OUR ENGLISH TEACHER FURIOUSLY scrawls a word out on the whiteboard at the front of the room, her letters in all caps: CONTRAPASSO.
“Who knows what this means?” she asks, turning around, searching for recognition. “Come on, who’s taking Latin?” Radio silence. “Has anyone bothered to read Inferno over break? Anyone at all?”
I look at Dani. We bothered to read it. We read it out loud together as we sat on her bedroom floor with our legs crossed over each other’s; we took turns as we lay in her bed with our feet touching.
She could answer this question. So could I. But we don’t.
“It means ‘punishment,’ ” some guy shouts out, not bothering to raise his hand.
“Yes, but more specifically than that?” she asks, a glimmer of life lighting up her face momentarily.
He shrugs in response.
The teacher looks annoyed. It’s Monday—the first Monday after winter break—everyone looks annoyed. It’s cold, gloomy, and gray, and no one gives a damn about Dante. “All right, are your brains still on vacation? Someone look this up,” she demands.
I see a few students flip idly through the pages of our textbook. Our teacher lets out a long sigh and starts writing more words on the board.
“It comes from the words contra and patior. Anyone? It translates to ‘suffer the opposite.’ And it’s one of the major rules in Dante’s Hell. What does it mean, though?” she asks.
I roll it around in my head a few times. It means me looking across the room at Dani. It means having her ignore me. It means me telling her to leave me alone when I meant to say I love you, when what I really meant was Don’t leave me alone like everyone else—I have this hole inside of me that’s getting so big I think it might swallow me up. But I didn’t tell her that, either. I yelled, I scared her away, and then I ignored her phone calls. So now I’m suffering the opposite.
I wonder if that’s what Dante had in mind.
Probably not.
When the bell rings, Dani bolts out of her seat, like she did in AP Psych, and like she did in AP American History, where it felt as though we were having our own private civil war from opposite sides of the room.
“Dani! Will you please talk to me?” I ask, catching up with her in the hall.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she finally says, turning to give me the coldest glare I’ve ever seen. “That’s kind of why I was calling you all weekend. Because I wanted to talk. I don’t anymore, in case you couldn’t tell.”
Tyler joins up with us as our hallway spills into the main thoroughfare that leads to the cafeteria.
“Hey, Brooke,” he says, wincing—clearly, he’s heard all about our fight. Dani walks ahead of us, faster, until she disappears into the crowd.
I turn to Tyler, at a loss. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You better figure it out, this shit’s bad for my complexion.”
“You’ve known her longer than me. Tell me what to do, please?”
“Did you lie to her?” he asks. “She thinks you lied to her.”
“I didn’t lie,” I lie. “I mean, I didn’t mean to. It’s more like I haven’t told her the whole truth about some things.”
“Well, then it’s easy. Just tell her the whole truth.”
“That’s the opposite of easy,” I tell him, suddenly losing my voice.
“Look, why don’t you keep your distance till the end of the day, at least? I’ll work on her for you. Call her tonight, okay?”
I took Tyler’s advice. I didn’t go to lunch. I went to the nurse’s office instead. I told her I had a migraine, which, as it turned out, got me a lot more sympathy than a simple headache—it got me out of school early. I’ve been missing so much school lately that somehow it has stopped seeming so important.
But when I get home, I’m greeted by a notice stuck on my door with a crooked piece of clear tape: 7-DAY NOTICE TO PAY. From the landlord. I rip it down, but I’m afraid it’s already been seen by our neighbors—one more thing to be ashamed of.
Damn you, Aaron. He could’ve mentioned in his little good-bye note that he didn’t pay the rent. There was some cash Aaron left in an envelope that I found mixed in with the debris I threw off the table, but I thought it was extra money, since it clearly wasn’t enough for rent. Aaron didn’t care what would happen, apparently. Just like Mom.
Or maybe this is Dante’s contrapasso at work again: I freaked out, lost my temper, wrecked the place, scared the neighbors. But it was all because I wanted to stay. I wanted us all to stay. Therefore they’re trying to kick me out. A just punishment, according to Dante.
Well, screw Dante. Screw Aaron, too. Screw Mom and Dad.
I start making calls before I’ve even closed the door. I leave a message for the landlord. “There’s been a mix-up, I’ll have the rent to you this time next week, I promise.” I bring Mrs. Allister’s paper to her, sure to give her extra smiles and pet her cats. “Oh, the noise—that was nothing. I fell trying to move the furniture by myself—that was stupid, huh?”
By the time I get back upstairs, Callie’s home from school. She’s eating cereal from the box, the volume on the TV too loud.
“Can you please turn that down?” I shout.
She turns it off instead. Then leans back into the couch and stares at me.
“What?”
“Are we getting kicked out?” she asks, tilting her head in the direction of the letter that I stupidly left out on the coffee table.
“No, of course not. We just had a mix-up with the rent this month, that’s all.”
“Where’s Aaron?” she asks, her voice flat and hollow.
“I told you already, Callie. He’s out of town for a few days.”
“It’s been a few days.”
“Well, I don’t know exactly when he’ll be back. Remember, he said it could be a week.”
“No, you said that. He didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He’s not answering his phone.”
“He’s probably busy, Callie—he is there to work, after all.”
“But where’s there?” An uptick in her voice. Is it anger, worry, frustration? I’m not sure, but it sparks all those things in me.
“What do you want me to say? I’m not sure, okay? He didn’t tell me.”
“This is . . .” But she stops short before finishing, shakes her head instead.
“This is what?”
She stands abruptly, brushing past me on her way to her room.
I make endless calculations. I call Jackie and beg for more shifts. I scrounge up every last bit of money hiding in piggy banks and coat pockets and dresser drawers and even in the basement laundry room. Miraculously, I come up with $35.32 in under an hour. I add in my paycheck from last week and the social security check. If I don’t pay the electric or buy any more groceries, I’m short only $75.00.
“Okay,” I whisper to myself, hunched over my calculator and pad of paper, chewing on the end of my pen. It’s possible to keep this going for at least the next month.
I have to squint to see what I’m doing, and then I realize that’s because it’s getting dark outside already. I’ve been at this for hours. And even though this is shit, somehow I feel invigorated. Because here’s a problem that has an actual solution. Whether I’ll be able to solve it is another question entirely, but at least I know, as of right now, what has to be done.
Unlike those other problems. People problems. Mom. Aaron. Callie. Dani. Those are trickier to fix, maybe impossible. School problems are another thing, but in a different class of trouble. I make myself a grilled cheese for dinner and eat it on the couch, watching the snow fall down outside the window.