12. Xander
Sleep is a concept I no longer participate in.
Three nights across the hall from Penny MacHale.
Three nights of listening to her voice through the wall—on the phone with Cat, the murmur I can hear but can’t decipher, the frequency of a girl talking about things she can’t say in daylight.
Three nights of pressing my hand to the drywall like I can reach her through plaster and paint.
Three nights of not reaching for the pills because Alice cleared them and because Darla’s voice is in my head now—calm, steady, the voice of a woman who said “one day at a time” and meant it literally.
The craving is still there. It’s always there.
But the craving for Penny is louder. That’s the thing nobody tells you about recovery—you don’t stop craving.
You just replace the substance with something else.
Something that burns differently. Something with teal streaks and grey-blue eyes and the taste of strawberries and mint.
My sweet siren. Singing from the room across the hall. And I’m the sailor who tied himself to the mast and is listening to every note while the ropes cut into his wrists.
And then there’s Iz. The image that plays on top of the Penny images—a double exposure, burning through the film.
Iz’s hand on her back in the hallway. Iz’s mouth near her ear.
Iz making her laugh the laugh that used to be mine.
Iz’s fingers brushing her hair behind her ear with the particular tenderness of a boy who is not performing anymore—who has crossed the line from strategy to sincerity and is touching her because he wants to, not because I’m watching.
He said he’d step back. In the locker room.
After the Kole fight. He looked me in the eye and said the feelings were real but he was stepping aside because Penny chose me.
And then he walked into the library and put his hands on her face and I watched her lean into it—lean into him—and the stepping-back looked a lot like stepping forward from where I was standing.
Is it real? Are they real? Or is it the strategy—the two-front jealousy operation, me and Bella, Penny as the weapon?
And does it matter? Because whether Iz is performing or not, Penny’s body is responding.
Her body doesn’t care about strategy. Her body cares about the hands that are present, and his hands are present, and mine are across the hall pressed against drywall like a fucking ghost trying to haunt a house he no longer lives in.
The loop runs. Penny’s whimper in the kitchen.
Iz’s hand on her face. The treehouse floor.
The bracelet. Penny’s whimper. Iz. The treehouse.
The bracelet. Around and around until my skull feels like a washing machine and the only thing that would stop it is a pill or a punch or Penny’s mouth on mine, and I can’t have any of them.
I duck into an empty classroom to get my head together before first period. Except it’s not empty.
Ryan is in the far corner. His back to the door. His body angled to shield something—someone—behind him. The particular posture of a boy who is being a wall on purpose. Protective. Deliberate.
A giggle. Soft. Female. The sound of a girl who is happy and trying not to be loud about it.
I clear my throat.
Ryan spins. His face goes from soft to steel in a fraction of a second—the speed of a boy who has been keeping a secret and has just been discovered.
Behind him, a girl scrambles—buttoning her blouse, smoothing her red hair, her hands shaking.
Ally O’Toole. Small. Quiet. The kind of girl who moves through Edgewood Prep like a ghost—present but unnoticed, deliberately invisible, the survival strategy of a person who has learned that attention is dangerous.
She pushes past me without making eye contact. But I catch it—the fear in her eyes. Not of me. Of being seen. The terror of a girl whose visibility could cost her something I don’t yet understand.
Ryan zips his pants. Adjusts his belt. Turns to me with the expression of a boy who is about to either explain or attack, and hasn’t decided which.
“What the fuck, man.” Not angry. Scared. Ryan Harrington—the morally flexible information specialist, the boy who has a file on everyone and an angle on everything—is scared.
I lean against the doorframe. Close the door.
“Talk to me.”
“Mind your fucking business, X.”
“We said no more secrets. Remember? Danny’s pool house. The wall. Danny sat on the other side and said ‘I don’t forgive you yet but I’m not leaving.’ Same rules apply here, Ry. I’m not leaving. So talk.”
The fight goes out of him. He drops into a chair. Puts his head in his hands. When he looks up, his face is the face of a boy who has been carrying something too heavy for his frame and is about to set it down.
“Ally’s being sold.”
The sentence hits the room like a brick through glass.
“Her father. Roman. The policy advisor.” Ryan’s voice is low, controlled, thecadence of a boy delivering intelligence.
“He arranged a marriage. Not a real one—not yet. But a commitment. To a man who is… older. Our fathers’ age.
Maybe older. It’s a deal. Ally in exchange for political access, business connections, whatever currency men like her father trade in. ”
“What the fuck?”
“She has to be… untouched. When the arrangement is finalized. That’s the terms. If the man finds out she’s not—if he finds out about me—” Ryan’s jaw works. “He’ll kill her, X. I’m not being dramatic. He’ll kill her. And her little brother. Tobias. He’s six.”
I sit down across from him. The weight of what he’s carrying settles on my shoulders alongside my own weight—the pills, the cage, the treehouse, the bracelet in the evidence bag.
We are all carrying things. Every single one of us.
The Elite Five isn’t a friend group. It’s a support system for boys who are drowning in different oceans but treading the same water.
“Have you slept together?”
The silence is the answer. Ryan’s face does the thing it does when he’s calculating—not data this time. Risk. The risk of admitting what he’s done and what it means.
“Yeah.” Quiet. Heavy. The word of a boy who knows exactly what that admission costs. “We tried to stop at everything else. For months. But we—we couldn’t. And now she’s not what he was promised, and if he finds out—”
“He’ll know.”
“He’ll know. And it’s not just her, X. It’s Tobias. It’s her mom. The whole family is leverage. And I’m the one who fucked it all up because I couldn’t keep my hands off the girl I love.”
“Ryan. We have to tell the guys. Callum and Thomas are already building the Reece case. Arthur is making calls. If Ally’s situation is as bad as you’re saying—”
“I know. I know we need to. I’m just… scared.
Telling people means it’s real. And if it’s real, then she’s really in danger, and I can’t—” His voice cracks.
Ryan Harrington’s voice cracks, and I’ve known him for six years and this is a first. “I can’t lose her, X.
She’s—she’s the only person who makes the noise quiet. ”
The noise quiet. The same words I use for Penny. The same words Gideon used for Alice. The same frequency—different source, same frequency.
“You won’t lose her. The dads are already in motion. We add Ally to the plan. We protect her.” I lean forward. “But you have to tell them, Ry. Soon. No more carrying this alone.”
He nods. Wipes his face. Stands. Extends his hand.
I take it. We grip—the handshake-to-hug that boys do when the emotion is too big for a handshake and too raw for a full embrace.
“No more secrets,” he says.
“No more secrets.”
He walks out. I stand in the empty classroom and think about siren songs and the boys who sail toward them and the particular fact that every single one of my brothers is in love with a girl who is some version of drowning, and we are all swimming toward the sound, and nobody knows if we’re rescuing or joining.
He said he’d step back.
Iz. In the locker room. After the Kole fight. He looked me in the eye and said “I’m stepping back” and I believed him because Iz doesn’t lie—Iz is the one person in our group who treats honesty like oxygen and can’t survive without it.
So why the fuck is his hand on Penny’s back in the hallway at two-fifteen on a Tuesday.
I’m at my locker. Pretending to look for a textbook I don’t need.
But my eyes are on them—twenty feet away, walking toward the exit, Iz’s hand on the small of Penny’s back, her body tilted toward him, laughing at something he said.
They stop at her locker. She opens it. He leans against the one beside hers—the position, the proximity, the geography of a boy who is occupying a girl’s space by invitation.
He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She smiles up at him. He leans down and kisses her cheek.
He said he’d step back.
The green beast doesn’t roar. It howls. The uncontrolled noise of an animal that has been told the threat is gone and is watching it return in real time.
But I don’t move. I don’t storm over. I don’t grab Iz by the collar or slam Penny against the lockers or do any of the things the old Xander would have done.
Because the old Xander is the reason Penny is in recovery and the reason Iz had the space to fill in the first place.
The old Xander created this. The new Xander—the one Darla is building, the one Gideon is shaping, the one who is three days clean and white-knuckling every hour—the new Xander has to watch and learn and figure out how to earn back what he threw away.
They walk out together. I follow. Not stalking—observing. The particular distinction of a boy who is trying to learn the difference.