Another rule is: Don’t pay attention to property, but be mindful of people’s investment in things. This one is a little tricky. It’s like—I mean, obviously you can’t own anything. So, there is no stealing. My aunt doesn’t care if I steal from the supermarket or whatnot. She might be mad if I got caught in a stupid way, but that’s just because she has an expectation of my cleverness. Sometimes I can be clever. Anyway—there is no stealing because you can’t own anything, so stealing isn’t stealing, it’s just taking something that you can use. However—if someone puts their life into something, then maybe you shouldn’t take it. They call it sabi in Japanese—it is when a thing shows the use of a hand. If there is a guy who has a guitar and it sits in his house and he never uses it, my aunt would be fine with me showing up at home with the guitar, if I am going to play it. But if not, then I am kind of an asshole for taking the guitar, or at best, neutral and a bit covetous. Now, on the other hand, if a guy has a guitar and he plays it all the time and you can see that his hands have changed the guitar—that it is his guitar, really, then it isn’t right for me to take it. If I really needed a guitar, maybe he would give it to me. That kind of thing happens, but that would be up to him.
There is a rule also about being considerate, which is basically just making sure to have empathy. So, that extends to things like cleaning up after myself, which I am not always good at. This is where I get in trouble. But, getting in trouble isn’t so bad. It just means my aunt glares at me a little.
WHAT HAPPENED
We got back and the school hadn’t called, so my aunt didn’t tell me that they had. She did notice that I was drunk, because she put on the pot for tea, which is what she does when I am drunk. Otherwise she asks me if I want tea before putting on the pot.
Also, she did ask Helen if she wanted to stay for tea and thanked her for bringing me home. Helen declined and headed out. I think her book about hypnosis is going to be terrible. She has maybe twenty books about hypnosis at her house. I know because I have been there. Her “book” is mostly just parts she likes from the other books that she has copied into a new book. There is nothing wrong with that, but it isn’t really an achievement. I guess if it is a fundamental improvement, it would be. If all the other books were redundant because of her book, then it is a pretty succinct business, so I guess that would be something. But, it’s about hypnosis, which I don’t believe in anyway.
They had a hypnotist come to our school, to the last one, Parkson, and some people got onstage and he made them pretend to be farm animals and contort into weird positions. The math teacher stood on his head, which is something apparently he can’t do. I don’t know what that proves. The whole thing left me feeling a bit sick.
PREDICTION
I thought about the guy from the Home while I was lying there drunk in the chair holding the tea my aunt made me. I couldn’t drink it because it was too hot, but I was holding it and it was kind of like a hot water bottle. We have one of those, my aunt and me, and we use it in the winter. Actually, I think my aunt uses it year-round, which doesn’t make sense. The window next to the chair is cracked at the top and mended with tape and there is a bit of a draft, which makes the glass brush back and forth. I like to listen to it when I sit in the chair.
It was great of him to bring me the applesauce. It’s probably the first nice thing someone has done for me in a while. He was wearing that awful uniform that the Home makes its employees wear, but it looked okay. I mean, it looked good. I’m sure he is completely deluded. Most people can’t keep all the lies straight—and they end up believing everything. I promise myself every day that won’t happen to me. He is probably in his late twenties. I don’t know.
I wrote down a prediction then, before I went to sleep, and it was:
Tomorrow I will find out more about the Arson Club.
This is a pretty shitty prediction, if you ask me. I think I shouldn’t do predictions when I have been drinking.
Of course, it is possible that such a thing could happen. I could find out more about the Arson Club. But there is no reason to think it would happen. I hate when I break my own rules. What’s the point of me being rational if I flail around like a clown?
WHAT HAPPENED
Stephan, it turns out, is probably also in the Arson Club. I know this because of what happened in Social Studies class. We had to turn in a topic for research and then we had to go to the library and use the computers or look up books about the subject. Most of the kids are useless cretins, so they wait in a line while the librarian does all the work for them. First thing I do when I get in a library is—I go to the stacks and nose around. The idea is—you don’t know what you’re interested in. That’s why it’s possible to be surprised. So, instead of looking for things in particular, you look for what you didn’t know you liked, and then when you find it you know that you liked it, and then you are a broader person than you were before.
That’s what I was doing nosing around in the book stacks. Stephan was maybe doing the same thing. I had a slip of paper and it said, Russia Peasant Fire-Setting. There were some numbers, too, for the place the materials might be. I had walked back and forth, nosing around, until I got tired of doing it, and decided to find what I was actually looking for—and when I did, there was Stephan, looking at the same shelf. He was holding a book called Arson Investigation, Step by Step. He almost dropped it when I came around the corner.
STEPHAN What are you looking for.
LUCIA …
STEPHAN …
LUCIA I don’t know. Why?
STEPHAN …
LUCIA …
STEPHAN I don’t know.
LUCIA Excuse me, the book I want is right here.
I took it off the shelf and handed it to him.
?
You asked what I was looking for.
Stephan looked at the book and looked at me thoughtfully. I had my hood up, so I felt pretty good. I wondered if I should ask him about the Arson Club, but I didn’t. Next thing I know, we are all just back in class, and then I get called to the principal for having skipped detention, and then I am told: you have a week of detention. They don’t understand—I can just read a book. It doesn’t really matter where I am. The principal’s assistant actually takes me to the detention, as if he is afraid that I will run off into the woods.
In my head, I imagine the conversations that they have probably had at their country club with the old principal from Parkson. Little hellion stabbed him with a pencil, watch out. Yeah, he’s the best basketball player we’ve ever had. That and other nonsense I’m sure they say.
Anyway—it turns out that detention was the place to go if you want to join the Arson Club. Which makes my drunk prediction right. I’m not really comfortable with that.
THE ARSON CLUB
Do you want to know how detention works? You go to a classroom and there, voilà, all the other shitty little fucks produce themselves like rabbits out of a hat. Then you are supposed to sit together doing nothing as punishment for not obeying. Maybe you can see from this that I am quite familiar with being in detention. Matter of fact, I feel like I have always been in detention. I am an old veteran of detention, like one of Napoleon’s soldiers limping back from the battle of Moscow. No, not like them—they were chumps. More like—one of the girls who died in the Triangle Fire looking out the window and realizing it is too far to jump, then jumping.