“Suit yourself.” Lana put her boot on the empty chair beside him and adjusted her laces. “Just know anyone’s welcome. Queer, straight, questioning.” She let that hang in the air. “I just thought it might be better than being alone.”
But people did homework alone all the time… unless she thought he was too unstable to be by himself.
Andrew massaged his scarred hand under the table. “Dove ever go with you?”
Lana snorted, but her smile was fond. “A few times. She fixed all the Pride flags we’d hung crooked. Offered to iron them, too.”
He stole a quick glance at the window just as a car pulled in. From this far away, he could barely make out faces, but a boy with tousled auburn curls climbed from the back seat and slammed the door hard enough for the shock wave to be felt inside the library. One of the professors walked around the car with keys still in hand, motioning Thomas toward the manor.But he took off in a flat-out run to the dorms. The professor didn’t try to catch him.
“I have to go,” Andrew mumbled, aware that avoiding Lana to chase Thomas had become a habit.
Aware that she noticed.
He gathered his homework and flung himself from the library.
Lana was wrong to invite him, anyway. He didn’t fit with those kids because he didn’t fit with anyone except Thomas and Dove, and he didn’t know if he was gay enough when there was only one boy he wanted. A small, reserved part of him knew he must be asexual, and that beinggay enoughwasn’t a thing. But he looked at other boys and felt nothing, so maybe the only reason he didn’t want Thomas to kiss Dove was so their trio wouldn’t change—not becausehewanted to kiss Thomas.
Or maybe he… did?
But it was better this way; Thomas was in love with Dove, and he was not one to think kissing was enough, anyway. Andrew wouldn’t survive a gentle, pitying rejection. He just wouldn’t.
Andrew went to the dorms, but their room was empty. He dumped his satchel on his bed and checked the bathrooms, then the lounge. Nothing. A quick survey of the garden and athletic fields showed no sign of Thomas.
Afternoon tipped toward dusk. He had one last place to look.
Past the endless green sea of tamed grass, the forest rose up in a sharp, dark line. It had always marked the edge of campus, but it used to be easy for a stray ball to be kicked through or kids to sneak past the tree line. Now there was the fence.
As if that would stop Thomas. The forest was immense and unmappable and monstrous—and it had always belonged to him. He never got caught sneaking in there.
Crossing the stretch of open field without being seen from one of the school’s many windows would be a trick, so Andrew sprinted.Don’t see me, please let no one see me.
The fence looked like a beast up close. Eight feet tall? Maybe ten. Chain links made for easy climbing, but the wires had been left sharp at the top. Andrew hauled himself over and waited for some sort of alarm to go off. It was instant expulsion to those who crossed the fence after all.
It didn’t used to be like this, but maybe one too many kids had sneaked out to hook up or drink after dark, and the principal had had enough.
Andrew scraped his arm climbing over. He hissed as he dropped to the soft leaves on the other side.
His shoes hit the muddy forest trail and he tried to talk himself through his swelling panic. Whatever the cops had wanted Thomas for didn’t matter. They’d given him back. He couldn’t be in real trouble.
Because it looks bad—
Pines sighed as Andrew slipped between them. Already dark places lived in the woods, the promise of night thickening against the trees. He left the worn hiking path and followed a thin track crowded with shrubs and mottled blue flowers. Moss underfoot. Ferns rippling against his ankles.
Then the underbrush thinned and his destination sprawled before him—a white oak big enough to hold up half the sky. It was ancient and lovely, with branches that curled like handsreaching out to welcome him. They called it the Wildwood tree and had been climbing it since they were kids. They used to whisper their fears into the bark so it could swallow their words whole.
Thomas would be here.
Andrew stopped at the base of the oak and tilted his head up. “Thomas?”
At first, nothing moved. An emptiness stretched around Andrew, and his heartbeat felt too loud in his ears as his feet sank into the soft, leafy earth. He was acutely aware of how alone he was, how if he cried out, no one from the school would hear. Why was he thinking that? Nothing would happen. This was their place, where they were best together and comfortable in themselves.
A slow chill slipped down his neck like cold molasses, and he shook himself to dislodge the unease. It shouldn’t be so still, the ground this soft. He put fingertips to his temple, to the aching pulse of a headache fluttering to life.
Someone breathed out hard behind him. He made himself turn slowly, but there was nothing there. The wind, it was just the wind.
He refused to freak out over nothing again. But when he shifted closer to the tree to see if Thomas had climbed up, the ground seemed to suck at Andrew’s shoes. It shouldn’t be so damp out here—it hadn’t rained. When he looked down, the earth was as sodden as a bog. Dying afternoon light shimmered over the wet leaves, and for a second they looked almost… crimson.
Andrew knelt, careful, and touched the corner of a rotting leaf.
