Page 34 of Dead Boys Club

“Or, you know, you could just…like, look at the pictures,” Zach whispers.

Parker is quiet for a beat. His thumbs move restlessly back and forth over the edge of the pages.

“Can I stay in here?” Parker asks. “Paige snores.”

“Yeah,” Zach agrees. “I can leave the light on. I sometimes fall asleep with it on, anyway, so…”

They arrange themselves comfortably—Zach settles back down in the sheets and Parker sits up at the end of the bed, back against the wall, legs stretched out. His feet hang off the edge of Zach’s mattress. Zach falls asleep to the sound of Parker reading, the gentle swish of each thin page, slow and deliberate.

When Zach wakes up in the morning, he’s alone. He lays there, watching the space where Parker had been the night before, and feels an odd, new emptiness take root in his body.

Chapter Thirteen

“What happened last night?” Isaac asks, standing in front of his car as Zach crosses the wet morning grass between their driveways. He’s holding Zach’s backpack in one hand. He passes it over when Zach gets close enough. “Why didn’t you answer your messages? I was trying to get ahold of you all night! I almost walked over but your mom was home, dude. That dinner was fucking crazy. Who knew the entire Reid family was full of psychos? What did they say when they took you home?”

Zach grimaces. “They’re not psychos,” he says. Well, Mr. Reid might be. The jury is still out on that.

Parker and Paige are still in his house. That morning, Zach’s mom had come into his room to tell him that she had called the twins out of school with Mrs. Reid’s permission. He’d felt a little jealous but ultimately relieved. As much as he would have liked to stay home from school (on pretty much any given day), Zach is glad he doesn’t have to sit around the house all day while his mom helps Parker and Paige figure out what they’re going to do about this whole situation with their parents.

Although fielding questions from Isaac is probably just as bad. He won’t even let Zach get in the car until he tells him what happened.

“They stayed at my house,” Zach says. “Um, it’s just… like, really weird at their house right now. So, they stayed the night.”

“Paige Reid slept in your house?” Isaac crows. He lowers his voice when Zach shoots an anxious look over his shoulder at the porch. “Holy shit. That’s… wow.”

“She slept on my couch. Can we go now, please?” Zach asks. “My mom called them out, so they’re not even coming.”

Isaac relents, though visibly reluctant to do so. He shoots one last longing look over at Zach’s house, then turns to climb into the car. When they arrive at the school, Bea is waiting against Zach’s locker, and Isaac makes him repeat the whole thing to her again.

“Wow,” Bea says, hugging her first period textbook against her body. “That was really nice of you. Are they okay?”

“I think so,” Zach says. “For now.”

“Mr. Reid was something awful, wasn’t he?” Bea asks, leaning in further, as if she’s worried that the other students milling about by the lockers might hear. “We shouldn’t talk about them when they’re not here… Still, no wonder Parker is so…” She makes a vague gesture with one hand.

“Crazy,” Isaac suggests solemnly.

“Isaac!” Bea hits him with the heavy textbook. She has good aim; the blow lands on his arm with a solid thunk. Bea is definitely stronger than she looks.

“Ow, ow, fuck!”

“He’s not crazy,” Zach says, annoyed. “He’s really nice. You think he’s cool.”

“He bought my ice cream at the carnival,” Bea points out. “That was really nice.”

“He’s not that nice,” Isaac says. His face is darkening with an embarrassed flush.

“You’re not that nice,” Zach counters. “Like—you’re really mean sometimes, actually.” But Isaac scoffs and shrugs it—and the smack to his shoulder—off.

The rest of the day is really, really weird. Zach thinks about all of the classes that Parker is missing—and Paige too. He can’t get it out of his head, so he goes to the front office during lunch and asks the receptionist if he can have Parker’s and Paige’s class schedules to get their homework for them. Zach has to wait awkwardly while the receptionist at the front office emails Parker’s and Paige’s teachers. After a while, she tells him he can pick up their homework at the end of the day. Zach returns to the cafeteria, feeling a little less useless.

Isaac and Bea have commandeered a table in the corner. When he steps into the cafeteria, Bea waves for him to come sit. He’s never had someone waiting for him at a lunch table before. It’s nice. Nicer than most of his lunches have been for the past three years of high school.

“I signed Paige up for the tech crew,” Bea says once Zach sits across from her. “For the play. We’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I hope Paige still wants to join, after the whole commotion last night.”

“Didn’t you guys do that our freshman year?” Isaac asks.

“This is why it’s important to support funding the arts,” Bea says seriously. “I don’t think they could afford the scripts and costuming for something new.”