Chapter Twenty-Two
Everything happens so fast.
Zach’s mom calls the Reids and suddenly, the adults have reached a decision: Their sons are no longer allowed to speak to each other.
Because Zach can’t come up with a lie to smother the fire that is the emails, his dry-tinder life goes up in smoke in seconds.
He tries to explain, to say that those emails mean nothing, but their damning words are there in black and white.
Talking about suicide. Giving it their blithe little name: The Dead Boys Club.
It’s Parker who brings up the pact in the emails, and Parker who’d initiated everything that day in the empty classroom.
No wonder his mom is so eager to agree to Mrs. Reid’s suggestion that he and Parker no longer see each other.
Zach must look like a sad bystander caught up in the whirlwind of a troubled boy who wants to tear everything down with him.
None of it is true, but he can’t find the words to explain it.
Zach listens from down the hall as his mom makes extra appointments with his therapist. Twice a week.
No longer the once-a-month schedule he’d been coasting on for the last couple of years.
She works frantically to undo the damage that she believes Zach’s friendship with Parker has done.
Zach tries. He really tries. But to face his mother—her face pale, eyes red, and knuckles white as she grips the laptop—is impossible.
“We… we weren’t serious,” Zach says, knowing it isn’t true, unable to make the lie sound real.
He watches his mom struggle to swallow down an aching sob.
He wants to go back in time and stop himself from ever giving Parker the time of day in that empty classroom.
Except if he’d done that, where would he be?
Where would Parker be? Alive, still? Or…
Zach can’t think about it. However fucked-up this situation has gotten, it’s better than the alternative. He has to find a way to fix it.
“I am your mother,” his mom tells him, her voice tight and vehement. It’s the same way she says I love you. “And this—honey, this isn’t okay. You need help. He needs help.”
I am helping, Zach thinks blearily. He wants to live; I am helping.
The next day Zach’s mom drives him to school instead of letting him catch a ride with Isaac.
It’s embarrassing, but Zach isn’t in a position to argue about it.
Parker is out of school. Zach notices it right away when he sees Paige walking down the main hall without her brother.
Just like that first day of school. She looks incomplete without Parker at her side.
Zach steps away from his locker to approach her, his heart hammering. Where is Parker? Why isn’t he with her? He has so many questions, and Paige is his closest lifeline to the other Reid twin.
When Zach gets closer, he can see that her face is ashen and her eyes bloodshot.
She looks at him, through him, and shoves her shoulder into his as she passes.
She slams into him so hard that he goes stumbling back, nearly falling into the row of lockers behind him.
Zach’s stomach drops to his feet, and nausea and panic rocket all the way through his body.
“Jesus,” Isaac says, coming up behind Zach’s shoulder. “What was that about? What the fuck did you do to her?”
Zach can’t speak. He can’t say anything.
He’s screwed up so immeasurably, just by accidentally leaving his email open.
If he could go back twenty-four hours and shake himself, he would.
All of this could have been avoided if he’d taken a moment to click the little X in the corner of the screen.
Instead, he’s trapped in this nightmare, and Paige won’t even speak to him.
He has no idea where Parker is or if he’s okay.
Have the Reids already sent him away somewhere, locking him up so that Zach can’t get to him, like all the times they’ve tried to send him away before?
The rest of the day is a nauseating blur.
Zach barely notices when his teachers speak to him.
At lunch, he hides in the bathroom to avoid Isaac and Bea.
Would Paige have told them what happened by now?
Would she have seen them in the halls during a passing period and told them that Zach had made a suicide pact with Parker and, worse, kept it a secret?
Would she spin it so that Zach was an enthusiastic participant, eager and willing to help Parker die?
He sits through the lunch period on a closed toilet lid, his head between his knees.
When it’s time for English, Zach sits in the back of the room, staring ahead, avoiding Isaac and Bea’s curious looks. When Bea leans over to whisper to Paige, she just shakes her head minutely. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Paige says back, her voice tight and pained.
When the last bell rings, Zach avoids his locker, anticipating that Isaac and Bea will be there with an onslaught of questions.
Instead, he stands right by the doors leading to the senior parking lot.
He needs to talk to Paige. He needs Paige to fill him in, to tell him how Parker is doing, where he is, what happened after their parents found out.
He stands with his shoulders squared even as his chest aches, his breath coming fast and hard.
Zach straightens his back when he spots Paige coming down the hall.
She sees him and stops in her tracks, her face pale, terrible, and sad.
Zach wants to die, seeing her like this.
For a moment, he’s flung back to standing side by side with her in his bathroom.
He’d promised her no more secrets and he’d lied right through his teeth.
After a moment, she collects herself and walks toward the doors, her gaze fixed forward, clearly determined to ignore him.
“Paige,” Zach says, his voice wild and desperate as he follows her out the door, down the steps, to the dirt lot behind the school. “Paige, please, you have to—”
Paige whips around to face him, her face red with fury. “How could you?” she shouts.
People turn their heads to watch, eager for a dramatic blowup. Zach swallows, and the mid-January chill bites through his skin. He hadn’t grabbed his coat from his locker.
“You—you knew, you knew how bad he was!” Paige yells, her voice louder and louder. “You knew what he tried to do! And you—what, encouraged him? Played along? Let him talk about doing it again?” She’s shrieking now, her voice breaking on each word.
Zach has never in his life been on the receiving end of this kind of pain and anger and grief.
He wants to run away. He’s never been able to face his own emotions, much less someone else’s.
He flinches as Paige screams at him. But he forces himself to stand his ground.
He has to fix this. This is important. It doesn’t matter how scary it is.
He needs to find a way to fix the damage he’s caused.
“Please let me explain,” Zach begs. “Please.”
“Fuck you, Zach Williams,” Paige spits. “Fuck you. You ruined everything. Stay away from me—and stay away from Parker.”
She turns on her heel, marching toward her car.
Zach shivers where he stands, surrounded by dirty slush and mud, the cold clinging to his skin.
This is it, he thinks. This is the end of everything he’s built.
He had been right when he’d feared that all of the good things in his life would come crashing down around him.
They had been held together by little more than delusion.
And now Zach is here, feeling like he’s about to be crushed under the rubble.
He pulls in a deep breath. His lungs expand.
Determination pulls his feet forward. He crosses the parking lot to Paige’s car, where she’s fumbling to get her keys out of her bag.
He doesn’t mean to startle her when he slips and stumbles against the hood of her car, but he does.
Paige jumps, whipping around to face him.
“Are you—” Paige stares, mouth agape. “Didn’t you hear me?”
Zach’s teeth chatter as he tries to get the words out before she can get in her car and run him over. Then again, that might release him from this absolute misery.
“The emails—” he begins, then gives up and starts over. “What we talked about—”
“Fuck you,” Paige snaps, voice teary.
“I know, I know—all of that, it happened before I really knew you. Or Parker. We were both… so lonely.” Zach heaves as he watches Paige’s face, wary and wet with freezing tears. “After the cast party, he told me he wanted to stay alive, and—and so we…”
Paige scrubs her hand across her face and opens the car door. “Get in.”
The relief makes Zach’s legs nearly give out. “Thank you,” he gasps. “Thank you, thank you—” He hurries around to the passenger side before she changes her mind.
They sit in the front seat of the car while Paige cranks the heat. Zach shivers, waiting for his bones to thaw, not sure if he should say more or if he should wait for Paige to ask him to say more. The quiet expands until Zach feels like his ears are going to pop.
Finally, Paige says, “My parents want to send him to Vermont.”
“Vermont?” Zach gasps.
Paige sniffles, picking absently at her steering wheel cover. The tic reminds Zach of Parker, and he feels a sorrow so profound he could choke on it.
“To another retreat for troubled teens,” Paige says absently. “Another place that they hope will fix him. He won’t say anything about the emails. They were fighting all night. Dad had to take the door off of his room again after he locked himself in.”
Zach’s head spins. “Those emails are… are months-old,” he tries to explain, desperate to get these words out that no one, so far, has listened to. “We wrote those emails before he told you about the first time. Before you confronted your parents, before therapy…”