“I don’t care what you say or what they say. That’s not art. What about your life? Why can’t that be an adventure? Why can’t you be that person to someone? Instead you’re just going to attach yourself to this asshole like a … like a barnacle.”

“I’m not a barnacle!” Though I might have been offended, it only made me laugh. Soon, mostly without reason, we were both laughing, tears at the corners of our eyes.

“Excuse me,” a man’s voice said from behind us. “But you ladies mind if I sit down with you?”

I watched Clara’s face shift again, the oversweet smile, the shift in her posture, the crossing of her legs. “Well, it’ll cost you,” Clara said, changing her voice so that it was syrupy sweet. That quickly, I thought. She tipped her chin down so that she was staring up at him through her eyelashes. “One drink each.”

“Clara,” I said, my voice low, a warning. She gave me a look that I had seen before: regret for the way things were, and that I was too blind, too sheltered, to possibly understand.

LUIS

HE DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD go on, past the first one. That initial release, the thrill of color and heat, the pleasure of being the one who undoes. He used to get the same thrill from making things, but maybe now he’s too far gone. Too angry. Too lonely and separate from everyone else. The girls at work still watch him like he’s contagious, or else they ignore him. Even the one who has her father’s kind eyes. He still thumbs the two-dollar bill, thinking he could show it to her, like proof. But he’s worried she won’t know what it means, that it will be one more reason for her to think he’s broken or strange.

He’s set three more fires since that night when he burned the house—one fire for each time the men left him with bruises and scratches, the cut above his eyebrow that might scar, and the cops hadn’t stopped them, only watched from behind the shine of their sunglasses. Each house feels like relief or even revenge. Maybe if he keeps going, the cops will finally be sent out into the city with work, real work, to do something other than laugh at the people they’re supposed to protect. With every fire, he feels a weight lift from his chest.