10. Xander
Ican’t stop.
The images cycle on a loop that has no off switch.
They play behind my eyelids when I close them.
They play in the foreground when I open them.
They play over the teacher’s voice, over the hallway noise, over the music in my earbuds that used to be enough to overwrite everything and now barely registers as interference.
Loop one: the treehouse. Penny on the floor.
White skin. Blue lips. The pills scattered across the wood planks like confetti at a party nobody wanted.
The weight of her body in my arms—cold, limp, the particular absence of a person whose lights are off.
The thirty seconds where I didn’t know if she was alive.
Loop two: last night. The kitchen. My hand on her throat.
Not choking—holding. Feeling her pulse under my thumb, the beat of her heart proving she’s still here.
And the thing she did—the whimper. Small.
Involuntary. The sound of Penny MacHale’s body responding to mine in a language that bypasses everything her brain is telling her about me.
Loop three: her wrist. The bracelet still there. Teal and yellow against her pulse. She still wears it. And my wrist is bare. The pale strip of skin where my bracelet lived for eleven years, cut off by cops, sealed in plastic.
I am angry at Penny for taking those pills.
I am terrified of losing Penny.
I want Penny. I want my hands on her. I want her voice saying my name in the dark.
I miss Penny. I miss the girl who made playlists called “songs that taste like yellow” and believed the right song could fix anything.
I am scared to touch Penny because every time I touch her, something breaks.
I am scared to not touch Penny because every time I stop, she reaches for the pills.
The loop runs. And runs. And runs.
I round the corner toward my locker. And there she is.
Penny. At her locker. In the uniform—plaid skirt, white button-up, blazer with the crest. Black knee socks.
Converse. Her hair is in the bun. The teal streaks almost gone.
She looks thin. Fragile. Like a pencil drawing someone could smudge with their thumb.
Kole is hovering near her. Five feet away. Not engaging—watching. The patience of a boy who heard Penny was in the hospital and interpreted vulnerability as opportunity.
Penny isn’t engaging. Her back is to him. She hasn’t looked at him. But she hasn’t told him to leave, and that’s what makes the green beast roar.
He pushes off the wall. Steps closer. Opens his mouth.
I’m already moving. I follow him into the locker room. Shove him from behind. His chest hits the locker and he spins, eyes wide.
“Leave. Penny. Alone.”
He chooses wrong: “She’s fair game, bro. Especially after that hospital stay. Damaged goods are always—”
I hit him before he finishes. The locker room door opens. Kaiden first. Then Iz. Danny. Ryan. Kaiden takes one look and his expression shifts to amusement.
“All good?”
“Kole thinks Penny is fair game. Called her damaged goods.”
Danny locks the door. Ryan positions himself in front of it.
Kaiden: “Make it fair.”
Kole gets up. Squares up—sloppy, emotional. He swings. I sidestep.
Danny, from the door: “Low shot, Kole. My grandmother moves faster and she’s been dead for three years.”
Laughter. The boys. The particular laughter of teenage boys watching a fight they know the outcome of. It’s awful and wrong and the most normal thing we’ve done in months—just five boys in a locker room, being boys.
Kole charges. I grab him. Slam him against the lockers.
Ryan, helpful: “Left side is open. His guard drops every time he lunges.”
Kaiden: “Body shot first. Take the air out. Then the face.”
Iz, shaking his head but grinning: “You guys are terrible people.”
Danny: “The worst. But look at his form. He’s getting better.”
Kole gets a shot in—his fist catching my ribs.
Kaiden: “Oh shit! Hands up, X!”
Danny: “Did Kole just land a hit? Mark the calendar.”
Ryan: “Blind squirrel. Nut. You know the rest.”
I circle Kole. Slow. Watching him spin, getting dizzier.
Kaiden: “End it, X. The bell rang two minutes ago and I have calculus.”
One punch. Clean. Kole drops.
Danny: “Beautiful. Chef’s kiss.”
Ryan, making notes on his phone: “Two minutes forty-three seconds. Personal best for Kole’s consciousness.”
Kaiden: “Somebody get him water. And delete the video, Danny.”
Danny: “What video?”
Kaiden: “Daniel.”
Danny sighs. Pockets his phone.
Ryan and Danny drag Kole to the showers. Splash cold water on his face. The boys file out. Iz doesn’t.
He’s leaning against the sink. Arms crossed. The stillness of Issac Walsh when a conversation is going to happen and participation is not optional.
“You need to stop,” he says. Not angry. Tired. “The fighting. The possessiveness. The ‘she’s mine’ bullshit. You can’t claim a person you’re actively destroying. That’s not love. That’s ownership. And we both know where you learned that word.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because from where I’m standing, you’re doing the same thing your father did to your mother—pushing her away, pulling her back, making her feel like the distance is her fault when it’s yours.”
I stare at my hands. “I need to ask you something. And I need you to be honest.”
“Always.”
“Do you have feelings for Penny?”
Iz doesn’t flinch. He uncrosses his arms. Puts his hands in his pockets. Looks at the floor.
“Yeah.” Quiet. Careful. “I started to. Over the last few weeks. Walking her to class. Sitting with her. Being the person she leaned on when you weren’t there.
” He looks up. “I want to be honest, X. The ‘babe’ in the hallway was strategy. But the rest—the wanting to protect her, the way my chest does something when she laughs, the way I started looking for her in rooms before anyone else—that was real.”
The green beast roars. But underneath the jealousy—gratitude. Because when I was too busy being cruel to hold her, Iz held her.
“But I know,” Iz continues. “She’s yours.
Not because you claimed her—because she chose you.
Before any of us. She chose you when she tied that bracelet on your wrist. I can’t compete with that.
I wouldn’t want to. She needs you. But I swear to God, Xander—if you hurt her again, I won’t step back a second time. I’ll step forward. And I won’t lose.”
“I hear you.”
He pushes off the sink. Starts toward the door. Stops. “For the record—the ‘babe’ thing? Your face was priceless.”
“Fuck you.”
“Love you too, brother.”
He’s almost out when I call after him. “Iz. What’s going on with Bella?”
The grin drops. Instant. His jaw sets. Hands in pockets. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit. I’ve seen how you look at her. And how you look away. That’s not nothing.”
“We had a thing. The thing is over.” Sharp. The sharpest I’ve heard Iz go. “It’s over, X. I don’t want to talk about it. Not now. Not here. Probably not ever.”
He walks out. The door closes.
Everybody’s got a story they’re not telling. Even the boy who holds the rest of us together.
The MacHale house at midnight. I come home late. Parked in the driveway staring at Penny’s dark window, running the loops.
Inside it’s quiet. I stop at Penny’s door, press my hand flat against the wood. I feel nothing—no sound, no movement. The door stays closed because I don’t have the right to open it.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Gideon sits alone. He’s at the table. Tea this time, not beer—Alice has been talking to him about stress responses. RISD t-shirt. Reading glasses. A book he’s not reading. He’s been waiting.
He pushes a mug toward the empty chair. Tea, already made, already the right temperature. I sit.
“Heard about Kole,” he says.
“He called Penny damaged goods and said she deserved better than me.”
Gideon’s jaw tightens. “Then he deserved it. For the record: I don’t condone violence. I also don’t condone boys calling my daughter damaged goods. Moral gray area.”
The silence that follows is the Gideon kind—inhabited. Making space.
“G. How did you know Alice was the one? You came from nothing. She came from everything. What made you cross that gap?”
Gideon sets his tea down. Takes his glasses off. Full face for what comes next.
“I didn’t know she was the one. I knew she was the person whose presence changed my chemistry. When I was near her, the noise in my head got quieter. For a kid who grew up in a house full of screaming, quiet was the most valuable thing anyone had ever given me.”
He leans forward. Elbows on the table. The posture of a man talking to his son.
“The risk isn’t what you think it is. You think the risk is that you’ll hurt her.
That your darkness will infect her. I thought the same thing for years.
And you know what happened while I was busy protecting Alice from me?
She found her own darkness. Without my help.
At RISD with a rolled-up dollar bill and a line of cocaine.
She didn’t need me to bring the dark. It was already there. ”
The parallel is so precise it makes my spine straighten. Penny. The pills. The darkness triggered not by me but by a basement and a kidnapping and a predator named Garrett.
“The real risk,” Gideon says, “isn’t that you’ll hurt her by being close.
It’s that you’ll hurt her by staying away.
You’re the person Penny chose. When you pulled away, you took the one person she trusted enough to be honest with.
And without that person, she found other ways to get quiet. Worse ways.”
“I’m in deep, G.” The honesty that Gideon’s kitchen extracts from me. “Reece. The fights. The debt. It’s not just me—it’s Penny, it’s Daisy, it’s a network. Callum and Thomas are already working on it. Arthur is building a legal case. But it’s bigger than I told you at the hospital.”
Gideon listens. His face doesn’t change—the career crisis manager absorbing bad information and converting it to strategy.
“Callum and Thomas are good men,” he says. “Arthur is the best lawyer in the state. But they don’t know everyone I know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a PR specialist. That’s the clean version.
The real version: I know people. Media. Federal contacts.
People who owe me favors from twenty years of managing crises for clients whose names you’d recognize.
If Reece’s operation is as connected as you’re describing, this isn’t local.
This is federal. And I have a phone call I can make. ”
“Let’s all talk,” he says, standing. “Callum, Thomas, Arthur, me. The four of us. Tomorrow night. We build this together.”
He pauses at the stairs. Turns back. “Kole was right about one thing.”
“What.”
“Penny deserves better. She deserves the boy who tied a bracelet on her wrist at seven and promised forever. That boy isn’t dead, Xander. He’s just been hiding. Time for him to come out.”
He walks upstairs. I sit with cold tea and the porch light through the window and the pale strip on my wrist.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe the boy from the swings isn’t dead. Maybe he’s been in the dark, waiting for someone to leave the porch light on.
I go to bed. Across the hall from Penny. Through the wall, her voice—soft, muffled, on the phone with Cat. The murmur of two girls talking in the dark about things they can’t say in the light.
I press my hand to the wall. Feel nothing but drywall and paint and the two feet of construction between two people who have never felt further away.
Tomorrow, Darla’s program starts. Tomorrow, the real work begins. Tomorrow, I start becoming the boy who deserves to say “forever” and mean it. But tonight, I just listen to her voice through the wall and pretend I can hear the words.