MARK WAS ALREADY THERE WHEN Todd got to Peacock. Other than Mark, the park was empty, not even the echo of a pug. Todd punched over the parts of the snow that were smooth and untouched on his way up to the swing set. Mark was on the swing. He stood up, his coat pressing up against the chains of the swing as he did.
“Too tiny.” Mark pointed back, as he stepped forward toward Todd. “For me.”
“Yeah,” Todd said. “I mean swings always made me sick. So.”
“Not a swing guy.” Mark smiled. His cheeks were all rosy.
Todd imagined what it would be like if they were just meeting in the park. Like if this was where they hung out. Like, what if that was what he and Mark did. Late-night walks under the stars.
“Yeah, not my scene,” Todd said, trying to sound relaxed.
Mark’s breath came out in soft little plumes. Like down feathers puffing out of his mouth.
“So.” Mark stepped forward again. “Uh, sorry I’m late. I mean, that I had to change … the time. I needed to wait for my parents to crash.”
“It’s cool,” Todd said. “I actually, I had some stuff to do. Late-night errands.”
“Yeah?” Mark smiled again.
“Yeah,” Todd scoffed, “just picking up some butter and some … paperclips.”
Mark smiled again, but it looked nervous this time. “Right,” he said.
He pulled his glove off with his teeth and reached into the pocket on the front of his coat, which Todd figured had the money in it. Todd held up a mittened hand.
“Uh hey. I’m not taking the money,” Todd said. “I didn’t know, okay? I didn’t know you were selling them. I’m actually, sort of against that sort of thing? Personally? But, it’s fine and I’m not mad. But … I didn’t get the answers to sell them.”
Why did he say he was against it? Who’s for selling answers? Is that a thing a person is for? Obviously, Mark and Trevor were for that sort of thing. But Todd thought, hoped, it was Trevor’s idea. Not Mark’s.
“I got them for you,” Todd added. His voice sounded dangerously earnest.
A frozen wind whipped the little bits of loose snow up into the air, blowing right through Todd.
Mark paused, his hand still in his pocket. “Oh, uh.”
Todd felt himself blush, which he knew would give him not rosy cheeks but a series of state-shaped red blotches on his face, over the bridge of his nose. “I mean, to help you out. Because you needed it.”
Mark pulled his hand out of his pocket. “I think, Trevor and I would just feel better. If we all shared this. You know?”
That’s when Todd realized that Trevor wanted to be able to say that Todd took the money. Because he was setting him up, Todd thought. Trevor. But not Mark. Maybe not Mark.
Suddenly, Todd was weak.
“Well,” Todd pressed his lips together, spoke with what he hoped wasn’t a quivering voice, “I don’t want it. And I’m not doing it again. I told McVeeter—”
Mark’s eyes bugged out. “You told McVeeter! What did you tell him?”
Mark’s voice cracked in the cold air.
“I didn’t want him to keep looking for who did it. And I didn’t want to lie!” Todd’s voice squeaked in comparison, like a dog’s yip. “I told him it was me. Just me. I—”
“Fuck, Todd,” Mark shook his head. He pulled out his phone with his bare hand. “Fuck.”
“What are you doing?” Todd stepped forward.
“I’m just … calling someone,” Mark said, mumbling as he tried to dial with his glove. “Fuck.”
Todd didn’t know what to do next. He just didn’t want Mark to call Trevor. He just wanted to talk to Mark. Alone. To explain that McVeeter wasn’t going to do anything. And so he stepped up to Mark and put his hand on Mark’s arm, not to take his phone or anything, just to stop him for a second. Mark was like a brick wall, like there was no bend to him as Todd tried to gently push his phone arm down. In a fuzz of action, Mark yanked his arm up to pull away.
“HEY!” Mark yelled.
Todd saw Mark’s elbow swing toward him and whipped his head back. His feet hit a patch of ice and slipped out from underneath him.
And he saw the sky, black with Christmas light stars, and then his head slammed into what felt like a baseball bat, but was probably the post of the swing set. Whatever it was, it was like a rock.
And then nothing, except a weird soft tunneling backward. And then nothing. And nothing but a chill creeping in from the edges of Todd’s increasingly shrinking reality.
And then, how much later Todd couldn’t tell, a voice.
Two voices. Girl voices. One sharp and frantic.
“Holy fucking shit! Is he dead? Fuck! What the fuck!”
One calm and low. Close.
“Just relax, okay?”
Todd couldn’t open his eyes all the way. But he could see a sliver of a face. Of the arm of a gray coat.
“Can you hear me?”
“FUCK, Carrie. Just. Fuck, let’s GO! Please? Carrie! Please!”
“I’m going to get help. Okay? I promise.”
“Let’s GO!”
His head hurt. But by then it was just a little hurt. Like something several blocks away but important, a disappearing siren. He tried to open his mouth. But it felt like a steel trap. Like when his garage door used to stick and he and his mom would yank on it and it wouldn’t budge. So Todd fell back into himself. Let the darkness take him.
And then he was a kite in a dark place, being pulled through a black bumpy storm that was all texture and no shape. Noises like thunder, low rumbling thunder.
Todd’s ghost hovered over the spot where he took his last, soft shallow breath.
Compacted in the space of that breath was the cacophony of Todd’s existence: all the things he was and wasn’t. Bad things like the sound of his footsteps on the marble floor at Albright, good things like the sweet sound of knitting needles slipping and knotting wool into a line. Somewhere in that space, at its nucleus, was a pinprick of a memory that was better than it deserved to be, of the first time Todd made Mark laugh with a joke, about soup.
We don’t pick the things that end up in our last breaths.
We just breathe them.
Out.
The moon climbed into its favorite spot in the sky, where it was a window in the night, and Todd was gone.