Alex looked up and wiped his face. “What did you do?”
He seemed dazed, like he didn’t even know who Charlie was. The adrenaline had hacked his brain and pulled him into a zone.
Charlie couldn’t think where to start.
“Did you stop me?”
Charlie nodded.
“Why?” Alex’s voice wasn’t grateful. It was agonized and enraged.
“They’re not worth it. None of them.”
“You don’t know that.” Alex glared at him wildly. “Everyone hates me.”
“No, no.”
“And now … now…” Alex thought of the picture, of himself stripped naked, laid bare in front of the entire school. “You don’t know anything.”
“I hate them too. Kurt. Tim. All of them.”
“And I hate you,” Alex spat.
“Alex, I—”
“You had no right to stop me.”
“No right? I—”
“You ruined everything.”
Charlie just stared, stunned.
“I was going to do it.” Alex looked at the wall longingly. “I was ready. Now…”
“Alex, you’ll see—”
“I didn’t ask for your help. Ever.”
Alex got up, his legs shaky, and shoved Charlie so hard he fell backward into the dust. Alex stood over him. “I hate you.” Alex opened his car door.
Charlie picked himself up. “Please. Please, let’s just talk.”
Alex tried the engine, and it turned over. “Everything that happens now is your fault.” Alex’s voice was so anguished, so weary and defeated, that if left Charlie chilled.
Alex put the car in reverse and drove off.
Charlie would never get up the hill and back into the car in time to follow Alex. His Goldz were at zero and the Game showed him nothing. He called 911 and gave them Alex’s name and car. “He’s going to hurt himself,” Charlie told them. He called Alex’s home number and left a message for his parents, but Charlie had no idea how to reach them at work. Then he climbed his way back up the hill—it was a lot faster on the way down. Peter was there.
“You could’ve helped me talk him down,” Charlie said.
“I’m out of Goldz.”
“No, with him. He listens to you.”
“Not anymore.”
Charlie felt himself crumbling inside.
I hate you, Alex had said.
Alex was going to kill himself, and Charlie couldn’t stop it. He’d stopped it once, and it used everything he had. Now Alex was gone—Charlie couldn’t find him, much less save him. The guilt tore through Charlie. You don’t want me in the group anymore.… I’d be better off gone.…
“This wasn’t my fault,” Charlie said.
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Tim and Kurt did this.”
“Of course they did.”
How many other people had Kurt tortured over the years? Dozens, at least. Whom else would Tim crush—calmly, methodically—to keep his lousy place in the world?
“They have to pay,” Charlie said.
Peter studied him. A moment earlier, Peter had felt lost, hating that Charlie had been the hero below, and in the Game no less. Now, seeing Charlie lost and reeling, Peter felt centered again.
“They killed him,” Charlie said.
Peter’s eyebrows raised. “What are you going to do about it?”
“You still have something on Tim?”
Peter nodded.
“It’s good?”
“Yeah. It’s good.”
“And Kurt? You haven’t put that video out yet?”
“Nope.”
Charlie looked down at the savage skid marks in the dirt, far below them, where Tim and Kurt had sent Alex hurtling toward death.
This was the moment, Charlie realized. He’d always had that last thread, that connection to his old self, the voice in the back of his head. He knew he shouldn’t do this. He knew, deep down, that it was his anger talking—or, no, not his anger, that was just another layer of excuse, rationalization—it was his guilt talking, and if he listened to that fading voice in the back of his head, he’d know that lashing out at Tim and Kurt was just a way to avoid seeing himself. But this was the moment when he went dark, when he knowingly snipped that last line to the old voice and let that Charlie go. You could mark it in a book.
“Let’s ruin them. Let’s destroy them and leave nothing behind.”
Peter took a long slow breath, in then out.
Then he smiled. “Okay.”