Page 66 of Dead Boys Club

The reaction is so sweet that Zach barely resists leaning across the car and kissing Parker senseless. “It’s so totally fine,” Zach says, gripping Parker’s hand instead. “Really. We’ll—we’ll come back again someday. Okay?”

Instead of going inside, they head back onto the road, driving further into Acadia National Park. It opens up around them, something that Zach has only ever seen in pictures. Everything seems so much bigger here—despite the blanket of cold and snow, there’s still some green peeking out. The sky stretches out overhead, more enormous than Zach has ever seen it. He’s here. He made it.

Alive. So weirdly, strangely alive.

In the back of his head, Zach can hear the rattle of the train; he can feel the hot breeze as it zipped by him, close enough to blow his hair back off his forehead. His muscles tense up, imagining for a moment what it would have been like if he’d stayed on those tracks.

It wouldn’t be this.

As much as Zach desperately wants to go back in time and undo everything those emails caused, he wouldn’t be here, right now, without them. The inevitably of this trajectory burrows into Zach’s thumping heart. Without the note, without the train, without the emails, without all of that, he never would have met Parker. They never would have started talking. Parker would never have found him at the carnival, and Bea would never have come up to talk to them, and the five of them would never have had that twinkling night at the fairgrounds. And without all of that, the five of them would never have become interwoven in each other’s lives.

And Zach would never have realized how good being alive can be.

Parker pulls off onto the first trailhead they find. The sign in the parking lot reads Beech Mountain and Zach recognizes the name from his books. They walk through the trees slowly and quietly, side by side, bracing against the sharp winter breeze. It’s the opposite of Saratoga. Two bookends to their relationship—one trip at the beginning, the other at the possible end.

There’s no way to know what’s happening back home, but maybe that’s for the best. Zach doesn’t want to know their fate until he pulls back into his driveway. Out here, they’re still together, and everything else is background noise. Out here, it’s easier to pretend.

The trail takes them up through the forest, the trees falling away the higher they go, the ground becoming rockier. Zach’s seen so much of this place in photos and seeing it now, here, with Parker—it’s beyond compare.

They approach a huge fire tower, and Zach takes Parker’s hand, squeezing. They climb up to take in the sprawling, midwinter view. Zach points out different parts of the park: “Acadia Mountain is over there,” he says, pointing with his nondominant hand so he doesn’t have to let go of Parker’s. “And all of this is Echo Lake.”

They don’t move on for a while. They stand gripping the railing of the fire tower, watching the way the water and ice and snow chop wildly against the nearby shore. Zach’s nose gets cold and pink from where the wind whistles frostily against his face.

“You know…” Parker says slowly, breaking the silence. He’s staring straight ahead, not looking at Zach, but his voice is serious and sharp. Zach stiffens to attention. “I didn’t think I stood a chance with you. I didn’t even think a universe existed where you liked me—until, you know, you were kissing me.”

He laughs, ducking his chin. The wind whips his long hair back off his face. “Maybe all those self-help books my mom keeps buying are right, you know? Like, manifestation or something. Maybe they’re onto something. ’Cause how is my life so shitty for so fucking long, and then you show up and…”

Parker grips the railing tight. He furrows his brow, and his words get faster, like he’s trying to get them all out before he loses his nerve. “And I liked you. I really liked you. Enough that I wasn’t so sure about killing myself anymore. But you were my friend, and… and that was enough. It felt like enough.” He pauses, wipes at his nose with his baggy sleeve.

“When you kissed me…” Parker laughs, the sound tight and high and almost panicked as he presses his hips against the railing, leaning forward a little. “I thought, what on Earth did I do to deserve this? Like, how is this real? And now…”

Parker looks at Zach finally, his face pale, eyes wet. “And now if we go back, and I can’t even be your friend? That’s—that’s so fucked-up.” He shakes his head. “I can’t… I can’t do that. I can’t go back and not even get to be your friend.”

The words hang in the air between them. Zach grips the railing and sucks in a breath, the air almost painful in his lungs. Parker looks at him, his expression terrified, an echo of Paige’s before she’d confronted Zach at school. Zach had thought he was unable to bear the pain of that conversation. Now this, here—Parker, scared and in pain and caring, always caring, sometimes caring too much. Zach isn’t sure how he’ll survive it.

“I—I don’t want that either,” Zach says, finally. “I don’t want to go back to… to how everything was before. Everything—my life, it sucked, it sucked so much.” A pained laugh escapes from his lips. “How is it that my life sucked more before you tried to get me to kill myself?”

Parker ducks his head, his own laugh swallowed by a breeze that kicks up around them, sending a flurry of snow trailing up through the fire tower overlook. They’re quiet once more, Zach leaning his shoulder into Parker’s body. Despite the chill, he’s so warm through the layers of their jackets. Parker hooks his pinky around Zach’s where their hands rest side by side on the railing.

“So now what?” Zach asks.

Parker shrugs, defeated. “I don’t know.”

And up there on the fire tower, Parker’s phone must catch a stray signal, because just then Zach can hear it as it buzzes in Parker’s pocket. Parker startles, digging it out. He flips it over—Zach immediately recognizes the number.

“It’s my mom,” Zach says, surprised. A chill that has nothing to do with the cold Acadia air snaps down Zach’s spine.

“Fuck,” Parker mutters.

Zach answers the call before it goes to voicemail. “Mom?” he breathes.

The single bar of signal makes the call staticky and jumpy, but it comes through. His mom’s voice is slightly panicked as she replies: “Zach, honey? Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, mom,” Zach says quickly. “I’m okay. I’m with—um, I’m with Parker. We’re both okay.”

Slightly muffled, like she’s put the phone down against her shoulder, Zach hears his mom say: “They’re together. Yeah, they’re alright.” Then more loudly, as she brings the phone back to her ear, she tells him, “Zach, you both need to come home, okay?”

The fear in his mom’s voice is alarming. When Zach steps back and looks at the situation objectively, he can understand it. They did run away together.