Every Inferno

by Johanna Parkhurst

  Dr. Ben patted his shoulder. “Think about it. If you’re interested, I’ll get you set up with the volunteer coordinators.”

  On the way home, volunteering was all Maggie could talk about.

  “Of course, I love the idea of you working for the hospital, but are you sure it’s a good idea, JJ? You have so many memories of your own from that exact hospital.” She winced a little, and JJ knew she was remembering his five-year-old face, dulled with pain and sadness, staring sightlessly at the walls of that same pediatrics ward. “I’m just surprised you’d want to work there.”

  JJ didn’t answer. When he’d first asked about whether or not Dr. Ben needed help from volunteers, he hadn’t thought about the fact that he might have to go back to Pediatrics again. But Dr. Ben was cool, and maybe working at the hospital would be good—help him get over those memories from right after the fire. Or something like that.

  Or maybe not. Just thinking about the pediatrics ward made JJ wish he had another bottle of whiskey in his room. As soon as they were home, he texted Lewis and made plans to go with him to the party on Saturday.

  Chapter 5

  OCTOBER WAS a suspect time to have a keg party in a field in Vermont; you never knew what the weather might do. Lately it had been unseasonably warm though—Maggie kept calling it “Indian summer”—so JJ just grabbed his windbreaker on the way out of the house Saturday night.

  “Have fun!” Maggie called after him. She thought he was going to Lewis’s house to play cards with some of the other guys. JJ was glad she’d ended his grounding a few days ago and he didn’t have to try and sneak out of the house.

  JJ and Lewis met at their usual corner and walked to Rick Mooring’s house. Rick was one of the guys from their lunch table who was old enough to drive. After seven people had managed to pile into Rick’s mom’s minivan, they drove off to a cow pasture on the edge of the next town over.

  Music was already blaring from someone’s car stereo when they pulled up beside a line of other vehicles. JJ jumped out and was pleased to see two kegs stacked side by side next to an old building. He was on his way there before Lewis could even make it out of the car after him.

  The second the first sip of beer was down his throat, he felt that tightly wound spring relax within him and start to unwind a little. He would have rather had whiskey, but beer would definitely do the trick.

  For a while JJ was content to hang out by the kegs with Lewis, Rick, and their other friend Todd, downing cup after cup of the cheap beer. He saw Rick swig down a few and knew he should wonder who was driving them home, but he didn’t.

  JJ was coming out of the bathroom in the house when he saw McKinley. He was sitting on a sofa, drinking out of a blue party cup like JJ’s, surrounded by his usual harem of women. Only JJ wasn’t sure if you could consider it a harem if the dude wasn’t sleeping with any of them.

  Maybe it was the beer, but JJ found himself staring in that direction a little too long—and eventually McKinley saw him. He got up from his spot on the couch and came over. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  JJ gestured to the loud, crowded scene around them. “’Sa party, isn’t it?”

  McKinley nodded. “C’mon,” he said finally. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  JJ staggered after McKinley down a pasture to a small cow pond. McKinley sat down on a large rock and pulled JJ down after him.

  “You’re pretty drunk. You know that, right?”

  “Am… I?” JJ was pretty sure he was. Walking had been pretty tricky, and now he was having trouble focusing on McKinley’s face.

  McKinley shook his head. “I hope you know how you’re getting home.”

  JJ looked around for Lewis. “My ride… somewhere….”

  “You didn’t workshop your writing yesterday.”

  JJ was startled out of his stationary search for Lewis. “Not yet. I’m not… ready yet. Monday, maybe.”

  “What’s the big deal?” McKinley asked. “What are you hiding over there in the corner every day?”

  JJ tried to explain it through the fog in his head. “’Slike… they’re my thoughts. Just mine. Don’t want to share them with people. Don’t want people to know… my stuff.”

  “I guess I don’t get it. I mean, I write some really private shit I would never share with our class, but there are lots of pieces I write that I’m fine with the class reading.”

  JJ considered that. “Everything I write is me, so it all matters.”

  McKinley looked startled. “Wow. I never thought about it that way. You’re just that private, huh?”

  “I guess….” JJ tried to focus his vision on a tree in his line of sight. Things were starting to move a little too quickly around his head, and he was getting dizzier. He thought for a second about the dream, which he’d had again the night before. “I mean, I share some things. Like I told Dr. Ben about the tattoo guy. That was private.”

  “Tattoo guy? Huh?”

  “The guy… from the fire. With the tattoo. I told Dr. Ben… I remembered him. That was private. Only I knew I saw him.”

  “JJ, are you talking about the fire that killed your parents?”

  “How’d you know?” JJ could hear the accusation in his voice, only he wasn’t sure what he was accusing McKinley of.

  “Everyone remembers the fire, dude. Penny’s mom told me that your parents died in it, when I started working with Penny. Course, she never told me about you.”

  “Oh.” JJ was calm again.

  “So? Is the fire where you saw the tattoo guy?”

  “Yup.” JJ popped the end of the “p” between his lips. “But no… no one knows where he is. He’s invisible.” JJ couldn’t help but laugh uncontrollably. “The guy who set the fire was invisible!” Soon he was hysterical, laughing like a hyena into the murky, dark water in front of the rock.

  “I think it’s time to get you home.” McKinley pulled at his arm.

  JJ instantly pulled away. “Look, I’m not gay, okay? Get your hands off.”

  McKinley rolled his eyes. “Listen, kid, as tough as it is not to be totally attracted to your drunk and disoriented ass, I promise that I’m not coming on to you here, okay? Just trying to help you walk.”

  JJ frowned. “Okay, but nothing else, okay? Just walking.”

  McKinley shook his head, and JJ thought he murmured something about every guy in the world thinking they were the hottest thing around whenever a gay dude showed up.

  Then Lewis was there too, dragging the other side of JJ. He heard Lewis swear. “I think Rick left without us.”

  “We’ll have to walk!” Somehow this was hilarious to JJ too, and he heaved with laughter as he tried to amble away from Lewis.

  Hands held him still. “What are we going to do?” Lewis sounded like he was pleading.

  “I could take you home,” JJ heard McKinley say. “Just as long as JJ keeps his stomach together in my car. It’s my mom’s.”

  “I’ll watch him,” Lewis promised.

  JJ closed his eyes, and a few moments later, he opened them to find Lewis next to him in the backseat of a strange car. “Lewis?” he muttered.

  “’Sup, dude.”

  “I think I’m… drunker than I usually am.”

  Lewis had been drunk with JJ a lot, and he didn’t hesitate a second. “You sure are, dude.”

  “What ’bout… Maggie?”

  Lewis frowned. “I think I may have to sneak you in again.”

  JJ heard McKinley’s bemused voice from the front seat. “I think I’m starting to see what Darryl sees in you, JJ. You really are trouble, aren’t you?”

  JJ wanted to argue with that, but suddenly he couldn’t get his tongue to move.

  McKinley dropped them off at the corner and wished Lewis luck getting JJ into the house. They edged around the bushes at the back of house, Lewis holding JJ’s mouth to keep him from laughing, until they reached JJ’s bedroom window. It was on the first floor, and JJ never locked it, just in case he needed a good route back into the ho
use. Lewis shoved the window frame up and, after quickly checking for watching neighbors, he was able to hoist a limp, laughing JJ up over his shoulders and shove him through the window frame.

  JJ landed with a loud thump on his bedroom floor. Something hurt, but he didn’t know exactly what.

  “JJ?” Lewis was calling from outside the window. “You in okay?”

  “Yup.” JJ dragged himself up to look at Lewis out the window. Lewis was tugging on his wrist and muttering something to himself. He looked annoyed.

  “McKinley said I was trouble,” JJ told Lewis over the windowsill.

  Lewis laughed, already concentrating on something on his cell phone screen. “Well, yeah, dude, you are. That’s why I hang out with you.”

  JJ only had a few moments to ponder this before he passed out on the floor under his windowsill.

  JJ WOKE up Sunday with nausea, a splitting headache, and the pattern of the wood floorboards ground into his right cheek. Most of the previous night was a blur. He remembered talking to McKinley, but what had he said? He remembered something about telling McKinley he wasn’t gay, and then not much afterward. The one thing he remembered clearly was McKinley’s comment in the car that he was “trouble.”

  What surprised him was how much those words kept stinging as they rolled back and forth through his head. Why did he care so much what McKinley thought?

  JJ blinked. Wait—did that make him gay? Did he like McKinley or something?

  JJ shook that thought off right away. People cared what other people thought of them all the time, right? You didn’t have to be into someone to care what they thought about you.

  Except JJ almost never cared what anyone thought about him. So why was McKinley’s comment bothering him so much?

  The truth was that JJ had wondered before if it was weird that he wasn’t all that into girls. But he’d tried not to think about it too much. When Lewis and his other friends started making comments about boobs and stuff like that, JJ kind of just played along and pretended that the Playboy magazines they stole from their dads were really fascinating. Still, he told himself, that didn’t mean anything. After all, it wasn’t like he got totally turned on looking at guys, either.

  Maggie had told him a few months ago, when JJ had said there weren’t any girls he wanted to ask out, that he was probably a late bloomer. Well, maybe he still was. And JJ just cared what McKinley thought because McKinley was his key to seeing Penny. Yeah, that had to be it.

  Pulling himself up off the floor and onto the bed, JJ held out hope Maggie hadn’t heard his loud entrance last night. There was nothing like a lecture to really turn up the notch on a hangover.

  He stayed in bed until almost noon, leaving only for an occasional glass of water from the bathroom tap. Maggie came in around ten to make sure he was still alive, affirming that she hadn’t heard JJ’s awkward arrival the night before. JJ told her he was just tired, that he’d stayed out too late last night, and he wanted to sleep. She accepted that and went back to her work.

  Eventually JJ pulled himself out of bed and grabbed his Creative Writing journal from his backpack. Despite the blurriness of last night, he also remembered telling McKinley he would hold down his part of their deal.

  JJ flipped through the book, looking for something, anything, he could share with the class.

  Morris Finch. No way. People who knew about his connection with the Bijou fire would be all over him.

  His “Things No One Else Knows” list? No way.

  An entry about Penny? Definitely too personal.

  There was something written about how much he liked whiskey. Didn’t really seem appropriate.

  Everything was just so… him. He’d have to write something else. It would still be a part of him, but it needed to be a part of him he could at least say out loud.

  He grabbed a pen from his backpack and thought. About the dream, about psychologists who said JJ was “defiant” and “depressed,” and about teachers who gave him detention when he wouldn’t answer their questions… and about what McKinley had said last night. Finally, he wrote.

  Broken

  Sticks and stones, they told me

  Break bones, they told me

  Words, they told me

  Don’t hurt, they told me

  The words have come

  Always, with fire behind them

  The fire of bad news,

  And anger,

  And problems

  I have responded to these words

  With a fire of my own

  Fire that brings more words

  Of bad news,

  Of anger,

  Of problems

  I know no other response

  Their words

  Have broken me

  It was him. But disguised enough, shrouded enough, that he thought he could actually read it.

  JJ didn’t usually read or write a lot of poetry, but now he thought he understood why people liked it so much. It was the perfect opportunity to say exactly what you wanted in a way that only you could understand.

  Code. That’s what poetry was. A sort of genius code for writers.

  THE POEM was a success.

  Mrs. Lyle clapped her hands when JJ raised his hand to share his writing with the class, and then she clapped again when he was finished reading. McKinley just grinned at him from across the room, causing JJ to squirm in his chair.

  There were a few critical comments—suggestions of word changes or possible syntax revisions—but most of the things people said were positive.

  There was one comment, from a serious boy named Andrew who sat in the corner of the room, that stayed with JJ.

  “I wonder…,” said Andrew, tapping his pencil against his lips as he spoke. “The poem is really about a cycle, isn’t it? Words that bring fire, fire that brings further words? Much as I love the title, I almost feel the greater theme of the poem is that unbreakable cycle. Shouldn’t that be included in the title somehow?”

  The class had murmured in agreement, and JJ had left the room thinking.

  Andrew had noticed something in the poem, something JJ had never been able to see in his own life: that he might be trapped in a cycle. And it was more than just the cycle of teachers hating him when he didn’t talk to them, even though JJ thought that was an important part of the bigger problem. No, this cycle was everything. Everything JJ did. Everything McKinley was referring to when he’d called JJ “trouble” the other night. From the moment JJ had heard the worst words he’d ever hear—“Your parents didn’t make it”—to his fight with Patrick, to his silence in the school shrink’s office, to stealing the dead frogs after someone had called JJ’s attitude “disturbing”… the cycle just kept going.

  His whole life was an unbreakable cycle.

  He spent the first half of biology class wondering if maybe it wasn’t unbreakable. If maybe he didn’t have to be so angry all the time, and always getting in trouble, and constantly making Maggie crazy. If maybe he didn’t need to be the reason his parents were rolling over in their graves.

  But how did you break a cycle when the cycle was your whole life?

  So while his teacher droned on and on about mitochondria, JJ took out his poem and examined it again. He thought about one line he’d written: “The fire of bad news.”

  Could you end a cycle by going back to where it started? JJ was supposed to start volunteering in the Pediatrics Wing of the hospital that weekend. He’d be going back to where he’d first heard the horrible news about his parents.

  Maybe he’d figure out something there. Maybe going back to the beginning of the “fire of bad news” was what he needed to do to be… JJ wasn’t sure what the word was. Happy? Not pissed off every moment of the day?

  Whatever the word was, the idea felt so encouraging that JJ actually opened his book and started taking notes.

  Chapter 6

  “WELCOME TO the pediatrics ward.”

  The Volunteer Director scanned the crowd of five people stand
ing before her. JJ ducked, worried she would see his shaking hands and decide there was no way he could handle this assignment. Ever since he’d workshopped his poem earlier in the week, he’d been looking forward to this. Looking forward to seeing if this volunteer work was what he needed to do to somehow break the cycle. But the moment JJ had reached the familiar front entrance of the Pediatrics wing, a flood of memories had poured through him, and the spring had wound painfully in response. It was all he could do not to turn around and run the other way. The cheerful walls seemed to be laughing at him. He fidgeted, accidentally nudging into a middle-aged woman next to him. She glared at JJ before focusing back on the director.

  “As a volunteer for this department, your job is essentially to be a companion to the children here.” The director swept out her arm to indicate the row of open doorways behind her. “Many of these children are lonely. Many are in pain. Many do not have family that can visit constantly or consistently with them, so they need strong companionship….” She began to walk them down the hallway, going on about what they could do for the children in the ward, but JJ wasn’t following what she said.

  He had gone far enough to see into the first door on his left. There were four children in it—all boys. Three of them were happily sitting up in bed. One appeared to be reading, and the other two were watching TV.

  The fourth boy wasn’t doing anything, though. He was lying down on his stomach, staring at the wall. His face was ghostly pale and JJ could see from the way his hands were drawn into fists that he must be in pain.