Chapter 7 – Secrets

•••

In the end, Conor spent more time looking for an open bathroom stall than he did actually reading. Guyler had written back, and his response was brutal and short:

Dear faggot,

I’ve got to admit, the LAST thing I was expecting was for you to give this shit BACK. Are you really that desperate for a pen pal? I mean, I know you’re not getting any from your boyfriend these days, but seriously, this is a new low.

As for your question: from you, nothing. Unless this is you hinting that you’ve finally pulled your head out of Ashleigh’s ass, in which case I’ll take a complete list of his secrets, habits, and weaknesses.

Yours truly,

~Guyler

And just like that, Conor’s modest optimism vanished. Letting out a long, slow breath, he closed the journal and tucked it in with the rest of his books, holding his fury tightly in check. He used his foot to flush the empty toilet—camouflage, a habit—then nudged the stall door open with his shoulder and stalked back out into the bathroom.

It was the last minute of class change, and the space outside the stalls was nearly empty. A pair of boys looked up as he walked past, but their glances were idle; they had nothing to hide, which meant that Conor had nothing to fear.

(A week or so earlier he’d lost track of things and ended up needing to go in the middle of third period, only to stumble across three boys filling in bubbles on an entire stack of scantron answer sheets. He’d backed out through the door before they could react and ended up crossing over to the sixth grade building to pee; while he was washing his hands, after, a younger boy had backed out on him.)

Worming his way through the thinning crowd, he left most of his stuff in his locker, keeping only the journal and a pen as he turned toward the cafeteria. He moved as if half-held by invisible leashes, his fists and jaw clenched as energy thrummed through his body, seeking an exit and finding none.

He had walked into math class to find the little book lying on his desk, with Holt eyeing it as though afraid it would sprout fangs and lunge. He’d slid it under his desk with the rest of his books, waiting for the end of the period—had spent all of class staring at the back of the other boy’s head, imagining what Guyler might have written, assembling an army of devastating responses—

—only to find that once again it was Ashleigh who was at the center of things, Ashleigh who was the other boy’s sole target. The destruction of Conor’s journal wasn’t even part of some grand plan—it was a mere sideshow, an offhand act of cruelty, something Guyler had done just because.

Wait a sec—are you actually jealous?

Even in his own head Ashleigh tried to steal the show!

Overcome, he turned to a nearby pillar and kicked it—then backed up and kicked it again, harder—then pounded it with both fists, a feral growl clawing its way past bared teeth. Around him, several students froze in mid-step, their eyes widening, but he ignored them, continuing to hammer at the indifferent concrete until his rage collapsed under its own weight and he found himself sagging, a cut-string puppet left leaning in the breezeway.

Not his fault, he thought wearily, retrieving the journal from the dust as the rubberneckers chuckled and began to drift away. Ashleigh had not asked for any of this, was probably not even aware that his peculiar brand of fame was casting Conor in shadow.

But still. It was one straw too many. Entering the cafeteria, he filled his tray and headed for the tables, once again forgoing the company of Holt, Eddie, Nolan, and Nicholas in favor of the silent lunch section. Setting his food to the side, he opened the journal and picked up his pen, shaping each word with careful concentration.

You know for somebody who throghs around the word faggot the way you do you sure do think about dicks an awful lot. Something you wont to get off your chest? I mean, its ok, its perfecly normal to spend all your time obssessing over a boy oh wait no its not. You’ll have to get your stocker list the old fashoned way, perv.

Seriusly, you keep calling me and Ashleigh pathedic, but nether one of US is sneaking around stealing peoples jornals and trashing them or talking big in front of a crowd but where were you when Ashleigh came back to school? Didn’t hear you talking big then. Your mad cos Ashleigh beat your sorry little ass but you forgot that YOURE the one who started that fight and Ashleigh just finished it.

You wont to mess with one of us your gonna have to deal with both of us, cos that is how it works when you have friends (not that you have any) so FUCK OFF with your bully bullshit, you can make fun of my spelling all you wont and I don’t care, thats cos I have a life and your just sitting there being obsessed, signed “Faggot” see it don’t bother me cos I know its not true.

Conor dotted the last sentence savagely, the tip of his pen poking through to the page below. Somehow, the act of writing had made him more angry, not less, a kind of anti-catharsis slowly overtaking him as he refined and clarified his grievances. He found himself bristling at incidents that had long since ceased to matter, recalling every slight and scuffle of over a year of conflict—

Ashleigh overdid it this time, but Guyler started it at the skate park, and in Mr. Marowitz’s class, and on the bus on the way to the science museum…

It had been Guyler when Ashleigh had brought a fragile mural to school for his book report, and when Holt’s mother had done a ludicrous job with Holt’s haircut. It had been Guyler who’d tripped Ashleigh in the hallway right before Thanksgiving break and almost broken his nose. It was ridiculous for the other boy to act so aggrieved, to demand redress as if he had been uniquely and unfairly wronged—

Aren’t you doing the same thing, though? a quiet voice asked.

No!

But his fury faltered as a different set of memories began to surface. Guyler’s shoulders slumping as he stuttered to a halt while Ashleigh raced away with the bag that held his Halloween candy. Guyler’s hair shining like a beacon in the movie theater, an easy target for their popcorn, their pennies, their chewed-up gum. Guyler, on the verge of tears in the locker room, unable to find his brand-new sneakers because Conor had snuck them into Ashleigh’s bag while Ashleigh provided a distraction—

Fine, Conor snapped. So none of them were innocent.

But it was Guyler who was in the wrong today, Guyler who’d chosen to give up his transient claim on the moral high ground when he’d turned his anger at Ashleigh into an unprovoked attack on Conor.

He looked back down at the page. The message was all wrong for his original goal of stalling, of drawing the other boy out. But it fit just fine with the way he was feeling now. He had no idea how Guyler would react, and he didn’t care, and he sort of liked that he didn’t care.

Do your worst, asshole.

Standing, he stalked across the cafeteria to the table where Guyler was sitting, alone as usual. Setting the book down, he slid it firmly across the speckled surface, knocking a splash of juice out of Guyler’s cup as he pushed it against the other boy’s tray.

Guyler looked up, his eyes narrowing. Reaching forward, he picked up the journal, tossing it lightly back in Conor’s direction.

“Already read that one,” he said. “It’s boring.”

It took a full three seconds for this to sink in, after which Conor experienced a moment of horrible, clawing desperation in which the only response he could think of was you touched it last. “W—there’s more,” he said, suppressing a wince at the catch in his voice. “Whole page, brand-new.”

“Not interested.” Guyler feigned a yawn, which morphed into a predatory grin as he watched Conor splutter. “Whatcha gonna do now, pen pal?”

“Fuck you, Guyler, read it,” Conor growled, trying to ignore the tendrils of panic that were worming through his chest.

(Over at the staff table, several heads had turned in their direction. He had been out of his seat for over twenty seconds.)

“Why should I? Last I heard, your own boyfriend didn’t even want to.”

Conor’s breath caught in his throat, his lips moving soundlessly as a dozen angry retorts all tried to come out at once and formed a traffic jam.

“You couldn’t get enough of it before,” he said lamely.

(One of the teachers had stood and was heading their way.)

Guyler’s smile deepened. “Yeah, but this is more fun.”

Frantic, Conor felt his thoughts go slippery, and he scrambled for words, not bothering to filter for quality or relevance—

“You owe me,” he blurted. “For your forehead.”

Guyler’s eyes widened just a little, the mask slipping half an inch. He stared at Conor for all but their last two seconds, finally breaking off to shrug. “Deal,” he said, reaching out for the little leatherbound book.

“You need to be in your seat, young man,” said the teacher, an older woman Conor didn’t know. She had come to a halt and drawn herself up imperiously, looking down at them over the ramparts of her crossed arms.

“He was bringing me my diary,” Guyler piped up, a sudden and appalling choirboy cheerfulness in his tone. “I dropped it in the hall!” Already turning, Conor looked back to see the other boy holding up the book, a shit-eating grin plastered across his open, guileless face.

The woman’s expression softened. “Next time, wait until lunch is over,” she chided, punctuating the order with a frown. She watched as Conor beat a hasty retreat, not daring to look back until he’d arrived back at his seat. By then, she was gone, and Guyler was once more staring inscrutably in his direction.

We probably should have seen that one coming, whispered Ashleigh.

Fuck you, and fuck him too.

In a quieter voice, he added: New rule—no more plans that Guyler can fuck up just by deciding not to play along.

Yeah, I told you we should have just punched him.

•••

The next day and a half passed in staccato savagery as the journal switched hands with ever-increasing frequency. It was on the floor of the hallway when Conor returned from Activity, some twenty feet away from his locker as if it had been carried downstream by the flow of students. He’d thrown it at the back of Guyler’s head in the courtyard after final bell, picking it up from the tree again that night. By the time they arrived in Math on Wednesday, they had each written in it three more times, and it passed between them again whenever Mrs. Atkins turned her back.

Guyler had apparently decided that his agreement to read it was generally binding, because after his initial capitulation in the cafeteria, he offered no further resistance.

(Either that, or he was simply enjoying the opportunity to take the gloves off.)

His first response had been ruthless:

I’m glad it doesn’t bother you when I call you faggot, faggot. By the way, faggot, *throws, *want, *it’s (4x combo!), *perfectly, *obsessing, *stalker (I think, anyway), *seriously, *pathetic, *neither, *journals, *people’s, *you’re, *because (4x combo!), *YOU’RE. There’s more, but there’s no fucking way I’m doing all the work for you. Quit screwing around, put some fucking effort into it.

As long as we’re making lists of stuff you don’t get, we might as well add irony, because I’m pretty sure YOU just called ME obsessed. You know, by writing it down in this book. The one that you carry around with you everywhere because it reminds you of your butt buddy. I can’t decide if it’s funnier if he never even read it, or if he just didn’t bother to write back.

Not your friend (since I don’t have any),

~Guyler

P.S.—I didn’t steal your stupid journal, shithead. You dropped it on the ground in Math and never bothered to pick it up. News flash: no one’s out to get you, because no one cares.

Conor had accomplished very little in Art that afternoon, spending most of his time poring over the newspaper scraps they were using for papier-mâché, looking for the proper spellings of various words. He’d felt a grim pleasure at the lack of annotations the next time he’d opened the journal, but the feeling had lasted only seconds:

Hey, look, progress! Maybe we can work on your math skills next. I could teach you about negative numbers so you can finally understand your report card.

Livid, Conor had filled his next entry with deliberate errors, which Guyler had thoroughly ignored. It was infuriating—the other boy seemed to know each and every one of Conor’s buttons, while at the same time having none of his own. He didn’t react to name-calling or insults, and when Conor recounted several of his more public humiliations at Ashleigh’s hands, Guyler replied with details that Conor had forgotten, each word oozing a cool, dispassionate contempt.

Conor had considered breaking the chain—just keeping the journal the next time it came back, refusing to write another message. But they both knew that Guyler was currently winning—that to end their exchange prematurely would be an admission of defeat.

Of course, if Guyler felt the same way once Conor pulled ahead…

IF you pull ahead.

God dammit.

In any event, most of the low-hanging fruit was gone, and both boys were beginning to probe deeper, their battle shifting from a general bombardment to a slower insurgency as each looked for chinks in the other’s armor. A real conversation began to emerge, its content buried at first beneath the sheer volume of the abuse, but rising gradually to the surface as the insults became perfunctory. It was as if, having rigorously established their mutual disdain, they were by unspoken agreement giving one another room to maneuver, each risking a devastating coup de grâce in hopes of achieving the same.

Guyler’s advantage in this more intimate arena was indisputable, given his unlimited access to two weeks of Conor’s most private and vulnerable ramblings. Conor nearly choked the first time Guyler referred to Ashleigh as his imaginary friend, mocking his internal dialogue with unsettling accuracy.

Slowly, though, the gap began to narrow, glimmers of the other boy’s true personality poking through as their strange correspondence went on. Often, there was more to be learned from what wasn’t said than from what was, and Conor began quietly keeping track of which threads Guyler consistently refused to pick up. Most of the other boy’s deflections were subtle, as when Conor had asked once again why he hadn’t ratted Ashleigh out after the fight.

And here I thought you were grateful, Guyler had written, leaving the book on Conor’s desk at the start of fifth period. What’s the point of telling, when it doesn’t get anything done? I notice YOU haven’t told on ME for ruining your pretty little diary.

Which had in fact successfully distracted Conor from his question, though he privately resolved to come back to it later. I haven’t told anybody cos I don’t want to have to hold your stupid face together again, he’d written back.

Guyler’s response had been shrewd:

You wouldn’t have to WORRY about holding people’s faces together if your friend wasn’t a fucking psycopath with a short fuse. Seriously, how does this not bother you? I mean, it must bother you on SOME level, or you would have just told him I fucked with your journal, right? Why else would you keep it a secret?

P.S.—*because

It had taken Conor an extra read to be certain that there were, in fact, no subtle insults or hidden sarcasm—just an open, honest question. Without stopping to think, he’d picked up his pen and composed an answer:

Yeah, it bothers me. Its fucked up, think I don’t know that? He crossed the line. But you’re an asshole if you think you’re any better. You stoll my journal and spent like five hours wreking it, WHY? Just cause I’m Ashleigh’s friend. You ask me, BOTH of you need to get some fucking counsiling, difference is NONE of this would of happened except for you and your bullshit. If you would of just left us alone (hell if you just left us alone in the FIRST place, back in 6th grade) everything would be all normal right now. Ashleigh might have a short fuse, but your the one liting fucking matches and then crying cos you got burnt.

No sooner had he placed the final period than a note of worry rang softly in the back of his mind. Looking back over the message, he frowned.

Caught up in the act of writing, he hadn’t made any effort to filter his words, and his candor had brought him dangerously close to the edge of disloyalty. There was nothing in there that he wouldn’t share with, say, Holt, or Timothy, or even Nolan or Sam. He’d said as much to Ashleigh directly, on the one day they’d both been at school.

But this was Guyler Stevens he was writing to. Solidarity was called for—wasn’t it?

Conor closed the book on his finger, holding the page. He glanced toward the front of the room, where the other boy was talking quietly with Rami as the pair of them worked together on the day’s assignment.

…Ash? Little help, here?

Silence.

(It didn’t work like that, apparently.)

Conor opened the book again, rereading the message once more.

It wasn’t bad, exactly. Just…too honest. Even for Holt or Timothy, now that he really thought about it. The nature of what Ashleigh had done, the way Conor felt about it—these things were intimate, almost sacrosanct. They were, quite literally, just between Conor and Ashleigh—no one else had any right to eavesdrop, or comment, or judge.

Yeah, but it’s not like either of us gives a shit what Guyler has to say about it.

True. But there was still power in confession, in confirmation. Guyler was already uncomfortably familiar with the details of Conor and Ashleigh’s recent—what, disagreement? Separation? Rough patch? This would just be fuel for his fire, ammunition for his attacks.

Who the fuck cares?

Conor frowned. That was a question that cut two ways.

Come on. What are you going to do, rip out the whole goddamn page like some girl who can’t decide what to write to her crush? I’m sure he won’t have anything to say about that.

Which was the deciding factor, in the end. There was no way that Guyler would fail to notice, and no doubt that the other boy would milk it for all it was worth. Better simply to leave it, and let him think whatever he wanted.

Besides, Conor thought, closing the journal as he waited for Mrs. Atkins to turn her back. It’s the truth.

(There were things worth lying for, but the opinion of Guyler Stevens wasn’t one of them.)

•••

It began to rain in the middle of last period, a heavy, monotonous downpour that made it hard to stay awake. After final bell, the students huddled awkwardly beneath the breezeways, packed in like sardines, breaking away in impromptu footraces whenever one of the buses pulled into the circle.

Conor was one of the last ones onto bus 134, having lingered at his locker, waiting for Guyler to give back the journal. He had waited at lunch, too—both before and after—and between sixth and seventh periods, but neither book nor boy had been anywhere to be seen. He’d been on the verge of giving up when Guyler had appeared around the corner in the empty, echoing hallway, tossed the little book like a Frisbee, and disappeared without a word.

Swinging into an open seat near the front, Conor pulled the journal out of his bag and opened it.

I didn’t fuck up your stupid diary because you’re Ashleigh’s friend, faggot. I fucked it up because you’re Ashleigh’s tool. I mean, Jesus, look at this crap. You spent two fucking weeks begging him to just PLEASE come back and make you his bitch again, and he wouldn’t even ANSWER you. After he got you in trouble, ditched you, ignored you, wrote your stupid little secret up on the board. All that and you’re STILL on his side. Go figure.

The problem is, he’s an asshole, and you’re his fucking stooge, and I can’t decide which pisses me off more. At least he’s got a REASON to try and ruin my life. He actually HATES me. But you? You don’t even give a shit! You’re just along for the ride! So don’t go bitching about how I came after you just because you’re Ashleigh’s friend, when that’s the only reason YOU came after ME. It’s a two-way fucking street. You want to be left alone, quit taking orders from a thug and start thinking for yourself. Get off his dick, grow a pair, and tell him to fuck off once in a while. Or better yet, forever. I’ll sign the fucking truce in a heartbeat.

Holding my breath,

~Guyler

P.S.—“Crossed the line,” my ass. Ain’t no line if nothing HAPPENS when he crosses it.

The engine came to life with a sputtering roar just as Conor finished, and the bus lurched forward, tossing the students back against their seats.

He closed the little book, slipping it back into his bookbag, looking out past his seatmate at the washed-out grey of the October sky, at the droplets tracing their way across the window.

Time passed.

Guyler was right.

(Conor didn’t think it, exactly. But he let himself know it.)

The other boy was biased, hypocritical, and vicious, and his loathing for Ashleigh colored every word he wrote, every move he made.

And he was right.

Conor closed his eyes.

What did that mean?

Conor didn’t know. Or rather, he didn’t want to know. In a flash of lucid self-awareness, he realized that this was the real reason he’d hidden the journal’s destruction from Ashleigh, the source of his strange, unnamed reluctance. Somehow, all the way back at the beginning, reading those first few furious passages at the foot of the magnolia, a part of him had intuited where Guyler was coming from, leapt ahead to the truth and spent the past week trying to dodge it.

But it had found him, now.

So, whispered the imaginary Ashleigh in his head. What happens next?

Conor didn’t know that, either.

A snatch of conversation behind him caught his ear and he turned toward it, grateful for a distraction, anything that could derail his current train of thought.

“—little man. But you feel free to do whatever. We red, white, and blue up in here—ain’t nobody making green unless they want to.”

It was Devon, sitting four rows back and making no effort to keep his voice down. He was speaking across the aisle to Timothy, who was looking back through narrow, suspicious eyes.

Conor watched as Timothy spoke, too quietly to be heard over the background chatter. Devon laughed. “Love that word, literally,” he said. “Straight out of a book, makes me think of Shakespeare. Sure, ain’t no reason why I can’t, but I got five or six reasons why I won’t.”

The older boy held up a hand, ticking them off as he continued. “Numero uno: today is by definition better than tomorrow morning, that’s why FedEx charges double for it. Numero dos: little personal rule of mine. I try not to bother a man before eight AM unless I got news that’s better than coffee or I don’t give a fuck, neither of which happens to apply in this particular situation. Numero tres: once a dude’s told you to fuck off, gets kind of hard to get him to break the habit, so I’d rather make shit smooth as possible before it gets to that point. And last and most definitely not least, if I do it myself, then how do I justify handing over thirty whole dollars to your skinny white ass?” Lowering his hand, he frowned. “Shit. That was only four, wasn’t it? Guess I literally lied.”

Timothy opened his mouth to respond, still too softly for Conor to hear. Just then, the bus came to a halt, and the two kids in the seat in front of Devon stood up to get off.

There was no time to be subtle. Seizing the opportunity, Conor darted down the aisle as soon as the two kids had passed, throwing himself into the empty seat as the bus jerked into motion again. “Uh,” he said. “Hi.”

A muscle in Timothy’s jaw tightened, but Devon merely chuckled. “Long time no see, Rocky,” the older boy drawled. Turning back to Timothy, he jerked his head in Conor’s direction. “Now that I think about it, maybe catapult here could help me out, since you seem so…unenthusiastic.”

Timothy crossed his arms. “Didn’t say no, did I?”

“Didn’t say yes, did you?” Devon spread his hands, waiting.

Timothy frowned, his gaze shifting back and forth between Conor and the older boy. “It’s so stupid, though,” he grumbled. “Isn’t there something else I can do?”

Devon shook his head. “I got plenty of people can do me plenty of favors. This the favor I need right now. You either the man who can do it, or you’re not.”

Conor cleared his throat. “What’s—um. What’s going on?”

Devon raised his eyebrows.

Timothy sighed. “Fine,” he grumbled. “Give it.”

Devon chuckled again, pulling out a pair of tightly folded bills. Opening them up, he skinned away a twenty, tucking it back into his pocket. The other, a ten, he passed across the aisle. “Pleasure doing business with you, Tim,” he said cheerfully. Lifting his chin in Conor’s direction, he added, “How about you, David? Want to make this into a race? I got me another ten right here.”

David?

“Oh, come on, ain’t you been to Sunday school? David throws rocks.” Devon looked back and forth between the two of them, then shook his head. “Shit. Y’all bitches just don’t understand the basic concept of nicknames.”

“What’s going on?” Conor repeated. Across the aisle, Timothy was folding the bill into a tiny rectangle, his expression baleful.

“Oh, just looking for an introduction to some local talent,” Devon said breezily. “Been hearing lots of stories about ol’ Tim’s big brother lately.”

Oh, here we fucking go.

“Game goes like this,” Devon said. “I give the little man here a ten, he comes back tomorrow with his brother and they’re both holding fives, I give each of ’em ten more. You want in? Bet five bucks on the other guy and either way you come out happy.”

Conor blinked.

“That’s thirty dollars,” he said, taken aback. “For nothing?”

The older boy shrugged. “You call it nothing, maybe. Me, I like to play the long game, know what I’m saying? Call it a retainer—my boy Tiny here pulls it off, I got two friends with goodwill who know they’ll be taken care of, they ever in the mood to do me a favor. And if he doesn’t, well. I lose ten today, but that’s a good price for learning the limits of the little man’s competence.” He grinned. “R-O-I, amigroes, return on investment. Nothing like a little goodwill in the bank, ain’t that right, Timothy?”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“Uh, Timothy?” Conor said, unable to stop himself from glancing nervously over at the older boy. “This, uh. Sounds an awful lot like you’re getting recruited into a gang, or something.”

Conor expected another laugh from Devon, but the older boy said nothing as he turned to meet Timothy’s gaze, their faces still and masklike. There was another long pause as the two of them weighed each other, Conor looking back and forth between both. “So?” challenged Timothy, still staring in Devon’s direction.

So—gangs are bad?

“Ain’t no gang, Alcatraz,” Devon said, breaking the stalemate to look at Conor once more. “Just friends and favors—freely asked, freely given. You get people start thinking of they selves as part of a gang, shit gets all kind of fucked up.” He snorted. “Remember the first couple weeks of school? Stupid, man. Whole bunch of people could’ve just got along, except they had this idea between them. Eagles and bulldogs and shit. Set us back fucking weeks, man.”

Conor frowned. “Set who back?”

“Me and every other Joe out there just trying to make a quiet buck,” Devon said. “Live and let live, know what I’m saying? I must’ve dropped three, four hundred dollars trying to calm things down. But hey, you got to spend some to make some. Shit’s looking real entrepreneurial, now.”

“Wait,” Timothy cut in. “You’re saying you’re the reason everything got better in the last couple of weeks?”

Had things gotten better?

Conor bit his lip.

Other stuff on your mind, eh?

“Wasn’t just me, of course,” the older boy said. “Had to find me some similarly enlightened individuals to help put pressure in the right places, and that took a while. And good ol’ Mr. Sykes did his fair share, thanks to a couple of extremely accurate anonymous tips.” He winked. “But all in all, time and money well spent. Brother needed a little peace and quiet so he could get to work, you know?”

Timothy’s eyes had narrowed again. “And you’re telling us this why, exactly?” he demanded. “Want to make sure you’ve got street cred with the sixth and seventh graders?”

“I’m telling you so you’ll be fuckin’ grateful, man. Ain’t no point building a bridge if you don’t put your name on it. And it don’t hurt to have people think of you when they asking they selves who runs shit. Even if those people are middle schoolers. Middle schoolers have this habit of turning into high schoolers eventually.”

There was another silence. Conor studied the older boy’s face.

It was almost beyond belief—would have been beyond belief, if someone had tried to make the same claim a month earlier. And there was still the other boy’s—what, demeanor?—the way he seemed to think he was in a play, or something, every word exaggerated, every sentence crafted.

But a month of Ms. Palmano’s lectures had left their mark on Conor’s worldview, and after a moment’s thought, he was almost surprised that he hadn’t seen it coming. He could hear his teacher’s words in his mind as clearly as if she were on the bus beside him—agency is what we call it when an individual has power, control, the ability to make choices and have those choices affect the world around you.

Devon was not an NPC. He sounded like one—but that was on purpose.

“Aaaanyway,” the older boy said, leaning back and stretching languorously. “All that’s just a roundabout way of saying I ain’t after no lifetime commitment. I’m just looking to get up with anybody thinks they might could turn a little value into a little more value. And until we get that ball rolling, I’m more than happy to spread a little cash among good friends who know how to get shit done. Men of unusual talents, so to speak.”

The bus squealed to a halt, and Devon stood. “You ever short a couple presidents,” he said, his glance including Conor as well as Timothy, “you just say the word.” He shouldered his bag, threw them a mock salute, and stepped out into the aisle.

And then he was gone. Conor and Timothy rode in uneasy silence for the next few minutes, until Conor suddenly realized they were only a few blocks away from the younger boy’s stop.

“Hey,” he said.

“What?” Timothy growled, still looking out the window.

Conor swallowed. “I, uh. I’m sorry. Sorry I never caught up with you again. After Ashleigh came back, I mean.”

“Whatever,” the younger boy said, his voice brittle with bitterness. “Used to it. World revolves around Ashleigh, everyone loves Ashleigh, Ashleigh is love, Ashleigh is life.”

Conor winced, remembering the fury he’d felt at Guyler’s disdain, at Ashleigh’s usurping of the jump…

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I know that feeling.”

He looked down at the floor. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Run errands for Devon, I mean.”

“Mom’s got enough money for half a birthday present,” Timothy said levelly. “The other half went to Ashleigh’s new window and Ashleigh’s therapy sessions.”

A ghastly shriek filled the air as the bus driver downshifted, and Timothy stood, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

(He wasn’t carrying a lunchbox.)

“Besides,” the younger boy continued. “I need somebody I can count on to have my back.”

Then the bus stopped, and he, too, was gone.

•••

A double life, a triple life—quadruple, quintuple, high enough that Conor no longer knew the word for it. A dozen lives, a hundred, each in its own little box, distinct from all the rest; a shifting sea of priorities as he stole time and energy from himself to satisfy the needs of the present.

He was awake at five in the morning, dangling by one arm from the old oak tree in the backyard, fighting for even an inch of lift, humbled by the pull of gravity. The monkey jump loomed on the horizon in the same way that Binder’s Gap once had—it was all he ever thought of, the sole consuming passion in his heart.

He was on the edge of his seat in Ms. Palmano’s class, razor-sharp and laser-focused. He rarely spoke, holding out for serendipity, for the rare and ideal coincidence of a brilliant insight and a silent room. He had come to need his teacher’s winks like water—a day between them parched, and two was almost unbearable. He had even made conscious efforts to improve his grammar, beating plowshares out of Guyler’s cutting mockery.

He was enduring that mockery in math, where the first test had rung a death knell for his hopes of earning a D. There would be a parent-teacher conference soon, and Conor had had two separate nightmares in which they made Guyler his tutor. Over a week had passed since the other boy’s last entry in the journal, and Conor still hadn’t handed it back; Guyler had responded by resuming his usual steady stream of snide asides and vague aspersions, taking particular pleasure in being provocatively right whenever Conor was forced to be publicly wrong.

He was gasping for breath on the soccer field, where the modest improvement brought about by his nighttime runs had been horribly misconstrued as the tip of an iceberg of talent. Coach Pool had kept him at midfield for two of their three games so far; perhaps out of respect for his former loyalties, he had benched Conor for the entirety of their first match against the Vikings. Guyler was showing a peculiar consistency of character on the field, resisting all appeals to decency, strategy, and esprit de corps—he had received yellow cards for tripping Conor on two separate occasions, and there was now a boy assigned to stay between them at all times.

He was at a loss for words in Freedom Plaza, struggling to translate his patchwork, piecemeal philosophy into some kind of coherent and teachable framework. Where Ashleigh had questioned his motives, Timothy challenged his methods, demanding that Conor justify the placement of every hand, the value of every drill. By the tenth time the younger boy interrupted his explanation with but why can’t you just, Conor was ready to scream.

(But Timothy was there at his request, had in fact only come because Conor had insisted, and so he swallowed his frustration, doing his best to think things through from a fresh perspective. It wasn’t that there weren’t reasons, after all. It was just that he’d never forced himself to figure out what they actually were.)

He was playing the good son at home, weathering his parents’ oblique comments about the importance of good study habits, laughing at his mother’s jokes, forcing himself to accept his father’s affections, unable to put his finger on the moment when his responses had ceased to be genuine. He did his chores, suppressing the layer of resentment that had overlaid his ordinary reluctance. He left his bedroom door open as an act of defiant self-discipline, closing it only when he needed to relieve some pressure, or when he was sneaking out, or when he was working on homework or listening to music. He realized he was closing his door all the time, and he gritted his teeth and opened it again.

And between and behind each of these, in the unscheduled hours that filled the cracks of his week, he was Ashleigh Falhanner’s friend. The two of them sat together on the bus, rendezvoused in the hall, defected to one another’s team in dodgeball. They shared afternoon bike rides and weekend sleepovers, shrinking the lengthening autumn nights with hours of online conversation. They told tales, dared dares, discussed dreams—solemn and serious one moment, dissolving into giggles the next.

(“You made it to first base with Jennifer yet?”)

(“Huh? I’m not—I mean, what do you—oh, fuck you, quit laughing.”)

It was by far the largest share of Conor’s attention, an archipelago that dominated the map of his life. But it was not one hundred percent, and in the quiet lull between laughs, each could see that the other had noticed.

(Conor sensed that they might have talked about it, together—cut their way through the tension from both sides at once, and in so doing meet in the middle. But the confidence to take that critical step was part of what had been lost. The other boy was—well, certainly not a stranger. But no longer so thoroughly known that Conor could be sure he wanted the distance closed, and would in fact be trying, from his own side.)

Ashleigh no longer came out to train, though his ankle had fully healed. After his fourth refusal, Conor had stopped asking. They still went up to the roof together from time to time, but by silent and mutual agreement, neither of them approached the Gap. It hung unacknowledged in the background, casting its shadow into the present, painfully apt.

There were times when Ashleigh disappeared entirely, leaving no note, his phone off or simply ignored. He offered no explanation, and Conor didn’t ask for one. He did, however, let die his long-established habit of dropping by the other boy’s home unannounced, demoralized by the sinking sense of abandonment he felt whenever Ashleigh failed to come to the window.

(The new normal was especially awkward at sleepovers, Conor’s mother and father expressing their hospitality through endless, cheerful interrogation, always with the pair of them lumped together by default—so, what were you boys up to this afternoon? What have you boys got planned for the weekend? You boys working on anything interesting in school? They soon defaulted to spending nights over at Ashleigh’s, where Mrs. Falhanner’s questions were cursory and tended to be pizza-topping related.)

By the second week of October, Conor had become aware of another new wrinkle in their relationship, one which seemed portentous or petty by turns, depending on his mood: since the day of their argument, Ashleigh had not called or texted him once.

Oh, he called back. He answered Conor’s pings most of the time, those occasional odd absences notwithstanding. And it wasn’t like he was going invisible online or avoiding Conor in the hallways.

But if Conor didn’t make the first move, nothing. Once, a full four days went by with zero contact outside of school before Conor finally caved—and when he did text, the other boy answered as if nothing was out of the ordinary. It was emblematic of the uncertainty that filled the space between them, at once too small for comment and too large to be ignored.

I’m not imagining it. I just don’t know what it means.

As if all of that were not enough, the seeds of doubt that Guyler and Timothy had planted in the back of Conor’s mind had been quietly growing. He began to notice patterns, obvious ones—a set of common triggers, common responses. Around other people, Ashleigh was constantly on edge, his composure stretched taut around a kind of vindictive petulance only partly restrained. He launched caustic attacks during classroom debates, elbowed his way through the halls as if itching for a fight, lost his temper with his fan club in the courtyard. He was dismissive, imperious, blunt to the point of cruelty—in short, every inch the self-centered, arrogant asshole that Guyler and Timothy had accused him of being.

But that doesn’t make sense.

Uncertain of his footing, wary of his own bias, Conor did his best to think things through in short, simple steps, confining himself to the realm of verifiable fact.

People like Ashleigh. That’s not just my imagination.

Evidence: they talked to him in the halls. Picked him early in Activity. Joined his group for projects. Followed his lead with substitutes. Invited him to parties.

People don’t like assholes.

Evidence: much weaker. There were plenty of stuck-up, bratty popular kids. But still. There was a difference between popular and “popular,” and Ashleigh really was well-liked—wasn’t he?

Unsure, Conor returned to his observations, this time turning his attention to his classmates, to the way they were reacting to Ashleigh’s abrasiveness. It didn’t take long to reach a conclusion: Ashleigh was popular, but he was losing ground, and fast.

So it wasn’t just me being dense, Conor thought. This is new.

Now that he knew what to look for, the signs were everywhere. There were furrowed brows and pursed lips when Ashleigh stormed through the hallways, dark mutters that spread behind him like a wake. A kind of ad hoc militia formed in English, a bloc of students who would immediately leap to a collective defense whenever he started gearing up for one of his rants. On the bus, he’d developed the same sort of anti-kid bubble that existed around Eichardt—none of the sixth graders sat within two seats of him anymore unless they had absolutely no other choice.

The change was most apparent in Ashleigh’s fan club, no longer quite so fanatical. Nolan and Sam seemed to be halfway through the process of splintering away, spending more and more time with each other, away from the rest of the group. When they were gone, Eddie became even more frenetic than usual, filling every second with puerile word vomit, as if terrified of silence. This had the effect of wearing away Ashleigh’s already thin veneer of patience, turning every get-together into a potential powder keg. Holt was doing his best to play diplomat, smoothing over misunderstandings and keeping everybody happy, but it was clearly just a matter of time before things came to a head.

It was agonizing to watch, this slow descent into self-destruction—not least because Conor couldn’t quite convince himself that it wasn’t exactly what the other boy deserved. He swung back and forth like a pendulum, one hour exulting in grim satisfaction, the next squirming in penitent guilt. And all the while helpless, held back by Ashleigh’s impenetrable pretense that everything was fine.

And you’re playing along with that why, exactly?

He doesn’t want my help.

Fuck what he wants! He’s falling apart over there!

Not my problem.

He’s your best friend!

He was my best friend.

He’s still your best friend. He’s your only fucking friend.

Not if he won’t even tell me what’s going on.

You mean like how you told him all about your journal, and the monkey jump, and having a big fat crush on—

Shut up.

It was spite, and he knew it. But dammit, Ashleigh had hurt him. Had gone right to the heart of everything they shared and made a mockery of it. Whatever trust, whatever loyalty, whatever friendship was left between them, it wasn’t worth saving on faith and hope alone. Conor needed something—some reason, some spark of encouragement. There would be no more forgiveness without apology, no more help without thanks. If they were going to come back from this, it was going to be because Ashleigh wanted them to.

And in the meantime, he can dig himself out of his own damn hole.

Slowly—experimentally—Conor began to disengage, reclaiming the hours he’d left in Ashleigh’s possession. He started by dropping their late-night chat sessions, using the extra time to play catchup in math. When Ashleigh gave no comment, he stopped calling and texting as well, with predictable results. An Indian summer rolled in, the clouds disappearing for days at a time, and Conor began to bike to and from school, cutting out wait time in the courtyard along with the bus ride.

They still saw each other, of course—in English and Activity, in the breaks between classes. But the flow of weekend and afternoon get-togethers slowed to a trickle as old plans got crossed off the list and no new ones replaced them. Before long, their friendship had shrunk to the level of mere acquaintance, no more time-consuming than Conor’s relationship with Timothy or Holt.

(They no longer talked about Halloween.)

Conor waited for the other boy to say something, anything—to give any sign at all that he’d noticed, that he too felt the sting of their estrangement. But if anything, Ashleigh only grew more relaxed, his smile like quicksilver, the unnatural smoothness of his banter in sharp contrast to his increasingly savage treatment of everyone else. The less they spoke, the easier the words flowed between them, and though he knew it was an act, Conor couldn’t stop himself from hurting at just how easy Ashleigh seemed to find it to slip on a mask of nonchalance.

He tried to distract himself, filling his evenings with yardwork, homework, games and cartoons—endless practice sessions that left him battered and drained and vividly alive. Bit by bit, the edges of his other lives expanded, pushing into the empty space until it almost seemed it wasn’t there. Whole hours would pass in which he didn’t even think about it, and when he did, the pain was dull and distant, like the bruise beneath a cut that had long since scabbed over.

There were times, though, when it seemed as if nothing had changed, when a glimpse of Ashleigh’s haggard face across a crowded hallway would rob him of his breath mid-laugh, or a stray thought half a moment before sleep would leave him tossing and turning for hours. He felt inexplicably guilty, as if it were not Ashleigh who had caused all of this, Ashleigh who had driven the two of them apart. Conor had no god to speak of, so he cursed the other boy instead, pouring his frustration into clenched fists and muttered rants, digging pens into his journal until the pages seemed to bleed. Above all, he was maddened by the utter absence of reason, the lack of explanation, the seemingly avoidable nature of every scrap of misery. It became his refrain, his mantra, a single word upon which he pinned all of his unhappiness:

Why?

•••

There was a gentle knock at the door, sounding almost apologetic, and Conor heaved a sigh, setting his laptop down on the bedside table.

“Come in,” he called out.

He drew his knees up under the covers, pushing himself into a sitting position with his back against the headboard as his father entered the room, closing the door behind himself with a quiet click.

“Can I sit?” he asked.

Conor nodded, noting with some surprise that he was already angry (or something like it), his shoulders high and tight, an irritable restlessness creeping into his face, his fingers. He could feel his armor sliding into place, dull resentment oozing out between the plates.

Yeah, because you were so focused on your Social Studies homework.

There was a soft creak as his father slipped into the rolly chair that lived in front of Conor’s desk, turning it around to face the bed. His posture was unbalanced, asymmetrical—broken, almost, his limbs askew and tangled, body leaning sharply to one side, face quarter-hidden behind a cupping hand.

(Conor didn’t know—couldn’t know—had never really seen himself from the outside—but some other person, watching, would have instantly clocked that the two were father and son, the middle-aged man and the boy on the bed both folding their bodies in the same awkward manner.)

They studied one another.

“You’re worried about me,” Conor said quietly.

His father nodded.

“Because…”

(Conor squeezed his eyes shut, thinking.)

“…because I’ve been…”

There was no word for it.

He opened his eyes to see his father still motionless, waiting, watching. Passive. Conor felt a surge of impatience, like molten metal filling up his chest, his lungs, and beneath the blanket his hands curled into fists.

“What are you feeling?” the man in the chair asked softly.

“Mad.”

Another nod. “What’s the mad like?”

Some part of Conor tried to scoff, to sneer, the rest of him barring the way, keeping his face smooth.

Man, what is WITH you lately?

(It was his own voice, this time.)

“Hot,” he said aloud.

“Where?”

He tapped himself on the chest, and then—almost as an afterthought—his cheek, and his forehead.

Seconds passed.

“I’d like to help,” his father said.

A strange, strangled sound forced its way out of Conor’s throat, something halfway in between a laugh and a sob.

His father’s eyes held him, wide and gentle. “Still,” he murmured.

There was another long silence. Conor watched as his father visibly discarded three or four sentences before letting one through.

“Is there anything you do want to tell me?”

Conor gnawed at his lip.

“About—”

Conor stiffened.

(The man in the chair noticed, and backed off.)

Another minute crawled by.

“I don’t like this, bud,” his father said quietly. “I don’t like seeing you in pain, and I don’t like having no real clue what it is that’s bothering you. I get that you—”

He broke off, drew in a breath through his nose, let it out in a soundless sigh. “I get that maybe you don’t feel like letting me help for your sake,” he continued. “But if you could chip off a little bit of something I could help with, that would honestly make me feel a whole lot better.”

Conor winced. “Not fair,” he said.

“Hm?”

“This is hard enough without…”

He trailed off, looking for a word, then gave up when he saw that the message had already been received.

“Okay,” his father said. “Fair enough. Never mind.”

Again a quiet waiting. Again a restless roiling, the sensation of being trapped, cornered—

“I won’t say sorry,” his father said, breaking the silence. “I do take it back. I’m not here to make this worse for you. But I’m not sorry for wishing I could help. Wishing that you’d let me help.”

Conor felt his lip curl, his face twisting until it was as close as it was going to get to matching the crooked thing inside of him.

Unless you know how to make Ashleigh—

(And then silence again, even inside his own head. Because that was the problem, really—make Ashleigh what?)

He forced himself to look at the man in the chair—at the short hair splashed with grey, the soft eyes cradled in worry lines. He wondered briefly where his mother was, and whether she’d been asked to stay away.

“I can’t,” he said—

(Because he couldn’t—couldn’t take responsibility, on top of everything else, for finding a way to make his father feel better.)

“—sorry.”

And whether the man in the chair heard him, and understood, or heard something else entirely, or simply gave up of his own accord, Conor didn’t know. But he nodded, and said “Okay,” and pushed himself to his feet, his gaze lingering long enough to make Conor squirm but not quite long enough to make him scream.

“I love you, bud,” his father said finally, turning to leave the room. And then, over his shoulder: “Please don’t forget that I’m here.”

And the door closed behind him with another quiet click.

For a long, long time, Conor sat frozen, unmoving, his eyes glued to the place where his father had been as he waited for his body to uncoil. He kept his hands at his sides, afraid that if he touched his computer he would end up hurling it into the wall.

This can’t go on like this.

But that wasn’t a path, wasn’t an action. There wasn’t a thing that Conor could do, to make it not be like this any longer, and so he simply waited for the moment to pass, grateful that for once the Ashleigh in his head was wise enough to hold its tongue.

•••

“So, anyway, I tried to explain it to her mom like you told me, about learning how to fall and stuff, take it slow, protect yourself. But she was still, like, pretty against it, and she said the only way she’d let Isabella try is if she can talk to your mom first, and you come with us.”

Conor blinked.

It was Halloween (or the day that would give birth to it, anyway). Timothy had ambushed him by the flagpole after dismissal, dragged him out of the flow of students heading for their cars, their buses, their bikes. There was a girl with him—another sixth grader—rocking back and forth on her heels and blushing faintly.

“What?” Conor asked. “I mean—what?”

The younger boy took a deep breath and started over, more slowly this time. “I was going to show Isabella some of the stuff you taught me,” he explained. “You know—target jumps, switchovers, the roll. At Freedom Plaza. But her mom won’t let her go unless she talks to your mom, first.”

“And unless I go with you?”

“Right.”

Conor turned to the girl. “And you’re—”

“Isabella. Hi.” She stuck out her hand and Conor shook it.

“Hi.”

He felt as though he’d been teleported, his thoughts stuttering like he’d missed the end of the moving sidewalk at the airport. Turning back to Timothy, he squinted. “So you…want me to teach her, too?”

(He still wasn’t used to the idea that Timothy wanted to learn from him, let alone some random girl.)

“No,” Timothy said, shaking his head. “I mean, yeah, sure, that’d be great, if you feel like it, but no—I can just show her the same stuff you already showed me. It’s just that she’s gotta have, like. A chaperone, or whatever.” Isabella snorted, and Timothy shot her a glare. “Like in case somebody gets hurt,” he amended.

Conor scratched his head. “Okay, I guess?” He glanced over at Isabella and hastened to clarify. “I mean, sure. The more the merrier. I just—I wasn’t—yeah, that sounds fine.”

“Awesome.” The two sixth graders shared a smile, and then Timothy turned back to Conor, expectant.

“What?”

“Um—your mom’s number?”

What, she didn’t give it to you last night?

“Wait—you mean today?” Conor asked, feeling a slight flutter of panic. “Now?”

“Um, yeah? If that’s okay.”

It wasn’t, not really, but Conor didn’t really have words for why not, nothing that passed muster when he imagined saying it out loud. So he simply dug into his bookbag and handed the other boy his phone, and five minutes later, they were on their way.

“So,” Isabella said, as they began walking up the hill that led toward downtown. “Timothy says you’ve got, like, a whole Zen thing going on.”

“I guess,” Conor replied.

There was a silence.

“Uh,” he added. “Do you…do anything? Or—sorry—I mean—what do you do? Like, um. Exercisewise.”

Smooth.

Isabella didn’t tease him, though. “Gymnastics,” she said, smiling. “Since third grade.”

“Oh, cool.”

Another silence.

Why is it my job to—

“Um. Can you do a backflip?” he asked.

“Yeah, but not from standing. I have to round off into it.”

Conor nodded.

So, how do you and Timothy know each other?

He winced and said nothing. Eventually, Timothy rescued him, the younger boy explaining that they had been in the same fifth grade classroom at Littleton, that they were not, repeat, not dating, and that Isabella had gotten interested after Timothy had climbed the patterned brick façade of the music wing during recess.

“They let you do that?” Conor asked, dumbfounded.

“Not really,” the younger boy said, shrugging. “They yell at me whenever they notice. But they only notice half the time, so.”

The most recent time, Isabella had asked Timothy what the hell he was doing, to which he’d cryptically answered tracing. Intrigued, she’d pressed him for more detail, and here they were.

They reached the plaza after maybe twenty minutes, and Timothy launched straight into his explanation, Conor’s words sounding strange to him coming from someone else’s mouth.

“…so there are sort of two different ways to think about it, right? Like are you trying to get to some place, to reach some specific spot, or are you just trying to get away from somewhere, so it doesn’t really matter which way you go…”

Conor floated an uncertain distance away, feeling irrelevant. He listened as Isabella probed at the boundaries of Timothy’s reasoning, asking many of the same questions he had asked of Conor.

“…yeah, if you make more noise than you have to, Conor’ll gripe at you for, like, days. It’s supposed to be about keeping your knees from wearing down, or whatever…”

The two of them began to practice rolling, Isabella having both an easier and harder time than Timothy had, when Conor had taught him—easier because she was much more confident and in control of her body, and harder because she had clearly practiced a different kind of rolling until it was almost automatic.

Conor watched for a few minutes, but they didn’t seem to need him, so he drifted further, his fingers brushing lightly against the rough concrete of the plaza’s walls. His original plan for the evening had been to go straight home and get started on a new essay for Ms. Palmano, but as long as he was already here…

•••

“I think you want to try using your back leg, actually.”

Conor jumped, startled, turning to see Isabella standing off to the side, watching him.

“Water break,” she explained. “This stuff’s pretty aerobic.”

Conor nodded vaguely, his attention still three-quarters elsewhere. In front of him stood a pair of low walls, flanking the ramp down to the parking garage, each about as high as the bottom of his ribcage and seven feet apart from one another. It was an obstacle he had revisited time and time again, his Bat vision showing him faster and more efficient methods of passing it every time he leveled up in skill.

“But yeah,” Isabella said—

(Making him twitch a second time, having already forgotten that she was there.)

“—it looked like you didn’t have enough time to get your leg under you? So you sort of, idk, stuttered?”

Conor frowned.

Back foot…

In the beginning, he had simply vaulted the two walls one after another, polishing the steps in between until the combination was a single, smooth, cohesive whole—right-left VAULT, right-left VAULT. The movement of choice was one he had privately dubbed a cat jump, after the leap of a pouncing tiger—it was like a leapfrog, but instead of planting his hands close together and letting his feet swing out to the sides, he spaced his hands shoulder-width apart and kept his feet tight, pulling his knees through the space between his elbows.

(He had smashed his shins more than a few times before getting the hang of it, and once he’d clipped his toes on the first wall and flipped straight over onto his back in the middle, winding himself. But it had quickly become one of his favorite tools thanks to the way it kept his body square, with no wasteful leaning or turning or twisting.)

More recently, he’d begun vaulting up onto the first wall—rather than over it—and then simply jumping across the seven-foot gap. But there was something clunky and unsatisfying about going from the one-two split step of his takeoff to a side-by-side, two-footed punch. So he’d been experimenting with a one-legged jump—more of a step, really—boosting the first vault by powering downward with one leg at the exact moment when the wall was already passing underneath him.

But the girl—

(He hadn’t forgotten her name, exactly, so much as left the version of the world where it mattered behind.)

—thought that maybe he was using the wrong leg, should be pushing off the wall with his back foot instead of his front…

Still frowning, he walked back to his starting point—the runup he had carefully paced out, seven steps to the vault at full acceleration, left, right, left, right, left, right-left, the last two linked together like a kindergartener galloping. Turning to face his target, he shook out his wrists, took a deep breath, ground the soles of his shoes against the concrete, looking for grip.

Right-left on the ground, and then push down RIGHT as I’m passing over…

He launched himself forward, the world shrinking, narrowing, everything disappearing except for the stretch of ground in front of him and the pair of walls at its end. At the last possible second, he drove himself up into the air, his legs firing like twin cannons, hands coming down to slap against the rough surface, his right foot cycling forward and pushing down, finding the wall that was already out of sight behind him—

Fuck.

Not only did he make the distance, he overshot, bringing both feet together just in time to tap the top of the second wall as it passed underneath him, landing roughly and rolling on the far side. He came to his feet as the girl—

(Isabella.)

—let out a whoop, turned back to see her applauding.

“Nice one!” she called out.

“Thanks,” Conor said, waving. “And thanks for the tip.”

(But it had not actually been nice—he had been out of control, had put in way too much—would not have been able to stop on the second wall if he’d wanted to, if he’d needed to. He would have to work it a dozen more times, start calibrating just how much power each individual piece was adding to the whole…)

He returned to his starting position, Isabella once again vanishing into the periphery. As before, he shook out his wrists, took a deep breath, wiggled the toes of his shoes against the concrete—

“Oooh, look at that.”

Conor blinked, twitched, followed the sixth grader’s gaze to the other side of the plaza, where Timothy was just pulling himself up and over the wall by the bank. “Yeah,” he said absently. “Best place to practice topovers.”

“Do you always start them with a jump like that?” Isabella asked.

Conor squinted. “Jump?”

“Yeah.” Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted across the open space. “Hey, Timothy! Do that again!”

Timothy waved, dropping down from the wall into a roll and stepping over to one of the squat, decorative concrete pillars that flanked the bankside entrance. Popping up on top of it, he turned to face the way he’d come, rubbing his hands together and stomping his feet in a way that seemed oddly familiar.

“Wait,” Conor said. “What’s he…?”

“He’s going to jump across—watch.”

Conor sucked in a breath, but before he could say anything else, the younger boy sprang into motion, his arms leading the way, the rest of his body stringing out into a line as he leapt toward the high wall, an impossible eight full feet away.

Conor’s heart leapt with him, clawing its way toward his throat as he let out a strangled croak. As if in slow motion, he saw Timothy’s legs tuck up and then extend forward, saw his head and shoulders sink below the line that marked the wall’s top, saw the other boy’s fingers reaching for the edge as his shoes made contact, five feet off the ground. For a split second, it looked as if he’d succeeded, but then his hands ripped from the top and he fell, barely getting his feet under him before tumbling backwards onto his butt.

“Fuck!” Conor yelled. Even from a distance, he could hear Timothy’s groan. He took off running, the sixth grade girl sprinting along in his wake. But before they had covered half of the distance, Timothy was already on his feet, brushing the dust off of his jeans, a scowl darkening his face. He turned toward them as they came pounding to a halt, and Conor saw that he’d left a small streak of blood on the denim.

“Are you okay?” Isabella asked, her voice tight with concern.

“I’m fine,” Timothy grumbled. He looked down at his palm, pressing at a flap of skin at the base of his index finger. “Just slipped, is all. Stupid slick wall.”

“Stupid boy, more like,” Isabella teased, relaxing.

Meanwhile, Conor’s jaw was hanging open, his thoughts skidding as the scene replayed itself in his mind.

That was a monkey jump.

Timothy had just done a monkey jump.

Well, technically he just bailed a monkey jump.

But that hardly mattered, especially since he’d apparently landed the first one, when only Isabella was watching—

“Timothy,” he said, his voice shaky. “You just—I mean, that was—where’d you learn that?”

The younger boy shrugged, still pressing the little flap of skin to his palm, waiting for the bleeding to slow. “Dunno,” he said. “I was kind of messing around with it last week—you know, over by the cafeteria, where they keep the dumpsters? I was trying to jump up onto the wall, but I kept not quite making it and sort of, like, dropping down into a hang. Eventually I just aimed for the hang in the first place.”

He looked up at Conor, his eyes narrowing. “Wait. You haven’t done that one before?”

Conor shook his head, unable to stop himself from staring at the younger boy’s clearly-not-at-all-ripped-out-of-their-sockets arms.

“Cool! Does that mean I get to name it?”

“I…”

“Oh, man, this is awesome!” He turned to Isabella and held up his uninjured hand, which she high-fived good-naturedly, rolling her eyes affectionately. “Um, crap. Okay, let’s see…sticky fingers! No, wait—cliffhanger. Suction cup.”

“Wall catch?” Isabella suggested.

“Lame,” Timothy declared.

“It’s not lame, it’s descriptive. Better than some stupid skateboarder name where nobody knows what the hell it is.”

The pair of them continued to brainstorm as Conor mentally retreated, speechless, shaken.

A whole month.

Conor had wasted a month, overpreparing—or close enough, anyway. The jump Timothy had just done was smaller than the one at East Binder, eight feet instead of twelve, but given the difference in their heights, it wasn’t that much smaller.

Plus he did it from standing.

Conor clenched and unclenched his fists, thinking of the hours spent dangling under the old oak tree, the dozens of extra topovers on Mr. Baker’s wall—all because of fears that hadn’t even crossed the younger boy’s mind.

He’d just…done it.

He turned and walked away from the two sixth graders, squeezing his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose as if trying to stifle a brain freeze. He had been so sure that he was on the right path—that his progress was proof of the method, a sign that he really did know what he was doing. He had come so far, so quickly, that it had never occurred to him that there might be an even faster way—that his slow, methodical approach might be holding him back, actually—

(And underneath, the other fear, the one he didn’t like to look at, refused to linger on—that Ashleigh’s way was simply better, that Ashleigh was better—)

Which one of you sprained your ankle doing the Gap, huh?

The Gap, maybe. But Timothy hadn’t hurt himself just now.

Conor turned to the column, pulled himself up on top of it, looked out at the wall opposite.

It looked impossible.

It looked impossible.

Wait. Wait, hang on, let’s think about—

Ignoring the voice, Conor leaned forward, blanking his thoughts, letting muscle memory take over. Arms back, legs compressing and then firing, knees tucking in midair, his feet swinging forward just as his hands made contact with the top of the wall—

He landed with a jarring thud, the force of the impact reflecting his body upward into one of the smoothest, easiest topovers he’d ever done.

God dammit.

He dropped back to the ground, turning to see the two sixth graders approaching. Timothy was grinning, the resemblance to his older brother as strong as it had ever been.

“I’ve got it,” he said, a triumphant gleam in his eye. “I’m gonna call it ‘the Spiderman.’”

•••

Coward.

Conor stood on the edge of the shoproom roof, looking across at the high school science building. The dull throb of distant music swaddled the stillness, barely discernible snatches of Monster Mash and the theme from Ghostbusters echoing through the breezeways. The lights were on and the parking lot was full, mobs of costumed students marauding across the grounds with airhorns and silly string as they searched for couples scrogging in the bushes.

But on the rooftop, there was only Conor.

(Conor, and the fear he’d brought with him, that he could not outrun, that maneuvered itself between him and the edge no matter what he did with his body or mind.)

It was his second Halloween dance, the previous year’s having ended with him and Ashleigh throwing up behind the library, a mixture of Skittles, Butterfingers, and spiced rum that had burned like lava coming up.

(There were two dances, technically—the middle school one in the cafeteria and the high school one in the gym. But on Halloween, with everyone in costume, it was impossible for the adults to maintain the boundary, and for the most part they didn’t even pretend to try.)

Conor had spent the first hour of the evening wandering the trunk-or-treat in the parking lot, his mask tight against his face, pillowcase slung over his shoulder. He’d hugged the walls of the cafeteria for most of the second hour, listening to the awful music, watching his classmates writhe and grind in the strobes and black lights.

By the start of the third hour, he’d given up hope that Ashleigh was coming—

(Which was fine, who cared, it wasn’t like they’d made an actual plan or anything. It had just been an idea, that was all, and they hadn’t even talked about it in weeks.)

—and so it was that without really meaning to—

—without really wanting to—

—like a leaf carried on the wind, like a pigeon homing—

—Conor found himself on the roof, facing off against the as-yet-unbroken monkey jump.

(Or trying to, anyway.)

He had never been less afraid of getting caught. A kind of holiday indulgence had overtaken the staff and the parents, many of whom had been drinking liberally from the punch bowl, and only the most egregious of offenses were being punished. At the same time, though, the odds of being spotted in the first place were nearly as high as they were during the middle of a school day. He’d been up there for less than ten minutes and already two adults and four different groups of students had passed by, forcing him to flatten himself out each time to avoid notice. It was inevitable that someone would eventually come by at the wrong moment, would look up and spot his body silhouetted against the silver clouds.

Good thing the jump only takes like six seconds, then, right?

He gritted his teeth, staring out at the other building—so tantalizingly close, so terrifyingly far. He had refused to repeat the jump at Freedom Plaza, refused to do even simple topovers on his way home after Timothy and Isabella wrapped up. He was done playing games, done preparing, done wasting time.

He was either ready for this, or he wasn’t.

Seven steps in the runup. Left, right, left, right, left, right, left. Jump UP, not out—get your feet out in front of you—not too high or you’ll fall backwards. Let your shoes slip if they have to—what matters is your grip.

(Except that wasn’t true, was not even close to true, what mattered was that Conor was afraid, the fear like a glass wall six inches in from the edge.)

Just—

(He couldn’t complete the thought—not in words. But he replayed, for what felt like the thousandth time, the memory of the monkey jump that afternoon, breaking it down into its smallest fragments, reliving the most minute of details.)

Easy.

It had been easy. Easier by far than Binder’s Gap—smaller, safer, closer to the ground. And sure, this one was bigger (a little) and higher (a little). But also there was a runup, and the far wall was lower, actually; so long as he actually tried there was basically no way for it to go wrong enough to be a problem—

So you’re just being a little bitch about it for no reason, then?

He gritted his teeth again, stepped to the very edge of the roof and stretched out his hands as far as they would go, imagining the feel of the far wall beneath his fingertips—

There were voices in the breezeway, and once more he dropped to his belly, shrinking out of sight, waiting for the danger to pass. As soon as they were gone, he would get up and do it—

(Flinch.)

Fine. Once they were gone, and he’d paced the runup one more time.

And re-checked the grip on the far side.

And warmed up his shoulders just a little bit more—

(More voices below, another group close behind the first.)

No more fucking around, he told himself. Sixty seconds.

He began to hyperventilate slightly, intentionally, pumping air through his lungs like a bellows, stoking the fire in his chest. He shook out his limbs, rolled his head and shoulders, cracked his knuckles. He tested the runup again, did a running jump along the breezeway, parallel to the edge, to confirm that he could indeed make the distance.

(It wasn’t even hard.)

Fifteen seconds.

Ten seconds.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One…

“God dammit!” he yelled, heedless of the revelers below. Turning, he kicked at one of the ventilation pipes, stomped on it, savagely, the metal giving way beneath his shoe.

“It’s fine,” he said, out loud. “It’s fine. It’s fine, because it only takes like three seconds, right, so I can still do it right now before anybody shows up to bust me. I just walk over here, see, and I count down from te—from five, and then I run, and then it’s over, no problem.”

He brought his feet together with a click, took a single deep breath, let it out in a huff. Counting down, he reached zero and threw himself forward, managing two strong steps before faltering, staggering to a stop several feet shy of the edge.

FUCK.

His fingers curled into fists, but there was nothing to punch. There was literally nothing holding him back except himself.

“It’s right there,” he moaned. If it were even one foot closer, he would have done it already, a dozen times over—

Yeah, but it isn’t.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Five. Four. Three. Two…”

A hundred heartbeats later, and Conor was halfway up the magnolia, heading for the auditorium roof, churning through the branches faster than he’d ever gone before. When he reached the pipe, he gripped it so hard that for a moment he was surprised it didn’t crumple beneath his fingers. He swarmed his way upward, reckless, profligate, and once on the rooftop, he stalked straight toward the center, to the place where he and Ashleigh had sat on the last day of summer.

Twenty—no, ten seconds.

Nine.

Eight.

“Conor?”

It was like waking from a dream, closing one tab and opening another, as if the last five hours—the last five weeks—had existed on the surface of a bubble, and the bubble had just popped. In that moment, there was no monkey jump, no Binder’s Gap, no terrible crisis of confidence.

(And no Guyler Stevens.)

There was just Ashleigh, sitting, his back against the air conditioning unit, and Conor, walking over to him—as if it were summer all over again, as if he’d known the other boy was there the whole time, as if that were why they were both there. As if they’d come there for each other.

“Hey, Ash,” Conor breathed, and the words were the first he had spoken in centuries.

He lowered himself to the gravel, settling back against the metal at the same time that Ashleigh shifted over, their movements synchronized, harmonized, so that without looking, without speaking, they ended up side-by-side, shoulders pressed companionably together, each looking out at the moonlit rooftop.

“Happy Halloween,” Ashleigh murmured. He raised his far hand, accompanied by the sound of sloshing liquid, and Conor reached across, taking the bottle without comment. He took a gulp, the lukewarm liquid searing his throat, and handed it back with a cough.

“Tastes like poison,” he murmured.

Ashleigh shrugged. “It is.”

Thirty seconds passed, and the silence was not tense, not difficult—was simply a moment that the two of them happened to be sharing.

“Wasn’t sure you’d be here,” Conor said.

Ashleigh snorted, raising the bottle to his own lips. “You were supposed to be here two hours ago,” he grumbled.

Conor grinned. “Eh, you know how it is,” he said, taking the bottle back and downing a second gulp. “I try to get out of the house on time, but your mom just keeps dragging me back—”

He felt the other boy shift and twisted automatically, taking the punch in the middle of his upper arm, drink spilling out onto his sleeve, his pants.

“Shit.”

“Give that back before you break it, spaz.”

“Hey, you punched me.” Conor handed the bottle over, brushing futilely at his clothes. “Mom’s gonna smell this a mile away,” he added sadly.

“Just wash yourself off with the hose.”

“It’s like forty-five degrees out.”

“Scared of a little cold, Batman?”

Conor said nothing, just flicked the other boy on the temple and took back the bottle. They sat for another long moment, the silence of the rooftop somehow sharpened by the soft sounds of distant revelry.

“Speaking of scared,” Conor said. “I never asked you what you thought of the Gap.”

Ashleigh let out a breath. “That thing,” he pronounced, “is fucking nuts. Why the fuck I ever let you talk me into even thinking about it, I’ll never know.”

Conor laughed. “Come on, it’s not that bad. You made it, at least.”

“Bitch, I was on crutches for weeks.”

“Two weeks.”

“That’s weeks! There’s an ‘s’ at the end and everything!”

“You’re just jealous ’cause I did it first.”

There was a pause, and for the first time, the air between them seemed to thicken, briefly, the easy flow of words meeting a shadow of resistance.

“Yeah,” Ashleigh said, taking the bottle back.

(A cloud scudded over the moon, plunging them briefly into darkness.)

“So,” Conor said cautiously. “We going to talk about it?”

He didn’t specify the it—was not even sure he knew, himself. He held his breath, waiting for the coffin-nail—talk about what? He was suddenly aware of the stones digging into his calves, his butt, of the pins and needles already creeping into his feet, and the warm blanket of alcohol slowly settling over him.

But his friend said nothing—only took another swig, handing the bottle back as he swallowed. It wasn’t until Conor had pressed it to his own lips that Ashleigh spoke, just barely loud enough to be heard.

“Maybe.”

More silence, weighing this time. Conor shifted slightly, leaning, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his mask. Sticking his fist inside, he began to twirl it, like a hat.

(Ashleigh’s own mask was in his lap, crumpled—had been there the whole time, the black lens gleaming in the moonlight.)

“Hey, Ash,” Conor said, on impulse. “Truth or dare?”

There was no hesitation.

“Dare.”

Conor grinned in the dark. “Dare you to pick truth next turn.”

For a moment, it seemed he might have made a mistake, might have called up the ghost of tension once more. But then Ashleigh snorted again.

“That’s cheating, you know.”

“What was the safeword, again? I’m the littlest, tiniest—”

“Truth or dare?”

“So you’ll do it?”

“Truth. Or. Dare.”

“Truth,” Conor answered.

Again the other boy spoke without hesitation, as though he had planned ahead, had been waiting for precisely this moment.

“Are you mad at me?”

And just like that, the bubble popped—the second bubble, the inner one. The one where the two of them had never left the rooftop, had been sitting here talking since the last day of summer, with no Guyler, no cold shoulder, no broken window. The wall between the present and the past came down, and so many thoughts and feelings crowded into Conor’s head all at once that for several long seconds, the thing he was doing was not even thinking so much as simply trying not to drown.

He opened his mouth—closed it—opened and closed it again.

“Yes,” he said.

Strangely, the word seemed to have a calming effect, the muscles in Ashleigh’s shoulder softening, melting where they pressed up against Conor’s. “Okay,” he said, handing the bottle over once more, and there was a breath of something like relief in his voice. “Your turn.”

Conor bit his lip.

There was something that was happening fast—maybe too fast—his stomach roiling as the world tilted back and forth, back and forth. The something-special of twenty seconds ago hadn’t gone, exactly—the closeness, the ease, the back-to-before. It was still there, underneath, the rooftop like a raft holding them up, holding them together.

But it was damaged, now, diluted. The chorus had started back up in Conor’s mind—the too-loud self-awareness, the second- and third- and fourth- and fifth-guessing.

He shook his head, trying to clear it.

(There was really only one question to be asked, anyway.)

“Why?”

(And just like that, the tension returned, Ashleigh’s shoulder flashing into marble stiffness.)

“Because,” the other boy said flatly.

“As if,” Conor said, shaping the words to be light and musical, trying to stay within the bounds of banter. “Come on, Ash, that’s not even close to a real answer.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t close to a real question,” Ashleigh shot back.

“Yes, it was.”

“Conor—”

“It was.”

“Conor.”

“Ashleigh.”

“Don’t do this.”

A pause like a gut punch, the air suddenly airless.

(The two of them were side-by-side, still side-by-side, their faces pointed outward at the moonlit horizon, each only a vague shape in the corner of the other’s vision.)

“Do what?” Conor asked.

“This.”

A note of pleading, in the word, and Conor found himself slowing, stilling, taking a cautious sip from the bottle to buy himself time to think.

“Ashleigh—”

“I didn’t even say truth.”

“Okay, then I dare you to tell me why.”

“That’s not how the game works.”

“Then what the fuck are we up here for?”

The question came out of him like snow sliding off a rooftop, and Conor realized that the impulse toward stillness had lasted only a moment, the world tilting back yet again. It was as though there were a weight somewhere, above and behind him, pressing him forward—pressing the other boy through him. Meanwhile, Ashleigh—

(Conor had turned back toward the other boy, to hand him the bottle, an absent reflex, only to freeze mid-motion.)

“Ashleigh?”

The other boy was, was, was something, something suddenly unraveling—was twitching, fidgeting, his heels scraping back and forth against the gravel, the mask clenched in his hands, scrunching and stretching as he mangled it.

“Ashleigh, what—”

“I can’t,” Ashleigh said, and the note of pleading was louder, now. His breath was quick and shallow, and his head was turning, darting, as if following the movements of a wasp too close for comfort.

(I can’t, Conor had said to his father.)

“Can’t?” he asked softly. “Or won’t?”

(The unseen weight was growing.)

“Both.”

Conor frowned, remembering his father turning and leaving the bedroom, shutting the door behind him—

Please don’t forget that I’m here.

“Ash,” he said, trying to slow the world back down again. “It’s me. Remember? You can talk to me. I’m your best—”

“Yeah, that’s not helping.”

The temperature was dropping, now, or maybe rising—the quicksilver sensation that meant too much, that made you jerk your hand away before you could tell for sure whether the water was too hot or too cold. Conor was bewildered, was beginning to be almost frightened—Ashleigh’s fingers were dragging through the gravel, gathering up stones and squeezing, squeezing hard enough that his knuckles were white, his arms visibly trembling, that had to hurt—

“What—”

(What.)

“—what would help?”

(Because he couldn’t just say nothing.)

“Ha.”

The voice was bleak, the word like an axe falling. Forget almost—Conor was now genuinely alarmed. The boy beside him had let go of the rocks and was motionless once more—was sagging, now, his shoulders limp, head lolling to one side as he stared at his feet or the gravel or whatever it was he was looking at instead of Conor.

(Although there was one small, quiet part of Conor that felt no panic, that was relieved, actually—because this, at least, was something.)

(Finally.)

“Ash, buddy,” he said, the words spilling from his mouth. “I don’t know what—I mean, whatever is—fuck—look, you can just—just talk to me, right, it’s not like I’m going to—”

You’re babbling.

“—I mean, it’s—it’s okay, you know—”

(Flinch.)

“—I mean, it’s going to be okay, is what I’m saying. Whatever it is, I can help, just tell me, if you can’t tell me then—”

Conor broke off, his throat clamping shut. He’d been about to say if you can’t tell me, then who CAN you tell? But of course the answer was obvious—nobody, clearly nobody, Ashleigh’s jaw was trembling and his eyes were shining and Conor had no idea, no idea, no idea what was happening, but it was clear that there was something, there was A Thing That Was Happening, and whatever it was, Ashleigh had been not-telling-him about it for a while, now—

“Ashleigh,” he repeated.

(And it was clearly on purpose—it wasn’t like it would have just…not occurred to him to talk to Conor.)

Again he felt the weight, the sensation of pressure—only with the world tilting so wildly, it kept changing direction, was a rolling boulder threatening to crush them both. Whatever this was, it was—it was eating Ashleigh, eating him alive—

Suddenly, the other boy exploded into motion. “Fine!” he shouted, leaping to his feet, his mask spinning off into the darkness. He began to pace back and forth, wobbling drunkenly, his hands flashing around him as he waved his arms, rubbed his scalp, pounded his fists against his thighs.

(Conor sat frozen, petrified.)

“Fine! You really want to drag it out of me? Great. But then you can’t blame me when I’m done and you wish—you want—you can’t go back—”

“Ash, calm d—”

“I’m calm! I’m real fucking calm! You wanna see the—the—the opposite of calm, just you wait one shitfuck minute.”

(And still Conor was petrified, but it wasn’t out of fear of Ashleigh. Even now, with lightning crackling in every muscle of the other boy’s body, Conor’s fear was for him—for the hugeness of whatever this was, and what it was doing to him.)

“I mean, you asked for it, so here we go, get ready to fucking—told you so—but not like you ever listen—so sure, here’s your fucking answer—”

He stopped—turned to face Conor—drew himself up to full height, his eyes fixed on a point somewhere just to the side of Conor’s eyes, both hands buried in the pocket of his hoodie as though trying to hold his guts in place.

“The reason I opened the bag,” he said—

(And now every word was crisp, razor-sharp, like shards of flint chipped away from a cave wall.)

“—the reason I kicked Guyler’s fucking face in—I’ve been trying to avoid—didn’t want to talk about—because I—because you fucking—gah!”

He broke off, gritted his teeth, grabbed his hair with both hands and pulled his head down toward his chest. Conor’s heart was twisting, his whole body awash with adrenaline—he could feel his friend’s distress like a physical pain, wanted nothing more than to stand, to grab him by the shoulders, tell him it was fine, that everything was fine—

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t, clearly, and so Conor had nothing, nothing that he could say, nothing that he could do—

“Fuck me,” Ashleigh breathed, his voice suddenly quiet (though no less ragged). “I was going to tell you then. That was the whole reason I—but then you—and then fucking Guyler—”

“Ashleigh, what—”

“The thing I’m going to tell you is. The thing. I am going. To tell you. Is. That I want—that I am. Fuck.”

It was familiar, eerily familiar—as if his friend had come up against some kind of invisible wall, some internal censor that was holding firm no matter how hard he pressed against it. All of the awkwardness, all of the uncertainty, all of the anguish of the past two months—it was all suddenly present, compacted, reborn in the form of Ashleigh’s stuttering impotence. Conor watched, helpless, horrified, as the other boy stopped, sagged, dropped his face into his hands.

“I can’t,” he said, his voice hollow and miserable. “I’m sorry. I just—I want to, but—god, I just, I’m just so fucking tired of this—this bullshit, I hate this, why does it have to, to, to, I tried, I really did, you don’t even know, but it didn’t work and now I just—can’t.”

He lowered his hands, lifting his head to look Conor straight in the eyes for the first time, and even in the darkness, Conor recognized the expression instantly.

(He’d only ever seen it once before, after all.)

“I was going to tell you then,” the other boy repeated, his voice suddenly, unnervingly normal, cool and steady and emotionless. “I don’t want it to be like this. I want it to be like it was. But it won’t.”

And his face began to change. Smoothing, calming, the vulnerability evaporating away, revealing iron underneath. It was like a door swinging shut, and suddenly Conor was desperate, desperate to stop it from closing, he didn’t know what would happen if it shut but he felt queasily certain that if it did, it would never open again—

He leapt to his feet, ignoring the numbness in his legs, the unsteadiness of the alcohol in his blood.

“Ashleigh,” he said.

Just that—just the other boy’s name, but it flew into the space between them like a cannonball, shattering whatever it was that had been holding them apart, and as he stepped forward, Conor caught a glimpse of tears in Ashleigh’s eyes, felt them hot and wet on his neck as he reached out, dragging the other boy into an awkward hug.

They stood in total silence for what felt like years, Conor’s arms wrapped tight around Ashleigh’s shoulders, Ashleigh’s own arms limp, hands trapped between them in the front pocket of his hoodie.

Slowly—so slowly—the ice began to melt, cracking and finally crumbling as the other boy pulled his hands free, lifted them and placed them on Conor’s back, clinging as he sobbed, wordlessly, into Conor’s ear.

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck—

But it didn’t matter, really. All that mattered was that Ashleigh was there, was with him—that Conor had caught him before he could disappear or turn to stone or whatever it was he’d been just about to do.

More minutes passed. Maybe two, maybe ten, maybe ten thousand—eventually, the tears stopped, and they pulled back, each still holding the other, their faces close enough that they could see one another clearly even in the midnight gloom.

Ashleigh was a wreck, his eyes bloodshot, his nose and lips wet with snot and gleaming. Conor held his gaze as if it were an egg, gently determined to keep him here, right here, where he could see that Conor cared, that Conor wasn’t going anywhere, wasn’t going to let him run away. He pulled the other boy closer, pressing their foreheads together, trying with all his might to make him understand.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered, desperately hoping it was true.

“No,” Ashleigh said, his voice cracking. “It’s not.”

And then he leaned forward, tilting his head to one side, and Conor felt pressure, tasted salt, saw the other boy’s eyes flutter shut.

Ashleigh was kissing him.

Ashleigh was kissing him.

Softly, gently, hesitantly at first, but as Conor stood frozen with shock, the other boy seemed to take it as encouragement, or at the very least permission, because after a moment his mouth opened slightly and Conor felt the soft brush of the other boy’s tongue across his lips.

So utterly astonished was Conor that for once, the chorus of voices in the back of his mind had absolutely nothing to say, their silence deafening as he scrabbled frantically for words and found none. He could only stand there, stunned, as Ashleigh disengaged, drew back, opened his eyes and swallowed nervously, bracing for the reaction.

But Conor had no reaction, was still less than halfway through a total systems reboot, all higher-level functions suspended. He could feel the slime of Ashleigh’s snot and tears coating his nose, his cheek, could taste the other boy’s spit on his lips—

—but he was unable to move beyond these simple facts, and form any sort of opinion about them. He just stood there, watching, as Ashleigh’s trepidation faded slowly into confusion—

—and then kindled into hope—

Oh.

Oh, no.

Conor could see it happening, could see the thoughts worming their way through the other boy’s mind, the way Ashleigh was talking himself into it, setting himself up for the fall that would surely shatter him, that might possibly shatter them both—

With a herculean effort, he seized control of a single hand, lifting it off the other boy’s shoulder and planting it firmly in the center of his chest.

Ashleigh’s response was immediate. He sprang backwards, stammering an apology, almost losing his footing as the gravel rolled under his feet. His hands waved wildly, frantically, threads of panic weaving through his voice as he began backing toward the pipe.

Say—

Conor stood, scarecrow-stiff, as Ashleigh turned and ran for the edge, his final sorry hanging in the air between them. There was one last audible scrape as he swung his legs over the side, and then—almost too quickly to be believed—there was silence.

—something.

Seconds passed, and then minutes—enough time to know that it was too late, that Ashleigh was gone, that there was no point shouting or trying to catch him. As Conor thawed, wrenching himself free from his paralysis, he saw the other boy’s mask lying crumpled and forgotten in the gravel.

He blinked, and found himself clinging to the side of the building, the metal pipe cold in his shaking hands. He blinked again, and he was in the magnolia, dangling from a branch, not even registering that this was new, that he had never done that before—had always dropped from the bottom of the pipe, not leapt from the wall back into the tree.

(He blinked a third time, and discovered that he was not yet willing to touch ground, was somehow convinced that reality and consequence could be postponed along with landfall, and so he wandered across the rooftops like a lost angel, indifferent to the sounds of revelry below.)

It was almost midnight before he truly came to his senses, awakening to find himself sitting atop a breezeway roof, legs dangling in the air, in a dark and quiet corner of the school. He’d been dragged from his fugue by the sounds of wet kissing below, a pair of seniors pawing at one another on the grass. He turned to move away, to give them privacy, to get away from the reminder, but paused at a quiet note of alarm in the back of his mind.

Listen.

Conor listened.

There was a discordant note in the soundtrack below—something subtly off-key, the difference between an eager mmmm and an uncertain nnnn. Leaning out over the edge, he looked down to see the couple’s hands roaming, his beneath the bright white of her nurse’s costume, hers sliding across his chest—

Pushing.

She was pushing.

Not hard—even as Conor watched, the boy’s hands moved between her legs, and she moaned around his lips, her arms relaxing. But when he stopped, she resumed, her hands once again pressing feebly against his shoulders, her head shaking slowly, back and forth, back and forth.

Shit.

As their kiss continued, the girl began to giggle nervously, a slow-motion crescendo that ended with a squeak as she flopped over onto her back and passed out. Her date, a massive boy at least twice Conor’s size, chuckled drunkenly, rising to his knees as he shuffled over to one of the bottles lying in the grass and took a drink. Dropping back onto all fours, he crawled over to the girl, reaching out with a finger to poke at her belly, then her cheek, then at the space between her legs. When she didn’t move, he began to kiss her again, smoothing back the hair that had fallen across her face.

This isn’t happening.

But it was. As Conor watched, the high schooler reared up onto his knees, fumbling at his belt, swaying with the effort required to stay upright. With a grunt, he managed to undo the buckle and shuck his jeans, falling over onto his back as he kicked them away. He lay there for a moment, hiccupping, and Conor allowed himself a breath of hope.

Pass out. Now.

But after a moment, the boy rolled back onto his hands and knees, reaching out to tug at something under the unconscious girl’s skirt.

It all happened in a flash, the journey from understanding to action, from disbelief to outrage. Conor could stop this—would stop this, with a word, a shout—

No.

Not with words.

Crouching at the edge of the breezeway, Conor took aim, the blood roaring in his ears. He hesitated only a moment, waiting for the boy to finish pulling down the girl’s underwear, damning himself. As the giant rose up to toss the panties aside, Conor stepped out into open space, one hundred pounds of flesh and fury dropping six feet straight down, directly onto the older boy’s shoulders.

He had lined it up perfectly, the arc of his descent containing just enough sideways momentum to throw them both safely away from the unconscious girl. There was a sickening crunch as his shoes made contact, followed by an uncontrolled tumble as the pair of them crashed into the ground. Conor rolled, but badly, a knifelike pain lancing through his wrist, his right hand taking the brunt of the fall. Coming to his feet, he spun—

The high schooler was screaming. It was a high, tortured sound, echoing horribly through the commons as he writhed on the grass, clutching his shoulder. Cursing, Conor backed into the shadows, digging in his pocket for the masks. Pulling one on—he didn’t know which—he edged forward, trying to avoid the thrashing hands, to get close enough to do something, anything—

“Hold still!” he yelled. “You’ve got to stop moving!”

But the injured boy either didn’t hear him or wouldn’t listen. There was blood leaking from his nose where he’d hit the grass, and it began to streak across his face and neck, a spiderweb of lines looking black in the moonlight. Panicking, Conor reached for his phone, trying to hold his fingers steady enough to dial—

—but before he could even unlock the screen, there were shouts and footsteps, bars of waving light in the breezeway. People were coming—grownups or upperclassmen, he couldn’t be sure, but they were big—and as the light swept across his masked face, he whirled and ran, melting back into the darkness, the screams slowly fading, leaving only the thudding of his heart and the ragged rasping of his breath.

No one followed.