Viv and I knelt for one of the wooden blocks, crammed our fingers under its edges and lifted. They were heavy and solid, pinning the train car in place.
Nine of us would push the train car. Graham would position himself outside the car, on the metal risers so he could reach the puddle of accelerant, and jump. The fire would catch inside the car. The rush of the wind as it moved would keep the flames from spreading too quickly. When the car reached its destination by the knoll, likely in a matter of minutes, it would ignite. Ideally. We hoped. There were a million things that could go wrong or end in serious injury, but none of those consequences occurred to me. What did: a girl was killed, someone got away with it, we had the right to punish Seven Hills, Graham was used to jumping.
But first, leverage. “Amanda,” I said, “C’mere.” She trotted over, rosy cheeked.
“This is cool as fuck,” she gushed.
I thrust the red plastic tank into her arms. “Time for souvenirs,” I said. The ten of us filed inside the car. I fought to keep the memories at bay. The piece of glass that scarred my shoulder was probably still in there, discarded on the floor, a part of me that would soon go up in flames.
“Amanda, Jess, all you guys there.”
Viv, Graham, and Harry hovered in the rows of seats behind me. I took my Polaroid camera from my backpack. “Hold the tank above your head, Amanda. Yeah, yeah, you look so cute.” I peered through the viewfinder, made out their forms in the light of the flashlights. “Say ‘arson,’?” I called.
“Arson,” they giggled in unison. My camera flashed. Their crime was caught on film.
I slipped the photo into the pocket of my backpack. “You take one of us?” I asked Jess.
She obliged and Graham, Viv, Harry, and I posed by the door, arms linked. I took the camera from her quickly. “Here, I’ll keep it safe with the other pic.”
Once everyone had exited the car, Graham made a pool of gasoline at the far end, and a thin stream that ran from it to the door.
“Everyone but Graham at the rear,” Harry called outside in the tunnel, ignoring the dirty jokes Trent made loping over.
I jumped from the bottom riser. Turned to look up at Graham. “You sure?” I asked under my breath.
He braced against the railing and leaned over me. I tilted my head to meet his eyes. “Have I ever wussed out on a dare?”
“This isn’t a dare, so it wouldn’t ruin your perfect record.”
“Just get this thing rolling and stand back once it is.” He winked at me. “Don’t be a hero.”
Eighteen gloved hands set against the train car. We heaved. Dug our toes into the ground. Levered our weight. The train car gave an inch. Another. A few more. It lurched forward. Rolled at a walking pace. I tried to push through the initiates who’d stopped dead in front of me, shoved Rachel to the side when she didn’t respond to “Excuse me.”
Harry kept parallel with the front of the train car. No longer walking, jogging. My breath got louder in my ears as I gained on him. Viv yelled something I didn’t catch over the roar of the rolling car.
My thighs burned closing the distance. “Why isn’t he jumping?” I shouted. “Harry, why isn’t he jumping?”
Gravity was dragging the car down the gentle slope, faster. Faster.
Harry’s head bobbed as he accelerated. “It won’t light,” he yelled.
“It doesn’t matter. Tell him to jump. Graham. Jump!”
I pushed myself harder. Ten feet behind Harry. Five feet. “He won’t,” Harry wheezed.
For a split second, I was neck and neck with the front of the train car, the metal steps, the metal grate of the deck where Graham was supposed to be standing, and he wasn’t there.
30
The black, empty rectangle of the train car door seared into my eyes. Graham was inside a tinderbox. With the lighter and accelerant. The mouth of the tunnel was fifty yards and closing. I was slowing down, legs not cooperating.
Over a dip in the tunnel and up a small summit, the train car’s speed eased just a little. A flash of black shot from its front. With his arms outstretched, Harry ran at it—at Graham—like he could stop him from colliding with the ground.
I came up on both of them in a heap in the dirt, near enough to the tunnel’s mouth that they were bathed in the light of the three-quarter moon.
The night whisked the car away. Gone. Its rumbling receding as I hit my knees by Graham. On his back, legs hooked over Harry’s midsection, eyes winced closed. Harry’s frame was juddering. Laughter coursed through Graham too.
My arms went slack at my sides and I crumpled into them. “I’m going to vomit up my heart,” I managed to say.
Viv was there then, tears striping her mascara, falling into me, elbows gouging my ribs. “I’m going to kill you, Teddy Graham. Kill you. Murder you. Leave you hanging with the goat,” she blathered.
Finally, when it was apparent to everyone that Graham wasn’t hurt and that our train car had either reached our mark or derailed somewhere along the way, we escaped home.
? ? ?
The morning staff of Holy Bagels arrived at work at five a.m. Their ovens would be preheated and laden with bagel dough, including cinnamon raisin, my favorite, by five thirty. They never got that far. Fire trucks arrived on the scene fifteen minutes after the 9-1-1 call. Meanwhile Viv and I sat in my bedroom, dressed for school, in the dark.
“And when he wasn’t jumping off the train, I thought, oh my god, we’ve killed Graham,” Viv said, barely a whisper, our heads sharing a pillow propped against the bedframe.
“It was too risky having him set the car on fire while inside the car. Should have done it another way.”
“Like he would have listened.” Her pinkie hooked mine. “He was dying to be the hero.”
“And then Harry kept alongside the train, like he was going to try to jump on it or run it down.”
“He wanted to play the hero too,” she said. “But it was you I worried would actually leap on to a moving train for Graham.”
I laughed softly, remembering what the two boys had said about heroics and how they’d differed in opinion—Graham swearing that most liked their heroes to be a little bad and Harry disagreeing. I liked them both ways and in the same story.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, bouncing off my bed and rushing to the open window. All of Seven Hills likely heard the wailing sirens.
Fifteen minutes later, whirring helicopter propellers passed over Driftwood. We raced downstairs. I smelled a pot of fresh coffee. Dad must have been up already, but we didn’t see him as we slipped out. At the car, I said, “Will it look suspicious if we go down there?”
Viv slapped the top of my car. “Sirens and a helicopter—there’ll be a crowd. If anyone asks, we’re getting bagels and working on a project before class starts.”