Inferno (3 page)

It's pathetic. I feel like a cyber-stalker.

Mom knocks and opens my door without waiting for a response.

“Do you mind?” I say. “Maybe if my door is closed, it's because I actually want privacy. What if I was getting changed or something?”

She just laughs and walks across the room toward me. “Sorry. What are you doing?”

I close the window before she can see what's on the screen. “Nothing.”

“Oh.” She is quiet for a moment. “How was your day?”

“Fine. I guess. Mr. Lawson's a dickhead but whatever.
Apparently it's not a problem if a teacher can't be bothered to remember a student's name.”

“I'm sure he means well.”

She says this about absolutely everyone. She thinks the Pope means well, despite the fact that he's a complete idiot who thinks using birth control is, like, evil. Whatever.

“Are you making any friends?” she asks. “Since Beth left you don't seem to talk to anyone.”

“That's because all the girls in my class are obsessed with stupid celebrities, Mom.”

She sighs. “It isn't right that you spend so much time alone.”

“Yeah, well. There are plenty of things worse than being alone.” Like wasting my time talking about tabloid gossip.

“You're okay though? Right?”

“I'm fine.”

She drives me crazy. I know she means well, to borrow her own phrase. Really, she's not a bad parent or anything. She loves me. It's just that because she loves me, she thinks she owns me. She thinks that she should be able to dictate and control everything about my life. All in my own best interests, of course.

Between school and my parents, there isn't a single square inch of my life that is really, truly my own. The only time I feel even remotely free is when I'm running. And for some reason, that gets me thinking about the no-eyebrows girl and the weird notes she was handing out today. Obedience school. Sit. Stay. Don't get up until the bell rings. Woof, woof.

I have to admit, she has a point.

The next day, I look for the girl when I get to school. I don't really expect to see her, but there she is, standing outside, wearing a thick multi-colored sweater and tight jeans.

I walk over to her. “Hi.”

She grins at me. “Hi.”

Up close, her eyes are pale blue. Sled-dog eyes. “So...” I feel off balance all of a sudden. “I was just wondering...”

“Wondering's good.” She's holding a stack of papers, and she peels one off to hand to me. Lime green. Two identical buildings are roughly sketched on it and underneath, in all caps, it says:
HIGH SCHOOL. JAIL. CAN YOU SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
?

I raise my eyebrows. “That's a bit extreme, don't you think?”

She grins again. She has skinny cheeks and a wide mouth that's too big for her face and those weird pale eyes, but there's something about her face that is hard to look away from. She's kind of pretty in a fragile, no-eyebrows way.

“Think about it,” she says. Her voice is husky and surprisingly low for someone so small. Nothing fragile about it. “Rules about where you can go and when. Asking permission to speak. Scheduled time each day to go out into the yard. Punishments if you don't do what you're told.” She shrugs. “That's fucked up.”

My mouth is probably hanging open. She's pretty much summed up how I've been feeling lately. I nod slowly and
for some reason—don't ask me why, I never shake hands with people—I hold out my hand. “I'm Dante.”

“Parker.” Her hand is dry and warm, almost hot. “Good to meet you.”

“You don't go to this school, right?”

“No. Thank Jesus. This has got to be one of the weirdest schools I've ever—”

I cut her off. “I know. It's bizarre.”

“It's unreal.”

“I know. I know.”

“It's like something out of the movies,” she says.

“I know! I mean, everyone's walking around like they're auditioning for a part.”

Parker nods. “The cheerleaders, the jocks, the nerds...”

It's like she's been reading my journal. “I was so blown away by it all when I started here,” I tell her. “Now I've simplified it to the Elites, the Athletes, the Academics, and the Deviants.”

“Hah.” She grins appreciatively. “So where do you fit in then?”

“I don't.” I grin back at her. “What school do you go to?”

“I don't believe in school.”

“You don't believe in it.” I repeat her words flatly. It hadn't occurred to me that school was something in which I could or could not believe. Like fairies or Santa Claus or God.

“I mean, as an institution. I don't support it.”

“So what are you doing here? I mean...” I nod at her stack of lime green papers.

Parker lights a cigarette and offers me the pack.

I shake my head. “I don't believe in supporting tobacco companies.”

She laughs, lights up and watches me through a veil of smoke. “I'm trying to make people think, that's all. I visit different schools.”

“You mean...”

“Hand out flyers, hang around, talk to people. People who are open-minded enough to question things.” She waves her cigarette in the direction of the school doors. “People who haven't had every last spark of curiosity stomped out by years of education or incarceration or whatever you want to call it.”

I feel a prickle of irritation. She is a bit too sure of herself. Like she thinks anyone who is still in school is an unthinking idiot. It's just not that simple. I mean, what choice do I have? “So how's it going then?” I ask. “Are many people interested?”

“Some are. Most aren't.”

The bell rings. Through the glass doors I can see a rush of kids milling down the hallway toward their classrooms. “I guess I'd better go,” I say.

“Up to you.”

I look at Parker. She waits, non-eyebrows raised, and I wonder if she shaved them off. “Nah. I don't skip classes. Not worth the hassle,” I tell her.

“Like I said, up to you.”

I start to walk away. Then I turn back. “You really don't go to school? How old are you anyway?”

“Sixteen.”

“And your parents? I mean...did they freak out?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” She looks down at her hands. Her nails are short and ragged-edged. “You'd better go,” she says. “If you're going.”

“Yeah. See you around.”

“Maybe.” She turns her head and blows a cloud of smoke away from me. “Usually it doesn't take long for them to kick me off the school grounds.”

For some reason, the thought that I might not see her again bothers me. A group of kids pushes past me, and I find myself still hanging back.

Parker laughs. “Tempted, are you? Thinking about a jailbreak?”

My next class is with Mr. Lawson. Another hour of being called Emily and being publicly accused of lying. Just thinking about it makes me want to run as far and as fast as I can. “Yeah,” I say. “Screw it.”

“You up for a drive?” she asks.

“I guess. Where to?”

“Tell you when we get there.”

I make a face at her, exasperated, but she just laughs and I'm too curious not to go. “Fine,” I say. “Whatever.”

Parker's car is a total beater. An ancient Honda Civic that used to be blue and is now mostly rust colored. It has a tape deck instead of a cd player. I buckle up and Parker
turns on the radio. Some guy with a British accent is interviewing a woman about terrorism.

“You can't trust the media,” Parker says. “Most of it's just a bunch of lies to keep us in line.”

“Us?”

“Everyone,” she says darkly. “To make sure we do what we're told and don't ask too many questions.”

I think about that for a minute. “What about nine-eleven though? I mean, you can't say that didn't happen.”

Parker looks sideways at me, pale eyes unblinking. “Who knows who did it or why. I don't trust what we're being told, that's all.”

“Well, there's no way everyone can be lying.”

She rolls down her window and sticks her arm out to signal a left turn. “Sure, but how do you know who is?” She turns on to the highway, speeds up and switches the radio to a station playing some old, heavy metal song.

I suck on my bottom lip and watch Parker's profile out of the corner of my eye. I wonder where the hell we are going and why I am skipping class to hang out with a crazy girl with no eyebrows. Then I wonder why it feels so alarmingly good.

Parker drives fast and taps
her hands against the steering wheel, totally offbeat to the music. She is wearing fingerless black gloves, thin wool ones that are frayed at the edge. She has the longest skinniest fingers I've ever seen. Spider hands.

Eventually she takes an exit, makes a couple of turns and pulls into a parking lot.

I look at her quizzically.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“Of what exactly?” I look around, trying to figure out where we are.

Parker points at a large sign.

“Juvenile Detention Center?” I read out loud.

She turns to me with a wide grin. “Does it give you any ideas?”

“Umm...” I study the square gray building. “Not really.”

“Okay, picture this: all the students at your school show up tomorrow morning, bright-eyed and bushy tailed with their sunny morning faces...” She pauses, watching me.

“And?”

“And there, right in front of the main doors, they see... this sign. Juvenile Detention Center.”

I shrug. “So what. No one would care.”

“Oh, come on. They would. You know they would. Just picture the looks on everyone's faces.” She gives me a face-splitting grin. “It'd be great.”

I grin back reluctantly, imagining everyone milling around, the air thick with
oh my gods
. The academics would disapprove; the elites and the athletes probably wouldn't get it. The deviants...well, they're a mixed group. Goths and nerds and stoners and a few unclassifiables: they're harder to predict. Mr. Lawson is easy though. He'd just stroke his mustache before tapping his heels together and disappearing off to the office to report it.

I can't help laughing. “Okay,” I concede. “It's a pretty funny thought.”

She brushes that aside. “Yeah, but it's more than that, right? Wouldn't it make them stop and think? Maybe realize that it's not so far off to call a school a detention center?”

I consider it. “I don't know,” I say slowly. “Maybe. But I don't think most people would really think about it that much. I mean, look at the flyers you handed out.”

“What about them?”

“Well, what did they accomplish?”

Parker's lips part in a slow, wide grin. “You're here.”

“Yeah, but...”

She leans toward me, her voice low and intense. “That's how change happens, Dante. One person at a time.”

A strange tingle runs down my spine. I swallow and try to stay cool. “I guess.” Her eyes hold mine and I give in. “Okay. Okay. It'd be pretty cool.”

Parker whoops and holds up a hand for a high five. “I knew you'd be game.”

“Me? I said it'd be cool; I didn't say I'd
do
it.”

She shrugs like she doesn't much care either way.

The wooden sign looks very solid and heavy. It is maybe four feet long and two feet high, and it sits low to the ground in the middle of a bunch of shrubs and flowers.

“It'd weigh a ton,” I say. “I don't think it'd even fit in your car.”

Parker rolls down her window, lights a cigarette, inhales and blows the smoke outside. She keeps her arm hanging out the window, and I watch the smoke curl upward into the still air. “That's okay. I've got a couple of other friends who will help.”

“Oh. Well, good.” I feel a bit hurt, which is stupid, but I'm not going to risk getting a criminal record just for a few laughs.

She pushes her white-blond hair away from her face and tucks it behind her ear. “I wish you were coming too. I'm sick of being the only girl.”

“Maybe another time,” I say. It sounds lame and we both know it.

Parker drops me a block from my house, right around the time I usually get home from school. I check for messages, in case someone has called to tell my parents I cut class, but there are none.

Which is good, because Mom would flip.

I head up to my room and turn on my computer. Beth hasn't sent me any messages. It's been three months; I'm crazy to think she still might. I log on to Facebook, click on Beth's profile and stare at her picture on the screen. Two thousand miles away, she must be sitting at her computer too. She changed her status just a few minutes ago. Now it reads
Beth loves her new school
.

I stare at her picture on the screen. It's an old photo; one I know well. I took it last summer. She's standing at the end of my driveway, wearing a tank top, running shorts and sneakers. She's laughing—openmouthed, head thrown back. Her teeth are Hollywood white, her slight overbite pushing her upper lip forward, her eyes dark slits, a long dimple curving in her left cheek.

I wonder if it means anything at all that she's still using a photograph I took. Probably not. I write a long message to her, telling her all about how Mom is driving me crazy, and about my haircut, and about Mr. Lawson and Parker. I tell her how much I still miss her and how I think about her every single day. Then I delete the whole thing before I'm tempted to hit Send.

Clearly, Beth has already moved on. I wish I could.

“How was school?” Mom asks at dinnertime. “Good day?”

I hate it when people ask questions like that—when they give you a little prompt to tell you what your answer should be. Mom does it all the time. I guess she'd rather avoid the truth if it isn't what she wants to hear.