Jesse Ball - How to Set a Fire and Why

I told her to cut out the bullshit. What did it tell me to be?

She handed me the piece of paper, which said my highest match was 69 percent with a career as a truck driver. I guess she thought I would be disappointed, but I thought that was great. Of course, I want a job where you work by yourself. The inside of those truck cabs are nice, too! Very comfortable. You can have a kick-ass dog with a bandanna. Sure, it is a bit jittery drinking twelve cups of coffee or popping pills to make a long-distance run through the night, but every job has its dangers.

She was looking at me very calmly. I don’t understand it, really, she said. Your scores in these parts of the test are very high. It must be a mistake of some kind.

I don’t think it’s a mistake, I said. And you’re definitely right—the test makers are very good.

Why do you say that? she asked.

Well, it’s probably that—if someone scores more than a certain amount on the ability part, but then loses patience with the test and doesn’t finish it, then that person is likely to hate having bosses, and being in office environments. So, such a person should be a truck driver or a park ranger or something like that. It’s probably built into the algorithm for the test results.

She said she hadn’t thought of that. Not finishing the test might be part of the test.

Stephan came near me at lunch, which was surprising because it meant other people would see that he had talked to me. I figured that might be embarrassing for him. It could be people would think he was trying to get me to give it up, which guys are always proud about. If a guy is a pariah, there is no reason to ever talk to him, societally. But if a girl is a pariah, there is still one reason. How fucked-up is that?

He said that his parents had come back. Apparently his mom got food poisoning in Tangiers. I said that was a lie. He said, yeah, it was because one of his dad’s patients was doing badly. They hadn’t been in Tangiers at all.

I said, I didn’t think that Tangiers was actually a place. It was something like Camelot, but for drugs and sex. He started doing some misguided shit where he took out his phone to show me Tangiers on a map. I know Tangiers is real, I said. You are like four steps behind.

He said we were going to meet at this empty lot, and he told me where it was. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.

I told him I would go, but I wasn’t sure. Meeting two or three guys at an empty lot when no one knows you are there?

I offered him some licorice, but he didn’t want it. I guess he’s one of those who don’t like licorice. I think 75 percent of people hate it, but the other 25 adore it. What else is like that? Trampolines? Tanning salons? Parrots?

In gym class, we were playing volleyball. Yes, I know, I told you I manage to avoid gym—but not always. I was stuck in gym and we were playing volleyball.

That meant I had to wear gym clothes, which is awful. It used to be everyone would wear ugly baggy clothes, but now the pretty girls wear essentially spandex outfits. This makes it awkward for people who don’t feel like doing that. So, I wear long basketball shorts and a black tank top. I do that so people will know I am not wearing the same shirt I wear during the day. It is no joke—it’s a real thing. If I wore a white tank top, they would think I didn’t change, and I would hear about it. Kids are jackals.

I mean, I like jackals more than kids, so the comparison isn’t fair.

The thing about this volleyball game, and the reason I brought it up is—Clarence Eames, who is huge, and really strong, spiked the ball on Jeanette Levy and broke the hell out of her fingers. It was really really good, because she is not a legitimate person and deserves every bad thing.

She was crying and holding her fingers, and two of them were obviously bent the wrong way. The gym teacher tried to do some EMT business, but it failed and she just screamed louder. Eventually the nurse came, and then an ambulance. It was havoc, and I loved every second.

While the ambulance was coming, I had a fantasy in my mind. In the fantasy I am wearing a doctor’s coat and just popping Jeanette’s fingers in and out and she is screaming. I hold the fingers delicately in one hand and I hold her hand delicately in the other. I don’t say anything, but my posture is like, I am being reasonable. Calm down, Jeanette .

That makes it even funnier (in the fantasy) when she can’t stop screaming, because I am being a rock-solid medical professional—apart from the fact that I am, for reasons unknown, brutally reinjuring the finger as soon as I fix it.

When I was finished with this thought, it was time to go.

I saw a film the week that I moved in with my aunt. It was called My Dinner with Andre . Nobody really likes this movie. I like it a lot, and my aunt likes it, too. She says it is a good weather vane: if people like it, you might like them. It’s possible, at least.

The movie has some Satie music in it, which is the first I had heard of this guy, Erik Satie. There are basically two things I like to listen to. One is a kind of headphone thing for concentrating. You put the earphones on and there is a tone that sounds sort of far away on one side. Then it goes away and after a while there is a tone on the other side. It is supposed to make you focus better than anything. I got completely addicted to it, and I used it for a long time until it broke, and then I found out they don’t make it anymore. That was sad.

The other thing I like to listen to is Erik Satie. My aunt has a record of someone playing his stuff—and we listen to that. She wants to put it on when we are doing things. I refuse that. I want to sit in the chair and do nothing when I listen to this music.

By the way, I don’t think that it is the greatest music. Bach is definitely better. Aretha Franklin is better. Everyone is better, I get it. There is a lot of really good music. I am not going to argue with you.

For me, though, I like to sit in the chair and listen to this Satie. I heard that he lived in a crappy little room in a boardinghouse, too, and was real lonely.

I think he was simultaneously feted and unappreciated.

But, that wasn’t even what I was going to talk about—I wanted to tell you about this scene in the movie where the main character goes to a house party somewhere on Long Island, and has to dig a hole in the ground for his own grave, and then gets put in a coffin and buried and then taken back out and runs through the night naked to a shining white tent where some ascendant adoration and joy fill him entirely. I think he said it was like being born. When I heard about this, I felt like I was entirely ready to give up being who I am and ready to try being someone else. The trouble is—the someone else you are okay with being isn’t anyone you know. So, who is it?

Partway through second period, someone pulled the fire alarm. I figured it was just a prank. At Parkson, Will Scaffy used to get his older brother to call in bomb threats, and sometimes would pull the fire alarm himself until they got the ones that spray you to mark who did it.

But, this wasn’t a prank at all. Someone had set fire to the music room. That is definitely not the room that I would have chosen, of all the terrible rooms at the school. Not that it mattered. I think just one or two chairs were set on fire.

But, we all got to go stand in the athletic fields, which was horrible, because I had to stand next to Jamie Anderson and her hair spray is like nerve gas. I almost fainted once, honestly. And, I’m not a fragile person.