Andrew paged through slowly, chewing his lip as he lookedat Thomas’s drawings from the summer. Everything here had been cut from the cruelest fairy tale.
Towers wrapped in thorns, with monsters hung by the throat at the gates.
Thistle fairies with their wings cut off, teeth sunk into their prey’s flesh.
A princess with fingers grafting into tree bark.
The final portrait made Andrew linger. A boy with arrow-tipped ears, his face a constellation of freckles, and eyes cut out for roses to claw through the sockets. His mouth had been scribbled out in dark pen.
Andrew loved it. He loved them all. He could tell many had been based on his stories, which meant he had been on Thomas’s mind all summer.
Thomas flipped pages in Andrew’s notebook, getting crumbs and smears of chocolate everywhere as he made small noises of appreciation. “You should write a whole book someday. Your stories are too short and I always want more.”
“They’re meant to be paper cuts.” Andrew turned to the last sketchbook page. “This one is inspired by my story, right?”
A boy, done in charcoal, leaned over the lip of a wishing well with fingers outstretched to the silver water. Behind him, a monster with elegant human hands and a hacked-off wolf’s head for a face devoured the boy’s parents.
Thomas snatched the sketchbook from Andrew’s hand.
Andrew stifled his yelp and had to grab for his phone before it skittered off the roof. He shot a confused look at Thomas.
Thomas ripped the page out and scrunched it up. “I hate this one. It’s… the shadows are wrong.”
Andrew’s phone flashed a low-battery warning. He turned it off. Truth felt safer in the dark. “Tell me what happened with your parents.”
Thomas sighed and stuffed the last Tim Tam in his mouth. “Or we could look for shooting stars and I could annoy you?” He handed back Andrew’s notebook.
“You already do. No extra effort needed.”
Thomas wrinkled his nose.
The lightness slipped from Andrew’s voice. “Are you even okay?”
They never did this—never confronted each other or asked what was wrong to be mapped out in words that made sense. Andrew was the worst about it, the one who clammed up or outright lied so people would stop trying to pry apart his bones and see why he was riddled with peculiar agonies. He couldn’t explain himself, which meant he couldn’t ask Dove why she fell into manic study spirals, or Thomas why he had a wine-colored scar on his shoulder blade. So Andrew tucked his problems away—his panic attacks, his suffocating shyness, the way he disappeared into daydreams.
Thomas flung an arm over his eyes. “I’m fine. What about you? You looked haunted after dinner.”
No way was Andrew confessing about the… whatever thatthinghad been that licked his neck. It hadn’t been anything. A waking dream. Lurid, and not his.
“Nothing,” Andrew said. “Why did you lie to the detective?”
Thomas went still.
Even whispering, their voices seemed too loud in the night. When Thomas peeled his arm off his face, something harrowedlived behind his eyes. Fear didn’t suit him. He was meant to be invincible.
“Because it looks bad.” Thomas’s voice came low. “I-I can’t explain it. I don’t want you to worry, all right? I knew the house was—things were messed up before I left. I left anyway.”
“Did your parents hurt you?” Andrew hated the pitch to his words. He thought of the drawing Thomas had ripped up.
“What? No. I told you before, they get a bit high and drunk sometimes and they get caught up in their art. All families are dysfunctional. Stop telling yourself stories where I’m some damsel in distress.”
“Thomas—”
He pushed himself up on his elbow and dug fingers into Andrew’s shirt. “Stop asking.”
Andrew went quiet.
Thomas pulled him down so they lay side by side again. Billions of glittering stars layered the world above them, blotting out the dark.
