Page 7 of Dead Boys Club

The look on his face must seem ill enough that Isaac immediately steps back, holding up both hands. “Ew, say no more.”

“Uh-huh,” Zach wheezes, but Isaac is already turning and heading for the door.

It takes Zach a good ten minutes before he gathers himself enough to step outside and cross the parking lot toward the usual route home. His attention immediately becomes divided between Parker and what the people in the passing cars are thinking about him. It’s not a good distraction, because it just makes him all the more aware of himself.

He could call his mom, maybe. She probably kept the packets that all the parents got when he was in elementary school, with all of the parents’ names and phone numbers. Maybe the Reids are in there. Maybe she could call Parker’s parents. But then what if Parker tells his parents that he’d asked Zach to kill himself, too, because he found the note he wrote? And then the Reids would tell his mom, and she would know that he’s broken and all of the medication and therapy is totally worthless.

Zach feels like his head is being squeezed in a vice by the time he gets home. The house is quiet and empty, all the lights off but the porchlight. His mom isn’t home. There’s money on the kitchen table for dinner, but he bypasses the kitchen and goes straight for his room. He digs into the bottom of his backpack, pulling out the plastic pill bottle of Ativan.

His hands shake so badly that he dumps the whole bottle out into his palm by accident.

You are a nobody. Nobody would care if a couple of nobodies just—went away forever.

Parker’s voice rings in his head like a bad migraine that he can’t get rid of. He stares down at the handful of pills. Little white circular tablets, piled on top of each other in the cradle of his palm.

Zach carefully tips pills back into the bottle, then digs one out with his fingertips. He takes a swig from last night’s bottle of water, stale on the nightstand, and swallows it. He sits, gripping the edge of his mattress while he waits for it to kick in. He should tell someone. He should call his mom.

As far as suicide methods go, a train isn’t a very good way to try and get the deed done. Like pills. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. Like, he could live and then be disfigured for the rest of his life, and then everyone would know by looking at him what he tried to do. Or maybe worse—it could work. There’s no time for regrets. When a train hits you, that’s it. You’re done.

As the Ativan coats Zach’s racing heart and straining brain in a calm, hazy film, it’s easier to think about Parker. He’s probably at home right now with Paige and his parents. And one suicide attempt is probably alarming enough that they know what to look for now. They probably have it all figured out. Parker probably said that messed-up, mean crap in the empty classroom because he was fresh from the psych ward.

Zach flops down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He breathes and tries not to think about easier ways to die.

Chapter Five

Parker Reid is in school the next day, which at least means he didn’t go home and—

The thought stops its tracks in Zach’s mind. He does his best not to think about it.

Zach feels vibrantly aware of him, in a way that he never has been before. In the hallways, in the cafeteria, in the library during the free period they both share during second hour. Parker is wearing layers, even though the air outside isn’t cold enough for it. A heavy jean vest over a black hoodie, unzipped over a T-shirt with a band that Zach’s never heard of plastered across the front. His thick boots stay unlaced, the hems of his thick, dark pants tucked into the boots. He looks like a shadow moving through the otherwise brightly lit halls of the school. The color still hasn’t come back to his olive skin. His long hair still looks unbrushed.

At lunch, Zach finds a corner table in the cafeteria and sits down with the meal his mom packed for him that morning, right after her shift. He feels sluggish after barely getting four hours of sleep. The conversation in the empty classroom keeps floating back into his brain like bad smog. He’s thinking about what he should say to Paige the next time he sees her, and then someone drops into the chair across from him.

Zach looks up and sees the scowling, pallid face of Parker Reid.

“So,” Parker says, chewing on his thumbnail, the way Paige does. “Have you thought about it?”

Zach opens his mouth, then shuts it. Has he thought about it? Has he thought about the pair of them killing themselves together? He doesn’t know what to say. No? Of course he hasn’t? But he has, that’s the problem. Not in a make-a-plan sort of way, but because he hasn’t been able to get the way Parker’s voice sounded in that empty classroom out of his head. So of course he’s thought about it. And he’s thought about all of the ways that he could possibly tell Paige.

“No,” Zach says, instead. “Um, no, I—look, should I… I think maybe you should tell someone.”

“Are you going to tell someone?” Parker asks, his shoulders hunching up against his jaw. He looks furious, his heavy brows furrowing together.

“Nononono,” Zach says quickly, throwing his hands out in front of him. “No, I mean—No, I didn’t say anything. I’m not… I didn’t know if you were, you know, maybe you were joking? ’Cause that’s a thing, dark humor, people joke about… about that kind of stuff all the time. Right? So maybe you were kidding. So I didn’t say anything. I won’t. I wouldn’t, I swear.”

Parker settles down, though he still looks suspicious. He rolls up the sleeves of his hoodie, and when he puts his sharp elbows on the table, Zach can see that his forearms and wrists are rippled like water—it takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realize that they’re scars. Some of them are scabbed still, red and raw, like maybe Parker picks at them. Like, maybe this isn’t the first time those particular cuts have scabbed over. They stand out against his skin, red and bright. Zach swallows and looks down at his turkey sandwich, his fingers plucking at the crust.

“I wasn’t kidding,” Parker says finally.

They’re surrounded by people, but nobody is listening. Zach is used to that. Used to sitting in the cafeteria and having no one even stand within earshot of him. The radius might be even wider now that Parker is sitting across from him. There’s literally nothing that Zach wants to discuss less than Parker’s proposed suicide pact, no matter how few people are around to overhear.

“Parker…” Zach says. He’s not sure he’s ever said his name, out loud, directly to him. It feels weird. He peeks up at him, watching the way that Parker watches him from across the table with an expression that is set and determined. “I—I don’t…”

“You wrote a note,” Parker points out, stabbing one finger against the table for emphasis. “You had a plan.”

Zach looks down at his sandwich, fingers ripping into the meat of it now, his heart hammering in his ears. Parker keeps talking, and the words feel purposefully vicious, like maybe he doesn’t really mean them.

“Haven’t you ever thought, like, fuck—literally nobody would care? Right? Who the fuck are you, anyway?” Parker fidgets across the table, and when Zach looks up again, he’s hunched in further on himself.