Chapter Twenty-Three
TWENTY-THREE
They sat together on the stairs, working through a package of Oreos between them.
Rain had left the garden glossy, hedges beaded with diamond drops and the air thick with that dense, clean smell of a freshly washed world.
It was a relief to breathe in something that wasn’t the forest—suffocating, cloying, all-consuming.
These stairs led to a side entrance into Wickwood and were only used by staff heading to the parking lot, so the boys felt safe in their aloneness. Unwatched.
They should’ve been in the dining hall for lunch, but this was Thomas’s compromise: They’d avoid everyone if Andrew would eat.
He tried. He wasn’t doing this on purpose.
He just never felt hungry anymore, and the flood of anxiety about food tasting of mud, of leaves, of the forest made it impossible to even force it into his mouth.
It helped that right now he sat on the top step while Thomas was a few steps down from him.
Thomas kept his back to Andrew as he bit into an Oreo, inspected it, and then passed it over his shoulder.
No eye contact. No confrontation about this anxious, needy habit Andrew had developed.
He couldn’t bite into food until Thomas had first.
Even now, Andrew’s tongue searched for the grooves Thomas’s teeth had left behind.
“They keep saying it,” Thomas said.
Andrew looked up from the notebook cradled in his lap. He had a routine: Bite an Oreo, think, then write a line. He was cold, October crawling into his blazer to leave frosty lingering kisses, but he didn’t mind. “Saying what?”
“That I’m a murderer.” He glowered and then twisted to pass back another Oreo, and Andrew leaned forward to accept.
“I know Bryce Kane is spreading shit to rile me up, but it feels like … so many people want to think it. Some guys I’ve never even spoken to were talking about me and they didn’t even stop when I walked past. They smirked.
They were like, ‘If he’s not guilty then why’s he so twitchy?
’ I just—” He stopped abruptly and let the pause stretch for a long minute before he said bitterly, “Maybe we should let monsters eat them. I do not look guilty.”
Andrew didn’t point out that they did, both of them.
A frenetic energy chewed Thomas through every waking moment—he was stretched and harrowed, attention split a thousand ways, always flinching as if he expected a blow, a scream, a knife through his side.
Meanwhile Andrew was faded halfway to invisible.
“And Halloween is tomorrow. The monsters are bad enough now, but they’ll be worse then. I know it.” Thomas bit savagely into the next Oreo. “Why can’t you write a story that says ‘and no more monsters manifested out of my goddamn drawings and we all lived happily ever after’?”
“I tried,” Andrew said. “I wrote ‘and all the monsters died’ last night and they didn’t. I have to tell some sort of twisted, macabre fairy tale. I have to write … suffering. For them, but also for us. I’m not making up the rules, okay? It is what it is.”
Thomas glowered at the crumbs in his lap and said nothing.
From this angle, Andrew had a perfect view of the softest curls at the nape of his freckled neck, the way his shirt tags stuck out at odd angles, the old smear of turquoise paint on his rumpled collar.
Thomas, the beautiful wreck. It took Andrew’s mind off the pulsing headache that never, never left.
Or how he felt so full that cramming the Oreos into his mouth left his stomach distended.
How he needed to tell someone that something was wrong with him.
See the school nurse.
Call his father.
Get help.
But he didn’t.
He crumbled Oreos into lavender bushes where Thomas wouldn’t see.
Thomas started to say something, stopped with a sigh, and went back to eating.
Silence pulled over them, companionable if a little morose, and Andrew wrote a few more lines of a new fairy tale.
Making up stories in the dark with monsters breathing down his neck was the kind of high-pressured environment he hated, so he jotted down a few ideas in the daylight.
His phone lay open beside him, unanswered messages to Dove on his screen.
He should give in, let her win, but if this truly was a war over Thomas, Andrew couldn’t just let go and—
“Hey, can we talk?” Thomas still had his back to Andrew, but his shoulders had tensed.
Andrew’s stomach tightened. “We are talking.”
Thomas let his head drop and dug fingers through his hair. Andrew was acutely reminded of how many times Thomas had started to speak only to pack everything back inside himself and deflect.
His next words hit Andrew like a fist to the mouth.
“Do you like me?” Thomas said.
No, they couldn’t do this. They had an unspoken agreement to never do this.
Panic clawed up Andrew’s throat and his heartbeat seemed too fast, too loud.
What would it even look like, to cut their feelings out, bloody and aching and raw, and compare them?
To find they didn’t match. To be left with guts vivisected and no way to sew themselves back up so they looked the same as before.
Thomas would ruin everything. What if he asked for more from Andrew, asked for everything?
Or what if he asked for it all to stop?
Andrew had this desperate, shaky urge to flatten his hands over Thomas’s mouth and press until he lost his breath and forgot he wanted to speak.
Thomas still didn’t turn. “I know you don’t like to talk about stuff, like really talk, but—”
“We talk all the time, all day.” Andrew snapped his notebook shut, heart galloping. “I was thinking, are you sure we haven’t missed some of your sketchbooks? Any lost under your bed? In the art room?”
For a long moment, Thomas said nothing. He picked at moss between the bricked cracks in the stairs. “I gave one to Dove. Ages ago. She probably got rid of it.”
“I’ll find out,” Andrew said. “Maybe Lana will look for us.”
“I don’t think it’s the problem,” Thomas said, voice low.
“We’re erasing everything I ever created and it hasn’t helped.
Maybe we should talk about that, too. We don’t talk about why the monsters won’t stop.
Why they even started. We don’t talk about Dove.
We don’t talk about what will happen after we graduate.
” His words scraped against each other, as if he struggled to even pull them out of his throat.
“We sleep in the same bed nearly every night now and we don’t freaking talk about that, either. ”
Andrew shoved to his feet. His body felt like an unwieldy colt, limbs detached, and he nearly fell as he stepped over Thomas and hit the damp path. It would start raining again soon. Sodden air pressed against his cheeks, but it did nothing to cool him. He was burning up; he was made of fever.
Thomas said, “It’s ruining me.”
And Andrew couldn’t look at him.
“You could cut me open and devour everything that I am,” Thomas said, ragged and thin. “I would let you. I’d ask you to. But I have no idea what it means to you. What … what I mean to you.”
“Of course I like you.” It came out rougher than Andrew meant.
“But do you want me?” Thomas stood then, too, crumbs on his pants and his shirt half untucked. “How do you want me?”
Andrew closed his eyes. “Stop.”
“Because I watch you, okay? I have for years.” Thomas ran a hand over his face, but he was already blushing his trademark red.
“You don’t look at boys. I mean, we’ve been in locker rooms, in our bedroom, and you’ve seen me naked.
It’s like you look away fast because you don’t want to see.
Not … not that you’re embarrassed to be caught. ”
Andrew couldn’t do this. A muscle in his jaw clenched. “You like girls. What is this even—”
“Not just girls.” Thomas’s ears had gone beet red. “But you know that.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“Damn it, Andrew.” His voice had gone uneven. “Can’t you tell that I’m in … that I like you? Because I-I like you a lot, okay?”
Andrew had heard the slip, the save. I’m in love with you.
His blood roared so loud he couldn’t think and all he could focus on was the tight nub of pain in his ear.
Burrowing, searching, hungry. Just like him.
He starved—for this confession, for the raw, helpless look on Thomas’s face. Hadn’t Andrew wanted this all along?
It shouldn’t be so hard to whisper, I’m in love with you, too, but—
But.
That word was too huge.
But what about Dove? But what if she loved him first? But what if Thomas wanted more than Andrew could give? But—
The world felt ready to spin away, and he couldn’t swallow properly. In his chest, his heart beat itself bloody against his ribs. He was losing control.
“Everything inside me is in ruins,” Thomas said. “For you.”
A fine misty rain started, and it tasted of the forest. Andrew stared at his knuckles gone white against the spine of his notebook. He could tear out a dozen stories and shove them in Thomas’s face. Each said, in bloody and beautiful ways, I love you I love you I love you.
Instead, his voice felt like it came from someone else, distant and mechanical.
“I’m asexual,” Andrew said.
It sat between them, echoing. Mist coated Thomas’s eyelashes as he blinked. His face was still full of aching questions and want—but a furrow dug between his brows.
The pause went too long.
“Okay.” Thomas sounded hoarse. “I don’t know … I mean, I kind of know, but I don’t…”
“I don’t have crushes,” Andrew said. “I don’t want—I don’t think about … about … sleeping with people. I don’t want it. With anyone.” He was blinking fast. He didn’t know why. “Sometimes it’s different for other asexual people. But for me it’s … this.”
“You don’t like boys.” Thomas’s voice sounded stripped.
“That’s not what I said.”
Thomas turned in a jagged circle, hands in his hair again as he paced to the stairs and back. Andrew could almost feel the heat churning from Thomas’s spinning mind.
“I like you,” Andrew said, his mouth dry. “But not … not how you need.”
Thomas stopped sharply. “Wait, what are you assuming I need?”
“Don’t pretend.” Andrew’s skin felt too tight. “You would want … you w-would want to sleep with me. Someday.” He couldn’t look at him.
“Well, obviously? Andrew, you’re beautiful. Of course I … I told you. I am in ruins for you. I’d give you anything.”
Andrew was going to cry. This was worse than anything, worse than the monsters sinking teeth into his skin.
He wanted to say, You are my everything, too.
He wanted to say, I don’t exist without you.
He wanted to say, Kiss me.
But he had to step back, because he couldn’t be what Thomas wanted, and for that he was going to lose him completely.
This was why they should have left it. Been whatever they were without words.
He knew there was nothing wrong with intimate, platonic affection—but for him, under all his rotted and tremulous layers, there was nothing platonic about what he felt for Thomas.
Andrew loved this boy so deep and whole and obsessively that he couldn’t breathe, and the weight of it terrified him.
“I can’t.” Andrew tucked his shaking hands behind his back.
“I’m not saying right now.” Thomas jerked at his tie until it loosened, and he looked everywhere but at Andrew. “I know you’re anxious. I’d never pressure—”
“It’s not anxiety. It’s … I can’t. I won’t. I—Just forget it, okay?” The notebook slipped from his shaking fingers and thwapped on the path between them. Andrew’s hands shook as he scooped it up. “What about Dove?”
It was a cruel thing to throw. He knew it as soon as Thomas’s face shuttered.
“I was never in love with Dove.” His voice came low.
“Did you two kiss?” Andrew said.
Say no. Say no.
But Thomas said nothing. He pulled at his bottom lip and then suddenly dropped down to sit on the stairs again. He scrubbed at his hair, curls so damp they plastered his forehead.
“What else did you do together?” Andrew had stepped outside himself. “Is this why you fought? Last year after school ended? The big fight that made her cut you out.”
Thomas looked up, surprise warring with confusion. “Sort of, but it’s complicated.”
But Andrew took a step forward, and he sounded so terrible he knew his face must match. “How many times did you kiss?”
“When we kissed it felt wrong, it was … a mistake. We both agreed.” Thomas struggled to keep his mouth straight, but his eyes were far too bright, the agony there brutal to behold. “Why are you doing this?”
To protect myself. To keep you away.
Because I can’t stop.
“Do you even like me,” Andrew said, “or do you just miss Dove?”
It was like Thomas had taken a lash to the face. He physically turned away, curled in on himself after the invisible blow. His mouth looked too red, eyes glossy in the rain.
“You know that time when we were twelve and hiking in the forest for class?” Thomas’s voice was uneven, and it took Andrew a second to realize it was with anger.
“We decided to race, Dove and me. And the whole time, I was thinking, I want Andrew to look at me. I want Andrew to see me. I’ve loved you since then.
So you know what? Fuck you. I think you do love me back, you’re just—you’re too much a coward to admit it. ”
Andrew shoved away and took off down the garden path.
He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear past the world ending.
He wiped furiously at his eyes, but what he needed was to curl into a ball and stop existing for a second before he completely lost it.
Panic attack. But he couldn’t force words out to warn anyone.
Not that there was anyone to go to for help.
He hadn’t just pushed Thomas away, he’d made sure to cut his throat on the way out.
Why had he done that—
The remains of a battlefield lay in his wake, broken swords and hollyhock crowns left to decay among piles of bones. But the sword plunged through his stomach was his fault. All Thomas had done was ask to love a boy lost in fairy tales, and the boy had ordered him punished.
“Andrew.”
Then again, anguished and breathless, as if he regretted what he’d said.
“Andrew, wait.”
He ran.