Inferno

by Robin Stevenson

  “Huh.” I look at the clock again. One minute. “Linnea? I’m going to have to go in a sec.”

  “Okay, wait. This is why I called. You said he wasn’t your boyfriend but...”

  “He’s not.”

  “Okay. It’s just, I think he might not have been totally honest with you. Eric says he didn’t drop out, he got kicked out.”

  “Kicked out?”

  “Yeah. For assaulting a teacher.”

  I hold my breath. “Mr. Lawson?”

  “I don’t know. Eric said it was just a rumor; he didn’t see it or anything. I guess no one saw it.”

  He’d told me Mr. Lawson had assaulted him. Shoved him up against the lockers. I remembered the look in his eyes when he talked about it. It was his word against mine. You can guess who the principal believed. I believed Leo. Maybe he had pushed Mr. Lawson away, or even struck out at him, but I had no trouble believing that Mr. Lawson had started it.

  Still...If anyone had reason to hate GRSS, Leo certainly did.

  I sit in my room and stare at my half-written essay. If I’d had doubts about whether Leo would really go along with Jamie’s plan, they’re gone now. Jamie’s angry all the time, but his anger is obvious: blazing flashes of heat and flame, all on the surface. Leo’s is hidden and carefully controlled, but from what Linnea told me, I’m guessing it’s been smoldering for years. And Jamie’s been fanning the embers.

  I shiver and put my pen down. There doesn’t seem much point in finishing my paper if the school isn’t even going to be there in the morning.

  At some point I hear Dad come back from wherever he’s been, and a little while later, Mom calls me for dinner. I ignore her. I’m not hungry and I don’t feel like talking.

  Eventually it starts to get dark. I can’t stop thinking about Parker. I keep picturing her at the social skills group, laughing and eating rose petals, that wide smile on her thin face. So beautiful in her own way. Then I remember how she looked standing there at school, all blotchy-faced and unhappy. I imagine her getting caught at the school, being hauled down to the police station and charged with arson. They won’t care that it wasn’t her idea or that she didn’t want to be there. They won’t care that she didn’t feel like she had a choice.

  I finally come up with a plan. It is a bit of a lousy plan— there are about a thousand things that could go wrong— but given that I am grounded and basically a prisoner, it’s the best I can do.

  I go downstairs and chat with my parents for a few minutes, like nothing is wrong. I heap dinner leftovers—a mess of lentils and undercooked brown rice—onto a plate. I’m suddenly starving. I pretty much inhale it without even bothering to heat it up first. Then I say good night to my parents, head back upstairs, brush my teeth, lie down on my bed and wait.

  EIGHTEEN

  At ten thirty, the stairs creak as Mom and Dad head up to their room. At eleven, I slip out of bed, peer down the hall to check if their light is off and listen for a few minutes. Silence.

  I pull on my jacket and pad as quietly as I can down the dark stairway. They’re both sound sleepers, but I don’t even want to think about how much trouble I’ll be in if I get caught.

  I tiptoe across the huge front hall with its high ceiling and cool tiled floor; then I slip my feet into my runners and open the front door without a sound. I guess that’s one good thing about a new house. Our old place had squeaky floorboards and a front door that creaked so loudly it could probably wake the neighbors.

  Outside, rain is falling softly and so slowly it appears to hang in the air, suspended; it is almost a mist. No one is around. Across the street, one light is on in an upstairs bedroom. Next door you can see the bluish glow of a TV through the half-open blinds. I walk down the driveway, hoping no one will look out the window and report back to my parents tomorrow. I stop at the end of the drive and stand there for a moment, staring at the glowing bowlingball lamps like they are crystal balls that can tell me something useful. They glow blankly back.

  I guess this is my last chance to change my mind and sneak back inside. But then I think about Parker—how scared she sounded and how hopeless—and I’m pretty sure I’m doing the right thing, even if my parents wouldn’t think so.

  I have to talk to her.

  Of course, her place is downtown, maybe fifteen kilometers away, and when you’re stuck out in the burbs you can’t just hop on a bus. The thought of taking my parents’ car crosses my mind, but only briefly. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even be able to get it out of the garage without waking them. Besides, even though I have a basic understanding of how to drive, I haven’t actually got my license yet.

  I look at my watch—five past eleven—and start to run. I have to get to Parker’s place before Leo does. Before it is too late.

  By the time I finally get out to the main road, it’s pouring. My heart is pounding, my shirt is soaked with sweat, and the rain has plastered my hair to my head. Eleven fifteen. I start to jog backward down the side of the road, holding out one hand. Thumb up. I hope I won’t get picked up by some pervert. Or, more likely and almost as scary, one of my parents’ friends.

  Cars zip past, spraying me with sheets of dirty water.

  I keep moving and dripping and doing my best not to think about Jamie hitting Parker, or about my parents, or about the school burning down. Eventually, a car stops.

  “Where you headed?” a girl yells out the window. She is maybe two or three years older than me, with straight red hair and orthodontist-perfect teeth.

  “Downtown. King and James area.”

  She nods and gestures to the back door. “Hop in.”

  I slump into the backseat and try to catch my breath. Eleven twenty-five. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to get there. Now if only I can get Parker alone.

  The girl who picked me up introduces herself as Alice and tells me she’s meeting her boyfriend, who’s a musician, at a downtown bar. I don’t feel like chatting, so I just nod a lot and make interested noises and tell her I’m going to visit a friend. By the time we pull up at the corner of King and James, the rain has mostly stopped. I nod thanks to Alice and hurry down the street toward Parker’s place. The pizza joint downstairs is practically empty. I take the stairs two at a time, praying that it will be Parker and not Jamie who answers the door. If it’s Jamie, I’m pretty sure there’s no hope at all.

  But it’s Parker. She has her jacket and boots on, like she is about to go out. The bruise is still there, a yellow-green smudge under her eye, but when she sees me she grins widely and she looks like the old, happy Parker.

  “Who is it? Is it Leo?” Jamie calls out.

  I grab her arm and pull her outside. “Come on. I need to talk to you.”

  Parker resists for a second; then she steps out into the hall. “Just a sec,” she calls back to Jamie.

  I close the door. “Come on.”

  “I can’t,” Parker says. “Leo’s going to be here any moment.” But she follows me down the stairs anyway.

  I look at my watch. Eleven forty. “Not for twenty minutes,” I say. “Just walk around the block with me.”

  Outside, Parker takes a deep breath and lets out a long shaky sigh. “Look, I know what you’re going to say. I know this is stupid.”

  “So don’t go along with it then.”

  She doesn’t say anything. She starts walking quickly down the empty sidewalk.

  “Parker...I’m not crazy about school, you know that. But I don’t see the point of doing this. It’s not going to change anything.”

  “I know, I know. You don’t have to persuade me.”

  I hesitate. “You said something once about maybe going back to school. Then you said, ‘Don’t tell Jamie.’” I try to meet her eyes but she is walking so fast that I practically have to jog to keep up. “What’s going on?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s complicated.”

  “You told me I had choices, okay? You helped me to see that.” I grab her wrist. “Parker. Stop.”
/>
  She stops walking and turns to face me. Her eyes are wet.

  “You’ve got choices too,” I tell her. “You do.”

  She is silent. I’m still holding her wrist, almost holding her hand, and she doesn’t pull away. We stand there under a streetlight, in the slow cold drizzle, cars driving past. Water trickles down my face. Someone honks their horn as they drive by. Neon lights flash red, green, blue in the darkness. I feel like time is standing still.

  “It’s easy to talk about making choices,” Parker says at last. “But they have a way of biting you on the ass.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You make one choice, and then all of a sudden you don’t have the same choices you used to have. You think I like my life right now?”

  Then Parker looks up at me with those pale eyes, and something flips and tumbles inside my chest. My heart is doing something crazy, falling from its precarious perch. I let go of her wrist and step back. “I don’t know. Don’t you?”

  “It’s not like I enjoy flipping pancakes at the Golden Griddle,” she says. “I have to pay the rent. God knows Jamie won’t.” She starts to cry silently, big tears rolling slowly down her cheeks.

  I put my arms around her and sneak a peek at my watch over her shoulder. Eleven forty-five. “Parker...you can’t stay with someone who hits you.”

  She cries harder, her whole body shaking.

  I can feel the sharp edges of her shoulder blades beneath my hands. I close my eyes and wonder what she’d say if I told her I was falling for her, what she would do if she knew how I felt. Whether she’d push me away.

  “He used to be different,” she says. She lifts her head from my shoulder and looks up at me again, and again my heart starts to go crazy.

  Under the streetlight, I can see that her face is wet with tears, but she doesn’t wipe them away.

  “He hasn’t had an easy time,” she says. “His family...”

  “Oh please.” I’m suddenly furious and I’m not sure whether it’s her or Jamie or myself that I’m angry with. “Give me a fucking break.”

  For a moment I think she is going to get mad. Then she suddenly laughs. A bitter laugh, but a laugh all the same.

  “You’re right,” she admits. “But...what else would I do?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  We stare at each other in silence for a moment.

  “Look at you,” she says. “You’re soaked.”

  “I’m okay. Parker...”

  “I can’t go back to my parents,” she says softly.

  “What happened? I mean, did they...did they hurt you or something?”

  “Not physically. Nothing like that. They just fought all the time. Yelling at each other, throwing things, slamming doors. And it was always about me, always my fault.” She shakes her head. “They had...they had all these crazy rules, like I had to be home by eight o’clock. I mean, eight o’clock? I couldn’t even do band at school because the concerts went later than that. The only remotely social thing I could go to was a Bible study group.”

  “Wow. I thought my parents were strict.”

  “That’s just an example. I could go on and on. My dad’s ex-military, and I swear, it was like boot camp or something. He’d decide what I could wear, who I could see, where I could go. I couldn’t deal with it, you know?”

  “No kidding. Who could?”

  She gives me a small, crooked smile. “Well, I started seeing someone and they found out and freaked completely. Wouldn’t let me go anywhere, drove me to and from school...I kind of lost it. I started running away and not coming home for days at a time. And I was doing a lot of drugs, Ecstasy and stuff, getting all screwed up.”

  I remember something she’d said before, about Jamie. “You said Jamie sort of saved your life. Is that what you meant?”

  “Yeah. I was acting kind of crazy, and my dad was totally losing it and taking me to all these shrinks, trying to get me locked up or something.”

  “I don’t think they usually lock people up. Not kids anyway.”

  She shrugs. “He’d have liked them to give me a lobotomy, I guess. But they just kept me overnight and then prescribed a bunch of meds that I refused to take. So we all ended up in family counseling, which was a nightmare because anything I said my parents would twist around and use against me, but the one good thing was that the counselor persuaded my parents to let me get a job.”

  “The Golden Griddle?”

  “Yeah. And then I met Jamie and moved in with him pretty much right away.” She grins. “Which I guess confirmed all my parents’ fears about letting me work.”

  “Wow. I guess so.”

  She lifts her chin and looks up at me. “Jamie really did help me though. I stopped using drugs and everything.”

  Parker’s never said much about herself before, and I don’t want her to stop talking, but I’m starting to get nervous about Leo showing up and seeing us. “That’s great. I mean, I’m glad you moved out then. But now what, Parker? You can’t go along with this business of burning down the school.”

  “I know. But you heard Jamie this afternoon. He’s all, ‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us.’”

  “Yeah. I know. But you don’t need them. You could get your own place. It’s not like Jamie’s helping you out any, with money, I mean.” I hesitate. “You could even go back to school, if you wanted to.”

  “It wouldn’t be that easy.”

  “You could do it though.” I shove my cold hands into my jacket pockets. “We’d figure it out, Parker. We would.”

  A small smile slowly lifts the corners of her mouth. “We? You and me?”

  I’m not sure what I’m agreeing to, but I don’t care. “Yeah. You and me.” I meet her eyes, and my heart skips a beat. She has absolutely no idea how I feel. She has a boyfriend, I remind myself. She’s straight, straight, straight. Forget it, Dante. Don’t be stupid.

  Parker wipes the tears from her cheeks with the palms of her hands. “Okay,” she whispers. She lets out a long shaky sigh and looks back down the sidewalk toward her place. “So...what do we do now?”

  I swallow hard. “Let’s get out of here,” I say. “Let’s go somewhere. Boston, maybe. Or New York.”

  NINETEEN

  I don’t think I expected Parker to agree. I just threw it out there: a crazy idea, an impulse. New York.

  But Parker jumps on it. “Hell, yeah,” she says. She brushes the backs of her hands across her eyes, wiping tears away. “Let’s go. My car’s in front of the apartment.”

  “Got your keys?”

  She checks her jacket pockets. “Yeah. Lucky.”

  We start walking and we’re almost there when I see a station wagon pull over and park across the street. I grab Parker’s arm. “Is that Leo?”

  “Crap.” She opens the door to the pizza place and pulls me inside. “Do you think he saw us?”

  “I don’t know.”

  We stand there under the bright lights, surrounded by the laughter and loud voices of mostly drunk customers, the sign in the window flashing 2 for 1 “slices” in backward writing, mirror writing. Leo gets out of his car and heads toward us.

  “Crap,” Parker says again.

  I can’t think what to do.

  “Can I help you girls?” the man behind the counter asks impatiently. “Or were you planning just to stand there admiring the view?”

  I spin around. “Yes! Um, two slices of pepperoni and pineapple.”

  Parker looks at me like I’ve lost it. “You’re not seriously thinking about food right now?”

  I smile tightly. “Play along, okay?”

  There is a cool draft as the door opens, and I turn around. “Hey! Leo.”

  He tilts his head quizzically. “Dante? What are you doing here?”

  “Lawson was such an ass this afternoon,” I say. “I decided you were right. Screw it. I’m in.” I raise one eyebrow. “If it’s not too late?”

  “You’re in?” He grins. “I figured y
ou just got nervous earlier. We shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that.”

  I feel a pang of guilt, lying to him. Part of me wants to trust him, give him a chance, try and talk him out of doing this. But I can’t risk it. “Tell Jamie we’ll be up in a minute. You want anything?”

  “Nah. See you upstairs.” He heads back out, and the guy behind the counter slides two hot greasy slices toward me. I take my time finding my money, giving Leo time to get up the stairs.

  Beside me, Parker is in a fit of giggles. “Oh god, oh god. You were so cool. He had no idea.”

  I hand her a slice of pizza. “Eat up. It’s a long way to New York.”

  She starts laughing harder. “We’re going? We’re really going?”

  “We’re really going,” I say.

  Two minutes later, we are in her car, pulling away from the curb and laughing hysterically.

  “I don’t have any of my stuff,” Parker says. “Any clothes or anything. I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

  I check my wallet. I have thirty-five bucks. “Um, Parker? How much gas do we have?”

  “Full tank.” Parker turns on the radio. “And my money’s under the seat. If I leave it in the apartment, Jamie spends it.”

  “Yeah? How much?”

  “Not much. Ten bucks, maybe.”

  I turn up the heat, shivering in my damp clothes. Forty-five bucks isn’t going to get us all the way to New York, but I figure we can sort out those details along the way. The wind-shield wipers slap back and forth and the Plain White T’s are on the radio, singing, “Hey there, Delilah.” Parker turns it up, and I laugh, singing along: “‘What’s it like in New York City...’”

  “It’s a sign, Parker,” I say. “An omen. You know, I’ve always wanted to go to New York. We could ride the subway and go to Times Square and...”

  “We could do anything,” Parker says. “We could do anything we want.” She turns onto the highway. The digital clock on the dashboard reads twelve o’clock.

  We made it, I think. We got away. I roll down my window, stick my face out into the rain and let out a loud whoop. I can hear Parker’s laugh, the music on the radio, the sound of the tires racing along the wet road. We’re leaving it all behind: my parents, Mr. Lawson, Jamie and Leo, the burning school.