In the dark, Thomas’s eyes turned to pools of black, the fear in them a living thing. The forest should have scared Andrew, too. But it didn’t.
Last night, he’d been terrified out of his mind, but he felt different now, solid and firmly inside himself as he walked. This time he’d worn jeans and boots, and tugged on a Wickwood hoodie against the cool September air. Both he and Thomas carried flashlights and spikes they’d dug from the garden, dirt still clumped at the points. The gardener would be pissed tofind the new rosebushes robbed, but the boys didn’t have much choice.
Andrew carried the sketchbook. Thomas didn’t want to touch it.
“We need better weapons.” Andrew’s voice felt too loud.
“Do you know what would happen if they found so much as abutter knifein my room?” Thomas said. “You didn’t see how the cops questioned me. They think I’m a murderer.”
Andrew stumbled on a knotted root and Thomas spun around to steady him, taking a little too long to let go.
He swallowed and kept walking. “If I get expelled, I’ll never see you again. I don’t even know who’d take me. My grandparents are in a retirement village. My aunthatesmy mother and won’t have anything to do with me.”
“I’d take you.” Andrew swung his flashlight around the trees. “I’d pack you into my carry-on.”
“Like, okay, I’m short, but not that short.”
Andrew snorted.
Thomas narrowed his eyes, but when Andrew smiled, the glower melted off Thomas’s face. This was good. Keep him talking. Keep his focus off his all-consuming dread.
“I need to find my phone,” Andrew said. “Do the monsters come to you? Or do you have to find them?”
“They find me. It’s better not to hide.” His voice sounded moth-eaten. “I always want to get it over with. I’m so goddamn tired.”
Andrew tucked the sketchbook under his arm and turned in a slow circle. His flashlight carved a groove through the blackness and revealed nothing but trees. No monsters. Nightsounds twisted around their bodies as the wind rustled through the trees and crickets thrummed. An owl called to the dark. Thomas jumped, but Andrew took a deep breath of moss and damp leaves, of the vivid green life of the forest pulsing under their feet.
It felt like they’d made the monsters up, a shared fever dream.
Something bit at Andrew’s neck and he slapped it. “The only things attacking me are bugs.”
“How are you not scared?” Thomas asked softly.
Andrew scuffed leaves around, looking for his phone. “I don’t know. I’m crazy?”
Thomas’s tone came hard. “Don’t say stuff like that.”
Andrew sighed. “I think… it’s because everything wrecks me.Everything.I’m so freaked out all the time and there’s no reason, just my brain imploding on itself. But monsters are something we can kill, and I think I like that.” He let out a flat laugh. “My brain is so broken.”
It was easier to make it a joke than close his eyes and think about the hundreds of times he’d been so anxious he’d ended up in tears, vomiting and frantic. Dove would hold him and say,Tell me what’s wrong. How can I help if you won’t say what’s wrong?
Andrew didn’t know. Life didn’t fit against his skin and it never had and sometimes everything was just too much.
Thomas backed up so they stood with spines aligned. “You’re not broken.”
“I am.”
Thomas turned off his flashlight and Andrew did, too. Theystood for a moment in the dark, before Thomas said, “I like how you are. There’s an entire world of ink and magic stuffed inside your head, and I think it’s beautiful. I just wish everything didn’t hurt you so much.”
There was an explosion happening in Andrew’s chest, a thousand flowered vines growing around his heart. Thomas never talked like this, soft and vulnerable. Maybe it was easier to whisper sweet and aching things in the dark.
Andrew let out a soft, shaky breath, needing to say something back, needing to lean into this gentleness.
But then Thomas flicked his light back on and said, “We’re never going to find your phone,” and he slouched off down the path.
Andrew followed. He slapped his neck again. It felt like bugs had landed on his back, bloodthirsty little things. “I swear I dropped it near here. I was near some clump of trees—”
“I’ve got news for you about forests.”
