through, shaking both the ground and the chimes that surround the house. I pull a crate over next to Jake and sit. Kaylee sits on the stoop, her chin on her knees. I wait until the train passes, and then I move his untouched coffee aside and take Marco’s hands.
“You’re still warm,” he says. “It’s because of that thing, isn’t it? The halo.”
I look to Jake. His hazel eyes are anxious, but we’ve talked about this. Honesty—complete honesty—is the only way to move forward now. He encourages me with a nod.
“Yes,” I say.
“Where is it?”
“In my duffel bag. In the car. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about yesterday.”
He pulls his hands from mine and off the table, pulling into himself. “I shouldn’t have run off like that, but . . .” He dissolves into silent sobs, his shoulders shaking. “I can’t watch someone else I care about die, you know? I can’t.”
“We’re here to help, Marco. We’ll do whatever we can to keep that from happening.” Jake’s voice cracks, and he takes a minute to gather himself. “Can you tell us . . . You saw Brielle dying?”
Marco avoids eye contact now, his gaze on the splintered table. “Remember that story I told you, Elle, about Olivia’s mom dying in a fire. Remember how I said we were there—Olivia and I?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
I’ve told Jake, but Kaylee’s still in the dark. She’s quiet, though, looking on, her green face and blue eyelashes turning her into an alien.
“It was a long time ago, and I’d forgotten things over the years. But when I put that thing on, it all came back to me. Intense. Detailed, you know, moments fragmented, captured in lingering snapshots.”
I picture a graphic novel. A comic book. Squares of color that, when assembled, tell a story.
“What did you remember?” Jake asks. I’m so glad he’s here. I get all captivated when Marco talks, and I forget to ask questions. Important ones. It’s like watching him perform. Even now, his tears trickle away and his inner storyteller kicks in, taking over, helping him articulate whatever the halo showed him.
“Well, it wasn’t just Olivia and me, for starters. A bunch of us guys were there. Guys from the neighborhood sitting on the benches in front of the school, hanging out, making fun of pedestrians. You know, stupid stuff boys do.”
My private school in the city had benches like that. We girls used to sit there and wait for the all-boys school to let out.
“Olivia was there that night, at the benches, talking to us. Her mom was inside meeting with a teacher.”
“At night? Don’t most parent/teacher conferences happen during the day? That’s when they did ours,” Kaylee asks.
“Yeah,” Marco says. “Probably. I don’t know. That’s just, that’s how I remember it.”
“It’s okay, Marco, go ahead. There was a fire?”
“Yeah, it started in the back of the school somewhere. It could have been burning for a while before we caught on. And then there was smoke. Thick, moving over the school like rain clouds.” He pinches his eyes shut, remembering. “We all started yelling, pointing. I remember . . . remember the principal and, and . . . his secretary maybe. They came running out the front door. Cars stopped to watch. And the guys, we all scattered. Some of us ran toward the fire. The others ran away.”
“What did you do?” Jake asks.
Marco’s eyes open now. Crisp. Clear. “I ran toward the fire, around the school, to the back where the smoke was coming from. The guys with bikes had gotten there just before I did. Olivia had a bike.”
Marco turns his face toward the empty train tracks and the horizon beyond. His tears are gone, his voice steady, but he’s not here. Not with us. He’s there. At that school. Watching it burn.
“I think Olivia went in after her mom.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The burns. Her legs were burned. Bad. The backs of her calves, her feet. It’s something I’d forgotten about. But they took her away in an ambulance. I remember that. I remember the ambulance.”
I think back to the Fourth of July, to the barbecue. She was wearing shorts that day and I didn’t see any scars on her legs, but I won’t ask Marco about that now.
“You said you saw Brielle die,” Jake says.
“The fire trucks arrived and were dousing the place in water. They’d removed the body—Olivia’s mom—and another ambulance took it away. Most of the drama had died down.”