The Secret Club of Dead Boys

Chapter One

“First day of senior year!” Zach’s mom crows. He can tell she’s been up since she got home from the warehouse. The circles under her eyes are particularly purple. The cramped kitchen table is stacked with unopened mail and a basket of unfolded laundry. He’s eating a bowl of cereal over the sink.

“Uh-huh,” Zach says. The thought of enduring another first day of school makes him feel like he’s preparing to climb a mountain.

He’s already taken one Ativan—thirty minutes ago, when he woke up already in a cold sweat.

His heart pounds at a steady pace, but there’s no helping his damp palms or the clammy back of his neck.

“Are you excited?” his mom asks, hovering in the doorway of the kitchen. She sounds delusionally hopeful, like maybe everything wrong with Zach has suddenly disappeared overnight, leaving her with a normal kid. “You know—new year, new friends, new classes…”

Zach finishes the last scoop of his cereal and dumps his leftover milk down the drain. “Yeah, totally.”

He doesn’t want to say what he knows they’re both thinking: He’s gone to school with the same people for the last twelve years, and nobody has deigned to be his friend yet. Neither of them should hold their breath.

His mom’s cheerful denial doesn’t waver. When he turns to look at her, her smile only widens. “Do you want me to drive you?” she asks, tapping her fingers against the frame of the kitchen doorway. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Zach swallows and doesn’t tell her that high school seniors who still have their moms drive them to school are losers.

“I was going to go with Isaac,” he says.

Isaac has been Zach’s ride to and from school ever since his parents bought him a used SUV their sophomore year.

Isaac has also been Zach’s only friend since the first grade.

They’re not exactly friend-friends, more like friends of convenience.

They’re next-door neighbors, so their moms arranged playdates between them when they were little.

They’re friends because it’s easier than not being friends.

Their relationship is… weird. Zach can’t tell whether Isaac actually likes him or not.

Sometimes it seems like Isaac isn’t totally sure himself.

It’s probably hard enough to be the only Black and Jewish kid at their small school without having to also be associated with the twitchy, sweaty, poor kid.

Zach thinks that’s probably why they don’t hang out at school, and Isaac pretends like he doesn’t really know him.

He still gives Zach rides to and from school, though. It’s confusing.

“Oh,” his mom says, “I wanted to see you off on your first day.” Relief washes across her face, though.

She must be exhausted. “But good! Okay, well…” She looks around the kitchen, like something in its dingy wallpaper and yellowed linoleum floors will inspire the second half of her first-day-of-school pep talk. “How are you on your medication?”

As always, the conversation loops back around to Zach’s many defects—the unending blitz of Wrong that they keep at bay with three separate prescriptions and the once-a-month therapy appointments his mom’s pathetic benefits can barely cover.

“I’m fine,” Zach says, scratching at his arm. “I should go meet Isaac.”

His mom smiles again, a tentative sort of simper. Zach knows she’s waiting for him to have a meltdown, but the Ativan holds strong. Zach lets her kiss his cheek before he goes to retrieve his backpack from his bedroom.

He grabs one of the binders off his desk, inching open the cover to make sure the note is still tucked inside.

He couldn’t throw it away in his own house—there’s always a possibility that his mom could find it, and then she’d be worried and devastated and she’d hate him, because he’s supposed to be getting better and he’s not.

Maybe he’ll throw it away at school. Bury it deep in one of those covered trash cans in the boys’ bathroom or shred it in the school library.

The thought of letting the note out of his sight makes his stomach sour.

Anyone could find it, and he’s the only Zach W.

in the whole school. If someone found the note, they would probably tell everybody.

And then the administration would call his mom, and everything would be just as terrible as if he threw it out at home.

Zach snaps the binder closed and shoves it into his backpack.

Isaac is just approaching his SUV when Zach crosses over the overgrown patch of grass between their two driveways. “Zachary,” Isaac calls as he yanks open the driver’s side door and slides into the seat. “So good to see you before eight in the morning again.”

Zach and Isaac might get along better if Isaac weren’t constantly doing things that put Zach on edge. Like calling him Zachary or sprinkling every statement with sarcasm that he can’t quite catch. Maybe Isaac thinks he’s being funny. Zach isn’t sure. If it’s a joke, he doesn’t get it.

“Hi,” Zach says. He stands awkwardly by Isaac’s open car door. “Can you—” He starts over, tries to sound nonchalant, the way Isaac always does. “Would it be cool if—”

Zach’s words kind of… die out, the sentence unfinished. Isaac rolls his eyes, scrubbing one hand over the back of his head, where his tight curls have been shaped into a fresh fade. “Get in,” he says, jerking his thumb toward the passenger side. “Jeez. When have I ever said no?”

Zach scrambles into the passenger seat. He puts his backpack on the floor between his feet and squeezes it with his knees. He feels like everyone can tell what’s in his binder—like if Isaac were to look at him too long, he would know.

But Isaac doesn’t look at him. He throws the SUV into reverse and backs out onto the quiet residential street. It’s lined with houses the same as theirs, houses that were built hundreds of miles away and moved here years ago. Houses that waited, perched on cinder blocks, to turn into homes.

Zach can just barely remember the day he moved into his house.

It was the summer right before first grade, after the divorce—a summer Zach tries not to think too hard about.

His mom did her best to keep him out of everything going on between herself and his dad, but their house had been so tense for so long.

That first day, when he and his mom had stood alone in the empty living room of the new house, Zach had cried in relief.

“So, um—how was your summer?” Zach asks Isaac as they turn onto the busy main street congested with morning traffic.

They’d seen each other a handful of times for dinner at the Brackenboroughs, but he’s not sure what Isaac did in between those forced, stilted reunions.

“Are you, I mean—are you excited for senior year?”

Isaac glances at him, his lips turned down at the corners. “No,” he says emphatically. “Who’s excited for school?”

“I just mean,” Zach says quickly, feeling his cheeks warm, which means his face is bound to be as red as his hair. “It’s—senior year, that’s… It’s supposed to be, I don’t know. Kind of cool. Right?”

“You and I have very different definitions of cool,” Isaac mutters.

He turns on the radio, and the car fills with a pop song Zach doesn’t know the name of.

He swallows and slumps a little further in his seat, pressing his knees tighter against his backpack.

Isaac says nothing for the rest of the drive, letting the corny morning radio DJs and their excessive sound effects fill the silence.

When they pull into the senior parking lot, Isaac turns the radio down and turns to Zach. “When are you going to get your license? Not that I don’t love being your personal chauffeur.” There’s that sarcasm again, making Zach feel somehow even more off-kilter.

“I’m… I mean, I have my license,” Zach points out.

He got his license before Isaac got his, but Isaac had failed the written test three times.

Zach hadn’t wanted to rub it in when he passed.

“But, you know. Mom needs the car, so…” His voice grows smaller with every word as Isaac stares at him skeptically, and he eventually trails off, clearing his throat.

After a moment, he adds, “Um, thanks, though.”

Isaac turns off the car and gets out. Zach follows, half-jogging to catch up. “Um, where’s, like, your backpack?” he asks, realizing he can see every technicolor hibiscus on the back of Isaac’s orange Hawaiian shirt.

“It’s the first day of school,” Isaac says, spreading his hands out in front of him. “It’s not like we’re gonna do anything important.”

Zach puts his arms through the straps of his bag as he follows Isaac into the double doors of the school, even though he wants to hug it to his chest. His brain keeps looping this horrifying, ten-second movie it made up where someone sneaks up behind him, reaches into his backpack, pulls out his binder, and finds his note.

Nothing like that has ever happened to him in all his eleven years of school, but what if today is the day that people finally notice him enough to bully him?

Isaac hovers next to Zach’s locker. Close enough to talk to him, but just far away enough that it looks like he’s not waiting up for him.

Zach stashes his bag in his locker and takes out his binder carefully, along with a fresh notebook, squeezing them both into the muggy space under his arm so that nothing falls out.

A low whistle falls from Isaac’s lips, and his elbow connects a little roughly with Zach’s ribs. “Dude, look,” he says, nodding down the hall. Zach turns, half-closing his locker, to follow Isaac’s gaze. “Paige Reid got hot.”