Parker suddenly stops laughing and holds up one hand. “Can you hear that?”
Far away, sirens are wailing faintly. Jamie will hear them, I think. He’ll be long gone by the time the fire trucks arrive. “You think they’ll be able to save the school?”
She taps her spidery fingers on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think it’ll have burned to the ground yet or anything, but there’s gotta be a lot of damage.” She looks at me sideways. “It’s not going to be open for business as usual tomorrow.”
“I guess not.” I wonder, again, if Mrs. Greenway will suspect me of being involved. I hope not. If she asks, I’ll tell her the truth. I’ll tell her that I didn’t know for sure it would happen and that I tried to stop it. I know what Leo would say—that teachers never believe students. But I am pretty sure Mrs. G. would believe me. Leo doesn’t know everything. “You think we should’ve done more? I mean, like called the cops or something, before they actually started the fire?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking that too.” She watches the road ahead. “I guess maybe we should have, but I couldn’t have done it, you know? I couldn’t get them into that kind of trouble.”
I don’t say anything right away. It makes me angry that I have to share the responsibility for this, at least a little bit. If the present world go astray...Well, it definitely did that. I let out a long sigh. “You know, on some level, I guess I didn’t believe they’d go through with it. Not so seriously, you know? Not such a big fire.” It sounds stupid. Like what, I thought maybe they were going to have a campfire? Toss a match in a garbage can? I close my eyes for a second. All I see is flickering flames. I can still feel the scorching blast of heat on my face and hear Jamie’s taunting laugh, his voice. Dante’s fucking inferno. A knot of guilt twists inside my stomach. “How come Jamie hates me so much?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. I shift in my seat, turning sideways to face her. “Parker? Do you know why? I mean, it’s not just tonight. He hasn’t liked me from the start.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Duh.” I force a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
She looks uncomfortable. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”
I know the answer anyway. Your stupid dyke friend, Jamie had said. What I can’t figure out is why he said it. He can’t possibly know about Beth. I guess I am queer or bi or whatever, but there’s no way he could know that. He doesn’t know anything about me. “He thinks I’m queer. Is that it?”
Parker slows down as she passes a highway turnoff. “Where are we going? My mind is so not on the road; I totally shouldn’t be driving.”
“Pull over,” I say. “Until we figure out where to go.”
“Yeah. Okay.” A McDonald’s is on the next block, and she pulls into the empty parking lot and switches the engine off.
It is suddenly very quiet. I figure Parker changed the subject on purpose. Obviously just the idea that Jamie thinks I might be queer makes her uncomfortable. My throat starts to feel all tight and achy. I wish I hadn’t brought it up. I think about Linnea and her queer students group. I’m not a joiner, but maybe I should check it out, or at least talk to Linnea. It’d be a relief to talk about some of this stuff with someone who isn’t freaked out by the whole subject.
Parker rolls down her window and lights a cigarette. “Sorry. I know smoking in cars is kind of gross.”
“It’s your car.” I wish she didn’t smoke at all. I don’t mind the smell, but I hate what she’s doing to her lungs. She’d make a good runner too, with her light build and those long legs. “Listen, I know what Jamie thinks and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Forget I asked.”
“No, it’s okay. He just says stuff without thinking sometimes, you know?”
I hope she’s not going to give me more reasons why Jamie isn’t all that bad. Or, even worse, try to reassure me that she knows I’m not a dyke.
“He’s just possessive. He doesn’t like it when I have friends, that’s all. I mean, he doesn’t even like me seeing Leo when he’s not around. He doesn’t really think, you know, that you’re...”
She can’t even say the word. I have to tell her though. I mean, if I don’t say something now, I’m basically lying to her. I try to take a deep breath but I feel like there’s a giant hand pushing down on my chest. “Parker,” I say.
She takes a drag on her cigarette and turns away to blow the smoke out the window. “You know, it’s just what he says when he’s pissed off at someone. Like calling Leo a fag. He knows that’s not true either.”
“Parker.” I’m running through possible ways of saying this inside my head. Parker, it’s no big deal, but Jamie’s not exactly wrong. But this isn’t about Jamie. It’s about being honest with Parker. Um, Parker? I don’t want to have secrets from you. Or maybe, Parker, I guess I should tell you something. I can’t get any of the words past my throat. I’m as bad as Beth. I’m chicken-shit.
Parker is sort of staring at me, and I have to say something. But I can’t do it. I can’t tell her.
“What?” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“Look...,” I say. “I think you should come home with me.”
Her non-eyebrows lift.
I clear my throat. “I mean, it’s none of my business, but I’m kind of worried about you going home tonight. Jamie seemed pretty pissed off.”
“I know. But if I’m not there...” She shrugs. “He’ll be more pissed off tomorrow.”
“I thought you told me earlier that you were done with him.” I feel suddenly, unreasonably, angry. “All that stuff about maybe going back to school, getting your own place. I guess that was all bullshit, huh?”
I regret the words the second they leave my mouth. Parker looks at me wide-eyed, a puppy that just got kicked. She butts out her cigarette in the car’s ashtray, rolls up her window and wraps her arms around herself. “I know,” she whispers. “It wasn’t bullshit. I meant it. I just...it’s hard, Dante. I love him. You know? I mean, I know he’s not always...you know, he does stuff sometimes...but...”
My anger is gone like it never existed. I can’t fit this Parker together with the tough beautiful girl eating rose petals at Shelley’s group. She’s getting sucked right back in to the same shit, throwing her life away for some jerk who doesn’t deserve her. Oh, Parker, I think. Please, please don’t go back to him. “You want to stay with me for a couple days? Until you figure it out?” I ask her again. “I mean, Mom might freak a little, but I’m already grounded anyway.”
“You really think your folks would let me stay?”
“Oh yeah. For a few days anyway.” No matter how mad my mother is at me, she won’t turn Parker out if she has nowhere else to go. More likely, she’ll send me to my room and treat Parker like an orphaned kitten.
She hesitates; then she nods. “Okay. Okay. For tonight, maybe. Thanks, Dante.” A frown crosses her face. “The fire will be on the news tomorrow. If they know you were out, will they suspect you were involved?”
“Not a chance,” I say. “Not in a million years.” “We can both sneak in,” she suggests. “They don’t even need to know you were out at all. In the morning, I’ll tell them I had nowhere to go so I came over. They shouldn’t get too upset with you over that.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Parker, you are a genius. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Less practice at lying to your folks than me, maybe?”
I’ve lied to mine more in the past two weeks than I have in my whole life. I feel a twinge of guilt, but I push it aside. Telling the truth isn’t an option. It isn’t even imaginable.
It’s well past three by the time we pull into the maze of streets I call home. Parker pulls over at the end of my street, turns the engine and lights off and coasts to a stop a few houses away from mine. She looks at me. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
We walk up my driveway, and I unlock the front door as slowly and quietly as I ca
n. “Okay, follow me.” I cross the front hall and head upstairs, barely breathing. Behind me, Parker’s footsteps are as light as an elf‘s. At the top of the hall, I turn and beckon to her. It’s pitch dark; I don’t think she can even see me. “This way,” I whisper. “Come on.”
She grabs my arm and I lead her down the hall. I’m just opening my door when ahead of us, at the far end of the hall, a crack of light appears under my parents’ bedroom door. I freeze and Parker’s fingertips dig into the back of my arm.
The door opens, spilling light into the hallway. Mom steps out. “Dante? Are you up? I thought I heard...” She sees Parker and stops abruptly. “What’s going on?”
I wonder if there is any possibility that she won’t notice we’re both fully dressed. As in, jackets and all. As in, we’ve been out all night. “Uhh...Mom, this is Parker. She kind of needs a place to stay for a few days.”
Mom ignores Parker. She stares at me like I’ve completely lost it. “You’ve been out, haven’t you? Emily, tell me you didn’t sneak out after we were in bed.”
“Um. Well.”
“I can’t believe this.” She raises her voice, and a second later I hear Dad stomping around in the bedroom.
He pokes his head and his naked hairy shoulders out into the hall. “Oops. Just a minute.” He disappears again, obviously looking for clothes to put on.
“Where have you been?” Mom steps closer to us and frowns. “You smell like smoke.”
Crap. Crap crap crap. I look at Parker and she stares back at me, wide-eyed. I don’t know what to do. The thing is, I want to tell the truth. Partly because I hate lying to my parents, but also because I really don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong. I had to sneak out to try to help Parker. I had to try to stop Jamie and Leo. I’d do the same thing again, if I had to do it over. But if I tell the truth, I know my parents will insist that we go to the police. And even though I think what Jamie did is wrong, even though I worry about what else he might do, I still don’t want to turn him in for it.
TWENTY-ONE
Five minutes later we are all sitting down around the kitchen table to “talk about this in a civilized manner.” Mom’s words. She is wrapped in a silk housecoat and her face is shiny with anti-aging night lotion. Dad, to my relief, is fully dressed in sweats and a T-shirt. Parker sticks close to my side and keeps muttering that she’s sorry and that this is all her fault. I’m not sure if she’s talking to me or to my parents.
Mom looks at us both, eyes steely. “I’d like an explanation from you, Dante.”
“It’s kind of complicated,” I say. Stalling, trying to decide how much to tell them.
She just waits.
“It’s my fault,” Parker says. “I didn’t have anywhere to go. I’m sorry. Dante was only trying to help me out.”
“Thank you,” my mother says, “but I’d like to hear from my daughter.” Parker nods and stares at the table. Dad gives her a small encouraging smile, but she misses it.
“Mom. Um, okay. You know when Parker called earlier tonight and you made me get off the phone? And I said she was crying?”
She nods.
“Well, she didn’t call back and she doesn’t have a phone so I couldn’t call her. But I was worried about her.”
Mom looks disbelieving. “That hardly justifies lying to us and sneaking out of the house after we’re in bed. We thought we could trust you, Emily. Now I don’t know what to think. Are you...” She lowers her voice. “Are you using drugs? Is that it?”
I shake my head impatiently. “No. Of course not.” My hands are sweating, and I wipe them on my jeans, under the table. I look at my dad. His heavy eyebrows are lowered, his blue eyes are shadowed and creased, but he looks more worried than angry. My stomach starts to hurt. “I don’t use drugs. We weren’t at a party or anything like that.”
Mom still looks skeptical. “Then...”
I take a deep breath. “Parker and I have these friends— well, we had these friends—that were talking about doing something really stupid. We wanted to try to stop them. To talk them out of it. I thought they’d listen to us. That’s why I went out. And Parker—well, she needs to get away from them, but she can’t go back to her parents’ house, so I was hoping she could stay here. You know, for a few days. Until she figures something out.”
“You’re not making sense,” Mom says. Her voice is sharp with anxiety. “What were you doing tonight? The truth, Emily.”
The truth. I look at my parents, and realize I have to tell them. The fire is going to be on the news; the school will probably be closed; we smell like smoke. They’re not stupid. They’re going to connect the dots. I look at my Dad and my throat starts getting all tight and achy so it’s hard to talk. “These guys we know...they were talking about starting a fire. At the high school.” I don’t know why but for some reason I start to cry. “I’m sorry. I thought we could stop them.”
My parents both stare at me like they’re in shock. Tears are blurring my vision and I blink, tasting salt at the back of my throat. “We went to the high school to try to stop them,” I say. I try to take a deep breath, but it comes out as a series of gasps.
Mom’s eyes are wide and her mouth is hanging slightly open. “You did...you went...These boys started a fire? You were involved in arson?”
“I wasn’t exactly involved,” I say. “I mean, I didn’t help or anything. I thought we could talk them out of it.”
Mom pulls her housecoat tighter around herself. She opens her mouth and shuts it again, as if she doesn’t even know where to begin.
Parker grabs my hand beneath the table and squeezes it for a second before she lets go again. Even though I know she means nothing by it, I just about choke.
“One of the guys wanted to stop,” she says. “But not Jamie. He wouldn’t listen to us. We couldn’t do anything.”
There is a very long silence. Finally, Mom looks at Dad and Dad looks at me. “Are you saying these boys you know actually started a fire at the school?” he asks.
I nod miserably. “One of them. Yes. We called the fire department.”
Dad gets up and switches on the tiny kitchen TV to the local news channel. Some guy with a toupee is talking about a dog show. He turns the volume down low but leaves the TV on.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t talk to me,” Mom says. “If you were worried about these boys doing this, why keep it all a secret and sneak out in the middle of the night?”
Hearing her say it like that makes it sound so stupid. I shrug. “I don’t know why. I didn’t really think of it, I guess.”
“You didn’t think of it,” she repeats slowly. “You knew these boys were planning to start a fire at the school, and it didn’t occur to you to tell an adult? It didn’t even cross your mind that it might be a good idea?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t think they’d really do it, I guess. I didn’t want to get them in trouble.”
“Well, I’d say they’ve got themselves into some real trouble now,” she says grimly.
Dad waves his hands at us. “Shh, shh.” He turns up the volume on the TV and we all look over to see a picture of fire trucks in front of GRSS. I can’t tell from the picture what’s happening or if the fire is out.
“...fire at Glen Ridge Secondary School appears to have been set deliberately,” a reporter is saying. She is standing in front of GRSS, holding a microphone, her hair sprayed into a shiny helmet. “A young male was arrested fleeing the scene and is facing charges related to arson. Thanks to a report from an observant neighbor, firefighters were on the scene quickly and were able to prevent the fire from spreading. However, they say the damage to the rear wing of the school is significant and that the school may be closed for some time. We will keep you updated with more information, including the identity of the suspect and plans for GRSS students, as it becomes available.”
I watch as the image of GRSS on the screen disappears. Leo must have got away then. So I guess we accomplished something by going to
the school. I can’t believe Jamie got caught. I thought for sure he’d be gone before anyone got to the school. He had plenty of time to get away. For a second I wonder if he’ll rat Leo out and try to share the blame—but much as I dislike Jamie, I’m pretty sure he won’t do that.
Mostly what I’m feeling is relief: I’m so glad Parker wasn’t with them.
I turn and look at her. Her eyes are wide and scared, and her face is as white as her hair. I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing. Maybe she’s just upset. She’s still in love with Jamie, after all, and she’s probably wondering what’s going to happen now.
“Mom? Can Parker stay with us? Please, just until she figures out what to do?”
My mother looks at my father.
He clears his throat. “Parker, where is your own family?”
“I haven’t lived with them for a while.” Her voice isn’t much more than a whisper. “I have my own place though. I guess I probably should have gone there tonight. If you want me to go...” She stands up.
“No, we don’t,” I say quickly.
Mom frowns at me. “Dante. No one’s saying your friend has to leave. We’re just trying to...to understand.”
“Sorry.” I look at Parker. “But Parker...you can’t go back there.”
“It’s my home, Dante.”
“But your parents...,” Mom says. “Surely if they knew you needed help...”
Parker shrugs. “You’d think. But things were pretty bad at home. Besides, I have a job. It’s not like, you know, I’m on the streets or anything.”
“You’re not in school?” Mom’s eyebrows shoot up even higher, wrinkling her forehead into a hundred fine lines. Avoid excessive facial expressions, I think, and suppress a totally inappropriate giggle.
Parker sits back down slowly. “I left part way through grade ten.”
Mom shakes her head. “Well, if you’re going to stay here, you’ll have to go to school.”
“I’ll only be here for a couple of days,” Parker says stiffly. “Like I told you, I have my own place.”
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