“Oh my gosh, he looks so happy.”Tean hovered a finger over one of the pictures of Daniel.“Where’d you get this?”
“There was a stack of them on Nasha’s desk.”
Tean made another soft sound as he continued to turn the pages.“We should ask her for the photos.”
“What was all that business earlier about ‘I’m not his dad’ and ‘I don’t know how to raise a teenager’?”
Tean took an emphatic bite of his sandwich.
“Fine,” Jem said with a laugh.“I’ll ask her.”As casually as he could, he dragged the packet off Tean’s knee and folded it up again.As he got to his feet, he shoved it into his back pocket.“You good here?”
Tean turned his head up.He moved on to his fourth and probably final bite of the sandwich, but he didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to do a quick sweep,” Jem said.
Tean nodded.
“Call me if you need anything.”
“Be safe.”
Jem threw him an okay sign and made his way down the bleachers.At the door that they’d come in through, he stepped to the side and scanned the gym.There was only one other exit—a pair of doors on the far side of the room—and that one was always off-limits to parents and spectators.A quick check showed him Daniel sitting near the other South Jordan students.Notwith.Near.The boy was looking at something on his phone.Probably trying to find the closest drag store.
In the lobby, the volume dropped significantly, and the air was cooler.A woman in a lacy red top that was way too dressy for a high school wrestling meet was manning the ticket table.She was laughing, her head thrown back, as a dad type with hair plugs leaned over the table to look down her shirt while he talked to her.
Jem knew the layout of the building by now; he’d spent too many nights here doing the exact same thing.He started down the closest hall and went looking for wolves.
The whole thing with Daniel—driving him around, going to all his activities, becoming a second set of super gay parents—was about keeping him safe.That’s what it boiled down to: making sure the wolves never got another chance at him because, for some reason, they seemed fixated on him.Or at leastoneof the wolves was fixated on him.And if Jem had to guess, he would have said that wolf was Kai.The weird shit had started not long after they’d saved Daniel.Someone had started following Daniel.And then Ammon had caught someone trying to jimmy a window at Rainbow House one of the nights that Daniel was there.
Why?
That was the big question, and the problem was Jem didn’t know.Because Daniel had gotten away?Because Daniel was a witness?He’d seen them without their masks?He could identify them?
All of those were plausible reasons.
But Jem and Tean had seen the wolves.They knew who they were.Hell, for that matter, the police knew who they were.Kai and his pack of fuck-ups had run away, so it’s not like there was a secret about who they were.And nobody had come after Jem and Tean.
Maybe, Jem told himself, because he and Tean were so badass.But that seemed like wishful thinking.And while Daniel was young and vulnerable in ways that adults weren’t, the black hole in Jem’s gut told him the wolves—Kai—wanted Daniel for a much, much darker reason.Even worse, Jem wasn’t sure if Kai even knew, or could admit to himself, why he wanted him so bad.
I’ll help you.
The thought popped into Jem’s head without any warning: the balloon wallpaper, Wendell reaching down, something tightening inside Jem’s chest until it popped.
Why in the fuck had he taken the donor packet?Why had hekeptit?When he’d seen it in Tean’s hand, his heart had almost stopped.
You did something stupid, he told himself as he continued down the hall.You did something really stupid.You shouldn’t have gone there.Youdefinitelyshouldn’t have taken anything.And Tean isn’t an idiot.He picks up on things.He knows when you’re lying.
Not all the time, another part of him argued.
Jem passed the locker rooms.The doors were shut, but even so, the usual locker room funk floated out, in spite of the sharp odor of bleach mixed with it.
His hands had smelled like bleach.Or something.He hadn’t remembered that, but he remembered it now.When he’d reached down—
I’ll help you.
—Jem had caught a whiff of it.That was strange because he didn’t remember what he probablyshouldhave remembered.He didn’t remember biting him.He didn’t remember what it must have felt like.He didn’t remember blood in his mouth.
Enough.That’s enough.It happened, what, twenty years ago?You haven’t thought about him in twenty years.It’s not like he was always there, hovering in the background, this memory you couldn’t get away from.He’s just some asshole you couldn’t give two fucks about.So, stop it.
