Chapter Seventeen #3
It’s almost familiar, now, this feeling—sweaty palms that Zach rubs on the front of his coat as they walk, an awareness of the hair standing at the back of his neck.
Parker Reid is his best friend, probably, but also probably not.
Maybe he’s something else that Zach doesn’t have a word for yet.
Whatever you call the other half of your suicide pact.
“You too,” Zach tells him. “I mean—my best friend. You, you’re… mine. Also.”
He shoves his hands into his pockets. It’s the truth, or as close as Zach can get to it. The reply makes Parker flush higher on his cheeks, and he shoves Zach hard until they’re both stumbling off the path and into the high, yellowing grass, laughing.
When they return to the visitor’s center, Parker insists on browsing the bookstore, which has both books and Saratoga-themed memorabilia.
Zach takes his time, walking through the aisles.
There are a lot of books about the local flora, travel guides to nearby hiking trails, photo books, and an insane number of volumes about the revolutionary war.
Parker finds a national parks-themed Scrabble game and carries it under one arm.
“When I was eight, I swallowed, like, five Scrabble pieces,” Parker explains, laughing. “We never replaced the stupid game. Paige still hasn’t let me forget it.”
Zach’s chest aches as he laughs. He makes a mental note to go home and look up if you can have a heart attack at seventeen.
Zach ends up picking out a retro Saratoga poster to match his other ones back home. On the way up to the counter, Zach picks up matching Saratoga baseball caps. He hands one to Parker as a joke, but he takes it seriously.
“I’m not, like, a hat guy,” Parker says, even as he puts it on his head. His ears stick out under the rim. Zach swallows thickly. It feels like the lump in his throat from earlier has turned into a Sisyphean-sized stone.
Parker pays, and as they leave the visitor’s center, it’s almost three in the afternoon. They climb back into the Subaru, tired and satisfied, their spoils in a Saratoga National Historic Park paper bag, wearing their matching hats.
The drive home takes longer than the drive in. They stop for lunch, going through a drive-through and eating in the car. It’s something that a normal seventeen-year-old boy would do with his best friend.
It’s close to six when Parker pulls errantly into Zach’s driveway. Mom’s car is gone. Zach is glad because he won’t have to debrief about the trip with her until tomorrow.
They listened to the entire Coheed and Cambria album twice on the way back in.
Parker turns the radio down now, leaning forward on the steering wheel, arms crossed.
Zach gets the sense that he’s working out how to say something like he had earlier on the trail.
Zach squeezes his passport in his lap, turning a little in his seat to face him.
“Thanks for…” Parker pauses, looking straight ahead rather than at Zach, his face illuminated faintly by the orange light from the setting sun.
“I mean, this was like… I dunno, probably the best day I’ve ever had, like, ever.
In my life.” He scratches at the leather on the steering wheel again, his gaze fixed pointedly forward.
“And I’m just… really glad it could be with you. ”
Zach swallows. That feeling from the trailhead surges in his chest again. The something’s not quite right about Parker feeling.
“This was—Parker, this whole trip… you didn’t have to do this,” Zach tells him. “It was—it was so amazing. I’ve never…” He can’t get the words out, so he settles on: “It was the best day I ever had too.”
Parker smiles, glancing sidelong at him. He shrugs his shoulders up against his jaw before dropping them, letting his long body slump low in his seat. “Cool,” he says, voice impossibly soft.
“Cool,” Zach whispers back.
A revelation comes to Zach slowly, unfurling somewhere in the back of his head—the answer to the question he’s been kicking around all day, about what Parker Reid is to him if not his best friend.
Not his best friend and not the guy he made a suicide pact with.
Not just a hopeful member of the Dead Boys Club.
“Here,” Parker says. He punches something on the dashboard, and the CD spits back out. He puts it in the case, then passes Zach the Coheed and Cambria album. Zach takes it, unsure as to why his hands are shaking.
After he gets out of the car, all Zach can think is that if he wasn’t who he was, and if Parker wasn’t who he was, maybe in that moment, in the car, Zach would have done something impulsive and crazy.
Maybe if this were a movie, and if Parker were Paige, Zach would have leaned over in those quiet seconds and he would have—
The revelation finishes forming in his brain. It’s a beastly thing that Zach can’t beat down: stronger than any foul, intrusive thought he’s ever had.
Zach thinks, I want to kiss Parker Reid.
And then he stands there, in his driveway, and waves shyly as Parker pulls away, clutching the Coheed and Cambria CD in one hand. And he keeps standing there for a few long minutes afterward, unsure what to do with his body next.
“Oh,” Zach says to himself long after Parker’s headlights have disappeared, his breath coming out in a warm, little cloud.
“Crap.”