Inferno

by Robin Stevenson

  He raises his eyebrows. “So why Dante then?”

  Like it’s any of his business. “That’s personal.”

  “Riiiiight,” he says again.

  I’m not telling him the real reason, not in front of the whole class. Not a chance. It’ll sound hokey, and I don’t want to be laughed at.

  Lawson waits, arms folded across his chest. Some kids shift in their seats to stare at me.

  Screw it. If he wants an answer that bad, I’ll make one up especially for him. “You really want to know?” I say quietly. “Fine. Dante’s Inferno is about hell, right? And since I apparently have to spend an eternity in school, which is basically hell on earth—”

  “All right,” he snaps. “That’s enough. I suggest you get to work...Emily.”

  I lift my chin and meet his gaze straight on. “That’s not my name,” I say. “I legally changed it. I won’t answer to Emily.”

  There is a hush in the class. No snickers. Everyone is waiting to see what’s going to happen, hoping that Mr. Lawson will lose it and provide some entertainment, or at least waste a few more minutes of class time.

  Mr. Lawson sighs. “Is this really the way you want to start a new year?”

  “I haven’t done anything,” I say. “It’s not my fault you don’t like my new name.”

  “I had hoped that your attitude would have improved.” He glances at the clock. “Not even nine thirty and already you’re causing trouble.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “I think you better go and have a word with Mrs. Greenway,” he says.

  I stand up and leave the room.

  I am halfway to the office when I see the no-eyebrows girl again. She’s standing outside the main doors, smoking. I am half tempted to push the door open and ask what her note meant, but Mrs. Greenway spots me and beckons.

  “Dante. Already?”

  Mrs. Greenway is fifty-ish and extremely fat, with masses of gray- and brown-streaked hair and bright pink lipstick. Despite this, she’s all right. She’s one of the more reasonable people at GRSS.

  I step into her office. “Hi, Mrs. G. Mr. Lawson sent me.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She waits.

  “Well, the thing is, he wanted to know why I changed my name.”

  She smiles. “I got your parents’ letter. I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  “I just liked the name.” I flop down in the big comfy chair that she’s managed to cram into the corner of her office. “Emily was too...I don’t know. It wasn’t me.”

  “Dante’s a great name. Knowing you, I’m assuming there’s a literary allusion. You know who Dante was?”

  “Sure. Italian poet. One of the greatest writers ever.”

  She smiles and squeezes herself into her desk chair. “Have you been reading the Divine Comedy?”

  I nod. “I read a bunch of stuff this summer.”

  “And what was it that impressed you so much that you chose his name?”

  I hesitate. What I’d said to Mr. Lawson wasn’t quite true. School was hell, but that wasn’t the reason I chose the name. “I liked what he said,” I tell Mrs. G. “You know, about how we need to take responsibility for the world. As individuals, I mean. He said, ‘If the present world go astray, the cause is in you, in you it is to be sought.’” I shrug. “It’s just cool, that’s all. I mean, he wrote that like seven hundred years ago, you know?”

  “Ahh. I do know.” She smiles. “Yes, very cool indeed.”

  The word cool sounds funny coming from her, like it isn’t something she would normally say. We sit in silence for a moment. Then Mrs. G. sighs. “I take it that isn’t what you said to Mr. Lawson.”

  I squirm. It does seem a bit childish now. “No. I told him I picked it because of the Inferno. That school was hell, you know, and that since I was stuck here...”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Yeah.” There is a pause. For a second, I think she is going to ask me about Beth, but of course she doesn’t. I don’t imagine she pays too much attention to student gossip, and even if she had heard something, she probably wouldn’t bring it up. It’s weird, but I don’t think I’d mind. I can almost imagine talking to her about Beth. Almost.

  “Oh dear,” she says again. She looks at me thoughtfully. “You usually have more sense.”

  “He kept calling me Emily. And he called me a liar.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Really?”

  “I said I’d already read the books he assigned, and he didn’t believe me.”

  “Ahh.”

  Even though she’s never said it, I have a feeling she doesn’t like Mr. Lawson either.

  Finally she sighs. “You haven’t written a paper on these books before though?”

  “No.”

  “So you can do the assignment.”

  “I guess.”

  She glances at her watch. “There’s only ten minutes left of this period. Why don’t you take a walk, then head on to your next class.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Dante...next time, maybe you could think before you speak. Some things are better kept to yourself.”

  I nod and leave the office. A couple of pink squares of paper lie on the hallway floor. I pick them up and study them for a minute. Apparently I’m not the only one that got the weird Woof, woof note. I open the main doors, step out into the bright sunshine and look around. Smoke still lingers in the air, but the no-eyebrows girl is gone.

  FOUR

  Mom and Dad usually get home pretty soon after me. Mom is teaching full-time for the first time since I was born. The little kids adore her.

  I run all the way home, go straight up to my room and turn on my computer to send Beth a message. How was your first day back, mine sucked, blah blah blah. It doesn’t matter what I write, because I’m not going to send it.

  When Beth told me she was moving, I hadn’t kidded myself that we’d stay close. Two thousand miles is a long way, and while computers and phones are great, they’re also pretty limited. Even when Beth was here, she wasn’t a big talker. Still, I figured we’d at least stay in touch. Tell each other what we were up to, who we were hanging out with, what movies we’d seen, stuff like that.

  For a few days after she left, I sent her long e-mails telling her how much I missed her and talking about how much GRSS was going to suck without her there.

  She didn’t reply. I figured she didn’t have her computer set up yet, so I waited a couple of days. Then I noticed that she’d updated her Facebook profile. So she was back online. I poked her a couple of times and sent her some virtual fish for her virtual aquarium. But I didn’t hear from her, and it gradually began to sink in.

  She wasn’t going to write back. Not ever.

  I stare at the computer screen and hold down the backspace key, erasing my e-mail to Beth one letter at a time. I wonder if she even thinks about me anymore. I log in to Facebook. I keep expecting to find that she’s deleted me from her Friends list, but she hasn’t yet. Maybe she just hasn’t got around to it. Or maybe it hasn’t occurred to her that I’d be checking her profile to see what she’s doing. She doesn’t write much, but she changes her status every day or two. Right now, it reads: Beth is listening to cool tunes.

  It’s pathetic. I feel like a cyber-stalker.

  Mom knocks and opens my door without waiting for a response.

  “Do you mind?” I say. “Maybe if my door is closed, it’s because I actually want privacy. What if I was getting changed or something?”

  She just laughs and walks across the room toward me. “Sorry. What are you doing?”

  I close the window before she can see what’s on the screen. “Nothing.”

  “Oh.” She is quiet for a moment. “How was your day?”

  “Fine. I guess. Mr. Lawson’s a dickhead but whatever. Apparently it’s not a problem if a teacher can’t be bothered to remember a student’s name.”

  “I’m sure he means well.”

  She says this about absolutely everyone. She thinks
the Pope means well, despite the fact that he’s a complete idiot who thinks using birth control is, like, evil. Whatever.

  “Are you making any friends?” she asks. “Since Beth left you don’t seem to talk to anyone.”

  “That’s because all the girls in my class are obsessed with stupid celebrities, Mom.”

  She sighs. “It isn’t right that you spend so much time alone.”

  “Yeah, well. There are plenty of things worse than being alone.” Like wasting my time talking about tabloid gossip.

  “You’re okay though? Right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She drives me crazy. I know she means well, to borrow her own phrase. Really, she’s not a bad parent or anything. She loves me. It’s just that because she loves me, she thinks she owns me. She thinks that she should be able to dictate and control everything about my life. All in my own best interests, of course.

  Between school and my parents, there isn’t a single square inch of my life that is really, truly my own. The only time I feel even remotely free is when I’m running. And for some reason, that gets me thinking about the no-eyebrows girl and the weird notes she was handing out today. Obedience school. Sit. Stay. Don’t get up until the bell rings. Woof, woof.

  I have to admit, she has a point.

  The next day, I look for the girl when I get to school. I don’t really expect to see her, but there she is, standing outside, wearing a thick multi-colored sweater and tight jeans.

  I walk over to her. “Hi.”

  She grins at me. “Hi.”

  Up close, her eyes are pale blue. Sled-dog eyes. “So...” I feel off balance all of a sudden. “I was just wondering...”

  “Wondering’s good.” She’s holding a stack of papers, and she peels one off to hand to me. Lime green. Two identical buildings are roughly sketched on it and underneath, in all caps, it says: HIGH SCHOOL. JAIL. CAN YOU SPOT THE DIFFERENCE?

  I raise my eyebrows. “That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

  She grins again. She has skinny cheeks and a wide mouth that’s too big for her face and those weird pale eyes, but there’s something about her face that is hard to look away from. She’s kind of pretty in a fragile, no-eyebrows way.

  “Think about it,” she says. Her voice is husky and surprisingly low for someone so small. Nothing fragile about it. “Rules about where you can go and when. Asking permission to speak. Scheduled time each day to go out into the yard. Punishments if you don’t do what you’re told.” She shrugs. “That’s fucked up.”

  My mouth is probably hanging open. She’s pretty much summed up how I’ve been feeling lately. I nod slowly and for some reason—don’t ask me why, I never shake hands with people—I hold out my hand. “I’m Dante.”

  “Parker.” Her hand is dry and warm, almost hot. “Good to meet you.”

  “You don’t go to this school, right?”

  “No. Thank Jesus. This has got to be one of the weirdest schools I’ve ever—”

  I cut her off. “I know. It’s bizarre.”

  “It’s unreal.”

  “I know. I know.”

  “It’s like something out of the movies,” she says.

  “I know! I mean, everyone’s walking around like they’re auditioning for a part.”

  Parker nods. “The cheerleaders, the jocks, the nerds...”

  It’s like she’s been reading my journal. “I was so blown away by it all when I started here,” I tell her. “Now I’ve simplified it to the Elites, the Athletes, the Academics, and the Deviants.”

  “Hah.” She grins appreciatively. “So where do you fit in then?”

  “I don’t.” I grin back at her. “What school do you go to?”

  “I don’t believe in school.”

  “You don’t believe in it.” I repeat her words flatly. It hadn’t occurred to me that school was something in which I could or could not believe. Like fairies or Santa Claus or God.

  “I mean, as an institution. I don’t support it.”

  “So what are you doing here? I mean...” I nod at her stack of lime green papers.

  Parker lights a cigarette and offers me the pack.

  I shake my head. “I don’t believe in supporting tobacco companies.”

  She laughs, lights up and watches me through a veil of smoke. “I’m trying to make people think, that’s all. I visit different schools.”

  “You mean...”

  “Hand out flyers, hang around, talk to people. People who are open-minded enough to question things.” She waves her cigarette in the direction of the school doors. “People who haven’t had every last spark of curiosity stomped out by years of education or incarceration or whatever you want to call it.”

  I feel a prickle of irritation. She is a bit too sure of herself. Like she thinks anyone who is still in school is an unthinking idiot. It’s just not that simple. I mean, what choice do I have? “So how’s it going then?” I ask. “Are many people interested?”

  “Some are. Most aren’t.”

  The bell rings. Through the glass doors I can see a rush of kids milling down the hallway toward their classrooms. “I guess I’d better go,” I say.

  “Up to you.”

  I look at Parker. She waits, non-eyebrows raised, and I wonder if she shaved them off. “Nah. I don’t skip classes. Not worth the hassle,” I tell her.

  “Like I said, up to you.”

  I start to walk away. Then I turn back. “You really don’t go to school? How old are you anyway?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “And your parents? I mean...did they freak out?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.” She looks down at her hands. Her nails are short and ragged-edged. “You’d better go,” she says. “If you’re going.”

  “Yeah. See you around.”

  “Maybe.” She turns her head and blows a cloud of smoke away from me. “Usually it doesn’t take long for them to kick me off the school grounds.”

  For some reason, the thought that I might not see her again bothers me. A group of kids pushes past me, and I find myself still hanging back.

  Parker laughs. “Tempted, are you? Thinking about a jailbreak?”

  My next class is with Mr. Lawson. Another hour of being called Emily and being publicly accused of lying. Just thinking about it makes me want to run as far and as fast as I can. “Yeah,” I say. “Screw it.”

  “You up for a drive?” she asks.

  “I guess. Where to?”

  “Tell you when we get there.”

  I make a face at her, exasperated, but she just laughs and I’m too curious not to go. “Fine,” I say. “Whatever.”

  Parker’s car is a total beater. An ancient Honda Civic that used to be blue and is now mostly rust colored. It has a tape deck instead of a cd player. I buckle up and Parker turns on the radio. Some guy with a British accent is interviewing a woman about terrorism.

  “You can’t trust the media,” Parker says. “Most of it’s just a bunch of lies to keep us in line.”

  “Us?”

  “Everyone,” she says darkly. “To make sure we do what we’re told and don’t ask too many questions.”

  I think about that for a minute. “What about nine-eleven though? I mean, you can’t say that didn’t happen.”

  Parker looks sideways at me, pale eyes unblinking. “Who knows who did it or why. I don’t trust what we’re being told, that’s all.”

  “Well, there’s no way everyone can be lying.”

  She rolls down her window and sticks her arm out to signal a left turn. “Sure, but how do you know who is?” She turns on to the highway, speeds up and switches the radio to a station playing some old, heavy metal song.

  I suck on my bottom lip and watch Parker’s profile out of the corner of my eye. I wonder where the hell we are going and why I am skipping class to hang out with a crazy girl with no eyebrows. Then I wonder why it feels so alarmingly good.

  FIVE

  Parker drives fast and taps her hands again
st the steering wheel, totally offbeat to the music. She is wearing fingerless black gloves, thin wool ones that are frayed at the edge. She has the longest skinniest fingers I’ve ever seen. Spider hands.

  Eventually she takes an exit, makes a couple of turns and pulls into a parking lot.

  I look at her quizzically.

  “What do you think?” she asks.

  “Of what exactly?” I look around, trying to figure out where we are.

  Parker points at a large sign.

  “Juvenile Detention Center?” I read out loud.

  She turns to me with a wide grin. “Does it give you any ideas?”

  “Umm...” I study the square gray building. “Not really.”

  “Okay, picture this: all the students at your school show up tomorrow morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed with their sunny morning faces...” She pauses, watching me.

  “And?”

  “And there, right in front of the main doors, they see... this sign. Juvenile Detention Center.”

  I shrug. “So what. No one would care.”

  “Oh, come on. They would. You know they would. Just picture the looks on everyone’s faces.” She gives me a face-splitting grin. “It’d be great.”

  I grin back reluctantly, imagining everyone milling around, the air thick with oh my gods. The academics would disapprove; the elites and the athletes probably wouldn’t get it. The deviants...well, they’re a mixed group. Goths and nerds and stoners and a few unclassifiables: they’re harder to predict. Mr. Lawson is easy though. He’d just stroke his mustache before tapping his heels together and disappearing off to the office to report it.

  I can’t help laughing. “Okay,” I concede. “It’s a pretty funny thought.”

  She brushes that aside. “Yeah, but it’s more than that, right? Wouldn’t it make them stop and think? Maybe realize that it’s not so far off to call a school a detention center?”