Burnt

The only way that he could pass the test was by cheating. He was “simpleminded”, that’s what his grandmother would say, pat-patting his “greasy mop” and smiling in that way that made him feel loved and mocked all at once. But the kids called him “stupid” and sometimes “retard”, even though the teacher would yell at them and remind them to “be kind”. But he knew enough to know she didn’t care a bit, knew enough to catch her pretending not to hear half of the cuts. Call him retard all they wanted. When they were spending all night studying for some dumb algebra test, he was out with Billy lighting things on fire and smoking cheap cigarettes they stole from the Jiffy, camped out in the shadows behind Billy’s garage.

They would melt action figures or sometimes if they were feeling particularly criminal, Gwen’s Barbie dolls. His sister had been collecting them since she was 5, but now that she was more interested in real boys and not plastic Ken dolls, they were wasting away in the back of her closet. They would dip them naked into a can of gasoline and then toss wooden matches at them like some kind of projectile sacrifice until Barbie burst into a beautiful flame, the smell something like acrid peach pie. They mimicked the horrible screams and rams in circles until the flames died down and they were left with a smudge of black goop on the driveway.

“You guys are mental. You know that’s the first sign of a serial killer you turd.” Gwen had gotten in the habit of listening to real murder podcasts and fashioned herself an expert in the wormy minds of killers. Sometimes at the dinner table, she would recount the gnarly murders and pathological dismemberment of their mother piece by piece, until some kitchen utensil was brought to her head and she ran to her room in a far too dramatic explosion.