do anything to you,” Kieran said. “You’ll be visiting me in jail, because I’ll kill them.”

“That’s very chivalrous of you,” Olivia said with a grim smile, “but I can handle myself. Besides, you can’t just go around killing people, no matter how badly they deserve it. You have to go through proper channels.”

“Okay,” Kieran said. “Maybe that came out wrong. I just meant... well...”

He looked up at her, tears gone now and replaced by something hot and painfully earnest.

“Be my girlfriend,” he said.

“Wait... what?” Olivia frowned, uncertain she had heard him right.

“I mean...” He shrugged with a little self-deprecating smile. “This probably isn’t the best time to ask, but I’m already beat up, so I figure I have nothing to lose. Still, don’t punch me or anything, okay?”

“I’m not going to punch you,” she said. “I just...”

She looked away, a deep flush creeping up from under the neck of her sweater.

“You don’t have to... do anything,” he said. “You know, if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that,” she said, reaching up to touch the side of his jaw that was the least bruised. “I do want to.” She couldn’t believe she was actually saying those words out loud. “It’s just... complicated.”

“I really want to kiss you,” he said. “But my lip’s all busted open and gross.”

She burst out laughing, the relief of it like a weight lifted.

“You’re so romantic,” she said.

He slid his arms around her waist.

“That’s nothing,” he said. “Wait till you hear my a capella rendition of ‘Mandy’ outside your window at midnight.”

“If I do,” she said, leaning into him. “I really will punch you.”

“Fair enough,” he said, brushing her hair back from her face. “I should have known you’re more of a Neil Diamond fan.”

She laughed softly, rolling her eyes and shaking her head. For a long minute neither of them said anything, and the reality started to sink in. Kieran’s embrace felt warm and safe in this cold, wintery world where so few things did. But it also felt like a gateway to a strange new world with its own mysterious language and unfamiliar customs.

“I tell you what,” she said, breaking the silence. “We can talk about this whole ‘girlfriend’ thing later, okay? Right now we need to concentrate on Brent.”

“Okay,” he said, although she could feel how reluctant he was to let go. “Just be careful, Olivia.”

“I was born careful,” she replied. “Trust me.”

Chelsea was totally behind Olivia’s idea to set up Brent and Tyler, but it had nothing to do with morality or a sense of justice. It was all about the fact that—for the first time—Olivia had finally agreed to allow her roommate to dress her up.

“You’re letting me do your makeup, too,” Chelsea said. “It’s already decided, so don’t argue.”

Olivia, whose concept of makeup was usually limited to mascara and chapstick, had no choice but to go along with this undercover makeover.

“Your feet are bigger than mine,” Chelsea said, giving Olivia a critical once-over. “So you’ll have to wear your own Docs.”

She rummaged through an open drawer and flung something plaid in Olivia’s general direction. Olivia caught it out of the air and discovered it was a pleated skirt so short it looked more like a belt.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, holding the little red piece of tartan up to her waist.