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SIXTY

  We didn’t talk for the rest of that morning and we didn’t sleep. How could we after what we’d just done? I changed out of the clothes that I’d been wearing-which reeked of gasoline-and into the extra set I’d brought with me to Cory’s so my mom wouldn’t question me about the way they smelled. Later I would bury them in the trash and try and forget about them forever.

  We laid there in the morning darkness, listening to the thunder compete with the sounds of sirens until the sun came up and the clouds began to break, crying. At least I was. I understood why they had chosen not to tell me about burning the house with Emily Manning inside and figured out later that Steve had done it for what she would have done to his sister. Jason had gone along with it for what he had assumed she had done to Amber Nelson. And Cory had helped because; well that was how Cory was. He probably just wanted watch something burn.

  Either way; the Sesame Street Killer was dead.

  We had killed her.

  It was never brought up between us again. There was an unspoken agreement that we could never, ever tell anyone what we had done. Whether we thought we were heroes for doing what we did or not, we could never take credit for it. We were fearful that we’d spend the rest of our youths in a boy’s home or Juvenal hall.

  At around six, as the rumbling of thunder began to taper and smoke began to pour through our neighborhood (the acrid smell would linger for days to come), I got up, rolled up my sleeping bag and went home and into my room to lay back down. Jason came in a half an hour later.

  For all of that day and all of Thursday, Jason and I stayed around the house doing nothing but lying down, staring at the ceiling, occasionally eating. We were terrified that at any moment the cops would come pounding on our door and take us away for our crime. But they never came knocking.

  Finally, on Friday, after our mom began to wonder why we weren’t going out to play (like we’d done ever other day that summer); we decided to go over and see Steve. And we weren’t more than a few minutes into our conversation when the police did show up.

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  Everything that I write from this point on, all the information that I give about the aftermath of the fire on the morning of July 9th, 1982, I either witnessed firsthand, was told about by parents or friends or accumulated on my own by researching newspaper articles. Some of it may be a bit of speculation on my part but I can assure you, this is what happened:

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