I half expect to see smoke when we pull up at the school, but I can’t see anything unusual. No Jamie, no Leo, no fire.
“Where are they?” Parker whispers. “You think they’re still waiting for us? Or looking for us?”
I open my mouth to answer; then I spot Leo’s car, parked at the far end of the lot where it backs onto the sports field. “They’re here,” I say, pointing. “They’re really going to do it.”
“I bet they’ll light the fire around the back,” Parker says. “That’s what they were planning anyway.”
We run along the side of the school, past the long wall of the gymnasium and around the corner. It all feels unreal to me. I still can’t quite believe they would actually try to burn the school down.
Then I see them. Leo and Jamie, right by the school wall. Right outside Mr. Lawson’s classroom window. Jamie is holding a red jerry can in one hand. I stop running and stand motionless for a second, immobilized by shock. They’re doing it. They’re really doing it. With sudden despair, I realize we’ve miscalculated. They’re not going to listen to us. We shouldn’t even be here.
“Gas,” Parker breathes.
“Hey!” I shout.
Leo and Jamie freeze. Then they spot us.
“Christ,” Jamie says, “I thought you guys were the cops.” He grins at Parker. “I knew you’d change your mind.”
“We haven’t changed our minds,” Parker says. She looks at Leo, not Jamie. “We came back to try to...well, to ask you not to do it.”
Jamie snorts. “Go home, Parker. If you’re not helping us, then get out of the way.”
“Just listen for a minute,” I plead. “I’m all about doing things that make people think. But this won’t.” I look at Leo. “The first time I met you, you said we have more choices than we think, right?”
He nods. “So?”
I gesture at the school. “I know you had some bad times here, okay? I know about what happened to you here.”
His mouth twists. “You don’t know shit, Dante.”
“I believe you, Leo. About Mr. Lawson. And I don’t blame you for being angry. But—”
He cuts me off. “This isn’t about me.”
“Yeah? You sure about that?” I lift my chin and meet his gaze full-on. “Fine then. It’s not about you. But it’s about me, isn’t it?” I raise my voice. “What if I want to keep going to school?”
Leo frowns. “It’s not about you either, Dante. It’s about taking a stand.”
Parker steps closer to me. “That’s what Dante and I are doing, Leo. Taking a stand.”
There was a long silence. Leo nods his head slowly, like he’s willing to listen to her. For a second I think we’ve won.
Then Jamie laughs, a cold mean laugh that tells me we haven’t won at all. “Stupid bitch,” he says to Parker. “You and your stupid dyke friend.”
He pulls his hand from his pocket and tosses something onto the gas-soaked ground.
There is a roar and a flash. A sheet of flame shoots up the side of the building. I just stand there for a moment, staring. The building is lit up, the gray of its walls glowing a weird pale orange. It looks massive and solid, and I wonder if it will really burn. It’s brick, after all. I find myself hoping that maybe, despite how awful it looks, they won’t be able to do too much damage.
Parker starts to cry. “Please don’t do this. Please stop.”
Leo looks at her; then he turns to Jamie. “Jamie, let’s go. You’ve made your point, right? Let’s get out of here.”
Jamie shakes his head. “Fuck, no. Don’t wuss out on me now. We haven’t even started.”
Leo hesitates. I can see the indecision flickering across his face. It’s up to him. If he’s staying with Jamie—if he wants to be a part of this—there’s nothing I can do. Except get the hell out of here and take Parker with me. I grab her arm. “Parker, come on. Let’s go.”
Parker looks back at Jamie, her faced streaked with tears. “Jamie? Don’t be mad.”
“Fuck, Parker. I don’t have time for your drama, okay? If you want to go, just go. You too, Leo. You’re as bad as the girls. No wonder everyone called you a fag.”
“Fuck you,” Leo says softly.
I tug on Parker’s arm, but she just stands there, still crying. Her face is lit up by the orange glow of the flames, and weirdly, I notice that she has eyebrow stubble. We’re going to get caught, I think, and my chest clutches tight with fear. I dig my fingers into her arm, hard. “Parker. Come on.”
“I’m going with Dante,” she tells Jamie. “Okay?”
Jamie doesn’t say anything, but his face is twisted with rage. He picks up a large rock from the ground and hurls it toward a first-floor window. Mr. Lawson’s classroom. There is a crash and a shower of broken glass falls onto the ground.
“Don’t,” I say, hopelessly.
He laughs, a cold hard laugh, and pulls a bottle from his backpack. I blink. I can’t think what it is for a second. Then I notice the rag sticking out the top.
“Jamie...wait a minute. Please don’t...”
Jamie ignores me. He grabs the jerry can and pours gas on the rag. “This is for you, Dante. Watch it burn.” He laughs again and flicks open his lighter. “Dante’s fucking inferno.” “Don’t, Jamie.” Leo moves to grab his arm, but not fast enough. Jamie lights the rag and in one smooth motion, tosses the bottle through the broken window.
There is a second’s silence.
Then an explosion. Flames shoot out the window and a blast of heat pushes me back.
“Shit. Shit.” Leo takes a few steps back; then he turns and starts to run across the field.
Parker clutches my arm. “Come on.”
I can’t move. I just stand there, staring, barely able to breathe.
“Dante! Come on.” She tugs on my arm again.
I turn toward her and I realize I’m crying, tears stinging my eyes and blurring everything into an orange haze.
“We have to get out of here,” she says. “Now.”
We start running and we don’t stop until we reach her car.
Parker drives fast, tires screeching as she pulls out of the parking lot and heads for the main road. Behind us, I can see the glow of the fire.
“Now what?” Parker asks.
My heart is pounding so hard I think I might throw up. “Where’s Leo?”
“I don’t know.”
I squint into the darkness, but I can’t see him. “He was ahead of us.”
“Should we look for him? I mean, I don’t want to just...”
“We should get the hell out of here,” I say. “Like, right now.”
Parker barely pauses at a stop sign, and I grab her arm. “Drive normal, for god’s sake. Don’t act like this is some getaway car.”
She nods and slows down. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Calling the fire department?”
She nods. “Yeah. I don’t mean to rat him out or anything...”
“We don’t have to give names.”
I pull out my cell phone, and Parker grabs my arm to stop me. “Isn’t that, like, traceable?” She gestures to a gas station up ahead. “Look. Pay phone.”
I sigh. I am absolutely the last person I ever thought would try to save my school. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Parker pulls into the gas station and we both get out of the car. She dials; then she passes me the phone.
My hand is shaking as I take the receiver from her. “I’m calling to report a fire,” I tell the operator. “At Glen Ridge Secondary School.”
“Now what?” Parker asks as we drive away from the gas station. She looks at me, then back at the road. “I guess we’re not really going to New York.”
I think about it. Somehow it no longer feels like such a great idea. We’ve got no money, and I guess it’d just be running away from everything. It wouldn’t be my real life. Anyway, it’d kill my parents. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe not tonight anyway.”
She sighs. “I know. Well, it was a fun idea while it lasted.”
The clock on the dash flashes 2:25. “What next then? I mean, where are you going to go?”
“Home, I guess.”
“To Jamie.”
“What else am I going to do?”
There’s a catch in her voice that makes me want to put my arms around her. I want to fix everything, to take care of her, make her happy. Maybe if I told her how much I care about her...Bad, bad idea. I ball up my hands into tight fists and press them against my thighs. “Do you have enough money to get your own place?”
She gives a short bitter laugh. “Are you kidding?”
There is a short silence. I don’t know what to suggest. I guess there must be people who could help, like social workers or something, but I don’t really have a clue about that. “Um, what about your counselor? Could you call her?”
“I’ll call her tomorrow.” She leans back against the headrest and closes her eyes. “But what can she do? I mean, she’ll be supportive and everything, and maybe she’d try to persuade my folks to let me move back in for a while, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go to some group home either, which is what she thinks I should do.”
I feel like someone should be able to help, but I guess no one is going to hand her the thousand bucks she’d need for first and last months’ rent. “Um, do you want to come to my place? Like, just for tonight, anyway?”
She opens her eyes and turns toward me. “Wouldn’t your parents freak? I mean, they don’t even know you’re out.”
“Mm. I’m supposed to be grounded.” Mom would have a hard time putting a positive spin on my arriving home in the middle of the night with a strange girl with no eyebrows. Almost no eyebrows. On the other hand, I can’t think of anywhere else to go, and the trouble I’d get into seems insignificant beside the idea of Parker having to go back to Jamie. “Did you know your eyebrows are growing back?” I ask her.
She nods. “So is your hair.”
I run my hand over my head. Still fuzz. “So, what happened? I mean, how come you shaved them off?”
Parker shrugs. “Bad day, I guess. I didn’t shave them though. I was actually just tweezing out a few hairs, only for some reason I couldn’t stop.”
I nod, like it makes perfect sense to completely remove your eyebrows.
She looks at me, makes a face and starts to laugh. I can’t help laughing too. It’s just the stress of the night, I guess, but soon I’m losing it, laughing too hard, laughing as if something’s really funny when really everything is kind of a mess. Parker is totally cracking up too, rocking slightly in her seat. I watch her—her thin face lit up with laughter, her eyes narrowed to slits, her cheeks flushed. I take a deep breath and look out in to the darkness of the empty parking lot. God, I am so crazy about her.
Parker suddenly stops laughing and holds up one hand. “Can you hear that?”
Far away, sirens are wailing faintly. Jamie will hear them, I think. He’ll be long gone by the time the fire trucks arrive. “You think they’ll be able to save the school?”
She taps her spidery fingers on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think it’ll have burned to the ground yet or anything, but there’s gotta be a lot of damage.” She looks at me sideways. “It’s not going to be open for business as usual tomorrow.”
“I guess not.” I wonder, again, if Mrs. Greenway will suspect me of being involved. I hope not. If she asks, I’ll tell her the truth. I’ll tell her that I didn’t know for sure it would happen and that I tried to stop it. I know what Leo would say—that teachers never believe students. But I am pretty sure Mrs. G. would believe me. Leo doesn’t know everything. “You think we should’ve done more? I mean, like called the cops or something, before they actually started the fire?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking that too.” She watches the road ahead. “I guess maybe we should have, but I couldn’t have done it, you know? I couldn’t get them into that kind of trouble.”
I don’t say anything right away. It makes me angry that I have to share the responsibility for this, at least a little bit. If the present world go astray...Well, it definitely did that. I let out a long sigh. “You know, on some level, I guess I didn’t believe they’d go through with it. Not so seriously, you know? Not such a big fire.” It sounds stupid. Like what, I thought maybe they were going to have a campfire? Toss a match in a garbage can? I close my eyes for a second. All I see is flickering flames. I can still feel the scorching blast of heat on my face and hear Jamie’s taunting laugh, his voice. Dante’s fucking inferno. A knot of guilt twists inside my stomach. “How come Jamie hates me so much?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. I shift in my seat, turning sideways to face her. “Parker? Do you know why? I mean, it’s not just tonight. He hasn’t liked me from the start.”
“He’s an asshole.”
“Duh.” I force a grin, trying to lighten the mood.
She looks uncomfortable. “It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”
I know the answer anyway. Your stupid dyke friend, Jamie had said. What I can’t figure out is why he said it. He can’t possibly know about Beth. I guess I am queer or bi or whatever, but there’s no way he could know that. He doesn’t know anything about me. “He thinks I’m queer. Is that it?”
Parker slows down as she passes a highway turnoff. “Where are we going? My mind is so not on the road; I totally shouldn’t be driving.”
“Pull over,” I say. “Until we figure out where to go.”
“Yeah. Okay.” A McDonald’s is on the next block, and she pulls into the empty parking lot and switches the engine off.
It is suddenly very quiet. I figure Parker changed the subject on purpose. Obviously just the idea that Jamie thinks I might be queer makes her uncomfortable. My throat starts to feel all tight and achy. I wish I hadn’t brought it up. I think about Linnea and her queer students group. I’m not a joiner, but maybe I should check it out, or at least talk to Linnea. It’d be a relief to talk about some of this stuff with someone who isn’t freaked out by the whole subject.
Parker rolls down her window and lights a cigarette. “Sorry. I know smoking in cars is kind of gross.”
“It’s your car.” I wish she didn’t smoke at all. I don’t mind the smell, but I hate what she’s doing to her lungs. She’d make a good runner too, with her light build and those long legs. “Listen, I know what Jamie thinks and I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Forget I asked.”
“No, it’s okay. He just says stuff without thinking sometimes, you know?”
I hope she’s not going to give me more reasons why Jamie isn’t all that bad. Or, even worse, try to reassure me that she knows I’m not a dyke.
“He’s just possessive. He doesn’t like it when I have friends, that’s all. I mean, he doesn’t even like me seeing Leo when he’s not around. He doesn’t really think, you know, that you’re...”
She can’t even say the word. I have to tell her though. I mean, if I don’t say something now, I’m basically lying to her. I try to take a deep breath but I feel like there’s a giant hand pushing down on my chest. “Parker,” I say.
She takes a drag on her cigarette and turns away to blow the smoke out the window. “You know, it’s just what he says when he’s pissed off at someone. Like calling Leo a fag. He knows that’s not true either.”
“Parker.” I’m running through possible ways of saying this inside my head. Parker, it’s no big deal, but Jamie’s not exactly wrong. But this isn’t about Jamie. It’s about being honest with Parker. Um, Parker? I don’t want to have secrets from you. Or maybe, Parker, I guess I should tell you something. I can’t get any of the words past my throat. I’m as bad as Beth. I’m chicken-shit.
Parker is sort of staring at me, and I have to say something. But I can’t do it. I can’t tell her.
“What?” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“Look...,” I say. “I think you should come home with me.”
Her non-eyebrows lift.
I clear my throat. “I mean, it’s none of my business, but I’m kind of worried about you going home tonight. Jamie seemed pretty pissed off.”
“I know. But if I’m not there...” She shrugs. “He’ll be more pissed off tomorrow.”
“I thought you told me earlier that you were done with him.” I feel suddenly, unreasonably, angry. “All that stuff about maybe going back to school, getting your own place. I guess that was all bullshit, huh?”
I regret the words the second they leave my mouth. Parker looks at me wide-eyed, a puppy that just got kicked. She butts out her cigarette in the car’s ashtray, rolls up her window and wraps her arms around herself. “I know,” she whispers. “It wasn’t bullshit. I meant it. I just...it’s hard, Dante. I love him. You know? I mean, I know he’s not always...you know, he does stuff sometimes...but...”
My anger is gone like it never existed. I can’t fit this Parker together with the tough beautiful girl eating rose petals at Shelley’s group. She’s getting sucked right back in to the same shit, throwing her life away for some jerk who doesn’t deserve her. Oh, Parker, I think. Please, please don’t go back to him. “You want to stay with me for a couple days? Until you figure it out?” I ask her again. “I mean, Mom might freak a little, but I’m already grounded anyway.”
“You really think your folks would let me stay?”
“Oh yeah. For a few days anyway.” No matter how mad my mother is at me, she won’t turn Parker out if she has nowhere else to go. More likely, she’ll send me to my room and treat Parker like an orphaned kitten.
She hesitates; then she nods. “Okay. Okay. For tonight, maybe. Thanks, Dante.” A frown crosses her face. “The fire will be on the news tomorrow. If they know you were out, will they suspect you were involved?”
“Not a chance,” I say. “Not in a million years.” “We can both sneak in,” she suggests. “They don’t even need to know you were out at all. In the morning, I’ll tell them I had nowhere to go so I came over. They shouldn’t get too upset with you over that.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “Parker, you are a genius. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Less practice at lying to your folks than me, maybe?”
I’ve lied to mine more in the past two weeks than I have in my whole life. I feel a twinge of guilt, but I push it aside. Telling the truth isn’t an option. It isn’t even imaginable.
It’s well past three by the time we pull into the maze of streets I call home. Parker pulls over at the end of my street, turns the engine and lights off and coasts to a stop a few houses away from mine. She looks at me. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
We walk up my driveway, and I unlock the front door as slowly and quietly as I can. “Okay, follow me.” I cross the front hall and head upstairs, barely breathing. Behind me, Parker’s footsteps are as light as an elf‘s. At the top of the hall, I turn and beckon to her. It’s pitch dark; I don’t think she can even see me. “This way,” I whisper. “Come on.”
She grabs my arm and I lead her down the hall. I’m just opening my door when ahead of us, at the far end of the hall, a crack of light appears under my parents’ bedroom door. I freeze and Parker’s fingertips dig into the back of my arm.
The door opens, spilling light into the hallway. Mom steps out. “Dante? Are you up? I thought I heard...” She sees Parker and stops abruptly. “What’s going on?”
I wonder if there is any possibility that she won’t notice we’re both fully dressed. As in, jackets and all. As in, we’ve been out all night. “Uhh...Mom, this is Parker. She kind of needs a place to stay for a few days.”
Mom ignores Parker. She stares at me like I’ve completely lost it. “You’ve been out, haven’t you? Emily, tell me you didn’t sneak out after we were in bed.”
“Um. Well.”
“I can’t believe this.” She raises her voice, and a second later I hear Dad stomping around in the bedroom.
He pokes his head and his naked hairy shoulders out into the hall. “Oops. Just a minute.” He disappears again, obviously looking for clothes to put on.
“Where have you been?” Mom steps closer to us and frowns. “You smell like smoke.”
Crap. Crap crap crap. I look at Parker and she stares back at me, wide-eyed. I don’t know what to do. The thing is, I want to tell the truth. Partly because I hate lying to my parents, but also because I really don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong. I had to sneak out to try to help Parker. I had to try to stop Jamie and Leo. I’d do the same thing again, if I had to do it over. But if I tell the truth, I know my parents will insist that we go to the police. And even though I think what Jamie did is wrong, even though I worry about what else he might do, I still don’t want to turn him in for it.