We Could Be Heroes Read online

  To two real heroes: Elizabeth and Scout

  1.

  Hank had things totally under control until he actually held up his brand-new Survival 4000 Fire Striker with Compass and Whistle—the one he got for his birthday, the one that he was only supposed to take camping—to Mrs. Vera’s book. Then the unthinkable happened. The 495-page torture device that she had been reading to the class for the last week—the one he had begged her to put away, the one about the thin, starving, scared boy who would most certainly be killed by Nazis—would not burn. Maybe it was the hard cover. Maybe the boys’ bathroom, where Hank stood committing his crime of passion, repelled fire. Maybe his mom was right after all: You never, ever, ever, ever burn books. Whatever it was, the paper merely ruffled and let off a little smoke.

  Worry set in. He only had a few minutes of lunch left, and if he didn’t get the job done now, he’d be forced to suffer another afternoon with that terrible, terrible book. But that was when all those weekends of roughing it with his family in the Montana wilderness paid off. Because Hank knew that fires need kindling, and do you know what makes good kindling? Paper towels. Hank took all of them from the dispenser and spread them into a little pile on the ground. Then, like he was returning a precious dragon’s egg to its nest, he settled the book on top of the paper towels. He picked up his fire striker. He slammed the stainless steel rod against the magnesium-coated bar and watched as a spark smoldered on the paper towels and then erupted into flames.

  Hank took a step back. The fire began to eat away at the paper towels and then at the book. Relief settled over him and his whole body felt lighter. Finally, he was free. He was free of the story. He was free of the boy. He was free of all the fourth graders seeing him cry every time the Nazi soldiers made the boy’s sad and scary life even sadder and scarier.

  But then the smoke detector went off. And the sprinklers on the ceiling sprouted water. And Hank thought maybe it was time to leave.

  Here, Hank got lucky. He slipped out of the bathroom and grabbed his down coat from the empty classroom before anyone saw him. Then—his hood covering his wet head—he walked all casual-like out of the building and over to the field. Of course no one noticed him then. No one ever noticed Hank. They didn’t notice him enough to be friends with him. They didn’t even notice him enough to be mean to him. And if they didn’t notice him when things were regular, there was no way they would notice him with the fire alarm blaring across the field.

  Students who only moments earlier had been poking at the pale lunch meats in their sandwiches were now scrambling onto the field, sorting themselves into long alphabetical lines, just like they had practiced during all those emergency drills. Hank, who even seven months into the school year had a hard time keeping his classmates straight, wandered to the end of his line and tried to look cool.

  The new girl—the one who had moved to Meadowlark a few months ago—hollered, “Up here, Hank. You need to be up here.”

  “Up there, Hank,” repeated the boy in front of Hank. “You need to stand behind Maisie. Hudson goes after Huang.”

  Hank crunched through the dusting of snow that sparkled on the brown and muddy field. He saw Maisie watching him and lowered his gaze.

  “I wonder if there’s really a fire or if this is just a drill,” said Maisie, bubbly and excited. She was taller than him and had black hair that grazed her chin. Despite the spring snowstorm that had snuck up on everyone in the night, she wore a thin pink coat and red plastic rain boots. Hank used to have boots like them and he had always liked the squelching sound they made when he moved through mud. His heart gave a hiccup as he wondered what had ever happened to those boots.

  Maisie shuffled left and right to better see around the lines of students. “I think maybe it’s a real fire because I’ve never seen a drill during recess. Have you?”

  “Shhh. I’m listening to your shoes.”

  She turned around and peered at him. “You’re listening to my shoes? That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.” Her eyes narrowing, she added, “Hey, how come you’re wet?”

  Hank looked away.

  She stepped back and scanned his whole body, her head moving up and down. “Your bangs are wet and your pants and shoes are wet too.”

  “I… um… Stop talking to me.”

  When Maisie didn’t answer, Hank slid his eyes over to find her staring straight at him, her lips squeezed tight. His insides went cold and he looked away again. He slipped his hand in his pants pocket and grasped his three rocks of the day—carefully chosen, as usual, from his rocks and minerals collection.

  He whispered the names of the rocks—“unakite, feldspar, augite”—to distract him from the weight of Maisie’s stare.

  “I got my eye on you,” she said, changing from bubbly to dangerous with that one little phrase.

  Hank turned sideways and his shoulders gave a small shudder. He did not like the idea of Maisie’s eye on him.

  A fire truck came.

  And then another.

  And then some firefighters in fluorescent jackets that shouted yellow came in the yard and the principal went and talked to them. Hank saw them hand her something. It was a very soggy book with a charred cover. He saw the principal hold the dripping book out in front of her like it was a stinking fish on a hook. Then Mrs. Vera shuffled over to the principal. The two women talked for a minute before they both looked over at Hank, who slowly pulled on the drawstring of his hood until all he could see was a wall of black.

  “Oh, boy,” said Maisie, her voice trumpeting through the cushioned padding of the hood. “You are in big trouble.”

  2.

  Hank was suspended for three days and grounded for five. But that wasn’t the real punishment. The real punishment was that he had to return the Survival 4000 Fire Striker with Compass and Whistle to the grandparents who sent it to him. He also had to write them a letter explaining why he was undeserving of such a wonderful and practical device. Plus, he had to write letters of apology to his teacher, the principal, the firefighters, and even the custodians who had had to clean up the “giant mess he had created.” Finally, he had to think carefully about his actions and endure countless stern looks and long lectures from his parents.

  The last lecture had come the morning he was due to return to school. He had just chosen his rocks of the day from his rocks and minerals collection. The collection took up most of the space on the bookshelf in his room. The rest went to books about rocks and minerals. He looked at his bookshelf as his mom reminded him that he needed to make good choices, not start fires (a moot point since he’d had to give up his fire starter), and listen to his teacher, but to also be himself, and to always know that he was as good as anyone else, but that he definitely needed to respect his teacher and his principal.

  “So let’s hear it. What are the rules?” Mom asked him when she was finally done talking. She had the same dark hair and upturned nose as Hank, but her eyes were hazel, not the deep nutmeg that everyone said made Hank look like a deer.

  She was holding Sam, who, at eleven months, permanently oozed drool. It occurred to Hank that the main good thing about going back to school was that he wouldn’t have to witness those foot-long strands of spittle that dangled from his brother’s slippery chin. But the very thought of school made Hank’s hand tighten around the three rocks in his pocket. Today’s beauties were rose quartz, gypsum, and pumice. The pumice was rough and light, and he suddenly wondered if his mom knew the very interesting fact that pumice floats.

  He pulled the pumice from his pocket. “This is pumice. It comes from volcanoes, and it is a very interesting fact that it floats,” he said.

  Mom shook her head. “What are the rules, Hank?”

  The han
d without the pumice gave a lazy swirl. The wrist went round and round as the fingers fanned out like spokes on a bicycle wheel. “No taking things that don’t belong to me. No destroying other people’s things.”

  “And?”

  “No starting fires unless—”

  “There is no unless. You may never start a fire—especially to burn a book, especially to burn a book about book-burning Nazis.”

  “How about when we go camping? Can I start a fire then? Dad always lets me start the campfire.”

  Mom’s lips made a loud smacking sound that pained his ears. “Don’t get technical with me. Until you hear otherwise, no starting fires. Ever.” She slid Sam down onto her hip, where he turned his wet face and blinked at Hank.

  “And?” she said.

  Hank’s hand began to swirl a little faster. He looked out his bedroom window. The snow from the other day had melted, and now, except for a few dirty banks of ice, things just looked muddy. “And I need to use my strategies when Mrs. Vera reads the book. I can pace in the back of the classroom. I can draw.… I can replay Star Wars in my head.…”

  But the more Hank thought about what to do when Mrs. Vera read the book, the more he thought about the sad and scared boy, and the more he thought about the sad and scared boy, the more sad and scared Hank began to feel, and the more sad and scared Hank began to feel, the more a’a he began to feel.

  A’a was a Hawaiian word Hank discovered in one of his rocks and minerals books. It described a kind of explosive lava flow where the lava moved and cooled at different rates. The top of the lava cooled faster than the bottom of the lava, which meant that on the surface the rock became rough and prickly and sharp, while on the bottom the rock became incredibly heavy and dense. A’a was how Hank felt when he had a meltdown. His world fell out of sync, like his body was moving at different rates. On the surface, everything became prickly and sharp. Sounds, textures, colors, smells poked him until he felt punctured and bruised. But even while that was happening, part of him felt heavy, dense, immovable. A’a was just like it sounded—two long awes signaling two awe-inspiring and simultaneous methods of destruction. A’a was the worst feeling ever. A’a was the thing he didn’t like about having autism.

  Mom lowered Sam to the floor. She wrapped Hank in a hug, and in a voice just louder than a whisper, she said, “I know it’s hard for you to hear that book. I know it breaks you up inside just thinking of that little boy, but remember, that boy isn’t real. It’s just a story. And why do we listen to those kinds of stories?”

  He sighed as the weight of her body made the a’a retreat. He said, “To make us sad.”

  His mother’s chin dropped onto his shoulder. She took a deep breath. “No—well, yes—but only because it’s important to get out of our own heads and know what other people’s lives are, or were, like. Stories teach us empathy, to understand and care about how other people feel.”

  “I have empathy.”

  She ran her hand down his arm, and that wasn’t a’a either. “You have lots of empathy, sweetheart. Maybe too much. But not everyone is like you.”

  Not for the first time, Hank wished that everyone could be more like him.

  * * *

  Hank walked the two blocks to school, and when he saw Mrs. Vera she greeted him with a funny little half grin that Hank could make no sense of at all.

  “Well, look who is back,” she said, one side of her mouth curled high above the other.

  She was a piece of work, that Mrs. Vera. That’s what his mother always said. Mrs. Vera was treelike—tall and thick-waisted with short, curly hair that sat atop her head like a nest. Plus, she dragged her left leg when she walked and she never explained why. She didn’t even explain when Hank asked her why. She just gave him that little half grin and said, “Why, that is none of your business, Hank.” Which always left Hank wondering one thing: Why was it none of his business when he saw her dragging her leg across the ground every day? And if Mrs. Vera offered a hug, it was not comforting and squishy at all. It was tree-trunk hard and wool-sweater scratchy.

  At lunch, Hank sat at his usual empty cafeteria table, but his heart was on the field looking for rocks—the best rocks always turned up there once the snow melted—so he wolfed down his ham and cheese and ran to the back fence of the schoolyard. He was crouched down looking through some muddy gravel when Maisie’s red boots appeared before him.

  “Fess up,” he heard her say. “Why’d you do it?”

  “Do what?” It annoyed him that Maisie was distracting him from his important work.

  “Why’d you burn down the bathroom?”

  “It’s not burned down. It just has water damage and maybe the beginnings of black mold. But my dad says that was probably already there.”

  Maisie dug the tip of her boot in the gravel, helpfully excavating a bunch of possibly important rocks. Hank raked a hand through the new finds.

  “What did the bathroom ever do to you is what I’m asking,” she said. “Are you, like, one of those wacky fire-loving kids or something?”

  He had to think about that. He did like fire. He liked the way fires crackled and the way you could roast marshmallows and hot dogs over them. He liked that you got to sit around them and listen to your parents tell stories when you went camping. He had very much liked the Survival 4000 Fire Striker with Compass and Whistle and the way it almost seemed to chirp when the stainless steel rod hit the magnesium-covered bar. But he wouldn’t say that he loved fire.

  “I just wanted to get rid of that book Mrs. Vera reads to us. It’s too sad.”

  “You risked burning down the whole school just because you don’t like a book?” She sounded impressed. “That takes meatballs.”

  “No,” Hank said with a shake of his head. “Just a fire striker. And paper towels.” He stood and wiped his hands on his pants. Maisie’s find was full of duds.

  “I don’t like that book either,” she said, following Hank as he moved to a new spot along the fence. “You know that boy is going to die. They always do.”

  Hank sighed. “Every time.” He picked up an especially smooth and flat pebble, put it close to his face, and then slipped it in his pocket.

  “What are you doing, anyhow?”

  “I’m looking for rocks.”

  Maisie cocked her head, considering Hank more closely. “You like rocks?”

  “I love rocks.”

  Maisie flipped her head the other way. “Huh,” she mumbled. “I can work with that.”

  “What?”

  “Listen.” Maisie squatted next to Hank, getting closer than he would have liked. “I’ve got lots of rocks at home. Cool ones too. Big ones. We got this amethyst. It’s so big we put a piece of glass on it and made it into a coffee table.”

  Hank’s eyes widened.

  Maisie picked up a handful of gravel and then poured it onto the ground through a loose fist. “Wanna come see?”

  * * *

  His mother could not stop smiling at Hank’s father. They were sitting at the table eating dinner.

  His father seemed confused.

  “A girl from your class invited you to her house? This happened today?” said Dad. He was a freckly man with a reddish beard and bushy eyebrows that both awed Hank and left him strangely unsettled. His dad had on the hospital scrubs that he wore to his job as an emergency room nurse. The scrubs always awed and unsettled Hank too. Because what if those clothes had been near a bunch of sick people? Or bloody people? Or people with broken legs? It was a scary prospect, one that seemed to put Hank right in the middle of the emergency room. And Hank did not like the emergency room at all.

  Dad asked him again, “Hank, a girl from your class invited you to her house? Really?”

  “Yes,” said Hank.

  “And you want to go? Tomorrow?” The bushy eyebrows inched higher.

  “Yes.”

  “And she likes rocks?” The bushy eyebrows almost touched his dad’s hairline.

  “She said she has lots of t
hem.”

  And boy did she. Polished rocks—some as big as Hank’s head—lay everywhere, and then of course there was the glass-topped amethyst coffee table. The enormous, bowl-like table base was a perfectly everyday-looking boulder on the outside and an explosion of craggy, purple gemstones on the inside. It was the most wonderful thing Hank had ever seen.

  “That is a really big geode,” marveled Hank, his nose almost touching the glass tabletop. “And it’s a table. It’s a rock and furniture—at the same time. This is the best house in the world. Or at least the country.”

  “It’s because my parents are both geologists,” she told Hank. “Those are professional rock experts. That’s why we moved here. There’s more going on here with rocks and stuff than where we lived in California.”

  She took him to the garage, which stood all by itself at the very back of her long yard, and showed him a whole closet full of rocks. Talk about treasure. Hank had never seen some of Maisie’s rocks, even on his favorite rocks and minerals website.

  “I’m gonna be a geologist too,” said Hank, excited to be in the home of actual rocks and minerals professionals. “I have forty-six different types of rocks and minerals. I keep them on a special bookcase. My favorite is obsidian. Obsidian is an igneous rock—that means it’s from a volcano. It’s black, smooth, and shiny even without polishing. I have six pieces of obsidian. My second favorite—”

  “Do you like dogs?” Maisie interrupted.

  “They’re okay. Mostly I like rocks. My second favorite—”

  Maisie interrupted again. “I like dogs a lot. My neighbor has dogs. You want to meet them? They’re really nice.”

  “No, I’d rather stay here.” Hank stretched out a hand to touch a pointy pink stone unlike anything he had ever seen.

  “We can see more rocks later,” said Maisie, almost slamming the closet door on Hank’s hand. “Come on.”

  Hank looked longingly at the closed closet door. But his mom had reminded him right before going to Maisie’s house that sometimes you have to do what your friends want even if it’s not what you want, so he apprehensively followed Maisie to the fence her family shared with their neighbor. It was a white wooden fence, about four feet high, with three long horizontal slats. Beyond the fence, under a large maple tree sprouting lime-green leaves, lay a sleeping dog.