The playground is burning.
The rubber of the swings is melting, the paint is peeling, and by morning, there’ll be nothing left but blackened metal and ash. The police tape will go up at five past nine, and by six, the local news stations will all carry the same story:
Loah Majerski, an eighteen-year-old senior at Mackenzie High, was not the sort of girl anyone would expect to be in trouble. A straight-A student with a 4.3 GPA, co-captain of the girls’ golf team, volunteer at the pediatrics department of Northwood Hospital, with dreams of attending Stanford and becoming a children’s oncologist. A bright girl, say her teachers, with an even brighter future.
Pictures will come up on television screens of a young woman in glasses with curly brown hair, playing basketball with bald-headed children in pajamas, holding up a trophy, sitting with her family, bowling with her friends.
But now young Loah’s future is uncertain at best. She lies in a hospital bed this morning in critical, unstable condition after she was brutally attacked on Caster Avenue in east Mackenzie last evening. She was on her way home when a group of young men who investigators suspect were part of a gang jumped out of truck and forced her to the ground. There, they proceeded to beat her unconscious with baseball bats. Janice Carpenter heard the girl’s cries for help and called police. She says the men stopped when they heard the sirens and sped off in a blue Toyota pick-up.
The view will switch from the playground to a bit of sidewalk two streets over on Caster Avenue, which will also be marked off with yellow crime tape, and then return to focus on the upper body of the reporter in front of the charred skeleton on Maple Street.
Investigators strongly suspect the same group of men set fire to the play structure you see behind me a few hours later, another act of pointless violence that has members of this quiet community looking for answers.
Various neighbors will express their anger, concern, and sadness. Kaity Higgins, whose daughter is friends with Loah, will call it a mother’s worst nightmare, and say her daughter won’t be going out alone any more. Tabitha Walters will say that’s just what these amoral, gangbanger, druggie kids do nowadays to feel cool. The lead investigator will promise justice. The camera will go back to the reporter.
A spokesperson for Loah’s family says they are shocked and devastated, but believe Loah has the strength to recover and will do so. For now, authorities urge anyone with more information on this horrifying crime to come forward.
The reporter will say his or her name, and the newscast will go back to the studio and the next story, about a new study correlating rising gang activity with the state of the economy. Over the upcoming days, the stations will update on the investigation and the girl’s condition. The investigation will go nowhere, the search for the blue Toyota pick-up fruitless, but the girl’s condition will improve.
Nurses and doctors say she shows remarkable courage.
Some uplifting news for your morning commute, attack-victim Loah Majerski is recovering well, and doctors say she might be able to walk at her graduation ceremony in June.
A feature story will run on the national network in a couple months, showing a bald-headed, post-brain-surgery Loah with less-bald children, talking of how thirteen boys asked her to prom, Loah meeting Janice Carpenter who heroically called police that night, teary interviews with the mother and father.
This will happen in May. In September, news crews will catch up with a limping, scarred, but smiling Loah in Palo Alto, California, setting up her Stanford dorm. In ten years, an oncology magazine will pinpoint her as a rising force in the pediatrics world. She’ll talk candidly of her near-death experience at the hands of gang men who won’t be caught, not on that charge at least, whom she won’t be able to remember, whom she’ll say she forgives because they taught her to have half the courage of her patients.
But at the moment it’s still January. It’s Friday night, and soon nine-year-old Carson Appleton will turn the corner onto Maple Street. He’ll see the flames beginning to glare orange against the starless sky. He’ll brake his bike clumsily, almost falling off, and stare for a minute before pedaling back home as fast as he can.
He’ll leave his bike outside and run in the front door. His mother will be in the living room on her treadmill, watching the news, and his younger brother will be sitting at the computer playing a math game that says “You’re a star!” on every right answer.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!” he’ll shout, and he’ll toss his helmet to the ground.
“Not now, Carson,” she’ll say between breaths. She’ll glance at her heart-rate monitor and turn up the incline on the treadmill.
“But Mom, the playground’s on fire!”
“You’re a star!”
She’ll glance at him and take out one earbud. “What?”
“The playground’s on fire!”
“Fire!” his brother will shout, and his r’s will be w’s. “Stop, drop, roll! Don’t be a hero!”
“That’s right, Jimmy! Stop, drop, and roll! But you know, I’ve just about had it with your imagination, Carson.” She’ll look at the flatscreen, the calorie count displayed in the bottom corner, and then back at her son. “What were you even doing outside? It’s unsafe, and you know—” Here she’ll take a deep breath, look at her monitor again before turning down the speed “—you know we don’t play outside without supervision, especially after dark.”
“You’re a star!”
Carson will start to cry. He won’t be able to help it. “But it’s on fire, Mom. I went down Maple and—”
“Carson Appleton, I’ve told you a hundred times never to leave this street. Mr. Riley lives on Maple, and I don't trust him or anyone else.” She’ll take a drink of water, and as the treadmill transitions into a cool-down mode, she’ll fix her son with a stern look. “Go up to your room, wash your hands, and think hard about what you did.”
“But—”
“Now, Carson! And I’m taking that bike away.”
Carson will know better than to argue further. Scrunching up his face, he’ll scramble up the stairs, slam his bedroom door, and dive face-first onto his bed. He’ll pounds his fist against the sheets, which will just crunch and crackle with waterproof, hypoallergenic fabric. He’ll throw his Gameboy against the wall, yank the wires out of the neck of his remote-control robot, smash his science-fair project.
He’ll fall asleep on the floor with his light on without ever washing his hands. His dad will put him back under the covers in a few hours, after he finishes watching a movie in his den, but he’ll forget to shut the closet door.
In the morning, Kaity Higgins next door will text Carson’s mother that good-for-nothing scum attacked her daughter's friend. Carson's mother’ll reply that Kaity’s daughter can carpool home with them from now on out, and cry into her husband's shoulder about how it could have been her baby boy out there. When he comes down for his breakfast of unsweetened cereal, she’ll hug him and say he can do his homework tomorrow if he wants, but she won’t say why. He'll take her offer and watch cartoons.
For now, the playground is burning.
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