Inferno (7 page)

The plan is that Parker and her friends will pick me up at the corner of my street at eleven Sunday night. I'll wait until Mom and Dad are in bed; then I'll sneak out. I haven't done this before. I actually haven't lied to them much at all, but then again, I haven't had to. I've never been all that interested in partying, and my parents never objected to me going to Beth's. Hell, I could even sleep over there, and Mom just thought it was sweet that we were such good friends. I don't really want to lie to them now, but I can hardly tell them the truth about what I'm planning to do.

I feel pretty guilty about sneaking out, although not guilty enough to change my mind. Not as guilty as I probably should feel.

Dante Alighieri saved the ninth circle—the worst place of all, at the bottom of a great pit at the center of hell—for those who had betrayed people they were bound to, like their relatives. Okay, the examples in the poem are a bit more extreme than just lying to your parents one night, but still, his point was that betraying someone who trusts you is pretty much the worst thing you can do. That's as bad as it gets. The betrayers are forever imprisoned in Cocytus, which is basically a lake of ice frozen by the flapping of Satan's wings.

I shudder involuntarily. It's a good thing I'm not a believer.

Sunday night finally arrives. My parents stay up later than usual, and I start to get nervous. Ten o'clock. Only an hour until Parker and her friends will be at the corner of my street. I'm debating whether to go down and try to subtly remind them that it's bedtime when I hear Mom's footsteps on the stairs.

She knocks and opens my door almost simultaneously. “Hi, sweetie. Doing homework?”

“Mmm. Novel study.” I hold up a book. “I'm doing
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
.”

“Didn't you already read that one?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Well, great. That should be easy then.”

“Uh-huh.” And depressing. I'm already wishing I hadn't chosen this book.

“Well, I just wanted to say good night.”

“Night, Mom,” I say. “Sleep well.”
Really, really well. And don't wake up until after I've snuck back in
.

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” I blow her a kiss and close the door behind her.

Mom and Dad are both snoring by ten thirty. I change into black jeans and a gray hoodie and stare at myself in the mirror. The buzzed hair makes my head look too small compared with the rest of me. When you're five foot eleven and broad-shouldered, you need hair. I bare my teeth at my reflection. There isn't much I can do about it other than wait for my hair to grow. I cram a navy hat over my fuzz, which helps a bit; then I brush my teeth and splash cold water on my face. Done.

I tiptoe down the carpeted stairs, pull on my jacket, lace my boots and slip out the front door with my heart racing.

Outside, the air is cool and damp. A heavy fog hangs low over the rooftops, and the streetlights are surrounded by fuzzy yellow halos. I jog to the street corner and wait there, checking my watch every few minutes. I hope no
one looks out a window and sees me standing here. I can just imagine one of the neighbors reporting back to Mom. My hands are sweating and a small part of me hopes Parker and her friends won't show up. Then I hear a car, and a pair of headlights appears in the misty air. My heart speeds up, and I know there's no way I'm going to back out now.

“Dante!” A guy leans out the passenger window of a station wagon and gestures to me.

His head is half-shaved, leaving only a stripe of floppy dark hair a few inches wide. Like a Mohawk but not spiked up. I should fit right in with this crowd with my new do.

Someone opens the back door and I slide in.

Parker is sitting on the backseat beside me, her skinny face split by a huge grin.

“Hey, glad you could make it,” she drawls.

“Hey,” I say. “Good to see you again. I wasn't sure if you'd really show up.”

“Are you kidding? This is a big occasion.”

“What, stealing a sign?”

She shakes her head. “You. Our new member.” The car pulls away from the curb, and Parker kicks the back of the driver seat. “Hey, assholes. How rude can you be? Aren't you guys going to introduce yourselves?”

“Maybe, if we could ever get a word in,” the driver says.

His voice is slow and sort of smoky, both soft and rough at the same time. I look at him, curious, but all I can see from the backseat is long hair and one skinny shoulder.

“Ha ha. Very funny, Leo.” Parker puts her arm around me. “Dante, meet Leo and Jamie. Guys, this is Dante.”

Leo peers out the window and slows to a stop. He twists around to look at me. “Man, Dante. Nice to meet you. I thought I knew this area pretty well, but you live in a fucking maze, you know that? Look at this. Oak Place and Beech Crescent and Willow Terrace...What's that joke about the burbs? You know...where they...”

“Cut down the trees and name the streets after them,” I say. “Yeah, yeah. I didn't choose to live here, okay?”

Floppy-Mohawk guy—Jamie—turns and looks at me too. “You choose to stay,” he says.

“Like I have a choice,” I say.

There is a long pause and everyone is very quiet. Apparently I just said the wrong thing. Jamie shrugs and turns away, as if he's already decided I'm not worth bothering with. Leo studies my face for a long moment, his eyes locked on mine. “You have more choices than you think,” he says at last. All serious, like he's Yoda or something.

I don't say anything. My heart is beating so loud I think maybe everyone else can hear it too.

Finally Leo clears his throat. “Uh, Dante? Help me out here. How do I get back to the highway?”

I swallow and give him directions in a voice that sounds too fast and too uncertain. You know how some people end of all their sentences like they're asking a question? I hate that. But for some reason, that's what I'm doing.

Jamie turns on the radio; then he twists around in the passenger seat and grins at Parker and me. The mood
in the car suddenly lightens. “So Parker talked you into coming along, hey?”

I shrug, pushing my thoughts aside. “She told me what you guys were planning and I said I'd help out.”

“Uh-huh. You go to GRSS, right? What grade?”

“Eleven. You?”

He laughs. “Nah. I went to a school in the north end but I quit two years ago. The day I turned sixteen, I was out of there.”

He's cute, despite the half-shaved hair thing, but not my type. Whatever that is. So far I've had precisely three relationships that could possibly be called romantic, and that's if you counted a week of note-passing and hand-holding with freckle-faced Mark Cole in the fifth grade. In grade nine, I went out briefly with a very intense grade-eleven guy called Lukas. He had these beautiful, long-lashed, dark eyes, and he wrote angst-filled poems for me and we talked on the phone until we fell asleep. Then he dumped me for no apparent reason, and I was both crushed and relieved.

And then there was Beth.

I watch the driveways flashing past outside and the yellow rectangles of illuminated house numbers glowing in the darkness: 3245, 3247, 3249, 3251. I sigh and turn my attention back to Jamie. “So, no regrets? About leaving school, I mean?”

“None.”

“What do you do? You have a job?”

“Sure. Waiter at the Golden Griddle.” He shrugs. “The tips are okay.”

“That's how I met him,” Parker says, bumping me with her shoulder as Leo takes a corner too fast. “I got a part-time job there last year, after school, and we started hanging out.”

Jamie winks. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”

“I left my parents' place a few weeks later.” She makes a face. “It was about time.”

I'd like to ask her about it, but this doesn't seem like the time or place. I remember what she said in the church basement, something about old stuff with her family and not wanting to get into it. A picture of that other girl's tear-streaked face slides into my mind. Sylvie, the redhead with the bandana. The girl whose mom called her a slut.

Leo turns onto the highway and steps on the gas. Parker lights a cigarette and holds it out her open window. The wind whips her pale hair straight back. “And then we met Leo at an anti-poverty demonstration and...”

“Started our little group,” Jamie says, finishing her sentence. “Decided to do some stuff to fuck shit up.”

Parker frowns at Jamie; then she turns and looks at me intently. “We never do anything without a good reason. I mean, we've talked a lot about what we believe and how we want to make some real changes in the world, you know? Right, Leo?”

Leo just nods.

I watch Parker's face as she talks and imagine the three of them sitting in coffee shops or driving around, talking late into the night. I've never known anyone I could have
those kinds of conversations with. Mom's a big believer in not rocking the boat. And Dad—well, mostly he avoids talking. He doesn't spend much time with me, and when he does, he'd rather be doing other things at the same time. Raking leaves or painting his little soldiers. Besides, he hates conflict too much to disagree with Mom, let alone the government. Even Beth always thought that I should just accept things more and that trying to change things was pointless.
Quit banging your head against brick walls
, she used to say.

I don't think Parker believes in brick walls.

“What kind of changes?” I ask. I feel like I'm skating on the edge of something important and I want to keep this conversation going.

“Lots. Like, we think that everyone should be guaranteed a basic wage, you know? It shouldn't be that some people have practically nothing and other people have all the money.”

Like my family, I think, wondering if they are all picturing our monster house and three-car garage. I clear my throat. “What else?”

She laughs. “I've got an opinion on most things. Don't get me started.”

“I'm interested.”

“Well, right now the school system is our main focus. But we support anti-poverty groups, animal rights groups, anti-war, social justice...I figure we all need to work together if we want to get anywhere.”

Jamie twists around to face us. “Most of the groups
around here don't do anything. They just sit around and have endless meetings. They're all talk.”

“Yeah, but you have to talk about things,” Parker says. “You can't act without agreeing on some basic ideas first.”

I can tell they've had this argument before.

“Most of those people are never going to do anything,” Jamie says. “They talk and talk to avoid ever taking any action. That's why we started our own group. I got sick of all the fucking talk.”

Leo's quiet, and I wonder what he is thinking. “My parents wouldn't let me do any of this,” I say, thinking out loud. I brace myself, expecting Jamie to say something dismissive. But it's Parker who responds.

“So move out,” she says.

I nod. “Maybe.” I've always imagined I'd move out in two years, after grade twelve, to go to university. It's my parents' plan, not mine, but I've never questioned it before. I could move out, get a job, be done with school now. The thought is almost dizzying. I can't imagine being that free.

Then again, flipping pancakes at the Golden Griddle doesn't sound that much better than school.

The discussion spins off into talk about politics, government, social justice and most of all what Parker calls “compulsory education,” which apparently just means making kids go to school. My head is spinning. I don't want to say too much because I haven't thought as much about all these issues as I should have, but at the same time, I am almost giddy with exhilaration. I'm sick of just reacting to things, putting up with things, waiting for things to change.

“Do you believe in fate?” I ask Parker, interrupting. “Like, that some things are inevitable? That you can't always alter what is going to happen?”

She looks at me like I'm nuts. “If you believed that, what would be the point in ever doing anything?”

“You're right,” I say. “It'd be self-fulfilling, wouldn't it? You'd just give up and then you really wouldn't be able to control anything about your life.”

She looks at me curiously but doesn't say anything.

I just grin at her. For the first time in ages, I actually feel like I could make things happen.

The whole area in front
of the detention center is floodlit. There's even a light on the ground right in front of the sign, shining up through the sparse shrubbery.

I look at the others. “There's no way. If we make any noise at all, someone will look out and see us.”

Jamie laughs, his lip curling in disgust. “I knew you'd wuss out.”

“Don't be an asshole,” Parker says quickly. She flicks her cigarette butt out the window and frowns. “You know, it is pretty bright.”

“We've never been caught before,” Jamie says. “We won't get caught this time either, unless we fuck it up.”

I study the sign. It seems to be attached to the ground by two very thick wooden poles. More like tree stumps than poles, really. I can't imagine how we'd get it off, but I don't want to say anything else. I glance sideways at Parker and look away again, back out the window. The warm fizzy
feeling I had in the car has disappeared and my stomach is in knots.

Jamie gets out of the car, and the rest of us follow. Parker looks pissed off, but she doesn't say anything, and I'm not sure if it's Jamie she's mad at or me. My heart is pounding so hard I feel like I've been running, and my hands are cold as ice. I don't think there is any way to do this without getting caught. I can just imagine my parents' reaction if they get a call from the cops. My mother will cry about a gallon of tears and demand to know what she's done wrong, Dad will be all silent and bewildered, and I'll be grounded for the rest of my life.