Page 67 of Dead Boys Club

Tears stick achingly behind Zach’s eyes. “I know,” he says quickly. “I know, but—I don’t want to stop seeing him. Mom, I—he’s my best friend, and everything happened so fast, and nobody is listening to us, and—”

“Honey,” Zach’s mom says, a little louder to gain his attention. “Zach, I know, okay? It’s okay. We… we’re going to figure this all out, okay?”

Zach sniffles. “What do you mean?”

His mom is quiet for a moment before she says, “Your friends had a lot to say on behalf of you and Parker. They gave me and Parker’s parents a lot to think about. We want to figure this out, okay? What’s best for both of you.” She sucks in a deep breath, then says, “And it doesn’t seem like what’s best is keeping you boys apart.”

Zach looks up at Parker, who’s staring at him, waiting for Zach to say anything that might indicate what’s happening on the other end of the phone. Zach holds up one finger, still unsure how to process his mom’s words himself. Parker frowns.

“Really?” Zach asks.

“Really,” his mom says. “But we can’t work it out if you don’t come home, okay?”

Zach catches Parker’s gaze, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “You mean we can keep seeing each other? We can still be friends?”

He needs to hear those words. He needs something to hold onto during the impossibly long drive back home.

“You can still be friends,” his mom agrees. Then, more softly, she adds, “Trust me, okay?”

For a moment, Zach is six again. His mom is a superhero who can do anything. He swallows around a thick lump in his throat, looking up at Parker. He nods into the phone, then says, “Okay. Yeah—we’ll come home.”

Before the call ends, a thought strikes him, and he says, “Um, what did you mean when you said—our friends, they…?”

“Oh,” his mom says, and Zach’s chest unclenches a little at the slightly confused smile in her voice. “Your friend Bea made a Power-Point? She presented it to all of us. She’s. very convincing.”

“Um—” Teary, Zach laughs, unable to stop himself. “Yeah. She’s the stage manager. Bea made a PowerPoint,” he repeats, and he’s sure that his mom can hear Parker’s barking laugh on the other end.

“Come home, honey,” his mom urges.

Zach looks at Parker, meeting his mismatched eyes. They’re bright and alert and so very alive. He nods and says, “We’re coming home.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The drive back home feels both impossibly short and terribly, insufferably long. They drive as far as Parker can stand it before his eyes start growing heavy. When they run out of crumbled bills from Parker’s jacket pocket somewhere on the highway after getting gas, he pays for their hotel room with a credit card that clearly has Henry Reid’s name on it. Zach has a feeling that Parker’s dad isn’t entirely aware that he has it.

In the hotel, they finally get a signal back on Parker’s phone, and it buzzes with incoming messages from Bea, Isaac, and Paige. Zach reads them out loud to Parker and they laugh, incredulous, at the play-by-play of Bea’s presentation from Isaac’s point of view. Paige’s messages feel more intimate, something for just her brother to read, so Zach skips them, letting Parker scroll through them on his own while Zach takes a shower.

When it’s time to sleep, Zach holds Parker through the night again, his heart racing. Despite his mom’s reassurances, he can’t help but fear that this is going to be the last time that they get to hold each other like this. What if their whole relationship is over before it’s even begun?

Parker’s words on the fire tower echo in Zach’s mind. The thought that Parker liked him all this time, had found his friendship worth living for—it makes Zach feel indescribably small. A speck in the churning universe. A moment in time that changed Parker’s entire course of action, from death to life. How could Zach have been so important without ever realizing it?

The second half of the drive is done mostly in silence. Paige doesn’t have the same kind of music that Parker has in his Subaru, and Parker is too twitchy for the radio. Each mileage sign tells them they’re closer and closer to home, until Parker takes the highway exit into town. The rain from the night they left has turned to snow, coating Zach’s neighborhood in a fresh blanket of white.

Zach’s stomach is twisted up in knots by the time Parker pulls into the driveway behind Zach’s mom’s car. The porchlight is on even though it’s barely past noon. Neither of them make a move, reluctant to part ways again. The last time Zach walked away from him that day at school, he hadn’t known he might never see him again.

Finally, Zach says, “I have to go in.”

“I know,” Parker mutters, scratching at Paige’s steering wheel cover.

“Bea made a PowerPoint,” Zach reminds him, his voice too shaky for the joke to land. “So… it’ll be fine, right?”

Parker’s lips quirk at the corners, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Right,” he agrees.

They kiss briefly at first, but neither pull back after the first few chaste kisses. Parker cups his hand against the back of Zach’s neck, and Zach gets his fingers into the long hair at the back of Parker’s head. What if the Reids have changed their mind in the last twenty-four hours about Vermont? What if this really is the last time that they’ll see one another? What if everything his mom said was just to get him to come home? Zach’s never known his mother to lie, but the fear keeps him stuck in the passenger seat, holding Parker by the face.

Finally, Zach peels himself out of the front seat. As he stands on the porch, he watches as Parker pulls out of the driveway and turns recklessly back onto the road. His taillights disappear around the corner at the end of the block and Zach can’t put off going inside any longer.

His mom is sitting curled up on the couch in the living room. She’s already looking at the door when he enters, like she’s been waiting for him to come in from the porch the whole time. Her face is pale, and her eyes are red like she’s been crying all night. Zach knows the feeling. He shuffles out of his boots and jacket, and the minute he sits down beside her, she throws her arms around him, pulling him against her.