Page 69 of Dead Boys Club

After a brief moment, his mom asks, “Has he been your boyfriend since those emails…?”

“No!” Zach says, eager to stop that line of thought in its tracks. “No. It wasn’t like—it wasn’t, like, a Romeo and Juliet thing. We’ve been, like, together since December. Since the opening night party.”

Relief washes over his mom’s face immediately and she pulls him in for another hug, her arms tight around his shoulders. She rocks him again, but this time the hug is relieved and happy. “Thank you for telling me,” she says, her voice soft in his ear.

They pull away, his mom’s hands still firm on his shoulders as she rubs her thumbs up and down the line of his neck. Zach feels so soothed and so small and so tired. He could probably sleep for a week.

“Okay,” his mom says softly, mostly to herself. She gives a little nod. “You’ve had a long day. Why don’t you go take a nap?”

Zach nods back, relieved. “Okay.”

Then, as if suddenly remembering everything that had brought them to this emotional conversation again, his mom adds, “I think you should be grounded, though, for… you know. Running away.”

They look at one another, neither of them knowing what that might entail. Zach has never been grounded before. Still, he nods again, because it only seems fair.

“Right,” he agrees.

His mom smiles, satisfied, and pats him gently on the knee. “Good.” She wraps him in another tight hug, then pulls away slightly to press her forehead against his. Zach closes his eyes, relief sweeping over him in cool, lapping waves.

No more secrets.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Zach has no idea how to be grounded. His mom has never had to discipline him for something as serious as running away. Zach can’t even remember the last thing he got in trouble for in a major way, actually. They’re both a little awkward about carrying out the punishment. He’s not allowed to watch TV and he can’t go out after school, both of which he already does very little of.

On Monday, Parker returns to school. When he walks in with Paige, Zach’s heart leaps into his throat. He looks tired, eyes sleepy, hair damp, bundled in his jacket and a black-and-white striped scarf. He looks so soft. Zach wants to kiss him right there in the hallway but he settles for hooking their pinkies together.

Despite his mom not being around most of the time to enforce the new rules, Zach follows them to the letter. He wants to show her that he’s taking their conversation seriously. He comes right home with Isaac after school and sits in the living room with the TV off, reading or catching up on homework.

Nothing goes back to normal because, maybe, in retrospect, normal wasn’t working. Zach starts to see life in two phases: Before the Emails and After the Emails. And frankly, he thinks he prefers the After.

Despite being barred from seeing each other outside of school due to their respective punishments, Zach and Parker still have study hall and lunch together. They sit in the back of the library during their free period, shoulder-to-shoulder. Parker peruses the shelves for books to read in order to avoid doing his own schoolwork, while Zach slogs through Calculus homework.

Zach’s punishment only lasts a week. He chalks that up to his mom’s inexperience with grounding a teenager. Parker, on the other hand, has parents who are experts at punishing Parker for everything from totaling his car to running away.

“Wasn’t even his first time,” Paige tells Zach one afternoon after school, rolling her eyes. “Except the last time he tried to run away, he was thirteen. He made it to the bus stop downtown before Dad found him.”

“It’s bullshit,” Parker complains, not for the first time. They all sit shivering on the front steps, drawing out the time before they have to go home. It’s technically not hanging out after school if the parking lot is still full of student cars, Zach reasons to himself.

“Maybe if you hadn’t stolen my car,” Paige points out.

“It’s not stolen if I brought it back,” Parker mutters around the end of his cigarette.

“I think it was very romantic,” Bea says, sitting as far away from Parker and his cigarette as she can. She rubs her hands together through her knitted mittens. “Inappropriate and dangerous, but… romantic.”

“It was fucking ballsy is what it was,” Isaac says, clapping Parker on his back.

Things aren’t normal, but things are better. Zach keeps going to therapy, slowly opening up to his therapist in ways that feel more real. He starts with his run-in with the train over the summer, then talks about Parker, and the emails, and the Dead Boys Club. It’s rough and he understands now why Parker found family therapy so taxing.

Bea is the first of them to turn eighteen on the last weekend in January. Parker’s punishment is lifted long enough for the rest of them to throw her a birthday party. Paige does most of the planning, but she comes over to Zach’s house on Saturday morning and they bake a birthday cake together for Bea. Parker tags along. He’s pretty unhelpful but Zach doesn’t mind.

The birthday party is Zach’s first time in Bea’s house. He’s immediately met with the evidence of all of Bea’s theatrical accomplishments hung up in the living room. Like Zach and Isaac, Bea is also an only child. Her parents have hung professional photographs of her all over the house, and when Zach meets Bea’s dad he understands immediately where she gets her managerial attitude.

After pizza and cake—Paige and Zach’s homemade one, as well as the store-bought cake Bea’s parents purchased for the party—they pull out a stack of boardgames from a wardrobe in the living room. They play a four-hour game of Monopoly that ends only when Bea’s dad has to split up Parker and Isaac, because Parker has Isaac in a headlock after getting caught on Isaac’s four mansions on Pacific Avenue.

Time keeps moving forward.

Parker is finally released from house arrest on the first weekend in February, and they all celebrate by driving to the Baskin-Robbins by the fairgrounds, which are now empty and covered in tightly-packed snow. Zach can’t remember who initiates the snowball fight, but they spend the afternoon chasing each other through the abandoned lot, pelting each other with slush.