Chapter Eight #3
“Um, so…” Zach trails off. He doesn’t know why he even said anything.
Of course, Parker doesn’t care about that stuff.
Parker has real problems that are probably bouncing around in his head.
He’s got weird parents who hide things from his sister and big secrets that he’s keeping.
Of course he doesn’t care about Zach’s dumb book exchange story.
“What did you get?” Parker asks, not looking at him. He’s pulled a book from the shelf, thumbing through the pages.
“Huh?” Zach asks.
“When you came with your mom.”
A strange feeling goes through Zach as he realizes that Parker hadn’t actually been ignoring him.
It reminds him of that first day, when Parker stopped to help him pick up his papers.
Or that moment in Zach’s kitchen, when Parker complimented the note his mom left behind.
Little moments that are entirely incongruous with the person that everyone thinks Parker is.
A slow smile pulls at the edge of Zach’s mouth.
“Oh, yeah,” Zach says. “I got a guidebook on national parks. It’s huge, I haven’t even finished reading it yet and that was, like, years ago. It probably weighs, like, ten pounds or something.”
Parker is looking at him now, his face twisted up in some complicated way. Kind of half-smiling but also kind of looking upset about it. Zach’s stomach drops and he looks down.
“Can’t you just Google everything there is to know about national parks?” Parker asks. “Or go to the library or something?”
Zach is still looking elsewhere. He shrugs, feeling a bead of sweat drip under the collar of his shirt. “I mean—yeah, I guess, but this had, like, pictures.”
Parker laughs, but like, really laughs. The sound is so startling that Zach actually jumps, goosebumps prickling all along his spine and his arms. He lifts his head so fast to see what Parker looks like when he laughs that he almost pulls a muscle, a tinge starting in his neck.
Parker’s face is all screwed up and his lips are pulled into a helpless smile.
Normally, Zach would rather eat an entire wasp’s nest than openly encourage someone to laugh at him, but he adds: “You should really get more books with pictures in them.”
Parker’s laugh, which had died down, starts up again and he swings his fist into Zach’s shoulder. “God, shut up,” he says, around a spasm of laughter. The punch doesn’t hurt. Parker’s cheeks are darkened with a faint blush.
They browse the bookstore together. Zach stays close to Parker, mostly because he’s terrified that maybe today is the day that his mom is going to stay home from work and come into the book exchange for the first time in years.
By the time they’re done, Parker ends up with an armful of books, all of them fiction, and Zach picks out The Curious Explorer’s Guide to Acadia.
“What’s Acadia?” Parker asks, tilting his head to read the cover as they walk out of the book exchange.
“Oh man,” Zach says, then flushes with embarrassment over being excited about something so dorky.
“It’s a national park. Acadia. It’s in Maine.
The hiking there is—it’s insane. There’s, like, huge mountains and islands, and the coast—I want to do, like…
environmental science, you know? Like, conservation stuff.
Mostly plants and mushrooms, you know. I’m really into, like…
foraging. There’s not a lot around here, but I’ve found some cool stuff.
And I would love to work in a park, like any park, someday.
But if I could work there, that’s the dream. That’s the big time.”
“The big time,” Parker says, swinging his paper bag of books.
“The big time,” Zach repeats, and it makes Parker smile.
They make their way back to the school around 2:30 p.m., so Parker can catch a ride home with Paige.
The Reids live across town in the suburbs, where the houses are huge and sprawling with long driveways and big backyards.
He’s never seen their specific house, but Zach has taken the bus to that side of town before to see his therapist. He tries to picture Parker in one of those big, pristine houses, with an immaculately manicured lawn and perfectly white shutters on all the windows.
He can’t. Every time he tries, all he can picture is Parker slumped across from him in the cafeteria, miserable and moody.
They part ways at the front doors of the school.
“I’ll email you,” Parker says over his shoulder, heading toward the senior parking lot as the final bell rings.
Zach watches him go. Parker swings his bag of books as he walks and Zach latches onto that as he disappears between the cars.
Parker bought new books, so maybe he’s not ready to die just yet.
Zach shoves his new Acadia guide into his backpack and hurries off toward his route home, wanting to avoid a ride with Isaac because Isaac will inevitably have more questions.
The trip to the book exchange feels private.
Like a piece of Parker no one else has. Zach wants to keep it and he can’t figure out why.
When Zach gets home, there’s a message from the school’s front office on the answering machine about him having missed class that afternoon. Nervous but channeling some of Parker’s nonchalance, Zach erases the evidence of his walkabout.