mind.
TEN
He curled under blankets in the dark, his spine to the wall, listening to Thomas breathe across the room. The electric clock perching on a haphazard stack of textbooks flicked to 2:00 a.m. He watched the dark melt down the ceiling and wished Thomas would fill the silence between them with a whisperedWhat happened? I’ll take care of it for you.
Andrew hadn’t explained what had happened in the bathroom the day before—not that his supposed best friend had been around to tell. Two seconds before lights out, he had slid into their room and dived into bed, and by then Andrew felt too small to speak. It was all over the school anyway: the boy who’d had a total mental breakdown over an alleged senior prank and landed in the nurse’s office for the rest of the day.
He decided that Thomas hadn’t heard, instead of accepting the possibility he didn’t care.
Everything felt wrong. The way the darkness bled like ink before his eyes, the ghosted memory of thingstouchinghim as if they wanted him, owned him.
He squeezed his eyes shut. “Thomas?”
The only response was the sound of bedsprings shifting as he rolled over and pulled the comforter over his head.
And suddenly Andrew couldn’t stand it any longer. A frostbitten anger surged up his throat and he flung off hisblankets and punched the desk lamp on. “Thomas.Wake up and listen—”
Thomas wasn’t in bed.
Andrew squinted in the lamp’s golden blaze and scrubbed his eyes, because he’dseenhim a second before. Heard him moving. Breathing.
But the bed across from him lay empty, comforter and sheets scrunched up, and when Andrew crossed the room to feel the mattress, no heat remained.
Something had been there—
He had the crawling urge to look under the bed.
No,no. Andrew dug fingers through his hair and pulled, hissing through clenched teeth. He wasn’t making this up.
A cool breeze slipped under the window. Papers rustled on the floor, and crumpled balls of Thomas’s half-done drawings rolled around like tumbleweeds.
Andrew would have to wait till tomorrow to confront him—except, why was he always the one who had to be patient and quiet until someone felt like listening to him? Maybe he should force Thomas to listen.
Andrew’s jaw clenched. Surely he deserved that much.
He snatched up a sweatshirt and tennis shoes and shoved the window all the way open. He bit his lip until it felt raw and swollen as he climbed down and landed in the rosebushes. He still wore pajama shorts, the cool evening biting at his bare legs, but this wouldn’t take long. None of them would want to linger after Andrew busted them in the woods.
Thomas and Dove. Dove and Thomas.
Mouths against skin and shirts slipping from shoulders and the leafy green knobs of the forest’s fingers tangled in their hair.
They could do him the barest courtesy of being honest about it.
He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his lumpy sweatshirt. It was time to change the story.
At least, he thought, as he ran across the sports field with the moonlight turning his hair silver, he still wasn’t afraid of the dark.
He climbed the fence and dropped down the other side without a sound. The night folded over him as he walked into the woods. As soon as the trees stretched up tall and black on every side, he turned on his phone’s flashlight and stomped around until he found the dirt track to their ancient white oak.
He decided to be noisy. No way did he want to surprise anyone.
Everything inside him had turned brittle. He couldn’t fit into a love story the way he was meant to, the way the stories were always told. No one would see a point in kissing him and leaving it at that, but he didn’t think he wanted anything more.
Sticks cracked underfoot and he plowed through leaves until he sounded like a petulant storm. But the tiniest worm of doubt wriggled through his stomach. Was this even a good idea? If there wassomethingin the school, it could be out here, too.
Cloven hooves. Breath like wormwood rot.
“I’m not afraid,” he said to the trees. “Nothing bad has ever happened in the forest.”
