Chapter Two
Parker Reid doesn’t show up for the second day of school.
Or the third. For the rest of that first week, Paige arrives alone, and Parker is nowhere to be seen.
There’s a palpable difference in the hallways, and Zach has a feeling that everyone is very aware of Parker’s absence.
The biome of the school feels a little off.
Parker reminds Zach of an ensnared animal.
Once during sophomore year, Zach witnessed half of the hockey team knocking Parker’s books out of his arms. He’s heard snarky comments and slurs made behind Parker’s back—and to his face.
Parker’s distinctive dark clothes and grungy style have inspired references to serial killers and infamous troubled teens with a body count.
The way people treat Parker makes Zach thankful that nobody notices him enough to give him the same treatment.
And, alternatively, sends him into a spiral that one day they might.
There’s no way that Zach could do what Parker does—take the hits and keep hitting back. It always seems like none of that stuff bothers him. Or, at the very least, he has no moral qualms with terrorizing anyone who terrorizes him first.
“Do you think he’s in jail?” Isaac asked that first Friday, slumped next to Zach’s locker as he exchanged his textbooks. “I heard he used to break into people’s houses when we were freshmen. I’m surprised he’s not already in jail.”
Zach shrugged, not wanting to speculate. If he speculated on whether or not Parker was in jail, it might get back to Paige, and the idea of Paige hating him for gossiping about her brother made him nervous.
Zach has a feeling that his crush on Paige has very little to do with himself and a lot to do with the fact that Paige is the kind of girl that boys have crushes on: rich, pretty, smart, friendly, and entirely unobtainable by virtue that her brother is a ticking time bomb.
After Zach’s failed attempt to ask her out to the dance in middle school, Parker had cornered him in the yard during lunch and threatened him with fists that, back then, were tiny and ineffective.
He’d kept his distance since, though Isaac still wouldn’t let him live it down.
The second week of school starts with a three-day weekend for Labor Day—the Brackenboroughs host a cookout for the block, and Isaac puts to rest his insistence that they’re neighbors and not friends long enough for Zach to play several rounds of Super Smash Bros.
They both lose miserably to a group of six twelve-year-olds who live on their street. Despite that, it’s kind of fun.
On Tuesday, Zach is already so used to seeing Paige coming into the school on her own that the sight of Parker nearly shocks him.
The Reid twins walk side by side, Paige just an inch or two shorter than her brother.
They both look wrung-out. Parker is wearing a dark jacket, hood up over his head, his long brown hair obviously uncombed.
Paige looks a little more put together, but as she passes by his locker, Zach can see that dark circles have formed under her eyes.
The sight of it is so jarring that he looks away, heart hammering.
At lunch, Zach sits alone, fingers peeling at the crust of his turkey sandwich.
He spies Isaac, sitting at the end of one of the long tables by the wall, close to a group of kids, but not quite with them.
As his gaze drags over the cafeteria, he spots Bea Unigwe, too, hunkered over at a solitary table with a pair of big headphones squishing down her coils and a book open in front of her lunch tray.
Zach wonders if he sticks out like a beacon when he sits alone, too—a bright signal, letting everyone who looks know what a friendless loser he is.
Paige is absent—the school newspaper kids and the band kids all have a different lunch period—but Zach’s eyes drift over Parker, slumped over at an empty table, arms folded, head against the fake wood grain.
No one sits with him.
No one sits with Zach either. He eats the crust that he’s picked off his sandwich before taking a bite of the rest of it.
The din of voices in the cafeteria becomes a backdrop of white noise.
Zach draws his shoulders up against his jaw, like maybe if he makes himself small enough, he’ll pop out of existence.
When the bell rings to signal the end of lunch, Zach quickly gathers the remains of his lunch in one hand, tucking his binder under his arm with the other.
He makes a straight shot for the trash can by the cafeteria door.
Before he has a chance to throw his garbage away, something hard crashes into him.
His lunch scraps and his binder both go flying, skidding across the cafeteria floor, his papers fanning out like leaves over the scuffed linoleum.
Zach hits the ground with an embarrassing grunt, his face burning as he frantically looks around to see who he ran into—only to find Parker Reid also sprawled out on the floor, already propping himself up on his arms. The other students are streaming around them, stepping out of the way enough not to trample either of them.
They’re not as careful about Zach’s papers, though, and he watches as one of his first homework assignments gets ground beneath a dirty sneaker.
“Sorry,” Zach gasps, getting up on his knees. Parker sits up, too, and his gaze bores into the side of Zach’s cheek, like a physical weight. When Zach glances in his direction, Parker’s eyes shoot away, flickering between the open binder and the loose papers instead.
“Probably my fault,” Parker says. His voice is high and reedy. This close, Zach can see the oddness of Parker’s eyes. His eyes have always set him apart from his sister—the left one brown, the right blue.
“Oh,” Zach says. Parker is probably right. He hadn’t been paying attention, but it definitely felt like Parker ran into him, not the other way around. “Okay, um—sorry, anyway.”
Parker shrugs and starts gathering up the papers spread out around them.
The gesture is so surprisingly nice that Zach almost doesn’t notice when Parker’s fingers land on the note, wrinkled with creases from where Zach opened and folded it over and over again.
He tries to reach for it instead, but Parker has already flipped it over onto the pile in his other hand.
Zach can only watch in utter horror as Parker’s eyes flicker over the note.
Three lines, seventeen words. It takes half a second to read. Maybe a little longer to comprehend.
Zach snatches the pile of papers out of Parker’s hands, shoving them back into the binder.
“Thanks,” he says, his stomach twisting around itself.
He could throw up. He might. It’s a close thing.
Parker doesn’t say anything. Zach can’t decide if that’s better or worse. “Um, thanks, but—I got it, so…”
In his peripheral vision, Parker stands up. He’s wearing heavy boots. The laces are untied. By the time Zach has shoved all his papers, including the note, back into his binder, Parker is gone.
“Hey,” another voice says. Zach looks up, shaking. He wraps his arms around his binder, like someone might try to wrench it out of his grip. Bea Unigwe stands in front of him, her lips turned down at the corners. She reaches a hand down, offering it to him. “Are you okay?”
Zach swallows noisily.
“Um, yeah.” He takes her hand and lets her pull him up. She’s stronger than she looks, and her hands are cool and dry. Can she feel how damp his palms are?
“Sorry, I mean—thanks. I’m fine,” he says, blinking rapidly to disperse the sharp tears that begin to gather. His heart beats frantically against his ribs. It feels like it’s going to burst out of his skin.
Bea smiles thinly, her brows pulling together. “I don’t think he meant to run into you,” she says, leaning closer so that she can speak softly. She squeezes one hand against his upper arm before she turns away and heads from the cafeteria.
Whether or not Parker meant to, he did. And that moment has ruined Zach’s life.
His next class is Calculus, but Zach’s whole body has turned to liquid.
He barely manages to stumble to the nearest bathroom.
As he closes himself into the furthest stall from the door, his legs give out.
He slumps against the cool tile wall, pressing his fists against his forehead.
He tries the breathing exercises his therapist taught him—in for a count of seven, out of a count of ten—or is it the other way around? Or a different number entirely?
His Ativan is in his backpack, which is in his locker. By the time he thinks to go and grab it, the bell signaling the end of the passing period rings. He doesn’t have a hall pass, and he doesn’t want to have to explain what he’s doing.
An image of Parker reading the note fills the space behind his eyes.
He was so stupid. He should have thrown it away.
He should have ripped it up, or buried it, or shredded it—anything.
He should have burned it. He should never have written it in the first place.
Now, Parker is probably going to tell an adult, like a teacher or his parents, and then they’ll call his mom, and then she’ll know that he’s so screwed up that he tried to—
Zach curls tighter on himself, forehead against his knees, struggling to breathe through the sudden panic and shame that grips like an icy fist around his throat. The stupid counting technique from his therapist isn’t helping.
Outside the stall, one of the sinks is dripping, a rhythmic plunk… plunk…plunk…
Zach matches his breathing to the drips, pressing his back firmly against the wall. His heart is still exploding behind his ribs, but his breathing begins to even out. He slowly uncurls his legs, stretching them across the stall.
He’ll talk to Parker. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll ask him nicely not to say anything. After all, he stopped to help him pick up his papers. He didn’t beat him up for running into him—or for being in the way and getting himself run over. It’ll be fine. Maybe Parker is reasonable.
Thinking about confronting Parker sends a wave of nausea through Zach’s insides. He rubs his hands over his face, breathing as evenly as he can, filling up his lungs with the slightly sticky air of the bathroom.
He drops his hands back into his lap, staring straight ahead at the other side of the stall.
Someone has scratched a rude word into the metal.
As his breathing returns to normal, Zach opens his binder in his lap and carefully smooths out and rearranges all of his papers.
He starts practicing what he’ll say to Parker under his breath.
Eventually, the next bell rings, and the sound of students flooding the halls tells him it’s safe to make his escape.