Inferno (14 page)

“Oh. Okay.” She chews on her bottom lip and looks like she wishes she'd never brought it up.

Up until today, I'd always assumed Linnea was straight. She still hasn't actually come right out and said she's not, but presumably that's what all this is about. I sort of wish I could talk to her, but I can't say anything, not without talking about Beth. I feel kind of bad because she took a risk to tell me about the group, and I haven't given her anything back. I cross my legs and lean toward her. “Actually,” I tell her, “I'm thinking about dropping out anyway.”

“Ahh, don't do that.” She puts out the joint by pinching it between her finger and thumb, and sticks it in her pocket. “You gotta finish grade twelve. Two more years, you can do that. You know, I read that studies show high school graduates earn forty-eight percent more than non-graduates.”

I raise my eyebrows. Who'd have thought Linnea, who drifts through every day in a
THC
-induced daze, would be trying to persuade me to stay in school? I grin at her. “Yeah, but studies show that people who leave high school early are fifty-two percent happier than those who stick around.”

Her hair has fallen back over half her face, a shiny dark shield. “You're shitting me. Really? Did they really show that?”

I sigh. “No,” I admit. “I just made that up.”

We sit there in silence for a moment. I stare down the row of trees and wonder, if I stay for two more years, how much they'll have grown. I really do want my grade-twelve diploma. I'm pretty sure I even want to go to university. To do English, go figure. Mr. Lawson wouldn't believe it, but it's true.

I just don't know if I can stick it out for long enough to get there.

“Hey, Linnea?”

“Mm?”

“You've gone to GRSS since grade nine, right?”

She nods. “Sad but true.”

“So...you never knew a guy called Leo, did you? He would've been in grade eleven when you were in grade nine, but he quit halfway through the year.”

“Doesn't sound familiar. But grade nine...I was still sort of doing my best to blend in with the walls, you know? I didn't notice anyone outside of myself.” Linnea shakes her head. “I could ask my brother though. If Leo went here, they'd probably have been in some of the same classes.” She looks at me curiously. “So who is he?”

“Just a guy,” I tell her.

“Boyfriend?”

“No.” I take a deep breath. “Um, so about your group? I'll think about it.”

After school I go for a long, long run. Mom approves of exercise, so it's one of the few things I'm allowed to do when I'm grounded. I run down Willow Terrace to Oak Place, turn onto Maple and then run all the way along Lilac Avenue. I run past the driveways with their suvs, past the double and triple garages, past the kids playing street hockey and riding their bikes in aimless circles, past the emptied and neatly inverted recycling boxes waiting to be taken inside when everyone comes home from work. I run my usual six-mile route, but I don't want to stop. I run right past my house, run until my chest is bursting and my legs are screaming to stop.

I finally stagger to a halt at a small playground overlooking the highway. A couple of kids eye me curiously, their half-melted Popsicles dripping orange and purple ooze onto the grass. I'm breathing hard and I bet my face is bright red. I ignore the kids and climb to the top of an empty aluminum climbing frame, where I sit at the top of the red plastic slide with my legs hanging down. I should stretch, but I don't. I just sit and concentrate on the feel of my heart beating.

Slowly, the kids trickle away, called back to their houses by the smells of dinner. The sun slips from the sky and disappears behind the rows of houses, and the sky turns from blue to dark gray. Down on the highway, cars turn on their headlights, and all around me, suvs pull into driveways and lights go on in living rooms. Even here, with the lawns mowed within an inch of their lives and the
swimming pool filters buzzing like a chorus of crickets, the world has its own weird beauty.

I should go home, but I sit for a few minutes longer, drumming my heels against the plastic slide and listening to the hollow thudding noise they make.
Thumpety-thump
. Like my heart beating.

I sit for a moment, poised on the top of the slide; then I push off, flying down to land on my feet in the sand below.

Climbing the wall at Central would border on suicidal.

When I get home, Mom's waiting in the kitchen, looking pissed off.

“I went for a run,” I say quickly.

“For two hours?”

“Yeah, actually.”

She just looks at me.

“I did. I swear.”

She keeps staring at me, all suspicious. I grab a glass from the cupboard and notice that my hand is trembling. I pour a glass of water from the tap, drink it fast and refill it.

“There's filtered water in the fridge, you know.” She sounds annoyed.

“Whatever.” I drink a second glass; then I turn to go up to my room. “I have to make a call.”

“No phone calls from your room,” she says automatically. “In case you've forgotten, you're grounded.”

I groan. “Mom...It's important.”

“Then call from the kitchen. Two minutes.” She points to the phone.

Like I can have this conversation in front of her. But maybe I can figure out a way to tell Parker and the others that I need to talk to them. I pick up the phone and dial Leo's cell number.

The voice mail picks up. Leo's voice. “Leave a message if you want to and I'll call you back if I want to.”

“Hi,” I say, thinking fast. “It's Dante. I guess you're not there, so I'll see you tomorrow at school. If I don't see you before homeroom, I'll meet you at lunchtime by the main doors.” I hang up and look at my mother. “There. Satisfied?”

“Who was that?”

“No one. A machine.”

“I gathered that. Whose machine?”

“Jeez, Mom. Can't I have any privacy?”

She purses her mouth tightly, the skin wrinkling in tiny vertical creases. “Not if I can't trust you to tell me the truth.”

“Fine,” I say. “It was Linnea. A girl from school.”

“Oh. Well. Good.” She tilts her head to one side. “A new friend?”

“Sort of. Not really. I've known her for a while.” I have a fleeting urge to tell Mom that Linnea's a total stoner who wants me to get involved with this queer group she's starting, but for once I manage to hold my tongue. Mrs. G. would be proud.

I don't see Leo or the
others before school. Mr. Lawson tries to bait me into an argument during home-room by making snarky comments about my hair and by calling me Emily, but I refuse to be drawn in. I absolutely can't get a lunch-hour detention today.

When the bell rings at ten to twelve, I'm out the door in a flash.

Parker is standing right where she was the first time I met her, wearing the same faded skinny jeans and multi-colored sweater. I grin, and then I notice that she's not alone. Leo and Jamie are there too.

“Hey. Sorry about the cryptic message,” I tell Leo. “Mom was standing about two feet from the phone.”

He nods. “Yeah, I figured.”

“I'm not going to do that climb,” I say, speaking fast so I can't change my mind. “At Central, you know? It's too hard. Too dangerous.”

“Good,” Parker says quickly. “Good. It's so not worth risking your life over, you know?”

“Really? You're not going to?” Jamie's eyes shift from me to Parker, to Leo and back to me. Then he smiles ever so slightly. “Well, don't worry about it. I've got another plan anyway.”

“You do?” Parker looks surprised. “With Paul and Keenan and those guys?”

“No. Forget those guys. They couldn't even show up on time at Central. This is just us. No one else.”

“What is? What are you talking about?” She shifts her weight from one foot to the other, agitated. Anxious.

Jamie steps away from the doors and gestures for us to follow. When we get to the edge of the grassy field, he stops and turns to face us. “We need to decide when and where to do it.”

“Do what?” I ask. “What's the plan?”

There is a long silence.

“I want to know if you're in first,” he says. “We don't want anyone wussing out.”

“What about me? You haven't told me either.” Parker wraps her arms around herself as if she's cold.

Leo looks at me. “You're in, aren't you, Dante? You're with us?”

“Sure,” I say. “Why not? As long as I don't have to climb any three-story buildings.”

He looks at Jamie. “Good enough?”

Jamie shrugs. “Whatever.”

“What about me?” Parker says again. “Don't you want to make sure I'm in too?”

“You're in,” Jamie says flatly.

I look at Parker. She drops her eyes and doesn't say anything.

“So what's the plan?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light.

“This is something I've been thinking about for a while,” Jamie says. He turns and looks at Leo.

Leo clears his throat. For once, he isn't meeting my eyes. “The thing is, a lot of our actions—handing out flyers at the schools or the protest yesterday, for example— haven't accomplished much.”

“I don't know about that. It made me think. I mean, if it wasn't for Parker's flyers, I wouldn't be here.”

Jamie snorts. “Yeah. One person out of a whole school.”

“Still, that's a start,” I say, remembering what Parker had said about change happening one person at a time.

Jamie ignores me. “The sign you and Leo hung up at GRSS—Parker said you told her no one even talked about it.”

“Yeah.” I nod. “But if we did something like that again...or maybe handed out those flyers about schools and prisons...”

He shakes his head and smiles. “Nah. We need to do something that'll get their attention.”

He and Leo look at each other, and for a moment no one says anything. Parker's eyes meet mine. She looks scared, and I feel a sudden chill, a prickling at the back of my neck and a gripping tightness in my belly. Whatever is going to be said next, I'm not sure I want to hear it.

Jamie drops his cigarette and grinds it under his heel. “Leo didn't have a good time here, did you, Leo?”

There's something in his voice—something hard and taunting—that makes me shiver.

Leo shakes his head. “Don't go there, Jamie.”

“Aww...bad memories?”

“Stop it.” Parker's voice is sharp.

There is a tense silence. A standoff of some kind. I look from Jamie to Leo, to Parker, and wonder what is going on. Finally Leo sighs, giving in. “Okay. No. I didn't have a good time here.”

Jamie grins; then he lets him off the hook and turns to me. “And you don't much like it, do you, Dante?”

He's leading me somewhere, leading all of us, and I'm not sure I want to follow. I just shake my head slowly. “Not much.”

“So GRSS is our target then.”

I roll my eyes. “Enough with the mystery, Jamie. What are you talking about?”

He grins. “We're going to burn your school down, Dante. That should get their fucking attention.”

“You're not serious,” I say. I should be shocked but mostly what I feel is disappointment. I've been so caught up in the excitement of trying to make change, so inspired by Parker and the others, and now this. It's not what I thought we were all about.

“I'm dead serious.”

“It's a stupid idea,” I say. “No way am I doing that.”

Jamie gives a snort of disgust. “I fucking knew you'd wuss out.”

I ignore him and look at Leo. “Come on, Leo. You can't honestly think this is a good idea.”

He meets my eyes and his voice is low and intense. “I wasn't sure at first either, but you know, it's like Jamie says. We can't let fear stop us. If we want to make change, we have to take action.”

“How the hell is burning down the school going to change anything?” I shake my head. “It'll make us look crazy. No one will take anything we say seriously.”

Parker nods. “She's right. We'd be better to keep doing the stuff we were doing. Asking questions, trying to make people think.”

“You're just scared,” Jamie says, his voice cutting. “And so is Dante.”

“We're not in grade two, Jamie,” I tell him, scowling. “I'm not going to do something stupid just to prove I'm not scared.”

Parker doesn't say anything.

“You're scared,” Jamie says, taunting.

I stand up. “Look, I'm not scared, because I'm not doing it. It's messed up. There's no point.”

His eyes are hard. “You said you were in.”

“Yeah, well, I assumed you were planning something that made sense.”

“You better go then,” he says. “And once you're out, you're out.”

Leo is watching me. His dark eyes are hard to read, and he doesn't say anything. I feel sad, like something important is ending. We'd had a connection of some sort. I'd liked being part of a group, this group. And now it's all over.

“Dante,” Parker says suddenly.

I turn toward her and something catches inside me. If I'm out of the group, what does that mean for me and Parker? I don't want to lose her. “What?” I say.

She stares at me mutely.

“Parker? What is it?”

She stands there, all huddled up and swollen-eyed and miserable in her too-big sweater. The bruise on her cheek is fading and turning green. “Nothing,” she says at last.

Jamie puts his arm around her protectively. Possessively. I look at her for a few seconds longer, wishing that I knew the right words to reach her.
Dump him, Parker. Walk away. Get your own life
. I swallow and say nothing. Then Parker drops her eyes, and I turn and walk away.