Chapter Four
After the last bell rings, Zach watches Paige Reid as she stands close to the doors that lead out to the senior parking lot. His brain is buzzing with noise, and each breath he sucks into his lungs feels ragged and stagnant.
Sitting at the back of the room in English class had been painful.
All he could do was watch the back of her head and try to come up with some way to talk to her.
But what was he supposed to say? Paige hadn’t raised her hand the entire class, and when Bea Unigwe leaned over to ask if she was okay, Paige barely mustered a smile.
Paige’s pink gingham backpack is on the ground between her feet while she looks down intently at her phone—it looks like one of the new iPhones, but it’s hard to tell from a distance.
She has one thumbnail in her mouth. A nervous tic?
A habit she hasn’t been able to break? Zach can’t help but think about all these little things that he notices, and wonders if other people notice him doing little things too.
Probably not. That’s the whole issue, isn’t it?
That’s his whole problem? That nobody notices him. And nobody ever will.
Except Parker Reid, apparently.
Paige lifts her head, looking around like she’s waiting for someone. When she doesn’t spot whomever it is she’s looking for, she goes back to fiddling with her phone.
He should go over there.
His conversation with Parker replayed in his head all day, so loudly that he couldn’t pay attention to anything the rest of his teachers said. Mr. Harris called on him during Calculus, and he’d been so busy thinking about Parker getting his stomach pumped that he’d entirely missed the right answer.
What would he even say? Hi, Paige, you don’t know me very well, but your brother is planning to try and kill himself again. Oh, how do I know? Well, he wants me to do it with him. You know, like, a suicide pact.
“Shit,” Zach whispers.
He can’t do this. Even thinking about talking to Paige makes all the blood vessels constrict in his head, making him dizzy.
It’s like the eighth-grade dance all over again, but this time Parker might actually kill him if he catches him talking to Paige.
He scrubs his palm through his red hair—then, he worries that he’s made it stick up everywhere.
He lifts his hand back to his head, trying to pat the wavy strands into place.
Zach closes his locker, hitching his backpack over one shoulder.
He sucks in a deep breath, trying to steady himself, before he makes his way over to Paige.
The hair at the back of his neck starts to prickle.
The closer he gets, the more his chest feels like it’s going to either expand beyond the realm of his ribs or combust inward.
He opens his mouth to call Paige’s name, but someone bumps into him, and he skids awkwardly on the linoleum, his sneakers squeaking so loud that it echoes.
Paige looks up at the sound, thumbnail between her teeth, familiar knot between her brows. He’s seen that exact look on Parker’s face.
Zach stares at Paige. He stares for maybe a second too long, because the confusion on her face starts to sour to annoyance. His stomach starts to cramp.
“Hhh—hi,” Zach says. He steps closer, moving his hands to grip at the strap of his backpack. “Um, hi. Paige?” It comes out like a question.
Paige’s face smooths, and she smiles in a way that’s tight all around the eyes. “Hi, Zach.” She drops her hand, rubbing her thumb against the leg of her jeans instead.
This close, Zach can see how brown Paige’s eyes are. They’re so different than Parker’s eyes. They’re both the same color for one. But they’re also so brown they look like little dark cups of black coffee. He doesn’t think he’s ever gotten this close to her, not even in the eighth grade.
“Hi,” Zach says again.
There’s a pause, then Paige says, “Hi?”
He’s so bad at this. Zach tries not to kick himself.
When was the last time he had a real conversation with Paige Reid? Maybe never. They’ve never even been paired up in a group project before.
“Right,” Zach breathes, gripping the straps of his backpack tighter.
“Right, I mean—yeah, yes. Sorry. Hi. Sorry, this is weird, this is… I—I mean…” The words stumble over each other, and he forces himself to stop and take a breath while Paige watches him, her expression slowly crumbling into more and more confusion. “I just think, well, your brother—”
Paige’s tight smile immediately drops, and her shoulders roll forward a little, like she’s trying to defend herself against a physical blow. “Did Parker do something?”
Zach clears his throat, which is suddenly so filled with phlegm it feels hard to speak. “I—what? No!” he says quickly. “I just—I think, maybe…”
“What did he do?” Paige asks, crossing her arms tight around her middle. “I’m not his babysitter, you know. Did he push you or something? Yell at you?”
“No!” Zach says, lifting his hands and waving them a little. “No—he didn’t… He didn’t do anything, but… I think, um, I think maybe—”
Paige turns her focus onto something over Zach’s shoulder.
Reaching down to grab her backpack, she gently steps around him, and Zach turns on the spot, watching as she approaches Parker, who is heading their way down the hall.
His head is ducked, but he lifts his face when Paige reaches him.
She grabs her brother by the arm, dragging him along behind her as she marches toward the doors.
“Your second day back and you’re already causing problems?” Paige snaps, looking up at Parker, her expression fuming. Zach edges backward, out of the way.
“I literally don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Parker says, frowning down at his sister.
When they pass by on their way out the door, Parker glances at Zach. Not like he’d known Zach was there, more like he’d looked at him by accident. Which is probably how most people end up looking at him. He’s just, like, there—a background character in their periphery. Zach meets Parker’s eyes.
Paige pushes open the door, and a rush of humid air sucks its way into the hall. She doesn’t stop to say anything to Zach, doesn’t pause to say bye. It’s like she’s entirely forgotten they were having a conversation.
“Mom and Dad aren’t going to let me do anything if I have to keep…” But Paige’s voice is swallowed by the sound of the door clanging shut after them. He doesn’t get to know what Paige has to keep doing, or what that might have to do with Parker.
Zach’s heart scrabbles like a terrified rabbit. He presses one hand against his sternum, breathing unevenly. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t get the words out. Parker wants to kill himself, wants Zach and him to do it together, and he couldn’t even tell Paige.
What if Parker goes home and tries again? Like, tonight? The thought circles Zach’s head. What other ways are there, even? Zach doesn’t know because Zach does not think about this stuff. Not really. Just the train tracks. And just the one time. Or two times. It’s fine.
Zach is struggling to get more air into his closing throat when a heavy hand claps on his back.
“Hey,” Isaac says. Zach turns to look, overly aware that he is maybe sweatier and redder in the face than normal. “Are you good?”
Isaac looks genuinely concerned, which makes Zach want to laugh at the absurdity. He struggles around a swallow, his mouth sticky with saliva. “Yeah,” Zach says after a moment, then repeats, “yeah.”
Isaac’s face scrunches up a little. “You need a ride home?” he asks. Zach always needs a ride home. He wants to tell Isaac to quit asking like he’s hoping Zach will one day say no.
The problem is, he suddenly feels like he might actually throw up all over Isaac’s car if he gets in.
If he has to sit and think for even one more moment about Parker and what he said in the empty classroom, he might have a heart attack.
At least then he wouldn’t have to deal with this.
He won’t have to figure out what to say to Paige, or if he should tell an adult.
He could just have a heart attack and drop dead, and all of this would be over with.
“I can walk,” Zach says, surprising himself. It’s a long walk, but not one he hasn’t made before. He could catch the bus, maybe, but then he might throw up in public, thinking about whether or not he needs to warn someone about Parker.
Isaac looks taken aback, his brows nearly disappearing into his hairline. “Wait, really?” he asks. “You—dude, since when?”
“Um.” Zach scrubs one hand against his face. “I, um—I don’t feel good.”
The look on his face must seem ill enough that Isaac immediately steps back, holding up both hands. “Ew, say no more.”
“Uh-huh,” Zach wheezes, but Isaac is already turning and heading for the door.
It takes Zach a good ten minutes before he gathers himself enough to step outside and cross the parking lot toward the usual route home.
His attention immediately becomes divided between Parker and what the people in the passing cars are thinking about him.
It’s not a good distraction, because it just makes him all the more aware of himself.
He could call his mom, maybe. She probably kept the packets that all the parents got when he was in elementary school, with all of the parents’ names and phone numbers.
Maybe the Reids are in there. Maybe she could call Parker’s parents.
But then what if Parker tells his parents that he’d asked Zach to kill himself, too, because he found the note he wrote?
And then the Reids would tell his mom, and she would know that he’s broken and all of the medication and therapy is totally worthless.
Zach feels like his head is being squeezed in a vice by the time he gets home.
The house is quiet and empty, all the lights off but the porchlight.
His mom isn’t home. There’s money on the kitchen table for dinner, but he bypasses the kitchen and goes straight for his room.
He digs into the bottom of his backpack, pulling out the plastic pill bottle of Ativan.
His hands shake so badly that he dumps the whole bottle out into his palm by accident.
You are a nobody. Nobody would care if a couple of nobodies just—went away forever.
Parker’s voice rings in his head like a bad migraine that he can’t get rid of. He stares down at the handful of pills. Little white circular tablets, piled on top of each other in the cradle of his palm.
Zach carefully tips pills back into the bottle, then digs one out with his fingertips.
He takes a swig from last night’s bottle of water, stale on the nightstand, and swallows it.
He sits, gripping the edge of his mattress while he waits for it to kick in.
He should tell someone. He should call his mom.
As far as suicide methods go, a train isn’t a very good way to try and get the deed done.
Like pills. There are a lot of things that can go wrong.
Like, he could live and then be disfigured for the rest of his life, and then everyone would know by looking at him what he tried to do.
Or maybe worse—it could work. There’s no time for regrets.
When a train hits you, that’s it. You’re done.
As the Ativan coats Zach’s racing heart and straining brain in a calm, hazy film, it’s easier to think about Parker.
He’s probably at home right now with Paige and his parents.
And one suicide attempt is probably alarming enough that they know what to look for now.
They probably have it all figured out. Parker probably said that messed-up, mean crap in the empty classroom because he was fresh from the psych ward.
Zach flops down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He breathes and tries not to think about easier ways to die.