Free Goodhouse by Peyton Marshall Page B

direction. I had a secret. I’d been sneaking out. The dormitory was old, and all the wooden windows had been replaced with metal sliders of impact-resistant glass. They opened only four inches to circulate the air. But the janitor’s utility closet on the fourth floor was an exception. It had its original double-hung sashes, and I knew the access code—I’d seen a class leader punch it in.
    The upper hallways were worse, filled with a more acrid, stinging smoke, with an almost unbearable heat. We crawled to the utility closet and I punched in the numbers. Stumbling over buckets and bottles of cleaning fluid, we managed to raise the window and suck in great gulps of cold January air. I was already regretting my decision to race for the closet. Surely most everyone had made it out the main door. Surely it was not as bad as it seemed moments ago. “I’ll take responsibility,” I said. “You should turn me in.”
    â€œI’ll say the closet was already open,” Ian said. “Nobody will check.”
    We expected to see boys flooding the yard below. I expected to see my friends lined up in rows, but instead, the yard was dotted with men in black jackets and red balaclavas. Bodies—proctors, mostly, but some students—lay unmoving on the lawn. It took us a moment to process it all. The snow at the base of the building had melted. Ash floated in the air, little black flecks like crows against a stormy sky.
    â€œI’m not going down there,” Ian said.
    â€œWe have to,” I said. The smoke was getting heavier. It was hard to breathe even with the window open. “Follow me.” I told him to put his feet where I did, and then I was on the ledge, trying to dig my fingers into the rotten molding, usually soft enough to find a grip, but tonight, frozen and slippery. Ian kept grabbing for me, and I moved away from him, afraid he’d knock me loose.
    â€œWait,” he said. “You’re going too fast.”
    â€œJust do what I do,” I said.
    We crept toward the corner of the building where the decorative edging had been cut to look like stone—and the pattern created a series of handholds and footholds. As we descended, we passed several open windows, one of which was broken, the safety glass bulging in its frame. A single limp and disembodied arm had been wedged through the four-inch opening.
    Purifying fire. This is what the Zeros preached. We’d all read Matthew 13—the parable of the weeds. We all knew that the Zeros used this—this single biblical chapter—as the foundation of their doctrine, their justification for the use of fire. In the parable, an enemy has sown weeds among a farmer’s wheat, but Jesus tells the farmer to wait. He tells him not to remove the weeds, not to risk damaging the crop. It’s only when everything has grown—when everything has been safely harvested—that the weeds must be bundled together and burned. This was, the Zeros said, the word of God. This was his truth.
    As I climbed to the ground that night in La Pine, as I struggled to grip the side of the building with my shaking fingers, I felt the blaze intensify. Paint bubbled off the siding and smeared onto my pajamas. My palms burned. I jumped the last ten feet and lay still beside a fallen proctor. Whatever was happening, I knew it was better to blend in and disappear. A dead boy had the best chance, and I assumed that Ian would follow me, do what I did, like he had for the duration of our climb. But as soon as his feet touched the ground, he ran for the woods. I could have shouted for him to stop, but I didn’t. I lay there on the grass watching his pajamas flapping, breath issuing from his mouth in clouds of condensation.
    Someone shot him from a distance. He fell, and then a man with a red scarf around his neck, a man dressed in the garb of a citizen, stood over him and shot him in the head. Even in the flickering chaos of