Chapter Eight #2
“Right,” Zach breathes. Talking to Parker is like edging around a landmine.
He doesn’t know the right things to say.
Except it doesn’t happen when they’re talking about Parker’s plan.
He wishes they could go back to those quiet minutes on his porch.
That felt normal. Like they could actually be friends.
“Do you want to go off campus for lunch?” Parker asks, changing the subject. He stands up from the table, leaning forward with his palms laid flat. Zach looks down at his turkey sandwich, uneaten and ripped up.
“I don’t have a car,” Zach says. He starts shoving the remains of his sandwich back in its ziplock bag anyway.
“Five Guys is, like, ten minutes away,” Parker says.
Zach doesn’t really want to go off campus. He’s packed the same turkey sandwich for lunch ever since he graduated from eating peanut butter and jellies in elementary school. But Parker is looking at him like he actually earnestly wants Zach for company, so he relents.
“Okay,” Zach says, pushing his lunch to the bottom of his backpack as he stands from the table.
When Zach turns to follow Parker out of the cafeteria, he catches sight of Isaac watching them, his face slack with surprise. Zach meets his eye and shrugs. Parker walks too fast down the hall, and Zach has to do an embarrassing half-jog thing to keep up with him.
The Five Guys is actually fifteen minutes away, and they only have forty-five minutes for lunch, and by the time they get there and order, it’s already 12:34.
Zach can’t stop thinking about how he’s definitely not going to make it back to school in time for Calculus—and he’s already not doing so well, so he really shouldn’t miss any new information.
Parker orders a bacon cheeseburger, and Zach orders nothing, too busy glancing nervously at his watch.
They sit on the curb outside while Parker eats, his long legs stretched out onto the asphalt in front of them.
“We’re going to be late getting back,” Zach worries.
“Okay. Then let’s not go back,” Parker says.
Zach hunches his shoulders. He’s never skipped school a day in his life. “You—you want to skip the rest of school?”
“What, you’ve never done it?” Parker crumples up his hamburger wrapper and throws it at the trash can outside the door. It misses and falls to the ground. “What does it matter? It’s not like we’re going to finish school anyway.”
That makes Zach’s skin tighten all over his body. He puffs out an uncomfortable breath. “Parker…”
He should tell someone. He should stand up to Parker and tell him, No, no, actually, I’m not going to do this, and maybe you should go back to the hospital, because you shouldn’t be talking about killing yourself as much as you do. But…
Parker can’t talk about it. With anyone.
Not even with his own twin. Not even with his parents.
He survived trying to kill himself, and he can’t say anything to anyone.
Nobody wants to talk about it. Zach stares at his hands in his lap, turning them over, palm up.
Maybe Parker keeps talking about it because Zach is the only one listening. And how can he take that away from him?
Zach looks up, watching the way Parker stares pointedly ahead, the knot in his jaw jumping as he clenches his teeth.
“Okay. Yeah… let’s skip,” Zach says. His stomach immediately cramps up. “Except, I’m pretty sure if you miss more than two periods they call your parents.”
Parker shrugs.
Zach is physically incapable of being so nonchalant when it comes to getting in trouble.
But the way Parker just doesn’t care is almost as infectious as his dark moods.
Even though Zach’s heart races while they cross the Five Guy’s parking lot and head toward the main road, he feels…
almost cool. Like he has a friend. Even though he and Parker are hanging out together under some extremely dubious circumstances, Zach is getting used to the quiet, moody ghost at his side.
“So…” Parker says as they walk. His hands are shoved into the pockets of his jacket. He doesn’t have his school bag with him. “Why do you wanna… you know.” He pulls one hand out of his pocket and jerks his thumb across his throat. The motion is so absurd that Zach can’t help but laugh a little.
“I don’t know,” Zach says, voice tight.
It’s a half-truth. He knows. He’s just never articulated it to another human being before—not his therapist, not the psychiatrist who writes his prescriptions, not his mom, not Isaac.
He’s never even said the words out loud to himself, or in a diary or anything.
Like Parker, he’s kept it all bottled up until it erupts in the form of a long, silent walk to the train tracks.
“Come on,” Parker says, elbowing him in the arm. “Don’t pussy out on me.”
It’s like they’re talking about anything else. Parker’s indifference is both comforting and off-putting at the same time.
“It’s just… hard, isn’t it?” Zach says after a moment, scrubbing the palm of one hand against his arm.
“School and making friends and the future and… And it’s not like I really have any friends.
Isaac—Isaac Brackenborough, you know? He’s, like, my only friend, and sometimes I don’t even think he likes me that much. ”
Parker is quiet for a minute, the only sound between them being Parker’s heavy boots on the pavement and the cars whipping by them on the main street. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “Me too. The—the friends thing, and school, and my family…”
Zach wants to ask about Paige—how could Parker stand not telling her?
Why don’t they like each other? Zach always had the idea that twins are supposed to be weirdly attached at the hip.
But with Parker and Paige, it’s like they’re opposite magnets who are really upset about it.
Always orbiting each other but never seeming like they want to be the other’s twin.
“Besides, I’m the fuck-up in the family,” Parker goes on.
He kicks his foot against a crushed can on the sidewalk.
It bounces into the street. “I don’t think Paige has even gotten so much as a tardy on her attendance sheet.
It’s really easy to find where the rot is growing when you compare me to her. ”
Zach frowns. He wants to tell Parker that he doesn’t think he’s rotten but before he can say anything, Parker effectively changes the subject by jogging across the street before the light has turned, causing a car to slam on its brakes and honk.
Zach waits anxiously on the other side for the walk signal, then scurries to catch up.
They make their way further from the school, toward a small cluster of stores separated from the road by a mostly empty parking lot.
“Where are we—” Zach starts to ask, before Parker cuts across the parking lot and walks toward Books on Books, the local book and media exchange.
Zach has come here once, a year or so after the divorce, when his mom cleaned out the storage space behind the house and found a bunch of his dad’s old books.
They packed them up and brought them to the book exchange, where they earned a shocking ninety-eight dollars in store credit.
Zach’s mom let him pick something out. He still remembers how heavy the National Parks guide felt in his hands as he brought it up to the counter.
The bell above the door rings. There’s a tired university student working at the front counter. She glances up at them without much enthusiasm before going back to the book she has open in front of her.
“My mom and I came here once,” Zach says nervously, following Parker as he weaves absently through the store.
There’s music playing overhead, but the store still feels so quiet.
There’s only a handful of other customers.
“We took a bunch of books that my mom kept from my dad after the divorce and we got, like, almost a hundred dollars. Not in cash, they only do a little bit of cash or something, but we got a lot in store credit—”
Parker doesn’t seem to be listening. He’s looking at a shelf, his brow furrowed.