Chapter Sixteen
The first Thursday in November, Zach walks out of the school after practice and finds Parker waiting for him in the drop-off lane. He’s leaning up against a Subaru that Zach’s never seen before.
Like every Thursday, Parker and Paige were absent from play practice.
Opening night draws nearer, scheduled right before winter break.
Most of the backdrops have already been painted, which means he’s had to learn a whole host of other duties backstage—changing the sets, putting the props where they need to be, helping the actors change costumes.
It’s not quite as mindless as painting had been, but for once, Zach’s anxiety works with him instead of against him, helping him keep pace with the frenetic intervals between set changes.
Zach approaches the Subaru. It’s the edge of fall, turning to winter: the air is bitter, and the first inklings of snow appear late in the evenings, gone by morning.
“Hey,” Parker says, his voice dull. His face is flushed, maybe because of the cold. His lips are pressed into a thin line. “Wanna hang out?”
Zach exhales a puff of visible air. “Yeah,” he says. He always wants to hang out with Parker. His mom isn’t home, and what is he going to do other than go home and stare at the walls, or the television, or his homework, just waiting until the next day when he can see his friends again?
Zach climbs into the passenger seat. Parker sits behind the wheel, gripping it, his knuckles white.
“Nice car,” Zach offers.
Parker doesn’t respond right away. There’s a beat of silence.
Zach struggles to not fill it with nervous commentary.
Parker looks exhausted—and a little bit like he’s been crying.
His eyes are red-rimmed and glossy. Zach tries to think about what might have happened to make Parker look like that but it just hurts his feelings, so he stops.
“It’s Henry’s version of an apology for being such a shit dad,” Parker replies, finally. He throws the car into gear and peels out onto the main road.
“Oh,” Zach says. “That’s… nice?”
“It’s stupid,” Parker says.
Zach doesn’t mention that he doesn’t know anyone else who would get a car as an apology. He pulls at a loose thread on his jeans, where a little hole has begun to rip below his pocket. They drive in silence, making loops around the same three or four streets.
“Maybe we should, like… make a real plan,” Parker says, after they’ve been silent for a while. “Become part of the Dead Boys Club for real.”
Cold shoots down Zach’s neck and spine. He presses his hands against his thighs, breathing quick and hard.
This is exactly what he’d been worried about ever since that conversation in his bedroom.
He’d been waiting, all this time, for the other shoe to drop.
Despite everything, Parker is still thinking about…
the Dead Boys Club. It makes Zach’s stomach hurt.
“Um,” Zach rasps. “I thought—I thought you wanted to wait?”
Parker shrugs. His left foot, the one not on the gas pedal, begins to jiggle.
In that moment, Paige comes to mind. Not just Paige, but the way she’d taken him somewhere that used to help her when she felt overwhelmed.
The way she’d tried to help him through his own feelings.
And it had worked. The memory of rolling down the hill, when everything had felt like too much, is bright in his mind.
He doesn’t have a hill for Parker to roll down, but he does have something that might be just as good.
Steeling himself, Zach sits up and points at the next upcoming right-hand turn.
“Turn up here,” he says.
“Huh?” Parker swerves into the right-hand lane without signaling. Zach clutches the handle above his seat. He’s never considered whether or not Parker is a good driver. Maybe he didn’t crash his car on purpose after all.
“Here,” Zach says, pointing ahead. “Okay. Now go straight. The turn is up here.”
Somewhere between the ages of seven and ten, Zach’s anxiety hadn’t been so bad.
He’d had an easier time just… existing, at all.
It was as if all his problems hadn’t fully formed yet.
Back then, his mom would drive him out to a small, marshy lake, and they would spend early Saturday mornings skipping rocks and drinking Big Gulps from the 7/Eleven.
It’s not a very big lake, with tall grass surrounding it instead of a wide dirt shore.
There are a few bike trails that connect it to a nearby residential neighborhood.
Still, it feels like it’s far outside of town, even if it’s only a few short turns away from the nearest house.
It’s a little silly, but Zach remembers it very fondly: There’s nothing quite like chucking a big rock into the water.
The gravel parking lot that surrounds the lake is tiny, with only a few parking spaces marked by cut logs. Parker pulls into one of the spots crookedly.
“What are we doing here?” Parker asks, lips turned down at the corners.
His expression is so heavy. Zach opens the door and climbs out, heading right for the tall grass at the edge of the lake.
Parker’s door slams behind him, and the sound of his long legs beating through the weeds follows. “Hey! Zach!”
Zach turns only when they’ve reached the narrow shore.
He looks down, kicking at the grass and dirt.
He finds what he’s looking for and bends down to pick up a hefty rock.
He doesn’t even care about getting dirt on his only nice jacket as he holds it up.
Parker is staring at him, incredulous, but at the very least confusion has overtaken the profound sadness from before.
Parker exhales a half-laugh. “What—”
“Here,” Zach says, heaving the rock toward Parker. He grabs it, holding it in both hands. “Throw it.”
“What?” Parker looks down at the rock, turning it over in his hands.
Zach digs around a little and finds another rock, not as big as Parker’s. He turns toward the lake and overhand throws it right into the water. The rock hits with a splash, sending a spray into the air.
Parker stares at him. Zach grabs his arm, jostling him. “Throw the rock, Parker.”
Parker turns forward, his expression twisting up into almost a smile—like he’s trying to fight it, or like he thinks Zach has lost his mind. He uses both hands to launch the rock away from him, into the lake. It splashes a little closer to shore, sprinkling them with water.
“Is this supposed to help?” Parker asks, dropping his hands.
“Yeah,” Zach breathes. He digs around in the dirt, pulling up another rock. He passes it to Parker, who takes it more enthusiastically this time. He wheels his arm back and chucks it, the lake swallowing it with a distinctive plop!
They dig in the mud until their hands are grimy and freezing. Zach tries to show Parker how to skip rocks, but Parker’s so bad at it that he gets frustrated and just ends up throwing them as far as he can.
They pick their way along the edge of the lake, walking further from the parking lot and deeper into the weeds. Parker finds a rock the size of his head. Zach watches the way he swings it around and throws it like a shot put, like it weighs nothing at all.
When the last of the almost-winter sun inches beneath the horizon, they make their way back to the Subaru, panting and shivering. Parker turns the heat all the way up as they sit in the dark car. Zach shoves his hands against the vents to try and get some feeling back into his fingers.
“That was so stupid,” Parker says, rubbing his hands together.
“Yeah,” Zach says, breathless. “But it worked.”
Parker presses his lips together to try and hide a smile. He shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”
They’re quiet, the only sound between them the rush of air from the vents. Zach sort of wishes that they were sitting somewhere else other than a car, so he could push his knee against Parker’s and feel him push back. A reminder that neither of them are really alone.
Eventually, Zach asks, “Was family therapy bad today?”
“Everything was bad today,” Parker says softly.
He turns the air down a little so Zach can hear him.
“I can, like, see my dad getting tired of sitting around for two hours every week while Paige and I cry.” He scratches absently at the steering wheel cover.
“Mom is a little better about it, but… god, I know she wants all of this—wants me—to be fixed, you know?”
Zach does know. He’s seen his own mom’s anxious hope every time he comes home from his therapist, like each new session might be the one that gives her a normal son, like each new combination of pills might make all of Zach’s problems go away.
Zach suddenly wonders if maybe he should hold Parker’s hand.
He shoves both palms against his thighs instead, bewildered by the errant thought.
It’d probably just come to him because he’d thought of Paige, and the hill, and holding her hand in the dark, dewy grass.
Zach had thought of all that and brought Parker here.
His wires are getting crossed. That’s all.
“I don’t…” Zach swallows, clears his throat, tries again. “I don’t think you need to be fixed?”
Parker doesn’t say anything on the other side of the car. Zach wonders if anyone has ever told him that he’s not, like… broken, before. That he’s not some machine or toy with a defective part that needs replacing.
“Tell that to Rebecca and Henry,” Parker mutters, finally. Zach exhales a laugh.
“God—” Zach says, shaking his head. “Who… who cares? I think you’re great.
I think you’re really great, actually. You’re really smart, and…
and nice, sometimes. You’re nice to me, which—I think that’s the important part.
” The words seem to come, for once, without Zach overthinking them.
They spill out into the silence of the car, filling up the empty space of the cab.
“And Isaac is, like, obsessed with you. He doesn’t even let me copy his homework, and I’ve only ever asked, like, twice?
And you ask every week, and he just does it.
’Cause he thinks you’re so cool. And Bea, I mean, she’s probably the nicest to you out of all of us.
She lets you get away with doing nothing at play practice every day.
” He sucks in a breath, then adds: “And your cat thinks you’re the best person in the world, probably.
So, who freaking cares what your parents think?
I don’t think you’re broken. None of us do. ”
Zach clutches the hem of his jacket after he gets it all out.
He stares forward instead of looking at Parker’s shadowy figure beside him.
Everything is so quiet, and Zach goes back over what he said, frantic, terrified that he’d said something wrong or embarrassing or maybe rude; he’s not entirely sure.
Then Zach hears it—a wet little breath, followed by a sniffle.
“Oh my god,” Zach breathes. “Oh, god, I’m sorry. Oh my god, I’m so—I’m sorry, I—”
“Shut up,” Parker says, rubbing his face. “Shut up.”
“Okay. Right. Sorry.”
“Shut up.”
Zach does. The sound of the vents blowing hot air fills the car again until, eventually, Parker shifts into reverse and backs out of the parking space.
He drives Zach home. No radio, just the two of them sitting in the silence following all the words that Zach had said.
They pull up to Zach’s dark house, and Parker pulls into the driveway.
“Thanks,” Zach whispers. He gathers his backpack off the floor mat, pawing in the dark for the door handle.
“For the record,” Parker says, lolling his head in Zach’s direction. “I don’t think you need fixing either.”
The words pluck at some raw nerve in Zach’s chest and he stops moving. Suddenly he understands why Parker started crying before.
Zach swallows a lump in his throat. “Okay,” he says.
“I mean it,” Parker adds, fiercely. Zach looks at him, his face blueish in the glow of the dashboard lights. Parker’s lips part like he’s going to say something else. But then they close again and he looks away.
Zach climbs out of the car. His limbs are heavy, his stomach bubbling, his muscles tight. He goes right into the house and sits on the cool bathroom floor, pressing his head between his knees and just trying to breathe through whatever this is.