“I have to help,” he says, the words slurred enough now that the alcohol shows through for the first time since he touched the boy. “I have t-”
“We have to go,” I say again, sharper this time, tightening my hold on him.
Something in my tone must reach him. Or maybe it is the sirens swelling closer. Or maybe it is the awful recognitionalready settling into his bones that there is nothing left for his hands to do.
His head turns finally.
For one second, his eyes meet mine, and whatever panic or fracture was visible there shutters closed with brutal speed. The warmth, the frenzy, the rawness, all of it disappears behind something cold and remote.
Then he stands.
No argument. No protest. No explanation.
Just that same distant silence as he turns and starts moving away from the patio.
Rising too fast, my knees unsteady as I hurry after him through the bodies making way for the paramedics now rushing through the gate. Somewhere behind me, Kadin is shouting for room. Somebody else is sobbing. The whole backyard has dissolved into disaster, flashing red-blue lights bleeding over the fence.
Near the side of the house, I slam lightly into someone coming the other way.
Lacey.
The cheerleader from the closet.
Her hair is mussed, lip gloss smeared, cup still in one hand like the rest of the night hasn’t fully caught up to her. She blinks at me, then glances past me toward the chaos unfolding near the pool.
“What the fuck is happening?”
“I can’t talk right now,” I say, already trying to move past her.
She catches my arm for a second, confused more than alarmed.
“Wait. Does Silas want his money back?”
I stop.
My head turns back to her slowly. “What?”
Lacey looks thrown by the question. “Your family is hosting him, right? The exchange thing?”
I stare at her.
“What are you talking about?”
She lifts the hand not holding the cup. Folded between two fingers is a bill.
A hundred dollars.
“In the closet,” she says, lowering her voice instinctively even though no one around us is paying attention. “He paid me to pretend something was happening. That’s it. He didn’t want to touch me. Didn’t even try. He just said he needed people to think…” She trails off, glancing down at the money, then back toward where Silas disappeared. “He said he wanted to make a point.”
For a second I can’t feel my feet.
All at once, pieces of him rearrange themselves into something even less understandable.
The smirk. The closet. The smile that hit me like a knife because I thought it meant something it didn’t.
Lacey’s expression shifts as she looks past me again toward the patio, where paramedics are now crowded around the boy’s body.
“Holy shit,” she breathes. “Is he alive?”
