Kerosene

         In the end, fire was all he really cared about. His eyes were so crazy insane, his laugh more a shout of freedom than anything else. He depended on nothing but the flames. I could say he depended on me. I could make a convincing argument for his dependence on me. I could convince everyone. But I would know I was lying. He didn’t depend on anyone but the flames. And in the end, that fire was what killed him.
         I loved him. Never doubt I loved him, and I would be so arrogant as to say he loved me back, but we were never more than friends, never wanted nor needed to be anything more. But, really we were so much more and so much less. I didn’t love him for what he put me through, and I didn’t love him for shattering the sheltered snow globe I had lived in. And I certainly didn’t love him for the person I became because of him; then again, I haven’t had enough time to find myself again—maybe he did good. Maybe. We’ll see.
         But I loved him, pure, simple, raw.
         Our friendship was nonjudgmental, but so complicated. I’m sure he never thought of me as often as I thought of him; he was a fascination, a break from the ordinary, while I was… I’m not sure what I was. A means for escape? Someone to spot him, provide a restraint his subconscious knew he needed? Someone to just be there? Someone he could count on?
         The first meeting was a chance occurrence. I was at the park, upset, sitting on a bench, staring at nothing and everything. And he came up to me, hair brown, flopping this way and that, so obviously not brushed. Lean, not muscular, and lanky, but with a certain grace. High cheekbones, a sly grin, clear skin, and the occasional show of dimples made him crookedly handsome, but his eyes made him stand out. Blue, such a light, alien blue, I accused him of colored contacts so many more times than once. And when I asked him his eye color on our first meeting before things got beyond comprehension, he responded with a swoon and a melodramatic eye flutter, “Periwinkle, love.”
         He asked my phone number that first time. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting, but I certainly didn’t expect this. Two weeks later, he called me at night, voice shaking, a certain hysteria barely covered, asking me if he could come pick me up, almost pleading with me. He would never actually plead, or show weakness, as I would come to learn, but the desperation was obvious to me. I’ve always been good at reading people, and he was no exception, as much as he was unlike anyone else. If anything, I grew to understand him better than most people because I paid more attention; he was so strange.
         That hulk of a car, so rusted and small and barely running, was the closest catalyst he had to freedom. And he rattled down my street; I could literally hear him coming. And he pulled into my driveway, his eyes bloodshot reckless, and I got in the passenger seat. I will never forget the smell of his car. Kerosene always reeked; I could almost feel it seeping into my pores. It made my nostrils flare, burned my eyes.
         I was appalled, the first time, asked him about the smell. Told him he was an idiot when he told me he had some in the back seat. Told him when he crashed, he’d explode. He laughed his not-quite-sane laugh and told me exploding in flames would be extraordinary, glorious, phenomenal, love. He was so excited by that thought, made use of his queer, strange choice of vocabulary, and never failed to add on an endearment. He saw my look of horror, and he laughed again, telling me they weren’t full, and they were in metal cans. Rattled off some kerosene facts, but I’ll never forget that first impression, his carelessness, that told me I would never forget such a wild, wild boy. And he drove like he lived life: reckless, fast, dangerous.
         We went to the park, that first time. The location always changed. And he jumped out of his near-broken car, not waiting for me. And he spilled his kerosene every which way and he lit his match and he threw it to the ground.
         The park erupted. It had been deserted, of course, because it closes at night, but the look in his eyes. I’ll never forget it.
         I was terrified. Illegal, destruction of public property, he told me no one would care, that there was no proof it was him, he was careful. He told me in some serious tone, some clever, some scary-grave tone that he was careful. His blue, blue eyes were so calm, contrasting sharply with the blaze so close behind him. Different, so radically different, from how he was only moments ago. No longer shaking, so serene; his thumb grazed my cheek, and he whispered, “Don’t worry, love. I’ll protect you from me. I swear.”
         And then he turned and he jumped and he screamed and I stood back, hugging myself, kerosene next to my feet far away from the blaze. Safe. I watched him as he let loose, suddenly so cold, inside as well as outside. I knew if I moved closer, just a few feet, I would be able to feel the blaze. I would be closer to him. But I would rather be cold than hot. I could control how the freeze affected me. And he was cold, too. He wanted to be warm, wanted something he couldn’t control, and I did not want to be like him, even back then.
         He never really told me about himself for the longest time. Eventually he mentioned his last name, and in my curiosity I looked him up on MySpace, Facebook, finding out random facts that really didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. Why he craved the fire, why he dared life to shoot him down.
         We did talk, though, finally. Once in awhile, maybe once every month on average, I would get a text message during the school day, telling me he would pick me up after school. I suppose it should’ve bothered me that he assumed I would be free, but it never really did, and even if I did have something going on, anything could be cancelled for him. He was easily, unhealthily, the most important.
         And we would go to some semi-deserted location. Usually we went to the park, the same place of his first escape I’d witnessed. And we did immature things like roll down the hill in the summer and sled down in the winter, me all bundled up and him in jeans and a thin shirt. And we swung on the swings and hurled ourselves down the slides and we laughed and we talked of Never-Never Land. We talked of conquering the world—I’d go to the north pole, he’d go to the south pole, and we’d build a gigantic slide through the Earth to reach one another again. Divide and conquer, always with a way back to each other.
         We would lay side by side and stare at the clouds or close our eyes and speak secrets in whispers. He cared about my life; he became my confidant, and he was a good one at that. Who would he tell? Even when he really had no answers because, really, there weren’t any, it seemed like he did. Everything was so much better when I was with him, those days.
         I knew he wouldn’t be there for me, though, if I needed him. I texted him once, upset beyond reason, asking him to pick me up, not trusting myself to call—he responded hours later he couldn’t, that he was sorry, that I couldn’t depend on him. He flat-out told me he wasn’t reliable, and I never really doubted it. I was being used by him, and I knew that, but I didn’t mind.
         He complained about the world. He wanted to change something, wanted to be somebody. Not necessarily someone important or famous, but someone worth something. His religious beliefs wavered from month to month; he was volatile, and everything changed about him, and changed frequently. Every part of his personality, excluding the basic primal desire for freedom, could change between times I saw him. It was like he was experimenting, and it was an all-or-nothing deal.
         He was intelligent, and I respected his brilliance. I believed he really would make something of himself. He had dreams to go to college, though he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life yet. I don’t know what his grades were like, or what his friends were like, and I didn’t know what his reputation was. But those days as we laid side-by-side and I absently, lightly traced his burn scars as his arm provided my pillow, I knew I was lying next to someone great, regardless of whether or not he knew it, regardless of whether or not he would use that potential.
         Only during the day did we really talk, and those are the times we exchanged parts of ourselves.
         Sometimes I was the worst person in the world, the cause of all his problems, issues I didn’t even know about before he accused me. Sometimes I was a pest, an annoyance, someone he was doing a favor for by spending time with. Sometimes I was the only person who truly understood him. Sometimes I was his little sister, all he had, as we stood in the rain as he hugged me roughly, tightly, and kissed my forehead before fleeing away from my house back to his car, dropping me back after an especially long day.
         And despite all of his shortcomings, despite everything, I came to love him. He had lied to me—he hadn’t protected me from him at all. He had protected me from the physical, but not from what would hurt even more.
         He usually didn’t speak to me when he picked me up at night, those frightful nights, about once every two weeks, random days with no pattern. Once in awhile he did, though, and we exchanged the more serious parts of ourselves, parts that weren’t fit for speaking of during the day, information far beyond the superficial. Those conversations were short, no elaborating, long pauses between the responses. So much more was unsaid and understood than said.
         I was never in any danger from the fire. He made sure I wasn’t in any danger, excluding his terribly fast driving skills. But he was. He always was.
         He burned himself often in the fire. He wasn’t suicidal, though. Maybe he was self-injuring; I suspect, in a way, he was. Fire was his release. He screamed at me that it was wild, that he would be wild like it was. That the world could try to hold him and the world could have the illusion of holding him, but really, like the fire, he would rise so much above, that when the time came he would break free. Screamed at the sky, screamed at me. I learned more about him at those times than any other.
         When I screamed back, he stopped his barbaric dances in the smoldering flames. I learned that after the first few times. I learned what was too far, what was beyond his control, and I would scream and he would stop. I learned that he needed me to tell him when to stop. I learned that was my purpose.
         Even in the snow, even in the winter, he would find some way to get a fire going with his terrible, disastrous kerosene. I came to hate kerosene; I hate it to this day, hate everything about it, hate that it allowed him to fuel his devastating passion.
         I guess I stopped him too early, the last time, two years after I first met him. I was so terribly cold; it was the middle of winter, freezing winds beating my face. I didn’t want us to get sick. But I guess he went back after he dropped me back at home. I guess he felt he needed more, needed to push the limits a little farther. I don’t remember if the car ride back home was any different than usual. I try to remember and I can’t. I don’t know if it was an accident. I hope, wherever you are, that it was.
         I went to his funeral. I wasn’t invited; no one he knew, knew me, but I went anyway. I forget who told me when it was; I think it was in the paper, some article on public safety fire regulations and see, look at the consequences! Seventeen-year-old boy dead!
         And I listened to the speeches. They didn’t describe the boy I knew. I spoke with his family; he had a mother, and a father, and a little sister, and two older brothers. I didn’t tell them who I was. They assumed I was a classmate, or some kind of friend. I didn’t tell them that I knew them better than they could have ever imaged from all the times he had spoken of them. I didn’t tell them that when I caught his oldest brother’s eye, I saw a glimpse of my boy, and that glimpse scared me. I didn’t tell them I was the last person to see their beloved son alive. I told them I was sorry, so sorry, but I didn’t tell them that if I had somehow been more intuitive, he would still be alive.
         And he had so many friends, or at the very least, he had so many classmates who cared. And I talked with some of them—some girls whose hearts he had toyed with, some boys he’d ran track with—apparently he was one of the fastest among them. I wasn’t surprised. I talked with people who he’d tutored in some subjects; apparently, in school, he’d been an all-around, well-rounded guy. But no one mentioned how he was wild; no one mentioned his freedom, the first thing that came to my mind regarding that boy.
         He had been cremated; I wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t like they could’ve displayed his body—he had splashed kerosene all over himself, supposedly lit himself on fire, and by the time anyone found him it was too late. Cremation was appropriate. He would approve. And I walked to the urn when no one else was up there, and I stared at it.
         “I’ll miss you,” I whispered. “And I hope you feel free enough, now.”
         And as I walked slowly home, knowing I would never forget him, I wondered why I was the only one there who knew him as the boy who lived his life as a dare.