“Tell me a secret,” Thomas said, “and I’ll tell you one.”
I’m glad Dove didn’t come with us tonight.Andrew swallowed, his skin suddenly hot. “I’m scared of everything except the dark.”
Thomas huffed the tiniest laugh. “I knew that. You write the darkest things, and it never keeps you up.”
“Tell me yours.”
“I think someday you’ll hate me.” Thomas’s voice stretched with a loneliness Andrew had never heard before. “You’ll cut me open and find a garden of rot where my heart should be.”
Andrew let the silence sharpen between them, waited untilThomas’s breath caught in quiet anguish from being made to wait.
“When I cut you open,” Andrew finally said, “all I’ll find is that we match.”
Below them something scraped softly over the stony path. The world smelled of sweet cloying decay, rotten leaves, and earth.
“Did you hear that?” Andrew scooted himself toward the edge, but Thomas caught his arm.
Shadows stole his face but for the sharp line of his mouth. “It’s probably a fox or something. We should leave anyway.”
They climbed down in silence together, their fingers cold and lungs aching. It was strange, Andrew thought, how when something moved in the dark, everyone’s first instinct was to go inside and hide under the covers.
As if monsters couldn’t open doors and crawl into bed with you.
Once upon a time, a cutthroat queen and a wormwood king had seven sons. They loved them all except for the last, who was made of sarsaparilla and foul tempers and had beautifully pointed teeth.
They gifted their first six sons crowns made of willow switches. But they ordered the seventh son to be switched with the leftover rods.
They gifted their first six sons golden apples. But for their seventh son, they put worms on his tongue and made him swallow.
They gifted their first six sons a wishing well. But to their seventh son, they gave the hacked-off head of a wolf cub.
The years passed and the seventh son’s skin toughened under the switching, and he developed a taste for flesh, and he befriended the murdered wolf cub and told it all his secrets.
When the wolf decided justice was necessary and ripped out the hearts of the cutthroat queen and the wormwood king and ate their six perfect sons, the seventh son did not even notice. He had found his reflection in the wishing well and liked staring at his pointed teeth.
SIX
On Wednesday, they took Thomas from class.
He packed up his books and left in silence, only pressing his fingertips to the top of Andrew’s desk as he passed. No backward glance. Through the open classroom door, Andrew saw the corner of Detective Bell’s cream trench coat before she strode out of view.
He sat motionless through the rest of the lesson and tried to make each breath more shallow than the last. He would disappear if he could. Just until Thomas came back.
As soon as class ended and everyone filed out, the whispers began.
“Not surprised…”
“He’s always so rude.”
“… has that violent streak—”
“Bet he killed his parents.”
No one should even know this had something to do with his parents. Either a student had overheard something or Dove had been extra vindictive since their fight and spread the rumor. It left Andrew wading through classes with a feeling of pins being twisted into his skin, one by one, until he could barely speak through the taste of metal in his mouth.
His lower lip bled. He had to stop chewing it.
Thomas didn’t return for lunch or when the final period ended. Why did the police even need to keep him this long?
