Ants On Fire

Katie Bannon

Word Count 884

Summer is dying.

 It’s so hot we smell the pavement bake. Shrill buzz of cicadas in our ears, my big brother and I squat until our knees scrape sidewalk. Leaves scatter across the curb, spilling onto the road like Legos. Soon, they’ll go crisp at the edges, breakable to the touch.

 On vacation, my brother and I always get along. Summer is intermission from our school-year theatrics, roles of tough-guy boy and pretty-doll girl tossed aside like outgrown clothing. We are just us. I cackle constantly, face hideous, head thrown-back, snorting so loudly neither of us can breathe. My brother’s sweetness is a smooth white stone, ordinary and beautiful. His skinny arms, the same ones that fail him during baseball season, wrap around my waist.

 Our spirits are breaking as summer falters, but neither of us will admit this to the other. Denial is a language we’ve learned young, as siblings with unhappy parents do. There’s beauty in forgetting.

 My brother inches toward me on the sidewalk, raising a finger to his lips. “Quiet,” he mouths. We wait. A minivan crawls by, boys and soccer cleats in tow. My brother straightens, toothy grin wiped clean. When the car’s gone, he’s back. Just as he taps my shoulder, I see it: jet-black movement on the sidewalk. He lowers his magnifying glass until it’s hovering a few inches above the ground. Tongue rolling in his mouth, he tilts the glass, wrist jerking back and forth, back and forth. He’s trying to catch the sun. When a pea-sized circle of light appears on the pavement, I know he’s done it. The ant closes in, a million legs twitching.

 Three.

 Two.

 One.

 A wisp of smoke.

 For a beat, the ant keeps crawling, like nothing’s wrong. Then it ignites. Flames lick its back and swallow the head whole, the ant dancing, dancing, trying to escape what can’t be escaped, dancing even as its antennae disintegrate and legs turn to soot. When my brother puts down the magnifying glass, all that remains is a black stain. His eyes, like mine, are wide with thrill. 

*

 It’s twelve years later.

 We’re at a college party, both drunk. My brother’s blown past drunk-having-fun and entered drunk-and-reckless. I wear a spandex skirt and fishnets, the uniform of freshmen girls desperate to belong. My brother is only ever protective while drunk, and he groans when he sees me. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says.

 A bonfire roars, wasted students gather ‘round. We lift our hands to the blaze, cold beers gone warm. Suddenly, there’s movement in the shadows. Someone is stumbling toward the flames, teetering, losing control. The figure has a familiar, long-legged gait. “Shit,” I say to no one.

 When I reach my brother, he’s covered in ash. His face falls slack; his eyes look haunted. I grab his arm. He pushes me away, taking another step toward the flames, closer, closer. Laughter erupts from the crowd. Fingers point at my brother, and I want to chew them right off, spit their bones into the fire like old gum. Instead, I cry. “Come back,” I choke between tears, tugging at the tail of my brother’s shirt.

 Come back. Come back. Come back.

 He whips around. The crowd falls silent, watching. My brother’s face is so pained I think he’s been burned. “Get away from me,” he says. "I’m fucking ashamed to have you as a sister.”

 The next morning, I get a text. “You have fun last night? I don’t remember a thing.” My eyes well up: he’s alive. I lost him the night before and was shepherded onto a bus back to campus. I stayed up for hours waiting for him to call. “I had a blast!” I type back. “I’m so glad I went.” What I don’t say: What if I hadn’t?

*

 We’re in the car, and he’s driving. It’s been three years since the college party. We’ve grown up and apart since then. I’m a writer, paid to share truths; he’s a businessman, paid to hide them. On the highway, I ask if he remembers burning ants as kids. “Don’t write about that,” he says, clutching the wheel. Apparently, a lot of serial killers abused animals. He’s concerned about the optics. “Well, we aren’t serial killers,” I say, rolling my eyes. In truth, I’ve never considered our ant burning anything but childhood fun. It’s among my happier memories of us.

 Later, I search “ant burning” on Google. In one video, a man uses a giant magnifying glass to kill fire ants by the thousands. Frenetic bodies fill the screen before falling still, mowed down in a sweep of light. The video has 2.5 million views and runs for four minutes. I barely last one. On forums, strangers ask if it’s wrong for children to burn insects. “The smell, it never leaves you,” someone says. My nostrils sting with memory. Articles dissect the science. A magnifying glass concentrates the sun’s energy on a fixed point, producing heat that can exceed 450 degrees Fahrenheit. I hesitate, then deviate: “At what temperature does the human body burn?”

 1400 degrees.

 I close my search tabs, one, by one, by one. I open the browsing data. Scrub my history clean. There’s beauty in forgetting.

Katie is a writer, educator, and editor. Her work has been featured in NPR, Narratively, and Salon, among others, and her memoir manuscript was a finalist for the Permafrost Nonfiction Book Prize. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two cats. You can follow her on Twitter or learn more about her work at www.katiebannon.com