I had no idea whose idea it was to schedule Homecoming on the same Saturday as Halloween. Homecoming was crazy enough without throwing ghouls and goblins into the mix. Guess I was alone in my apprehension, though, because all the student groups loved the idea, especially the cheerleaders and pompon squad. They’d had an informal competition for years as to who could make the biggest and best Homecoming float. Sometimes they had a hard time coming up with ideas—and a few of their floats had been really poor—but the Homecoming theme this year was “Keep the Spirit Alive!” (as usual, pretty lame), so you would think the floats would have practically designed themselves.
I mean, honestly, if they couldn’t create a decent float with a Halloween theme handed to them, they might as well have gotten out of the business.
First up on Saturday was a pep rally, followed by a football game, followed by a cookout, followed by a bonfire, followed by a costume party and dance in the gym. The alumni had a formal dinner somewhere later in the day and cut out right after the game, but that was okay since the rest of us had our proms at the end of the year. It was going to be one of those overbooked days that seemed to go on so long, by the time you finally got home you collapsed into bed without even bothering to get undressed, that’s how exhausted you were. We all knew we would have to steel ourselves if we were going to make it through the day.
For a week leading up to Homecoming we were bombarded with mutants and monsters and all manner of “scary” decorations on the hallway walls and hanging from ceilings, most of which were just annoying, especially the fake spiderwebs. If the webs were too low, they got tangled in your hair and felt just as disgusting as the real thing. And the announcements over the intercom system that week all started with a blood-curdling horror movie scream that always made me jump, much to Onion’s and Dave’s great amusement.
“That’s it! They’re taking this Halloween theme too far,” I said after spilling coffee down the front of my shirt when the intercom let out one of its ear-piercing shrieks before announcing some boring bake sale the chess club was having later that day.
“No, they’re not,” Dave said, still laughing at me. “I love it.”
I glared at Onion, who was laughing just as hard.
“Oh, I’m not laughing at you, George, I’m laughing with you. No, wait,” she said, glancing away to reconsider. “I am laughing at you!”
And they both laughed all the louder.
The pep rally Saturday was in the gym. Less than half the crowd wore Halloween costumes, mostly freshmen who looked young enough to still go trick-or-treating. There was a lot of loud, piped-in dance music and the usual energetic routines from the cheerleaders and pompon girls. The guy cheerleaders in their matching uniforms—way too perky, in my opinion—shouted at us in the bleachers through little plastic megaphones. You could hardly hear what they were saying over the music and yells from the prancing girls behind them, but I guess that didn’t really matter. It was the spectacle that counted, not the message. The pompon girls went through a long routine with a military precision that would have made the Marines proud, and the cheerleaders—not to be outdone—formed a pyramid so high it was a wonder the girls at the bottom didn’t get crushed to half their height. And when it was time for the pyramid to come apart starting from the top, the girls just fell to what looked like certain death, only to be caught in the nick of time by the cheerleader guys who kept their perky smiles going as they raced to save one life after another until the pyramid was gone.
Then the music stopped, and we all headed out the doors to see the floats and watch the football game.
Our football team was not exactly competitive, which is a polite way of saying they were zero-and-something for the year, as usual. They won a game so infrequently the four years I was there that whenever they did manage to eke out a victory, it would actually make the local news, which seemed to me only added to their humiliation.
Coach Steener, our head football coach, was one of those brawny guys you would immediately peg as a coach of some sport or another. I never saw him without his baseball cap, which led to speculation that he had worn the cap for so long, his skull had grown around it like a chain left wrapped around a tree. The coach always had this kind of shell-shocked look whenever I saw him, as if he were all too aware of the team’s dismal record and didn’t have a clue what to do about it. I know he had tried to get Dave to rejoin the team—many times—but Dave was steadfast in his disinterest in playing football again no matter what. It got to the point where Coach Steener finally recognized me as one of Dave’s friends and started giving me dirty looks, as if I were responsible somehow for Dave’s refusal to reconsider.
One time, and one time only, did he confront me about Dave when our paths happened to cross.
“Wells! Your buddy, Dave. Why did he quit the team? Why doesn’t he want to play for us anymore? He was a natural.”
There was a look of bewilderment on his face, and more than a hint of dismay.
“I don’t know, Coach. If he doesn’t want to play, he doesn’t want to play. What more can I tell you?”
His shoulders slumped as if he knew all along what my answer would be.
“We need a big, talented guy like him,” he said. “What a waste.”
And his lower lip actually trembled as he turned away.
I felt sorry for the coach right then, but I couldn’t do anything to help.
Some people wondered why the administration didn’t look for a new coach since the team had been so awful for so long, but Coach Steener had been with the school ever since it opened and was as much a part of The Big Brown Box as the walls and the windows and the doors. The place just wouldn’t have been the same without him. Each year that went by made him more entrenched here, that much harder to kick out.
Or as Dave explained it scientifically: “It’s inertia. A body at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. And nobody wants to act.”
Spoken like someone who really knew his physics.
So Dave and Onion and I took our seats in the bleachers to watch the floats and then the game. With our team’s record, Homecoming was the only time the bleachers were filled, and we had to hunt to find a place where we could sit together.
At one end of the eight-lane running track that surrounded the football field were two wide gates that were seldom opened. As the school band played a medley of Halloween-themed songs, one of the cheerleaders pushed the gates open and two enormous floats barely squeezed through, pulled by lawn tractors driven by two of the guy cheerleaders. Decorated with thousands upon thousands of different-colored tissues, they looked like gigantic wedding cakes or something, only with ghosts and goblins and whatnot sticking out.
It must have taken both groups endless hours to create their floats. If they had spent all that time studying instead, I thought rather sarcastically, they would all be straight-A students.
Behind the floats was a big old Cadillac convertible with the Homecoming King and Queen in the back seat, wearing their cheesy crowns. This year they were the traditional boy and girl, their bleached-bright smiles nearly blinding in the sunlight as they waved regally to the crowd. Okay, so maybe their smiles weren’t that bright, but as Dave once said about Homecoming royalty, “They’re everything you thought you wanted to be when you were growing up, but thankfully not anymore.”
As the floats approached the front of the bleachers, it seemed to me that the tractors were pulling the floats way too fast, since the tops of the floats were swaying. Standing on the bottom platform of each float were the cheerleaders and the pompon squad, waving to the audience.
Just as the first float with all the cheerleaders on board went by, I saw the tractor swerve and the driver fighting for control. It went left, then right, then left again, as if it had a mind of its own. Seconds later, one of the front tires on the tractor broke free and went rolling away under the bleachers. The tractor went nose down and the float came to an abrupt halt. The cheerleaders lurched forward, grabbing the float and each other to steady themselves. The crowd gasped.
The driver of the second float, waving to the crowd with one hand while driving with the other, seemed oblivious to the stalled float in front of him as he raced forward.
“Look out!” half the audience yelled, most of us rising from our seats.
The tractor driver looked at us perplexed and, too late, turned forward to see the back of the stalled float just a few feet ahead. I could see him brace his arms, mouth wide open in a silent scream, and then he disappeared completely into the back of the float, tractor and all, as if swallowed up.
There was a loud thud as the floats collided, and cheerleaders and pompon girls alike went flying off their platforms.
It was a good thing they were so athletic, I thought, since they all went either cartwheeling or handspringing end over end down the track as if in a race, landing firmly on their feet as if the accident had been planned. The two floats now looked like one, only missing most of their tissues, which littered the track ankle deep. Their chicken wire frames, visible now and mangled, kept shedding tissues back and forth until the shock of the collision finally dampened out.
The girls stared in frozen disbelief at their now-wrecked creations, and there wasn’t a sound from anyone for what seemed like an eternity.
Then one of the girls laughed, a single loud snicker. That started another one laughing, then another, and another, until they were all laughing so hard they had to cling to each other for support.
As if relieved to know that they were all right—and because the collision and its aftermath was, well, just awesome, really—the entire crowd stood up and started hooting and hollering like we had all just won the lottery.
When the football team burst through the paper banner set up for them at the other end of the field, they slowed and stopped at the sight in front of them, hands on hips as the crowd continued to cheer—only not for them, as they now realized. Together with the cheerleaders and pompon squads and a bunch of volunteers from the audience, they swarmed to clean up the mess so the game could begin. But when the wrecked floats were pushed apart to set them aside, they all stopped what they were doing when the driver of the second tractor came crawling out from underneath.
The crowd immediately fell silent again, mainly out of guilt, I figured. We had forgotten all about him.
In the new silence, he stood up to face us, arms apart, a look of horror on his face as if he had encountered a real Halloween ghost. He stared at us with pleading eyes, as if begging for forgiveness for destroying a Homecoming tradition.
“Oh, let’s give him a big hand,” Dave said, and began to clap. “That was highly entertaining.”
The clapping spread, slowly at first, until we were all back on our feet, whistling and cheering again.
His expression slowly changed from horror to bewilderment. When he feebly raised a hand to acknowledge the cheers, we cheered all the louder.
Still unsteady on his feet, a couple of cheerleaders supported him on either side and led him away, and that was that.
The football game seemed anticlimactic afterward. Practically before we knew it, the score was 7-0 visitors, then 10-0 visitors, then 17-0 visitors—all in the first quarter.
Dave shook his head. “Look at us on offense. We’re going backwards.”
While not a great student of the game, it was plain to see what Dave said was true. There were fumbled snaps, incomplete passes, tackles well behind the line of scrimmage, and frequent quarterback sacks—our quarterback, of course—until we were thirty or forty yards behind where we started and facing fourth down.
When the team finally made its first first down of the game right before the half, the crowd stood up and cheered. I wasn’t sure if the team appreciated that or if they thought we were being cynical.
Halftime came none too soon, with the score 28-0.
“Come on,” Dave said. “Let’s get something from the concession stand. I’m dying of thirst here.”
Onion wasn’t interested, so Dave and I made our way down to the front, where those of us trying to file out of the bleachers were stopped by the marching band director to allow the band access to the field.
The band wore these spiffy dark blue and gold uniforms with tall frilly hats. I thought we wouldn’t have to wait too long for them to file in, but they just kept coming and coming.
“How big is this band?” I asked Dave as they continued to pour onto the field. I knew the line had to come to an end eventually. I just wasn’t sure when.
“Oh, it’s huge. At least four or five times bigger than the football team.”
It occurred to me if enough of the bigger band members had played football instead, we would probably have a pretty decent team.
The second half was just as brutal as the first. Toward the end, I noticed that most of our team was sitting on the benches while nearly everyone on the other team was still standing.
“They’re exhausted,” Dave said, as if he read my mind. “We don’t have nearly as many players as they do. Some of our guys were out there for nearly the whole game.”
Only then did I notice that for every player we had, the other team had at least two, maybe more. Our entire team sat motionless, some with heads bowed, as the clock ticked down.
Final score: Visitors, 42. The Big Brown Box, 0.
The other side of the field erupted into cheers, which I thought was really rubbing it in, although our team looked resigned and didn’t much seem to care. They lined up at midfield and shook hands with the other team in a perfunctory fashion.
As the three of us headed toward the exit, we were stopped again, this time to let our team off the field. We stood there respectfully as they went by, their eyes hollow and expressions empty, as if they had nothing left to express. I think most of us wanted to say a few words of encouragement—anything—but what could you say at a time like that that wouldn’t sound phony and contrived? So we said nothing as they filed by, the uncomfortable silence ending only when the last player left and it was the coaching staff’s turn to leave.
Someone in the crowd hissed when Coach Steener went by. I saw Dave stiffen when Steener looked up and saw us.
The coach paused. “We sure could have used you out there today, Baker. Thanks for nothing.”
Dave turned slightly red as several people nearby looked at him inquisitively, and then the coach was gone.
Dave lowered his head and bulldozed his way out. Onion and I had to hurry to keep up. We didn’t speak for a while. I felt compelled to finally address the issue after avoiding it for years.
“So why did you quit football? Steener said you were a natural.”
He looked at me almost as if he expected the question.
“Because I don’t want my bell rung on a regular basis, that’s why. I like my brain the way it is, believe it or not. I don’t want it turning to mush later on. After games and contact practices, I was getting these nagging headaches. That was my warning to quit. There’s just no way to make the game safe unless you eliminate tackling, and what kind of football would that be?”
“Flag football?” Onion suggested.
“Exactly,” Dave replied. “Good luck finding a big fan base for that.”
Because we had charged out ahead of the crowd, we weren’t too far behind the football team as they made their way slowly back to their locker room, helmets off and held loosely at their sides, heads still bowed. A few were limping and some already wore ice packs on their legs or arms. All their uniforms were muddy, and several had torn jerseys. I couldn’t help but wonder now what kind of hidden toll the game was taking on them, what price they were going to pay for all those vicious hits.
“Hope they’ll be okay,” I said as just kind of a general observation.
“Me too,” Dave said softly, looking up at them with concern. “Me too.”
The cookout was a nice change of pace after the sour ending to the football game. It was one of those times when you’re so preoccupied, you don’t realize just how hungry you are until food appears. I ate nearly as much as Dave, which took some doing, then regretted stuffing my face minutes later when I had the overwhelming urge to immediately take a nap.
Dave saw me yawning and shook his head.
“Amateur,” he said. “If you’re going to pig out, you have to learn how to pace yourself. See?”
He took a dainty bite from his second burger and chewed politely. My plate was already empty.
It was nearly time for the bonfire. I could tell because the crowd was starting to gravitate toward the ravine at the end of the parking lot where the enormous pile of scrap wood sat waiting to be lit. Building the bonfire was to certain guys what the Homecoming floats were to the cheerleaders and pompon squad—an intense labor of love. It didn’t matter if you were a geek or a nerd, popular or unpopular, a mighty jock or an eighty-pound weakling, there was something about building the biggest, baddest pile of wood for the sole purpose of burning it all to the ground that just couldn’t be explained to those who had no interest in sending flames sky high, the higher the better. But while I liked bonfires just as much as the next guy, I had no desire to spend my weekends and after-school hours hunting and begging for scrap wood throughout town as the dedicated bonfire builders did. Guess that meant I wasn’t quite pyromaniac enough, but that was all right by me.
One guy who definitely was pyro enough was Sam, the Fireworks Man, our Senior Geek Supreme. We called him the fireworks man because if you ever wanted to buy fireworks, Sam was the guy to call. He could get you just about anything, legal or not. For the past three years, Sam had a tradition of setting off fireworks right before the bonfire was lit. It nearly rivaled the town’s Fourth of July display, even if not for all that long. Why the school administration didn’t put a stop to it after the first year, I’m not sure—maybe because they liked it just as much as anyone else, and because it added a really nice touch to the whole Homecoming experience. After his first successful Homecoming show, he added halftime at home football games to his repertoire. The one time he was sick and missed a game, some students actually complained that the fireworks were “forgotten,” as if the school were responsible for providing them.
Dave, Onion, and I found a good place near the ravine to watch the show. Just as we sat down, there was a flash, followed by a dull thump next to the small mountain of wood scrap waiting nearby. Something whistled faintly as it traveled high up in the air, then there was an explosion and corkscrew streamers of multicolored lights raced away from the center in a huge floral display directly over our heads.
“Outstanding,” Dave said, his head craned back like the rest of us in the sizable crowd.
I looked around as everyone oohed and aahed. It was moments exactly like these that I knew I would miss most about high school, and I wished I really did have a time machine so I could return to this moment whenever I wanted to revisit my good old high school days.
After about five minutes, the pace of explosions in the air picked up for the grand finale, with overlapping streamers and rapid-fire crackling. When the last streamer faded and all that was left were faint traces of drifting smoke, the crowd gave Sam a standing ovation, even though we couldn’t see him down in the dark ravine.
As we settled back down for the lighting of the bonfire, prepared to literally bask in its warm glow, I saw someone rising up out of the ravine and heading our way. Gangly and with a purposeful gait, it could only be one person.
“Great job, Sam,” I said as he strode by.
Sam stopped and turned around, searching for who had called out to him.
“George!” he said when he finally spotted me. “Didn’t see you there, my good man. Glad you liked it. My last Homecoming,” he said with a wistful note. Then he came closer to confide something in a low voice. “Hey. I hid an explosive device in the bonfire. You’ll hear it shortly after they light the pile. Just wanted to throw a little scare into people since it’s Halloween and all that.”
“Thanks for the heads up. Now I won’t pee in my pants when it goes off.”
Sam laughed and strode away.
“What did he say?” Onion asked over the general murmuring of the crowd.
“He said he put a bomb in the bonfire.”
That caught Dave’s full attention.
“What?”
The next few seconds were a bit foggy, but here’s the best I can recall.
I turned my head toward Dave, laughing lightly, to tell him it wasn’t actually a bomb but just an ‘explosive device,’ whatever that meant. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone in the ravine light a red flare to start the bonfire.
“Relax,” I told Dave. “Sam wouldn’t actually—”
I never got to finish the sentence because just then, I saw a streak of flames leap from the flare into the pile of wood, followed by a blinding flash and near deafening explosion. As the massive pile flew in all directions, I felt a hand hit me in the chest and push me back, flat on the ground.
“Get down!” Dave yelled, the owner of said hand.
Not a fraction of a second later, I saw a flaming board fly just a scant few inches over my face, right where my head had been.
As you might imagine, utter pandemonium ensued. People were screaming, running, shouting, doing everything a panicked crowd does.
All three of us sat up together to see what had happened. The enormous pile of wood that had taken days to painstakingly assemble was gone, strewn from one end of the ravine to the other. Fortunately, all the heavy stuff—old furniture, shipping pallets, logs—had stayed in the ravine. The lighter stuff, though, was scattered not only among the crowd, but in the parking lot behind us. Smoldering sticks and pieces of plywood were on top of cars or in between them, with dozens of car alarms wailing.
“Thanks for the push, Dave.”
“Don’t mention it. After all, that’s what friends are for, right?”
And he stared sternly at me as if expecting an answer.
From the ravine, I saw the poor guy who only wanted to light the bonfire come staggering out, stepping over smoldering wood scraps, the burning flare still in his hand. It looked like smoke was rising off his clothes and hair, but I couldn’t be sure. He stood wavering and speechless before us, observing the chaotic scene, wondering like everyone else what the in world just happened.
Everyone, that is, except me.
“Sam,” I said, over the sound of a siren drawing near.
“Yeah. Sam,” Dave said, looking around. “Where is that guy? I’d like to have a little chat with him.”
“So would the police,” Onion added, nodding toward the squad car that came racing down the main school drive.
The fire department arrived tout suite and doused the few scattered fires, and everyone pitched in to clean up. Fortunately, there were only a few slight injuries—scrapes and bumps mainly—and minor damage to the cars. Since most were high school beater cars like Dave’s, no one much seemed to care.
I’m not sure if Sam had told others about his ‘explosive device,’ but pretty quickly the rumor spread that it had to be sabotage. Most of the jocks were blaming other teams, especially our conference rivals. A few people thought it was an inside job.
Finally, someone mentioned Sam’s name, and faces brightened as if that must be the answer.
Sam was nowhere to be found. I figured he had either meant to blow up the bonfire—which seemed inconceivable to me—and he was in hiding, or it was an accident because his ‘explosive device’ was way more powerful than he had calculated and he was in hiding. Either way, all I knew for sure was that he had some explaining to do when he finally came around.
Principal Morgan soon came by with a megaphone that had the fire department’s logo on it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please head to the gym so the fire department can conduct its investigation. We will start the dance early tonight. Thank you for your cooperation.”
He repeated the message until the crowd turned away and slowly headed toward the gym, some of the girls still clinging to each other nearly in tears.
“That’s Morgan for you,” Dave said as we trudged along with the others. “Grabbing the spotlight as usual.”
As we should have expected, the gym was plastered top to bottom with Halloween decorations. I saw that the few upperclassmen who had worn Halloween costumes had ditched them and looked like themselves again. Frankly, by this time I was sick of Halloween and doubted I was the only one. And after being outside in the dark, the harsh fluorescent overhead lights were a bother.
“These lights are way too bright,” Onion said, rubbing her eyes and confirming exactly how I felt.
Over in a corner of the gym on a stage, the band seemed surprised that the crowd was streaming in already; I guess no one told them we were on our way after the bonfire disaster. They scrambled to plug in mics, tune their guitars, and adjust the volume on their amplifiers as the gym filled up. I had never heard of the band and wasn’t even sure what type of music they played. All I knew was that they were local and new, which didn’t bode well for the quality of music we were about to hear.
Set up at last, the lead singer of the band signaled one of the Homecoming volunteers to turn off some of the gym lights. The room dimmed considerably, which was welcomed relief.
“Hello, people!” the lead singer yelled into his mic.
After the events of the day, no one seemed to have the energy to respond.
The singer tried again.
“I said hello, people!”
The response was weak; I think the only reason we responded at all was so he wouldn’t yell at us a third time.
The singer shrugged and the music began.
They were a cover band, singing all the songs the radio stations had just stopped playing because they had fallen out of favor. The band wasn’t bad, but they weren’t great, either. “Serviceable” was probably the highest compliment I could give.
“Mediocre,” Dave said, far less charitably.
He danced a couple of songs with Onion—which was a sight to behold since Dave danced worse than I did—then the three of us kind of wandered around.
“You dance like Frankenstein’s monster,” I told him.
Dave shrugged. “Why not? It’s Halloween.”
Instead of dancing, most people stood in little groups here and there, still discussing the bonfire explosion. One group of guys looked particularly angry about it. I realized they were the ones who had spent countless hours planning and building it.
“Wells!” one of them called out as we went by them. “Where’s Sam?”
“I have no idea, Mike.”
“Come on. You’re friends with him, aren’t you?” He stared at me as if I really did know where Sam was but wouldn’t say. The others in the group glared at me with the same anger.
“Yeah, I talk to him. He’s okay.” I thought that was a fair assessment.
“Okay? Okay? You mean as in okay to destroy something we spent weeks working on? That kind of okay?”
He came right up to me, daring me to answer. The others behind him pressed forward, too. Mike was one of those thin, wiry guys who were a lot stronger than they appeared.
Dave stepped between us.
“Is there a problem here?” he asked.
“Not with you. Stay out of it.”
Dave shook his head. “No can do. If you’ve got a problem with George, then you’ve got an even bigger problem with me. You capisce?” Dave glowered down at him.
Mike winced a bit, then held up his hands and backed away.
“Fine. No trouble.”
Dave gave his usual exaggerated smile. “Great! You take care now, hear?”
Dave’s dark expression returned as we walked away.
“Thanks, Dave.”
“Not a problem. Jerks.”
“All right, everyone!” the band singer announced. “We’re told it’s time for the awards for the best Halloween costumes! If you’re wearing one, come on up!”
All the freshmen in their costumes crowded in front of the stage, making it look like a middle school party.
“Let’s get out of here,” Onion said as the names of the costume winners were announced, followed by the shrill, excited shrieks from all the short ghosts and vampires. “I’ve had enough of Homecoming.” She rubbed her forehead.
“Fine by me,” Dave said.
“Me too,” I said, making it unanimous.
It wasn’t until we left the gym that I realized how loud the band had been. My ears were ringing, and I wondered if that was from the music or the bonfire explosion. Probably both.
The outside air was refreshing, and our moods improved as we traipsed down the road to Dave’s car in the far parking lot. Far behind us we could see the flashing lights from all the police cars and fire trucks as they continued their investigation, the whole ravine cordoned off now with yellow-and-black caution tape.
“George.”
We stopped and looked around, trying to pinpoint where the soft, ghostly voice came from.
“Over here.”
I looked at a row of bushes on the other side of the dimly lit street. They rustled, and then a shadowy figure came out from behind them. I thought I recognized the gangly shape.
“Sam? Is that you?”
I felt Onion’s fingernails dig into my arm.
Sam came forward, looking either way down the road to make sure we were alone.
“I didn’t do it, George. I didn’t do it!”
“That’s not what people are saying,” Dave replied.
As Sam came closer, I saw the frightened look on his face and actual beads of sweat on his brow.
“I know they are, but what I put in the bonfire couldn’t possibly have released enough joules to blow that massive pile apart. Here, look, this is what I put in there. One of these.”
As he reached out to hand me a short tube with a long wick sticking out of one end, I noticed that Sam’s hands were shaking.
I heard myself gasp and stumbled back at the sight. Why, I wasn’t sure.
Dave took the tube from Sam instead.
“What is this? A quarter stick?”
“Just about,” Sam said.
Dave handed it back to Sam.
“If that’s what you really put in there, then you’re right. All it would have done was make everyone jump when it went off.”
“That’s what you said you were trying to do, wasn’t it, Sam?” I asked, trying to put my unintentional snub of him aside. “Just scare us a little, for Halloween.”
He nodded, breathing hard. I still couldn’t take my eyes off his hands as they shook.
“Well, you better hope the fire department finds some other cause for the explosion,” Onion said. “If not, they’re going to drag you in for questioning.”
He nodded again. “What should I do in the meantime? The longer I stay away, the guiltier I look.”
“Yeah, that’s a problem,” Dave said. “I would just lay low. Let people think what they want. If you’re innocent, all the talk will be gone.”
Sam looked resigned. “I guess so.”
“Good luck, Sam,” Onion said. “Hope things go your way.”
And with that, Sam darted back across the road and disappeared into the darkness.
We hardly spoke as Dave drove us home, Onion first. When I made my way into the house, it finally hit me how bone weary I was.
To my surprise, my dad was still up. I didn’t think he was waiting to make sure I got home safe since he hadn’t done that in years. Instead, I had noticed recently that he was having trouble sleeping. Dad had said that was a common problem as you got older.
He lowered the volume on the TV.
“So. How was Homecoming?”
Now, I wasn’t one of those teenagers who can’t or won’t talk to their parents, I really wasn’t. I didn’t give one-word answers or sulk or claim they just didn’t understand me. But as tired as I was, and with all that had happened, I really didn’t know what to say or even where to begin.
“Fine. Really. It was all good,” I said, hoping that would suffice.
“Great. Glad to hear it,” my dad said, and turned the volume back up to continue watching his show, apparently satisfied with my simple answer.
I collapsed on my bed when I got to my room, shoes still on and all, and didn’t wake up until almost noon the next day. I was glad my dad let me sleep since I needed every minute of it to recuperate from the horror that was Homecoming.
On Monday morning, back at The Big Brown Box, word spread that the fire department had figured out pretty fast why the bonfire exploded. It turned out that Mike’s dad, of all people, decided to “speed things up” when they lit the bonfire by filling an old dresser drawer at the bottom of the pile with several gallons of gasoline. When the flare was struck, that streak of flame I saw leaping from the flare to the bonfire were the gas fumes igniting, and when the flame reached the drawer, the gas had more than enough energy—“joules” as Sam called it—to blow everything to kingdom come. Sam returned to school mid-morning on Monday—looking mighty relieved—and it was Mike who was red-faced the rest of the day and had to endure the ridicule, not Sam.
“Serves him right,” Dave said when he heard the news. “Jerk.”
No charges were filed or anything like that since it was determined to be an accident, not a deliberate act, so that closed the final chapter on Homecoming.
“Tell you one thing,” Dave said when all the buzz about Homecoming finally died away. “They will never, ever hold Homecoming on Halloween weekend again. Not if they know what’s good for them.”
I could only hope Dave was right.