Inferno (15 page)

After school, I go down to the basement. Dad's little guys are all set up down there, rows of tiny plastic soldiers ready to fight, displays of perfect order amidst the chaos of the basement: boxes piled against the walls, stacks of furniture that Dad won't get rid of but Mom won't allow upstairs, overflowing shelves of books that I think I might re-read someday. I sit on an old wooden stool and think about my
life, and about my school, and about Parker. Most of all, about Parker.

I don't know what to do.

Eventually, I hear Mom come in the front door. “Dante?”

“Down here,” I yell, and then I hear her feet on the stairs.

She looks around, her nose wrinkled with displeasure. She hardly ever comes down to the basement. “What are you up to tonight?” she asks. “Homework?”

“I guess.”

“Anything due tomorrow?”

I shake my head. “Nothing major.” Just an English paper for Lawson, and a ton of math I've been ignoring and getting further and further behind on.

The phone rings and Mom sprints back up the stairs to answer it. “Dante,” she calls. “It's for you.”

I follow her up to the kitchen, wondering if it's Parker. Hoping it's Parker. Mom hands me the phone and taps her watch. “Two minutes.”

“Hello,” I say, ignoring her.

“It's me. Parker.”

I look at my mother, willing her to leave the room.

Nope.

“Hi,” I say, lowering my voice. “How are you doing?”

“Dante...Look, I wanted to tell you.” Her breath catches. “That thing about burning the school down? They're going to do it tonight.”

I feel like she's just kicked me in the chest. My heart
is racing and my hands are sweaty, but Mom's eyes are on me, so I try to sound calm. “Really?”

“Yeah. Really. I'm outside at a pay phone. Jamie doesn't know I'm calling you.”

“What about you?” I ask.

There is a pause. I picture Parker standing in the glass phone booth, twiddling the phone cord between her fingers or smoking a cigarette.

“I don't want to do it,” she says at last.

“So don't.”

I can hear her breathing.

“Parker? If you don't want to, then don't.”

“I have to,” she says. Her voice breaks. “Jamie and Leo...well, they're kind of like my family.”

Mom looks at me and taps her watch again.

“Parker?” I say quickly.

“What?”

“What time? Tell me what time.”

“Leo's picking us up at midnight. Dante...I'm glad you're not coming, you know? I mean, you're right, it's stupid. Worse than stupid. It's an awful thing to do.” She is crying now. “But I kind of wish you were coming too.”

Mom reaches for the phone, and I turn away from her, holding on tightly.

“Parker. Don't go with them,” I say. “Don't.” I can hear her starting to cry harder on the other end of the line.

“Dante.” Mom's voice is firm and self-righteous. “That's your two minutes. Hang it up or I'll do it for you.”

“Mom, this is important.”

Her hand closes over mine.

“Parker, I have to go.” I press End and practically throw the phone at my mother. I don't think I've ever been so angry. Right now, I almost hate her.

She looks a bit stunned. “You know the rules.”

“Yeah. And she was crying and needed to talk to someone,” I say. “And I just hung up on her. Thanks a lot, Mom. Real nice.”

“Well, I didn't know.” She hesitates. “It wasn't anything serious though, right?”

“Of course not, Mom. We're teenagers.” My voice comes out really loud, but I can't seem to help it. “We don't have serious problems. Not like adults. Our problems don't matter at all.”

“Calm down,” she says. “Tell me what's going on. If it is really something serious, you could always call her back.”

“No, I couldn't,” I spit. “She doesn't have a phone.”

“What was she upset about?”

For about half a second, I let myself imagine telling her.
Well, her abusive boyfriend and his pal are going to burn down my school tonight
.

“It's none of your business,” I tell her.

She sighs. “Well, if it's really that important I'm sure she'll call back.”

I go up to my room and try to convince myself that Leo and Jamie won't really do it. That Leo, at least, has more sense.
C
all back, Parker
.
Call back
. A second later, the phone rings, and I leap off my bed, race downstairs and meet Mom at the kitchen door. She looks at me, eyebrows raised, and I jump on the phone.

“Parker?”

“Um. No, it's Linnea.”

“Oh.” I'm disappointed, then surprised, and then curious. We talk at school, but she's never called me before. “What's up?”

“Look...this is none of my business, but I just thought I should call.”

I watch Mom watching me from across the kitchen. “Um, is this about that group? Because I haven't really had a chance to think about that.”

“No.” She hesitates. “It's just, I asked my brother about that guy. Leo?”

I glance at the clock. Two minutes. “And? Did he know him?”

“Yeah. Well, he knew of him.” She lowers her voice. “It sounds like Leo was bullied in grade nine. Like, really bad. Eric—that's my brother—says a group of guys kicked the shit out of him pretty regularly. Used to do stuff to humiliate him, you know? He says it was pretty sick.”

“Seriously? You sure it's the same guy?”

“Yeah. Well, I guess there could be two Leos who both left at the same time.” She sounds skeptical, and I have to admit it isn't likely. But neither is the image of Leo getting beat up. I can't imagine him being that vulnerable, somehow. But this would have been almost four years ago.
I guess everyone's pretty vulnerable at fourteen.

No wonder he dropped out.

“Eric says when Leo came back in grade ten, he was totally different. Like he grew a lot over the summer, and he beat the shit out of one of the guys who used to bully him. Broke his jawbone so the guy had to have it wired shut for, like, half the term.”

“Jeez.”

“Yeah. Eric says the other kids left Leo alone after that. Plus he'd started dealing drugs and stuff, and so he was at all the parties.”

“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.

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.”