Page 59 of Dead Boys Club

Zach blinks, stopping at the top of the school steps.

“What?” Isaac asks, noticing that Zach has fallen behind.

“My mom,” Zach replies slowly. He half jogs down the steps and crosses to the pickup lane. His mom rolls down the passenger-side window as he leans in.

“What—” Zach starts, cutting himself off when he catches sight of his mom’s face. She’s pale, and her eyes are red like she’s been crying. His heart immediately rockets into his throat. His legs feel like they’re going to give out from under him. “Mom, what… what’s wrong?”

Zach’s mom wipes underneath her eye with one palm before she unlocks the doors. She’s not looking at him. “Get in,” she says softly.

Zach glances over his shoulder at Parker and Isaac, who are hanging back.

He gets in the car.

The drive is quiet. Zach feels like he might die right there in the passenger seat. He tries to ask what’s happening, but his mom just shakes her head, her knuckles white where she grips the steering wheel at ten and two. Zach clutches at the bottom of his coat, breathing harsh and quick through his mouth.

Someone’s died. That’s all Zach can think. Someone’s died, like maybe his dad. Maybe his dad got into a horrible accident and now his mom has to find a way to break the news.

When they pull up to the house, Zach’s mom gets out of the car, still silent. Zach squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and tries to get his racing heart under control before he follows her into the house.

The first thing he sees is his old laptop on the coffee table. He immediately feels guilty, because he hadn’t finished clearing it for his mom last night and he wishes he had. But then his mom sits down in front of it, taps one of the keys to turn the screen on, and turns it toward him.

His email is still open to the thread he’d left up the night before. The thread of his emails with Parker. Bile climbs up Zach’s throat. He opens his mouth, then snaps it shut again.

“I went to use your old laptop,” his mom says quietly. “And I found these.”

Zach knows exactly what those emails say. He’s read them over and over and over again.

so whats your damage really? why did u write that note. and don’t just be vague like u did the other day. why do u want to join the dead boys club?

im glad we r going to do it together because i dont want to fuck it up this time.

I was really tired, and I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe everything would be better if it all just stopped.

This is undeniably his inbox, open on his computer. There’s no way for him to lie his way out of this. Even as he struggles to come up with an explanation, he can see that his mom has already come to her own conclusion.

His mom looks at him with red eyes, her face contorted in confusion and devastation. It’s everything he’d been so terrified of her finding out—that there’s something so much worse about him than what she knows. He’s dreaded this moment his whole life. And now it’s here and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. A slow-motion train wreck, and he’s the one standing right on the tracks.

“Zach,” she says, voice broken. “What is this?”

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.