Chapter Three
Zach’s plan to confront Parker had been solid.
He’d planned to find him after school and ask him very nicely to please keep what he saw to himself.
He’d practiced what he was going to say over and over, but stopped short of writing it down, so he wouldn’t find himself in this kind of situation again.
He’d intended to do it in the senior parking lot after school yesterday, while Parker sat on the steps and waited for his sister.
But Isaac came through the doors right when Zach was about to open his mouth, ruining the whole thing.
Parker gave Zach a strange, steely look at that moment, and Zach wondered if he was going to have a panic attack all over again.
So, he’s going to do it today. He got almost no sleep thinking about it, but he’s so confident in his speech that he makes it through his third period Environmental Sciences elective with minimal anxiety.
Except that, when the bell rings, and Zach moves toward the door of the classroom, he sees a gloomy shadow looming outside. Alarm bells go off in his head, but he exits anyway, his feet coming to a skidding halt as Parker Reid holds out one arm to stop him.
“Wh—” Zach half-says. Parker pinches the sleeve of Zach’s hoodie and gives one sharp tug, taking a few long steps back before spinning on his heel and heading down the hall.
It takes Zach longer than he would like to get his own feet working enough to follow.
Ahead of him, Parker’s lanky, hunched form pushes shoulder-first into an unlocked door.
Zach hesitates before following him into the empty classroom.
Inside, the lights are off, the only illumination coming from the row of windows against the far wall looking out over the junior parking lot.
Zach hovers by the door as Parker paces to the teacher’s desk at the front corner of the room.
He pushes some papers aside, then slides himself to sit on the top.
His legs are so long that the toe of his heavy boot brushes the floor.
His laces are undone. His jacket is too big on him.
His hands are propped on either side of his hips, entirely covered by the sleeves of his jacket.
“What are we—”
“Shut up,” Parker says.
Zach snaps his mouth shut. He tugs at the front of his hoodie, pulling the collar away from his throat, which is threatening to close up on him.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Everything is going wrong.
He had a plan. A really good plan and a really good speech and now Parker is messing everything up.
“How did you know what class I had?” Zach’s voice comes out in an embarrassing wheeze. Parker shoves one hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a crumbled paper. He unfolds it against his thigh, then flashes it to Zach.
“Took your schedule yesterday,” he answers.
“Oh.” Zach glances back at the door. What if a teacher comes into the room? They could be interrupted at any minute. He kind of hopes they are. He takes an unsteady step forward, grabbing the edge of an empty desk to keep himself upright.
Parker shoves the crumbled schedule back into his pocket. He watches Zach with quiet, blank eyes before he says, weirdly calm: “I think we should kill ourselves together.”
A high-pitched ringing starts in Zach’s ears. The world tips onto its side. His body is hot and cold at the same time. His stomach has dropped out of his ass and is probably trying to crawl away on the rough, thin carpet. Zach barely manages to squeeze out the words, “Excuse me?”
Parker doesn’t repeat himself. He just makes an impatient gesture with one hand. Like, come on, dude, or something.
“I’m not—” Zach starts, stops, can’t find the right words. His lungs hurt with each breath he takes. A lump starts to form in his throat as Parker stares at him with those strange, mismatched eyes. He switches tactics instead. “Please don’t say anything.”
Parker doesn’t say anything back. The fingers of one hand start to rap impatiently against the wood of the desk.
Zach fills the silence, physically unable to stop himself, all of his half-thoughts tumbling forward.
So much for his perfectly prepared speech.
“I didn’t… It wasn’t what it looked like.
What you saw. Which, I know it probably looked…
I mean, obviously, you know what it looked like, but…
Could you maybe not say anything? Please, I—”
“Oh my god, stop,” Parker says, holding both his hands up, face wrinkling into a scowl.
Zach stops. He adjusts his backpack on his shoulders, tugging the straps with anxious energy.
“I know what a suicide note sounds like,” Parker says, finally, when he’s let Zach stew in the quiet between them for an achingly long thirty seconds.
He shoves both his hands into the pockets of his jacket now, pulling the fabric tighter around his body.
“If you find this, please tell my mom I’m sorry. ”
Zach might have been impressed by Parker having the note memorized after nothing but a half-second glance, if he wasn’t so otherwise deeply nauseous and terrified.
He forces himself to focus on the sound of Parker’s voice instead.
Kind of nasally and highpitched. Zach’s brain frantically tries to land on anything other than the reality of the situation in front of him.
Which is Parker Reid, looking at him with his blank face and his two-toned eyes, saying: Let’s kill ourselves together.
“Who fucking dates a suicide note?” Parker asks then.
Zach almost bursts out a hysterical laugh, because it sounds absurd now that Parker says it out loud. Who does that? Zach did. It seemed right. Like, maybe it was important or something. Looking back, it seems so ridiculous.
“I—I don’t know,” Zach says, voice tight.
“Sorry.” The apology comes out, compulsive.
Parker stares at him—not through him, but right at him.
The point between his brows pinches together, his lips turning down at the corners.
He looks sickly and pallid, his typically olive-toned skin now colorless and pale in the low light of the classroom.
This is probably the most that Zach has spoken to Parker in their entire schooling together.
“So why didn’t you go through with it?” Parker asks. “Did you chicken out?” The question is a dagger right between Zach’s ribs.
This can’t be a conversation that he’s actually having. Zach flexes his fingers, looking down at his hands, making sure he’s still in his body. “I…”
Zach swallows around the words. It’s a loaded question with an even more loaded answer.
The answer is that he doesn’t actually want to kill himself, maybe.
He’s not, like, making plans. He doesn’t want to swallow all of his medication or hurt himself.
He’d gone to the train yard, sure, but he’d gotten off the track.
He hasn’t gone back since, so, like… he’s fine, probably.
If he just blinked out of existence, though, nobody would notice or care. His mom would, but then she would see how much better off she was without him.
“I don’t want to?” Zach finally gets out. The words are nearly drowned out by the sound of Parker’s immediate, disbelieving laugh.
“Yeah, right,” Parker says. He hunches his shoulders up against his jaw. He looks so small, suddenly. The Reid twins are both tall, but the way Parker sits curled in on himself makes him look a head shorter than he is.
“You are a nobody,” Parker snaps. The words are a buckshot right to Zach’s temple.
It’s cruel, and completely incongruous with the boy that had helped him pick up his papers yesterday.
The words don’t even sound like they could come from the Parker sitting in front of him, a boy with his shoulders slumped, his eyes almost sad.
They sound like the words of some horrible bully.
Maybe that’s all Parker is, after all.
“A nobody,” Parker repeats, like Zach didn’t hear him the first time. “Just like me. And nobody would care if a couple of nobodies just—went away forever.”
Zach is used to being ignored by his classmates.
He’s used to the occasional insult from Isaac, who always makes it seem like he’s joking, even if he’s saying something particularly mean.
But this—these are things he’s used to thinking about himself.
Now, Parker is using his uncanny ability to pinpoint someone’s worst insecurities and turning it on Zach.
Does it make it more true?
“Because—” Parker starts talking again, but like he’s picking up from a conversation that Zach doesn’t remember having. “Because it’s harder than it looks.” He looks down at his lap now, his long hair swinging forward around his face like a veil. It’s messy, unbrushed and tangled.
“What…?” Zach asks.
Parker juts out his chin. You know, he doesn’t say. The thing they’re both talking around. Zach squeezes his hands so tight that his nails bite into his palm.
“Especially pills.” Parker keeps talking, like he can’t stop himself.
Zach doesn’t want to hear any of it, but he can’t make himself stop him.
He’s really bad at speaking up under normal circumstances, much less whatever nightmare scenario he’s stuck in now.
“Turns out I just got really sick and threw up a lot.”
Zach closes his eyes, scrunching his face up so hard that he starts to see colorful spots behind his eyelids. He leans his hip heavily on the desk. His legs are going to give out if he doesn’t. “You…” he starts, then stops.
“They pumped my stomach anyway, at the hospital.” Parker is still talking. Zach opens his eyes. Parker’s own face is all twisted up in a frown. “After that, the mandatory psychiatric hold is seventy-two hours.”
For a moment, all Zach can hear is the rush of the train rattling along the tracks, so loud in his ears it’s like it’s blowing through the classroom with them. He probably wouldn’t have had to go into a psych hold if he’d stayed on the train tracks. It would have been one and done, for him.
He should tell someone. A parent. A teacher.
A trusted adult. Right? That’s what their mental health unit in eleventh grade health class had said.
If you think someone is going to hurt themselves, you’re not supposed to keep it to yourself.
But Zach is trapped, air scraping hard across his lungs, unable to move or speak.
From above, the bell rings to signal the end of the passing period. Zach’s skin jumps at the sound. Parker’s twisted-up face smooths out.
“Parker,” Zach says. “Um. Look, maybe—”
But Parker is already on his feet. He crosses the classroom and wrenches open the door. In the next moment, Zach is alone with nothing but the sound of his own blood ringing in his ears.