Ms. Cole, was Z agitated the night of the dance?
Yes.
Do you know what he was upset about?
We’d had a fight. About Victoria. She came without a date and proceeded to glom on to him, taking up all his attention. He was my date, and yet he couldn’t say no to her. Like I said, sometimes he was too nice for his own good. I think he liked having her hanging on his every word. She was his groupie. I told him he needed to man up and tell her to get her own life. At first he agreed, but then he started acting really strange.
But he still drove you home.
Right. Well, not home. We went to an after-party. But he apologized, and everything was fine between us.
So he didn’t drive Victoria home.
Right. Victoria wasn’t invited to the after-party at the hotel because it was just three couples, so it was never the plan to take her. But something was on Z’s mind. On the drive to the hotel, he was quiet. Then he banged his hands on the steering wheel and told me he needed to fix something.
What?
Who knows? The world. That’s Z. He dropped me off at the hotel, saying he was sorry but he’d make it up to me, then he sped away.
And you have no idea where he was going or what he needed to fix. Do you think it involved Victoria?
I don’t know. Yes, maybe. He wouldn’t tell me. Like I said, Z loved a good mystery, especially one starring him.
—Police interview with Parker Cole, junior at St. Ann’s
I wanted to be with you that night, Andrew. Just so we’re perfectly clear: it was supposed to be you.
I told my parents the dance was boring but fine and headed straight to my room. Z texted me as I was getting ready for bed. U make it home OK?
I texted back: Yep, no thanks to you. ;) Then I texted him what I was really thinking: What happened with Parker?
He came back with: Nothing good. Doghouse. Population me. With a little emoji of a black dog with a pink tongue.
Serves you right. You ARE a dog. Will she tell Cole?
He quickly responded: Nah.
Really? I thought we were doomed for sure.
I waited a long time for the next text. We need to talk. Alone.
I’d gotten to be an expert at texting—and expert at many other things, thanks to Z. But my fingers trembled over the screen: That depends. Will you break up with her?
His response made my stomach drop. What about him?
I swallowed. I didn’t want to break up with you. I love you, Andrew. Always, unconditionally. What we had was like coming home after a long adventure. Z was that adventure. I’d been unfair to you. You deserved so much better. If I broke up with him…then what???
He wouldn’t let you go.
I stared at those words. You and I are close, Andrew, but Z didn’t know you. He didn’t know the gentle soul you were. If I broke up with you, you’d go. You’d hate it, and it would destroy you, but you’d leave me be. And God, I didn’t want to destroy you. I never wanted that.
Never.
Vic. Stop. You have to stop pretending.
I would rather die than break your heart, Andrew. You and I…that was all I knew. We were a given. Maybe that was why I took our relationship for granted. But the possibility of there no longer being an “us” was more terrifying than thrilling, like losing a limb. I know.
Then I typed: Come over tonight.
I smiled at his response. Thought you’d never ask.
I opened the window and let the cold air in. I was warm with anticipation, my face flushed. Every part of me ached to be filled by him. As I stood in front of the window, taking in deep breaths of frosty air, I saw that little orange fireball near your house. Your stepdad’s cigarette. He was out in the backyard, muttering curses into the darkness.
It was after midnight. I thought about how you’d turned me down, Andrew, how it could’ve been you in my bed that night. I heard noises that could’ve been your mother crying. Your stepfather was probably pissed at you for coming back so early. He probably called you a faggot again. Am I right?
Z must have been driving toward my house when he texted, too hyped up to go home, because he showed up only a few minutes after your father went inside and slammed the screen door. Z scaled the side of my house and said as he threw his leg over the windowsill, “I thought that guy would never leave. Angry man.”
“That’s Andrew’s stepfather,” I explained. I started babbling about your stepdad, about how he didn’t do anything but work and drink and drag you on hunting trips, but Z silenced me with a finger across my lips.
“I don’t want to think about them. Just you.”
He kissed me, uncharacteristically tenderly and softly. He led me to the edge of my bed as if it were his room and sat down with me between his legs, staring up at me with such little-boy innocence, as if I held his whole world in my hands. He slowly slipped my zipper down my side.
“We don’t have to do anything,” he whispered. “I just want to be close to you.”
I nodded and pulled my dress down the rest of the way, then helped him remove his shirt. Just thinking of his body made me suck in a breath and tremble—but getting to touch it again? Taste it? I tentatively traced a finger along the rise of muscle just under his collarbone. His skin was so smooth, like sculpted marble, with a little coarse, golden hair. He wasn’t a boy. He wasn’t a man either. He was only a hairbreadth from immortality.
We got into my bed, under my ruffled comforter, and pressed against each other. He was so warm, and I could feel his heart throbbing against mine. He held me, breathing softly on my shoulder for the longest time. “This feels perfect,” he murmured. “You know, you’re perfect.”
It was perfect. Ours was a study in inevitability. That night, we didn’t make love. I’d always thought that phrase was corny. No, we made more than that—we made each other. We didn’t rush. We bared everything to each other, as was meant to be. As was right.
The sky began to lighten. He held on to me, his chest against my back. His lips nipped my ear as he whispered, “I don’t want to leave you.”
The thought instantly hollowed me. “Then don’t. Stay with me, and let’s do this forever.”
He kissed the top of my nose. “Think your parents would have something to say about that?”
I sighed. I knew they would.
“It’s like a different world here, a fantasy world.” He pointed to the window. “I don’t want to face what’s out there. I know you don’t either.”
I know he didn’t mean it, but he pointed at our spot. And the second he did, guilt overwhelmed me. I stiffened, then wiggled out of his arms.
He sat up and looked at me. “What?”
“I… Nothing.”
“Tell me,” he said, tracing circles on my knee. “If you don’t tell me, how am I supposed to help you?”
I shook my head. That’s one thing Z never got; sometimes things couldn’t be fixed. “I… Forget it.”
“You’re an enigma wrapped inside a conundrum, you know that?” He sighed, throwing up his hands.
“You’re one to talk! You’re a riddle shrouded in a mystery.”
He chuckled, conceding. “OK. But what was the first thing I told you when we met? To ask me. Ask me anything.”
“What, so you could make a joke in answering?”
For a second he looked stricken, but he nodded. “Fine,” he said. “You want secrets? I’ll tell you all my secrets. But only on the condition that you tell me yours.”
I sighed. “But I don’t have any.”
He stared at me as if I’d sprouted horns. “Yeah, you do.”
“You went through my files at school. What did they say about me?” I asked. “I get the feeling you already know all my secrets.” I whispered the last part because it was kind of ridiculous. Even if my file contained notes from my talks with Leary, that information wasn’t juicy. I took anxiety meds. So what? So did a million other people. I had nothing to hide.
Z motioned to zip his lips, and I lunged at him and playfully pulled the imaginary zipper back. I so desperately wanted to know him. “OK, fine,” I said. “We trade. You go first. Shoot.”
He gripped handfuls of my pillow. He didn’t look at me. “I… Oh hell. Here goes. The rumors about me and Bethany? They weren’t lies.”
I don’t know why I was so shocked. Z never did anything halfway, so I should’ve known his secret would be huge. “You mean…”
“After my grandparents died, there was all this back-and-forth about where I was going to go to finish up my schooling. I came here from Arizona over the summer, not knowing anyone, not knowing what the fuck I was going to do. The only person I knew was Bethany. She picked me up at the airport, and well…she’s hot and she was nice to me. Really nice, and not in the way an aunt would be. She and I…” He paused for a moment. “It was like we were playing house together, isolated from everyone else. We were both lonely people who ended up drifting together. And then she told me she had to register me for school. I didn’t know why, at first. I figured I’d get my GED and get a job, but she was insistent. I thought it was all a joke, me going to a private Catholic school like St. Ann’s on the state’s dime, her acting all mom.
“The next day, she introduced me to this boyfriend I didn’t know she had. I quickly figured out why she’d agreed to have me stay with her. I’m her meal ticket. She’s collecting money from the government as my guardian—you know, to feed and clothe me. But it doesn’t go to that; it goes into their pockets. Will, her boyfriend, is a fucking a-hole. He told me that if I didn’t want to be thrown out on the street, I’d better start earning my keep. Dealing to the rich kids at school and stuff. You know, like the bowling alley. That is why I’m at St. Ann’s, and why I’m so popular there. So…I don’t know, Vic. My life is fucked up beyond recognition right now.”
I stared at him for the longest time.
He’d said his life was fucked up a million times. He’d said I was too sweet to be corrupted by him. I thought he was just saying those things.
But yeah, his revelation was more than I expected. Suddenly, every one of his unexplained absences and mood swings made sense. All those times he’d been unable to meet me to practice his lines.
“Oh my God, Z,” I whispered. I could feel a tremor in his body. He was scared. For the first time, he didn’t have his life under control. “You need to leave. You can’t stay with them.”
“And go where? I told you. In another year and a half, I will leave. But I’ve got to get into college first, earn a baseball scholarship or something. Otherwise I have nowhere to go.” He hung his head. He looked so different, so young.
His facade crumbled, and I saw Z for who he really was, for what they’d made him. He’d let them puppet him, tell him what to do and where to go, and he was just going to let that continue? For how long would he be able to put up with that? He could get arrested or killed.
No. Not acceptable.
“So?” he asked.
My turn.
I said, “Wait. Back up. You have to do something. Don’t let them push you around.”
His eyes widened with surprise. “What would you do?”
The first thing that came to mind shocked me. Kill them. Kill them before they kill you. My hands shook—where’d that kind of violence come from? Instead I said, “Go to the police.”
He said, “And then I wouldn’t have anywhere to live. I spent three months in foster care after my grandparents died. It’s hell.”
We were silent, unable to come up with a better plan. Then he nudged me. I’d put my turn off long enough.
I mumbled, “I was going to break up with Andrew. I almost did last night.”
I waited for him to say something encouraging. Instead, he said, “Buzz. Wrong.”
“What?”
“What kind of secret is that? I mean, it’s not even true.”
“Yes it is,” I said, indignant, my face heating as he studied me.
“Something tells me you’ll keep saying that you were going to. Never that you did. You can’t, can you? Why don’t you admit you’re just as messed up as I am? We can’t move forward or backward. We’re both stuck.”
He was right. I’ll never be able to leave you, Andrew. Never. You’re all I’ve ever known. You may not make my heart beat faster the way Z does, but you’re responsible for it beating steadily. For it beating still. And I love you more than anything.
Instead of telling him that though, I said, “Speak for yourself.” Then I cleared my throat. “I have anxiety. Which is why I have those pills.” I pointed at my night table.
His gaze traveled over to them without much interest. He didn’t seem satisfied. I was about to tell him I was all out of material when he grabbed my wrists in his hands, pinning me down with his weight. Those brilliant blues worked their hypnotizing action. “The whole world is for shit, Precious. But not this. No matter what is going on outside this window, we still matter. I wish we could just leave them all behind.”
A crow flitted across my window, startling me. I thought about that old wives’ tale, about how a raven outside one’s window signified the approach of death. The sun was starting to poke over the horizon, casting pale-yellow rays. It would be hard for Z to escape unseen if he waited much longer. He started to pull on his boxer briefs, and I threw myself into his arms, desperately raining kisses over his face as if pressuring my lips to memorize every feature. It’s like my lips knew that this would be our last time.
“So what do you want to do? Run away together?”
I said it as a joke. But he nodded slowly. “Bethany has a stash of money. Easily more than a thousand dollars. We could, you know.”
Fear gripped me. Fear of leaving home, of leaving you, Andrew. I thought of all the times you tried to escape, and look how that turned out. “But I…”
“We can do it,” he said. “Throw the past away. Get away from all these demons that haunt us. Start fresh. That’s what we need.”
I laughed bitterly. It would never work. “I… What would we do? I mean, what would my parents and—”
“Andrew.” It was the first time he actually said your name. His eyes narrowed, and he exhaled. “Dammit, Vic, let your enormously talented boyfriend fight his own battles for once. Look, let’s meet tonight. In the Kissing Woods.”
I shuddered. “You mean the Killing Woods. Why?”
His finger trailed lightly down my chest to my breastbone, and when his gaze met mine, it was there again. That adoring, more-than-the face-of-God look that told me this was the moment all the others were leading up to. “Because I need to show you something. Maybe then you’ll be able to leave it all behind.”
So, of course, I agreed to meet him. Before he climbed out my window, he touched my lips with his finger, and even before he pulled away, I ached to have him back.
He climbed outside and gracefully scuttled onto the grill and out of the yard, leaving me smiling goofily after him.
Until I saw you. You were still wearing the same outfit from before, like you hadn’t slept all night, staring up at my window from our spot by the fence. You didn’t move. You didn’t even seem to breathe. For the first time, looking into those eerily calm features of yours, I had no idea what was on your mind.
And for the first time, Andrew, you scared me.