Shred of Evidence

They’d been in the kiddie park for half an hour when Johnny decided to set the playhouse on fire. Matt didn’t want him to. He thought of the tiny kids, like his brother Sam, who would show up here tomorrow. They’d expect to play house inside, using their sippy cups and Goldfish for pretend tea parties. Instead they’d find a shell of charred wood, the smoke spiraling up to the sky like exorcised demons. Some would cry. Sam would be the first. “Sensitive,” Mom called him. Matt hated it when Sam cried. The tears welling in his brother’s eyes always made him feel powerless. Matt lived for the adoration in Sam’s eyes when Matt got it right.

But you didn’t tell stuff like that to Johnny. One, he’d kick the shit out of you. And two, he’d burn the house in front of the kids. Just to prove he didn’t care what they felt.

The rest of the park was wet with that afternoon’s rain, but the playhouse’s inside was dry. First the fire only licked the red paint on the floor. Then it caught the wood. Matt had to admit it smelled nice with the odor of damp cedar chips, but that was another thing Johnny wouldn’t want to hear. “Fag,” he’d snarl. Matt didn’t want to piss off Johnny now that he’d set a fire.

Johnny sat so close to the blaze that Matt was afraid his clothes might catch. Apparently Johnny thought so too. He stripped off his shirt and pants.

This was why Johnny didn’t have any friends besides Matt: he was weird. He pulled wings off flies and kicked cats and dogs. Once Matt had found him in the bare dirt of his backyard, blowing up frogs with homemade bombs. Right now he was passing his hand over the flames, as if he could feel no pain.

“I’m bored,” Johnny said. “Let’s go to your house.”

Matt shivered even though the fire’s heat reached him from fifteen feet away. Bored was the worst thing Johnny could be.

When he and Johnny first started hanging out, just after Johnny moved here last month, Matt had invited him to sleep over. Make him feel welcome, like there was one kid who wouldn’t laugh behind his back. Then there would be two of them to face the sports jocks and brain geeks.

But Johnny had refused. “What,” Matt had said, laughing, “you wet the bed or something?”

He’d hardly known what was happening. One minute he was laughing; the next, struggling to breathe, keep from blacking out. “Don’t ever laugh at me,” Johnny had said, his voice a low flat monotone like Matt imagined a cyborg—a real cyborg, not the Terminator—would sound. Then Johnny let go, and Matt resolved never to follow through on his invitation. He also resolved to stay friends with Johnny. That way maybe he wouldn’t do anything truly evil…except that Matt had never been able to stand up to him.

“My parents are light sleepers,” he said, trying to sound cool. “They’ll just kick us out anyway.”

“You got a basement, don’t you?” Johnny almost never sounded like he cared. You could never tell whether he did or not.

“Yeah.” Finished, too, but that wasn’t a detail Johnny needed to know. “What are we gonna do in my basement, though? It’s not like we have a TV down there.”

Matt swore Johnny was smiling, even though he couldn’t see his face. “Let’s wake up your little brother.”

“Sam? What the hell for?” Matt tried to sound tough this time, but most of all he thought he sounded scared.

“Little kids love to play with big kids.” Johnny still sounded like he was smiling, but the shiver in Matt’s spine turned to ice when he said “play with.”

Still he tried to sound cool. “Not at midnight. Sam’s a crab when you wake him up. He’ll scream and wake my parents.”

“So we make it so he doesn’t scream.” Johnny turned and looked at Matt. Backlit, his features were unrecognizable, as if he had no face. “You got some kind of problem?”

“No, man. We’re good.” At least, that was what Matt wanted Johnny to think. He prayed Johnny couldn’t see the thoughts streaming like cold clear water behind his eyes.

Johnny shrugged. He picked up his clothes, pulled them back on. While he was off-balance, Matt rushed him.

The fire had eaten through most of the floor and was working its way up the support beams toward the roof. Sparks flew like Fourth of July fireworks when Matt pushed Johnny down through the floor onto the burning cedar chips beneath. The impact loosened the heat-weakened benches, and they crashed down as if in solidarity. From the roof, raining sparks burned the back of Matt’s neck as he held Johnny down. The stinging pain only made him focus.

When Johnny’s hair caught fire, he bellowed and almost knocked Matt free. Matt held tight to his neck, though, the way Johnny had done to him, the way he was sure Johnny wanted to do to Sam. He held tight even when Johnny’s face started to burn and singe his own hand and arm.

He let go only when Johnny stopped fighting. Then he leaped up out of the hole, narrowly missing being crushed by the falling roof. How pointless would that have been: to die with Johnny, have their names forever conjoined as The Two Losers Who Died Burning Down the Kiddie Playhouse.

By that time the sirens were wailing. Matt sat on a park bench and waited, the smell of seared pork and cedar still in his nostrils. He decided he would tell the police exactly how the whole thing went down: he was only trying to protect his brother. And all the other tiny kids.