Chapter Twelve #2
Paige knows. Parker doesn’t have to keep it locked up inside of himself anymore—that he tried to take his own life, that he felt those things.
Maybe this means that Parker isn’t thinking about suicide anymore.
Zach wants to ask him about it but he keeps his mouth shut.
He just jiggles his knee next to Parker’s while Paige puts on reruns of Friends.
It’s just a little over an hour later when his mom’s car pulls into the driveway.
Paige and Parker look up at the same time in a moment of twin coordination—at each other, then toward the door—as Zach’s mom comes up the porch steps and enters the house.
Zach is pretty sure he’s never been as relieved to see his mom as he is right now: her heavy, steel-toed boots, her businesslike ponytail, her thick denim, and the shirt with the warehouse logo on the front.
She pauses in the doorway to assess the situation, looking from Zach to the twins.
“Well,” his mom says. “Hi.”
“Hi, Mrs. Williams,” Paige says softly, uncurling herself and sitting up on the love seat.
“Oh, no, please, call me Kate,” his mom says, because that’s apparently something all moms are programmed to say.
“Um, Mom,” Zach says, voice wobbling. “This is Parker and Paige Reid.”
“Hi, guys,” his mom says. She hangs her jacket up by the door, then perches delicately on the arm of the love seat, crossing her arms. “What’s going on, huh?”
Paige sniffles but puts on a brave face as she explains.
“Our parents suck,” she says, frankly. “They suck so much. They—they, like, lied about something really important.” There’s a hesitation there.
Her eyes flick to Parker, like she’s not sure whether she should be telling the whole truth in front of another adult. Parker shrugs.
“They didn’t tell Paige that I tried to kill myself,” Parker clarifies, so plainly that it makes Zach flinch. “And they told me not to tell her either.”
Zach’s mom raises her brows and purses her lips, taking in the information. “Okay…” she says slowly. “Okay.”
The Ativan keeps Zach’s immediate anxiety tamped down.
He’s glad that he gets to give this over to his mom.
He doesn’t have to try and fix it. His mom listens as Paige carefully explains the situation, with expletive-ridden asides from Parker.
They tell her about how Parker took his pills at the end of the summer, about how Paige was told he went to rehab, about how Paige was made to babysit Parker without being told why—that Henry Reid won’t let Parker take the car anywhere on his own, and Paige has to come straight home with Parker every day.
They tell Zach’s mom things that even he hadn’t known until today after witnessing the Reid family dynamic in action—the fighting, the snide jabs from Mr. Reid, the high expectations, the never being good enough.
They unspool their home life, as if they trust that Zach’s mom can fix it, maybe because Zach trusts that she can fix it too.
He feels six years old again, like his mom can do anything.
His mom listens, her expression careful and contemplative. Zach relaxes more and more. Parker and Paige relax too. Parker’s jiggling knee eventually stills, knocking against Zach’s. Zach knocks his knee back. His body is warm through the layers of their clothes.
“Let me call your parents,” his mom says eventually, after Paige has stopped crying again. “So I can tell them you’re here and you’re safe.”
“Do we have to go back?” Paige asks, chewing on her thumbnail.
“I can’t stop your parents from coming to get you, but…” Zach’s mom places her hand gently on Paige’s shoulder. “I’ll see if I can explain that you two just need a night away.”
His mom picks up the landline, gesturing for Parker to punch his parents’ number into the keypad. She takes the phone out onto the porch, her voice going muffled as she closes the door behind her.
“Jesus,” Paige whispers, getting up off the love seat and disappearing down the hallway. The bathroom door clicks shut.
Zach knocks his knee against Parker’s and just listens to the sink running; his mom’s faint voice outside; the low, tired sound of Parker’s breathing.
“Thanks for this,” Parker says, quietly. “I mean, like… sorry we’re invading your house and screwing everything up—”
“You’re really not,” Zach says, as earnestly as he possibly can. “This whole situation—this sucks.” He looks right at Parker. “This is ass.”
Parker’s breath exhales in a sharp, small laugh.
“It’s ass,” Zach repeats firmly. “But I’m—I’m really glad you told Paige. About… you know.” He twists his fingers into the hem of his shirt and tries to keep looking at Parker. He ends up staring at his right shoulder instead. “I think you both needed that.”
Parker shrugs but he knocks his knee against Zach’s again, maybe a little harder than before.
“Yeah,” he says. “I dunno, it’s stupid; it’s so stupid.” He sighs, scrubbing one hand through his hair. “I don’t even know why I kept their secrets anyway.”
Zach pushes his knee into Parker’s and leaves it there. Parker presses back.
“’Cause they’re your parents,” Zach says. “They’re supposed to, like… take care of you.”
“Fuck that,” Parker mutters.
Paige returns from the bathroom, face clear and dry, just as Zach’s mom comes back in from the porch.
“Well,” his mom says. “Your parents said it was alright if you stayed here for the night. I told them you’d call them in the morning before school.” She grabs her jacket off the hook. “I’m going to go out and get some pizza, okay?”
A look of determination has settled over his mom’s face, and Zach has never felt so reassured in his life.
“Thank you, Mrs. Reid,” Paige says. “I mean, Kate.”
Zach hasn’t had someone sleep over at his house since he and Isaac stopped having weekly sleepovers, which had been arranged entirely by their moms. It’s a little weird to have Parker and Paige in his house like this but the tension of the evening starts to leak away.
His mom returns with a box of pizza and a Walmart bag carrying two new toothbrushes and a pair of pink plaid pajamas for Paige.
“You’re a little tall,” she tells Parker, having to look up at him while they stand in the kitchen. “But you can fit into something of Zach’s.”
The four of them eat pizza in the living room in front of the television, and nobody talks about Parker’s suicide attempt or the Reids’ lies for the rest of the evening.
They watch three episodes of Family Feud, and Paige and Zach’s mom form a team against Parker and Zach to try to guess the most answers that end up on the board.
His mom and Paige win by a mile but Zach’s never been good at Family Feud anyway.
Parker keeps saying rude answers that make Zach’s mom laugh and say, “No, stop that.”
When it gets late, Zach digs out the old air mattress from the hall closet while his mom makes up the couch for Paige.
It doesn’t really feel like a sleepover.
Maybe because it’s a school night, or maybe because Parker and Paige aren’t here because they want to be here.
Zach still feels weird and jittery as he gets ready for bed.
Paige raps her knuckles gently on the open bathroom door as Zach brushes his teeth. He startles, turning to look at her. She smiles tiredly, holding up the yellow toothbrush his mom bought her. “Can I come in?” she asks. Zach nods around a mouthful of toothpaste.
They brush their teeth side by side, silent but for the trickle of the sink. When he looks at them both in the mirror, Paige almost looks exactly like Parker. She’s a head taller than Zach, but not as tall as her brother.
Zach feels like maybe he should be excited or nervous, or other things you’re supposed to feel when the girl you’ve had a crush on since the eighth grade is standing right next to you. She’s so close that Zach can feel the warmth of her shoulder as they crowd together at the sink.
But mostly he’s kind of… happy? He’s happy that she’s here, not because she’s Paige Reid and she’s in his house, but because she’s here where Zach knows she’s safe. At least for the night. If the Reid twins were going to run away, Zach reasons, at least they ran away to his house.
Paige spits into the sink, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Can I ask you something?” she says, wiping her mouth.
“Yeah?” Zach answers, focusing very hard on rinsing his toothbrush.
“Did Parker tell you?” Paige asks. “That my parents were keeping this from me?”
Zach’s stomach starts to bubble unpleasantly.
“Yeah,” he says, after a beat. He shuts off the sink and puts his toothbrush back in its holder.
“So, you knew,” Paige says. Her voice wobbles.
Zach lifts his gaze, looking at her in the mirror.
She’s wearing the pink Walmart pajamas. She must have washed the makeup off her face earlier, because he can see smudges under her eyes where her mascara had been.
“This whole time, you were just—what, keeping this from me? Helping my parents keep secrets?”
“No!” Zach says. He swallows, gripping the edge of the sink. “No, Paige… I wasn’t. I mean, I was keeping Parker’s secret, I guess.”
Paige frowns. She turns her head and Zach turns his, tilting his chin back to look her in the face. They’re so close, and Zach is struck once more by how much of Parker he can see in her nose, her cheekbones, the shape of her eyes.
“Well,” she says. “Don’t. If we’re gonna be friends, now… no more secrets. Especially if you’re going to be friends with my brother.”
Friends. Friends with Paige Reid. And Parker too.
“No more,” Zach breathes out, and it’s a lie. It’s another lie, because he’s keeping the secret that Parker still wants to die. That he’s planning on it. Has been planning on it. Zach swallows that secret down again. It settles in his stomach like a stone.
Suddenly, Parker fills the doorway of the small bathroom, trying to edge his way in around Paige. “Move,” he tells her. She rolls her eyes and elbows Parker in his ribs as she squeezes past him and out into the hallway.