Chapter Twenty-Six
Prom. It’s the first time Zach has had the opportunity to go. He didn’t have any older friends to buy him a ticket in his freshman and sophomore years, and he didn’t have a date his junior year, so why bother going? But now he’s a senior and all his friends want to go.
The last few months of the school year went by quickly, everything happening in snapshots Zach wants so desperately to remember forever.
As the warming sun slowly thawed the ground, leaving behind dead grass and slush in the neighborhood yards, he viewed the coming spring as a sort of metaphor.
Like, being born anew or something. He’s slotted for a solid B-minus in his English class, so maybe metaphors aren’t really his strong suit.
But he felt alive in a new way as the first day of spring came and went, taking with it the last of the winter snow.
Zach makes a concentrated effort to count the days in moments of joy rather than episodes of anxiety or dread: Isaac gets into a university close to home; Bea accepts Yale’s offer of a full-ride scholarship; George commits to Stanford.
And other, less academic moments too: Isaac teaches Zach how to play Guitar Hero in the Reids’ living room; George does a promposal with his saxophone in the middle of the hallway, while Paige laughs and covers her face; Bea gives Zach a crash-course in Calculus so he stands a chance during his final exam; every moment shared with Parker, so incredibly alive.
The spring days are interspersed with sun and sheets of rain. On thundering weekends, Zach lays in his bedroom, listening to the clatter of rain on the roof—and in the near distance, the blaring sound of the train horn blowing through the train yard. Another day lived. Another train missed.
When prom arrives, Parker pretends he doesn’t want to go.
But he still asks Zach at the lunch table a week before: “We could go. Like, it doesn’t matter to me.
Do you want to go? It’s whatever.” But he looks like he wants Zach to say yes, so Zach does.
Of course he wants to go to prom with his boyfriend. Duh.
They gather at Parker and Paige’s house beforehand: Zach, in the only nice clothes he owns, with Parker, who wears a new suit and his hair pulled back off his face; Paige, in a glittery black-and-white princess dress and sneakers, with George, in black on black on black.
Bea shows up in a floor-length purple gown that puts them all to shame.
Isaac goes stag in a red velvet suit. Mrs. Reid takes so many pictures.
By the time they leave, Zach’s face hurts from smiling so wide.
The school gym is humid and pulsing with music and bodies and laughter.
And definitely the alcohol that some of the other kids have snuck in, hidden in water bottles and flasks.
Zach doesn’t know how to dance, but Paige and Bea are uninhibited, dragging him onto the dance floor, making him move and jump in ways that would have left him embarrassed if it weren’t for everyone else looking just as silly.
Zach is sweating from exertion, not anxiety, by the time the girls let him go.
Parker doesn’t dance—not really. He bobs his head to the music, which Zach now knows is to none of his usual tastes.
But when a slow song comes on, he laces his fingers through Zach’s so tight, and they watch the rest of their classmates pair off.
George is tall enough that Paige can rest her head on his shoulder; Bea dances with Isaac out of what Zach assumes is a desire to get him to stop complaining about having no one to dance with.
“Are you having fun?” Zach asks, tilting his head back to look Parker in the face. Parker’s lips pull at the corner like he’s trying not to smile.
“It’s alright,” he says. “For prom. You don’t want to dance, do you?”
Zach laughs. “God, no. This—” he lifts their hands between them. “This is perfect.”
They don’t stay the whole night. Once they’ve had enough of the DJ and the sweat clinging to their skin beneath their nice clothes, Paige gathers Alicia and Ben, and the eight of them climb, cramped, into Parker’s Subaru and go racing down the rain-slick streets, too fast through the quiet neighborhoods.
They pull off at the park with the wooden castle, where Parker produces a joint from seemingly nowhere.
Zach and Bea supervise as the rest of the group passes it around in a tight circle behind the swing set.
Afterwards, they all take turns seeing how high they can push the old, creaking swings.
Paige looks like a cloud of tulle in her dress when she sends herself flying off the swing and down into the wood chips.
It’s like a scene from a movie, and Zach never wants it to end.
After prom, finals week overtakes them before Zach is ready for it.
His exams pass in a blur of anxiety and Ativan.
He feels confident with American History and his Environmental Science exams. His final paper for English has already been graded.
Social Studies is a breeze. His last exam of the entire ordeal is Calculus—and after a solid hour-and-a-half of frantically scribbling out every equation his brain can possibly remember, it’s over.
Just like that. As Zach exits the classroom, he allows himself a shaky exhale: It’s done. He did it.
Grades are posted that weekend. Zach huddles around his laptop with his mom, and they both celebrate the solid 3.
0 that Zach will be graduating with. Right when Zach is about to pick up the phone and call Parker to see whether or not he’ll be graduating, he hears the sound of a car crunching onto the driveway.
When Zach opens the door to the porch, Parker is leaping out of the driver’s side with Paige, shouting: “I fucking passed!”
The last traces of panic ebb away. No one is getting left behind. They’ve all come out on the other side of high school, even Parker.
- - - - -
The week before graduation, Paige plans a trip to the lake.
Not the little one that Zach took Parker to, but the lake just outside of town with flowing, soft grass and a soft sand shore.
The lake that normal teenagers go to when the weather gets warm, to swim and drink stolen wine coolers and smoke weed. Zach’s never been.
They pile coolers full of food and soda into the trunk of Parker’s Subaru and squeeze everyone into the back—Isaac, Bea, Cool George, Alicia, Paige, Ben, and Zach, he’s there, too, squished between Isaac and Bea in the middle seat.
He’s there with his friends, wearing a white T-shirt and swim trunks that are a little too short, smelling of sunscreen.
They set up a row of beach towels on the sand and push a big umbrella deep enough into the beach for it to stand upright.
Zach hovers under the shadow that it casts—he burns easily in the sun, and when the burn fades it often leaves him slathered in freckles.
He sits on one of the towels, tucking his arms around his knees.
Paige and Alicia race immediately toward the lake, screeching when the cold water laps up their calves.
Ben and George set up the portable grill and start stoking the coal.
Bea stands by the edge of the water, getting her toes wet, while Isaac tries to pull her further in.
Parker drops onto the towels beside Zach.
He didn’t bring a swimsuit, and he doesn’t shed his heavy, grungy clothes.
He’s wearing his well-worn denim vest and a faded flannel button up.
The sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, but he grips his forearms self-consciously, palms covering as much as he can of his marred skin.
Parker has spent a long time waging a war on his own body.
Zach’s seen the scars, the evidence of battle.
He imagines that it’s going to take a while before he’s comfortable showing off the way his skin has, against all odds, stitched itself back together.
A testament to his will to keep on living.
Zach wants to tell him he doesn’t have to hide but he’s not sure that’s something Parker is ready to hear. Not yet, anyway.
“You’re not going to swim?” Parker asks, nudging Zach’s knee with his own. Zach nudges him back, smiling.
“I burn,” Zach tells him. “And freckle.”
Parker clicks his tongue. “No shit?” He eyes Zach’s bare arms and shoulders, as if imagining the splattering of marks.
“Besides,” Zach says. “I don’t mind sitting out with you.”
Parker snorts, but he doesn’t argue. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and watches as Paige climbs onto Isaac’s shoulders in the lake and lets him catapult her through the air and into the water.
They’re quiet, just sitting in each other’s company.
Zach wonders if Parker is also thinking about how neither of them had anticipated this being their life six months ago.
Zach has those moments all the time, now. Moments when he’s in the middle of something—playing a game with Isaac or walking in the halls with Bea and Paige—and has to stop, breathless, and think: Would I be here if Parker hadn’t cornered me in that classroom?
“Hey,” Parker says suddenly. He’s not looking at Zach but his tone is low, serious. He picks absently at a flake of peeling nail polish on his thumb. Zach sits up straighter.
“Yeah?” Zach urges, carefully encouraging.
It takes Parker a minute to find whatever words he’s looking to say. He chews at his bottom lip, curling his shoulders a little. Just as Zach’s stomach is starting to ache from anticipation, Parker says: “Don’t freak out but I love you.”
Zach sucks in a nervous breath.