Inferno

by Robin Stevenson

  And my foot slips.

  For a split second, I am hanging from my fingers. I can hear my heart beating. I close my eyes and feel around with my foot. There. I pull both feet up to the window ledge and pause for a moment to catch my breath.

  “God,” I whisper under my breath. Like I said, I’m an atheist, but it almost feels like a thank-you just the same.

  “Thought you never slipped,” Leo says hoarsely. He’s trying to sound casual, but I figure I’ve probably just about given him a heart attack.

  “Shhh,” I say. “No problem. I’m almost there.” It occurs to me that none of Dante’s circles of hell involved heights. He’s got all kinds of other punishments: high winds, stinging insects, ice, fire, even having your head fixed on backward for eternity—but no heights. I’d think having to spend forever balanced on a narrow ledge would be pretty nasty. Though if you’re already dead, maybe falling isn’t so bad.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this without ropes or anything.

  I’m about to move when I hear sirens. I freeze, my body pressed tight to the window. Cops. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the flash of red and blue lights. My breathing is fast and shallow and my arms are aching. What the hell am I doing here? It suddenly seems stupid and suicidal; this whole night seems unreal.

  The cop cars come closer. I hold my breath.

  Then the lights are gone, past us, and the sirens grow fainter. I glance down to see that Leo has hit the dirt.

  “Jesus Christ. Hurry up, Dante,” he whispers, scrambling back to his feet.

  “You want to try it?” I hiss back. “See how fast you can climb?”

  He shakes his head. “No. Sorry.” He steps closer to the school. “Cops just freak me out. Don’t listen to me. Don’t rush.”

  “Yeah.” I blink sweat from my eyes. Time to get off this wall.

  The last part is tricky. I manage to pull myself up so that I am standing on the top edge of the concrete around the window frame. Just above me, the roof has a slight overhang and I have to lean back slightly to grab the edge. When you’re standing on a tiny concrete sill two stories up, leaning backward is not appealing. I don’t like this at all. I know I can do it—I’ve done it before on a rock face—but I still have to force myself, mind over muscle.

  From the ground, I could see a metal pipe running down the roof, but now I can’t see anything but the smooth gray bricks right in front of my face. I force myself to breathe slow and easy and move an inch at a time, sideways, feeling along the edge. Finally my fingertips bump cold metal. I give the pipe a gentle tug, then a harder one. Secure.

  I take a breath. Then I heave myself up as hard as I can. I don’t quite make it up all the way, but I get one leg up and manage to hook my foot and knee over the edge. Then I haul myself up the rest of the way and crawl a couple of feet away from the edge. I sit on the sloping roof, heart pounding.

  “Christ.” Leo’s voice cracks. “I never want to see anyone do anything like that again.” He sinks slowly to the ground. “I think I might throw up.”

  I laugh, feeling the adrenaline rushing through me like a tide. I can’t believe I’ve done it. “Okay,” I yell back, grinning. “When you’re done puking, I’ll pull up the sign.”

  Leo tosses up the rope. It takes three attempts, but finally I catch it. I pull on the rope, and slowly the bundle of sheets slides and jerks its way up to me. Piece of cake. I unfold it: three sheets stapled together with a hammer and nails wrapped inside it. The sign looks just as big up on the roof as it did stretched out in Parker and Jamie’s apartment.

  I hammer nails in two corners to secure it to the roof; then I let it drop.

  When I am safely on the ground, I finally let myself look back up at the school. The sign looks amazing way up there. There is no way anyone arriving at the school can miss it. Huge green letters read JUVENILE DETENTION CENTER.

  Leo puts one arm over my shoulders. “You’re okay, Dante.”

  “We make a good team,” I say. Then I blush. I hope he doesn’t read anything into that. “I mean, you know...”

  His eyes are dark and intense. “Dante?”

  “Yeah?” My voice comes out sounding funny.

  “Parker was right. You rock.” Leo pulls me close. Then he kisses me.

  For a second, I kiss him back. Maybe it’ll be different this time, I think. But it isn’t. It’s okay; it’s fine. I don’t hate kissing him or anything. It’s just not me. It’s not what I want. I pull away. “Look, I don’t know...”

  He lets me go. “Sorry. I just...I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Yeah.” My legs are trembling but it’s from the climb, not the kiss. “It’s okay.” I look at him. He is actually taller than me, which most guys are not. Behind him, I can see a faint lightness on the horizon. It’s almost five o’clock. “I better get home,” I say. “I have to pretend to be asleep for an hour, until my parents get up.”

  Leo laughs, but it sounds harsh and discordant, like he’s not really amused, like nothing’s really funny at all. “Yeah,” he says. “From one fucking jail to another. That’s life for you.”

  We’re both quiet in the car. Leo smokes a cigarette, and I play with the radio dial, trying to find decent music. Occasionally one of us says something like Wow, that was amazing, or I can’t believe we did that. When Leo drops me off, neither of us mention the kiss—we just say good-bye like nothing happened.

  I manage to sneak back into the house without waking my parents, but there is no way I can sleep. I lie in bed and watch the cracks around my blinds grow slowly brighter and wonder when I’ll see Leo or Parker again. My heart is still pounding, my muscles twitching, all systems on alert. I’m not usually a big risk-taker. I wear a seat belt, I don’t do drugs, you couldn’t pay me to go bungee jumping. Climbing that school was the stupidest, craziest, riskiest thing I’ve ever done.

  I feel like this should concern me, but for some reason it doesn’t.

  I have just started to doze when my alarm goes off. My whole body jerks like crazy and for a second I think I’m falling. My arms flail about, and then I’m fully awake. I sit up, gasping. I guess my body still thinks I’m on that wall. Or maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s the way everything I’ve always taken for granted—school, my family, future plans, my whole life—suddenly seems like it isn’t as solidly built as I’d thought. It’s a big precarious pile, teetering wildly, and I’m balanced on top. I feel like it all might come crashing down. I feel like everything is about to change.

  I rub my hands over my face and get out of bed. The muscles in my shoulders are sore, my arms heavy, my hands scratched up. I pull on jeans and a few layers of baggy shirts, debate the hat and decide to let my fuzz go free. Then I make my way downstairs.

  “How are you feeling?” Mom asks. “Good sleep?”

  “Yeah.” Thanks for the prompt, Mom. “Good sleep.”

  She is standing at the counter drinking decaf, wearing a pink silk housecoat. “You want toast, right?”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  She sticks a piece of bread in the toaster for me and hands me a glass of orange juice. “There you go, Emily.”

  I sigh. “Dante. Not Emily.”

  “Sorry, honey.”

  She calls me honey a lot. I figure it’s easier for her than having to say Dante. I take a sip of the juice and look around the sunny kitchen with its dark wood and granite countertops and brand-new stainless-steel appliances; I think about sitting on the dirty carpet at Parker and Jamie’s place, painting green letters on white sheets.

  It feels like it could all have been some crazy dream.

  Mom eyes me and shakes her head. “That haircut. And you had such lovely hair too.”

  “Drop it, already,” I say. My voice is sharper than I mean it to be. It’s just that from the way Mom has gone on about it, you’d think that haircuts actually mattered. You’d think haircuts rated alongside global warming and third-world debt in the scale of what is important.


  She looks a bit taken aback but says nothing. I spread peanut butter and jam on my toast and try to imagine what it would be like to live on my own. The idea is weirdly disorienting.

  I’m sixteen. I could do it. I even have enough money in the bank for a few months’ rent. It’s supposed to be for later, for college, but...

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Mom says. “Everything okay?”

  Dad glances up from behind the paper.

  I nod. It is so weird that I was out all night and they don’t know. I’m not remotely worried about them guessing. Even if I told them, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t believe me.

  TWELVE

  I walk back to the school at eight thirty. I’ve been gone less than four hours, but it feels like a different place in the daylight. There is a crowd gathered outside, twenty or thirty kids, all staring up at the sign on the roof.

  “I don’t get it,” one girl says. She’s in grade twelve; I recognize her but don’t know her name. A cheerleader. “Juvenile Detention Center?”

  Another girl frowns. “Me either.”

  I want to say something, but I bite my lip and stare at the sign like everyone else.

  Three girls from my homeroom class are standing near me. Jackie and Nicole and Linnea. They turn to me, three pairs of heavily outlined eyes open wide. Linnea grins at me. “Did you see this?”

  I nod. “Hey. Uh, yeah, it’d be kind of hard to miss.” I wonder what she’d say if I told her I hung it up there. Probably she’d think I was joking.

  “Can you believe this?” Nicole demands. She looks like she hasn’t washed her hair all weekend. It hangs across her face, straight as uncooked spaghetti.

  Jackie folds her arms across her chest and looks up at the sign. “Are they slagging GRSS? It’s stupid. This is an awesome school.”

  Go figure. Even the stoners like it here. So what is wrong with me?

  Nicole laughs. “I wonder how the hell they got the sign up on the roof.”

  I can’t believe they don’t get it. That they’re not even talking about what matters. They are all missing the point. “Well...,” I start slowly, “I think it’s kind of interesting. I mean, if you think about it, there are some similarities between school and prison.”

  They both stare at me blankly.

  “Look at Mr. Lawson,” I say. “He’d make a great prison guard.”

  Nicole laughs again. “Yeah. He’s a tool.”

  The bell rings. Some students start to drift in but not me.

  “And look at all the rules,” I say. “A bell rings, so everyone goes inside. And we have to be here, whether we want to or not.”

  “Well, we don’t really have to,” Linnea points out.

  A voice behind us cuts across the conversation. “All right folks, let’s move it.” It’s a teacher. “Excitement’s over. Get to class.”

  Everyone scurries through the doors. I hesitate for a second, remembering Leo’s words: You have more choices than you think. It’s true. I could turn around and walk away. But instead I push through the doors, walk down the hall and sit down in Mr. Lawson’s stupid English class.

  Even before class begins, people have stopped talking about the sign. Other than a few comments about who might have done it, no one seems to care. I don’t know exactly what I hoped for, but more than this anyway.

  By morning break, the sign is gone. And by lunchtime, everyone seems to have forgotten about it.

  Except me.

  After school, I head upstairs to check my e-mail. Nothing from Beth, of course, or anyone else for that matter. I wish I could send Parker a message, but I don’t have her e-mail address. Actually, I don’t know if she even has a computer. Probably not.

  I hope Leo didn’t tell her about the kiss. I’m not sure why exactly, but I don’t want her to know. It’s not that I think she’d mind. I suspect she might actually be pleased about it—her and Jamie, me and Leo. I guess it would have a certain symmetry. Two neat little equations. Something about it makes me feel squirmy. I don’t want Parker to be pleased. I want her to mind.

  I find myself thinking about Beth, and how we ended up together without ever talking about it or even seeing it coming. It just happened one day after we’d been hanging out for a few weeks. We’d gone for a run together after school and then gone back to her place.

  I chew my lip, remembering. We were up in her room, laughing and goofing around, and Beth had been putting makeup on me, which was kind of funny because I didn’t usually wear any. She put thick eyeliner on me and told me I looked like Amy Winehouse.

  “I do not,” I said, giving her a shove. She fell onto her bed, laughing.

  “But much cuter,” she said.

  I poked her in the ribs. “Amy Winehouse. As if. She’s scary. Take it back.”

  She grabbed me. “You do, you do. It’s your eyes, Emily. It’s the whole ‘nobody knows my pain’ emo thing.”

  I sat on her, straddling her hips, holding her arms above her head. “Take it back, Beth, or I’ll tickle you. No mercy.” She wriggled an arm free and pulled me down on the bed, tickling my ribs, and we were rolling around, wrestling, cracking up.

  Then somehow it changed, just like that. We weren’t laughing anymore. We were staring at each other, our faces inches apart, and there were maybe two seconds where either one of us could have made a joke or pulled away, but neither of us did. Then we were kissing, and it was so intense I could barely breathe, and then we were touching each other and we’d crossed that line, we were miles over that line, and there was no going back. It felt like we’d been waiting for this but without knowing it.

  Remembering it still makes my heart race.

  In that instant we’d slipped from being friends into something more. But we never talked about it, never named it, never acknowledged it in any way. We never admitted we were anything but best friends. Running buddies.

  I look at my dresser and see the empty space. I’d forgotten that I’d put the picture of Beth away in my drawer. Good-bye Beth. I wish it were that easy. I wish I could just forget about her. A line from Inferno slips into my mind: The double-grief of a lost bliss is to recall its happy hour in pain. I underlined it as soon as I read it, even though I hardly ever write in my books. It is just so true.

  I check Facebook and find that Beth has changed her picture. The one I took is gone and the new one she’s put up doesn’t even look like her. Her hair is blonder and cut to shoulder-length, and she’s looking off to one side, distracted, smiling. A couple of guys are standing behind her, holding drinks—it’s a party picture.

  My throat feels like I’ve swallowed a knife, but I can’t seem to cry. I’ve never been a good crier; I just get all tight and choked up and can’t talk. Goddamn it, Beth. Everything that happened between us seemed so easy and natural when she was here, but it all hangs over me now, an unspoken, painful, confusing mess.

  Then I notice that she’s updated her profile. It now reads: Beth is in love.

  Obviously she doesn’t mean with me.

  It’s okay, I guess. I’m not in love with her either. Not really, not anymore. Still, I can’t help wishing she could have told me herself. I wonder who she’s met. A guy, obviously, or she wouldn’t be talking about it on Facebook.

  She sure didn’t talk about us on Facebook. Not that I wanted her to. I mean, it’s the twenty-first century, but people are still assholes about some things. Besides, I kind of liked the fact that our parents had no issues with us having sleepovers. Mom would’ve flipped if she knew.

  Still, I’d have liked to at least know we were a couple, in Beth’s mind as well as mine. But I wasn’t ever sure. Beth wouldn’t even talk about us when we were alone together. I tried a couple of times, and she basically told me that if I didn’t drop it, it would all be over. She started crying, getting all shaky and freaked out. I can’t deal with this, Emily. I don’t want to talk about it.

  I did, desperately. I wanted to talk about everything. I wanted to talk about what it all mea
nt, about me and about us. I wanted to tell her how I felt about her, and to know if she felt the same way about me. But I didn’t want to lose her, and I didn’t want to go back to just being friends. So I dropped it.

  I look at her picture on the screen for a few seconds longer, wondering if one of those guys in the photo is the one she’s in love with. Then I close my laptop.

  I think about Parker, and then about Leo and that kiss. I close my eyes. It’d be so much easier to go out with a guy, so much less complicated. And I like Leo. I do.

  But it’s Parker I can’t stop thinking about.

  I don’t see Parker all week. I keep hoping she’ll show up with another stack of crazy flyers. I pass the time in class by doodling new slogans for her. Stop brainwashing kids. GRSS: Enforcing Conformity. Schools are Factories—Get off the Assembly Line. And my personal fave: GRSS: the Tenth Circle. I love it, but no one else would get it.

  By Friday, I find myself in the bizarre situation of almost looking forward to Social Skills 101. At least Parker will be there. I wonder if she and Leo and Jamie are planning anything else.

  “You’ve got your group tonight,” Mom reminds me after school. Her eyes are on my face, sharply focused, as if she’s watching for signs of resistance. I can see her getting primed to point out that I’d agreed to go to at least two sessions before making up my mind.

  “I know,” I say, injecting a note of weariness into my voice. I don’t want her to think I’m too keen, or god knows what else she’ll sign me up for. “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Good, good. I’m sure you’ll make some new friends there. I have such a good feeling about it.” She smiles at me. “Someone to take Beth’s place maybe.”

  An image of Parker’s face slides into my head. Someone to take Beth’s place. My cheeks are warm. If Mom knew what she was saying...”Yeah, maybe,” I say; then I change the subject. “Did you get your teeth whitened or something?”

  She covers her mouth with her hand and laughs.

  “You did!”