I rolled onto my side and stared out the window.
Fuck you, Jack.
Then I heard something moving, and thought, Okay, it’s going to happen again.
Nickie.
She lifted the cover of my blanket up and slid her body along the floor and into my little bed.
I thought my heart would come out through my throat when she put her arm around me and pressed her warm lips against the back of my neck.
“Nickie,” I whispered.
She didn’t answer. Her hand rubbed my body. Down, she tracked along my belly and to my side.
I shook. “Nickie. I can’t do this. I don’t…know anything…”
Her hand tracked a circle over my heart, and as she pressed against me, I realized that she wasn’t wearing anything. I could feel the points of her nipples rubbing against my back. She squeezed into me. I felt myself letting go, shaking everywhere, like there was an itch on every thrumming nerve ending in my body. But it felt so good. She hugged me tightly, her tongue lightly tasting my neck.
I never imagined this.
I couldn’t want to be anywhere else.
“I never did anything like this,” I whispered. It didn’t sound like me. I was scared.
“I know.” Her voice, just a warm breath in my ear.
Her hand slid across my belly again, fingers suddenly lifting up the waistband of my briefs, her warm hand slipping inside them and following the curve of my hip forward. And almost as soon as she grabbed me, Jack gave up trying to hold himself in; and everything, rushing, pouring out of me, so it felt like I was turning inside out, everywhere, inside my underwear, spilling all over Nickie’s hand.
“Oh God, Nickie,” I breathed. I was terrified and so embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“Shhhh…,” she said, and kissed my ear, her fingertips smearing a trail of stickiness up over my belly.
I rolled onto my back and Nickie put her shoulder in my armpit so her hair fanned out over my chest. I was horrified at the mess I’d made all over us, in this bed on the floor, felt like someone had poured a quart of motor oil inside my boxer briefs, that were now drenched and plastered down to my skin. Nickie kissed me so softly.
I wished I could stay there forever.
In the dim light that fell on us through the uncovered window, Nickie and I made love two more times that night.
And finally, Jack slept.
Forty-Six
We woke just before noon.
Conner and Rachel had somehow ended up together in the “boys’ bed.”
So much for that assignation, I thought.
Nickie and I lay together, facing out at the gray sky on the other side of the window, twisted up in the one blanket I’d taken down onto the floor with me. I replayed in my mind what had happened to us there on the floor, felt embarrassed and foolish.
You’re just like fucking Mike Heath, aren’t you, Jack?
Like father, like son, asshole.
And Jack already felt the urgency, shaking, wondering if there was some way I could slip my hand inside my pack and just take the smallest peek through the glasses, just so I could see if Griffin was going to be okay, if Freddie Horvath really was there like I’d seen him in the bathroom before dinner.
I needed to.
And, in that need, I swear I heard something small rolling along the floor under the bed where Conner and Rachel lay together.
Something was wrong inside me. I felt sick, but in a way that scared me. It was getting worse.
Conner was the first of us alert enough to notice what had gone on in the room. He crawled over and looked down from the foot of the bed, and when he saw me and Nickie lying together, his face lit up and he said, “Holy shit! Do not fucking move!”
Then he jumped from the bed, pulled my cell phone out of its charger, opened it up, and, straddling the two of us with his long, hairy legs, began snapping pictures, announcing, “Jesus Christ! I am so proud of my Jack!”
I hid our faces behind the blanket, and Conner snapped one last picture of my extended middle finger, while, under the covers, Nickie kissed me and said, “Good morning.”
“Well, now that we’ve got all this sorted out, I guess nobody’s going to sleep on the floor tonight,” Conner said.
Nickie peeked her head out, looked over at Rachel. “We’ve got to take Rachel back home to Harrogate today,” she said. “Then, it’s down to London for me, sorry to say.”
Then Conner exhaled a deflated sigh and sat down on the bed. I grimaced and pulled my underwear on. Nickie wrapped our blanket under her arms, dragging the end along the floor as she made her way into the bathroom. I heard the shower running.
She called back, “Rachel, could you bring my things here, please?”
Rachel got out of bed. She wore Conner’s T-shirt, and it hung down to the middle of her thighs.
“Good morning, Jack.” She smiled at us, grabbed Nickie’s bag, and shut the door to the bathroom behind her. We could hear them talking and laughing in there. I sat on the floor, my knees bent, still dizzy from the night before.
“Dude,” Conner said, beaming. “You actually, finally, totally did it.”
He slapped my palm and I said, “Three times.”
I felt myself turning red.
“God damn.” Conner shook his head. “Me and Rachel only slept. That’s it. We just fucking slept next to each other. How can that be? It’s like I’ve reclaimed my virginity with one of the hottest girls on the planet. And now, she has to go home.”
I smiled at him and shrugged my shoulders. “You want some pointers or something?”
“Shit.” Conner collapsed backwards on the bed, moaning, his forearm across his eyes. “Three times? I must be sick.”
I slapped his knee.
“Run on the beach while the girls get ready?” I asked.
And I wondered if he realized that I was just trying to distract him.
Conner grunted and pushed himself up. “Okay.”
Once we’d gotten into our shorts, I sat beside him at the foot of the bed and we laced up our shoes. And even though I almost had convinced myself that we were going to avoid it, I also knew Conner. He never forgot things once he’d set his mind on them.
I felt like a thief, and I was trying to come up with some way of stealing from myself.
So my stomach knotted up when he cleared his throat and looked at me with a stern expression and said, “Okay. Let’s take care of that shit now, Jack. Give me the glasses. I’m throwing them in the sea, dude.”
Fuck you, Jack.
I rested my elbows on my knees, looked back once in the direction of the bathroom. The water was still running. The girls were in there, talking, laughing.
“I don’t want you to do that yet, Con.”
“Dude, you’re going to fuck up your head. Your life.”
Freddie Horvath.
Did something.
“You don’t understand. Don’t get sucked into it, Con. It’s not what you think. You have to trust me. Leave it alone. Please.”
Conner sighed. He pushed himself up from the bed and stood in front of the window, looking out at the flat of the beach.
“Fuck it,” he said. Then he started emptying out the stuff from my pack. “You promised, Jack. You swore to me.”
“Quit it, Conner.”
Quit it, Jack.
Everything came out. He dropped it in a heap on the floor between us. I didn’t know what to do: Here I was, watching my best friend as he tried to fuck with my life. I stood, thought about pushing him off my stuff when his hand came up, squeezing a balled-up pair of my underwear. And I could see the braided gold frames of the Marbury glasses that I’d twisted up inside of them.
I pleaded, “Conner, don’t.”
He’s becoming my enemy here, too.
He’s trying to kill me.
I tried grabbing his hand, and as I did, he pushed me away. It felt like a punch. I fell onto the bed and the glasses tumbled from Conner’s gras
p. And as they fell, spinning in the air, I saw flashes of Marbury through them. The other side, shooting blazing white pictures at my eyes like spotlights in the night. Conner had to see it, too: Griffin running; me, chasing something through the woods. I could even hear the sounds of the brush snapping against my skin while I ran wildly, shouting, “Griffin! Griffin!”
And we saw Freddie Horvath there, too.
“Fuck that shit!” Conner kicked the glasses under the bed. “Don’t look at that shit, Jack!”
I rolled over onto my stomach, tried reaching under the bed.
Just like you’re back in bed at Freddie’s house, isn’t it, Jack?
All tucked in, Jack.
Conner slid beneath me, lying on his belly, his arm extended, sweeping across the floor.
“What are you two doing?” Rachel, smiling, had come out from the bathroom. “Are you wrestling?”
I tried grabbing at Conner’s hair.
I wanted to fucking kill him.
I was mad enough to scream.
He straightened up onto his knees, gave Rachel an embarrassed grin, and said, “Nothing. Dropped something.”
Then I saw him slip the glasses inside the brief liner in his running shorts.
He looked at me. There was almost a smile, a challenge, in his eyes, like he was saying, Now what are you going to do, Jack? I won, it’s over. Give up.
You’re dead.
Then he spun around, gave Rachel a kiss, and said, “We’re going out for a quick run. We’ll be back in twenty minutes, tops.”
I chased after Conner as he pushed his way out the door.
He ran fast.
Forty-Seven
Let me tell you what Jack believes about friendship.
There was part of me—it sounded like a reasonable voice trying to talk while being smothered beneath a pillow, or maybe while drowning—and I knew deep down that what Conner did was out of love for me. The reasonable part of Jack knew this, but still, as I chased after him—across the street and onto the flat of the beach, running, running, all along the slithering reflection of the long North Pier toward the distant edge of black water beyond its end—a stiff middle finger that said, Fuck you, Jack, this is the way to the end of the world, here you go, just keep running, Jack’s head was howling, Fuck this shit.
Conner didn’t understand.
He was trying to save me, but it felt like he was killing me.
It felt like an arrow stabbing through my side.
How long ago did that happen?
“Conner! Wait a second!”
And he’d turn back and glance at me, without slowing his pace the least bit, holding those glasses tightly in his fist.
I needed them back. I had to go back to Marbury.
All I could feel was this unexplainable, desperate commitment to Griffin and Ben, two friends I’d never seen before but, somehow, I’d known forever; and, perhaps, a greater and more dreadful compulsion that drove me to need to reach some kind of final resolution between myself and my ghosts from the here and now—Conner, who I loved, and Freddie Horvath, who did something to my brain—and now I knew I was completely fucked.
If Conner got rid of them, I knew it would kill me. Here and there.
Fuck you, Jack.
So, you have this ugly choice: Save yourself or save your friendship. It’s why the shitheads who run things turn boys into soldiers: to us, the bond is more important—a flag, an officer, your teammate—the things that deserve our lives more than we deserve to hold on to them.
It’s why Seth ran away from home.
It was why Conner was running away from me.
And it was why I needed to get back to Marbury, at least one more time. I needed to save them, and save Conner there, too. Even if it meant losing.
Run away from here.
Just once.
Just a peek.
“Conner!”
Fuck this place.
When Conner was nearly to the edge of the cold water, I caught him. I didn’t want to fight, but I had to make him stop. So I leapt at him and wrapped my arms around his waist. He landed, face first in the salty mud with me on top of him.
And I don’t believe Conner intended to hurt me, but he threw an elbow to get me off his back. It caught me in the mouth and split open my lip.
Groggy and out of breath, I raised myself onto my hands and knees, watching as my blood dripped, brilliantly, into the water. It painted a constellation in red on the sand between my spread fingers. The purple glasses had broken when we hit the ground. One lens lay flat atop the shallow slick of seawater, opening a coin-sized hole that showed downward into the white-hot hell of Marbury.
Conner got to his feet, soaked and covered in mud. He stared down into the lens, the twisted frames half-buried in the muck beside it.
“What the fuck, Jack?” he said.
It didn’t sound like Conner.
I wiped across my mouth, swiping a red slash through the hairs on my forearm.
Then I saw Conner turn away from where he stood. With one hand, he scooped up the glasses and the dislodged lens and, no longer looking at them, threw the pieces out into the dark water.
A small wave came in and washed over his shoes and the tops of my hands.
The tide was coming.
At that moment, Jack gave up.
I dropped my head down into the mud. The water swept over my hair, into my eyes, and mouth.
It was over. I couldn’t go back.
It was like the universe collapsed when Conner threw the glasses into the sea.
And now the tide was coming.
“Get up. Let me see you.” Conner’s hand rubbed my shoulder. “Get up, Jack.”
I lifted my head from the water. I pulled the bottom of my T-shirt out of my shorts so I could wipe the last drops of blood from my face. A couple who’d been walking along the beach stood back, cautiously eyeing us, no doubt wondering if we were really fighting or just messing around like boys do, sometimes.
Neither one, I guess.
They turned away and kept walking after I stood up and gave them a dirty look.
Conner touched me, tried to get me to raise my face so he could look at what he’d done.
“I’m okay.” I pushed his hand away.
“Who was that in there?”
I started walking back toward the beach. I wanted to go home, wherever that was. Jack was dead inside.
Conner followed, a step behind me. “Who was that, Jack?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“I saw you. It looked like you were running in some woods. And I saw that doctor guy, too. Freddie. I’m not lying. But the kid. He was screaming for you, Jack. I don’t know who he was.”
“Just a little kid. Griffin.”
I kept walking, wouldn’t look back at him.
“How do you know him?”
“I only know him from there. That’s all.”
“That kid was scared. He was scared and he was trying to run away from me, wasn’t he?”
I kept walking. “It doesn’t matter now.”
We didn’t talk to each other for the rest of the morning; and I felt like it, but I didn’t cry.
Of course the girls knew that something had happened between us. My lip was busted open, and I wouldn’t talk to, or even look at, my best friend. Conner and I just sat there, across from one another, sulking, facing out the train window on the three-hour ride into Harrogate. I pretended to sleep.
I tried to think of something else: about calling Wynn to tell him about St. Atticus; Nickie’s touch on my skin; Freddie Horvath.
Freddie Horvath.
Fuck! Henry Hewitt; those fucking glasses; Nickie couldn’t see anything in them; black; nothing.
She’s dead there, that’s why.
Like Henry.
Like everyone.
Like Griffin.
Fuck!
I couldn’t bear thinking about Nickie not being in Marbu
ry, because I knew what it meant. Maybe she was on that train, in a sleeper. Maybe she was hanging head down on a crucifix beside a liquor store.
Why did Conner do that to me?
It was making me sick.
Shaking and pale, holding on to the seats like a drunk as I passed them, I stumbled down the aisle to the toilet and threw up.
Welcome home, Jack.
And I stood there in front of the mirror, bracing myself on the steel sink with my arms locked against the rocking of the train. It felt like the whole universe was shaking apart beneath my feet. Everything was coming open, layer after layer, opening onto an image of a fucking kitchen floor and Little Jack.
Fun game, wasn’t it?
I stared at my sick reflection in the mirror.
I looked like a crackhead.
I wanted to break something so badly, made a fist, and stopped myself from punching the glass.
I whispered, “Seth?”
Nothing.
A junkie, begging. “Seth? Please.”
I ran the water and rinsed my face.
How could she see anything in me? I was hopeless and lost. I wasn’t brave at all. And now I was acting like some desperate addict. I’d do anything to get those fucking glasses back. I’d kill to get them back. I needed to see the end, to make the end come. But there was nothing I could do.
Don’t let him turn into your enemy here, Jack.
You’re dying.
I tried to get my head clear. Call home. My hand shook so badly I could barely open my phone. I thought I should try calling Wynn and Stella, didn’t care what time it was there. I didn’t care what time it was anywhere, except in Marbury.
Look at the photographs.
Jack flips through the pictures: Me and Nickie lying in bed together.
That was nice, wasn’t it?
Do you remember that, Jack?
Jack’s middle finger.
Fuck you, Conner.
Jack, naked in the shower in London.
The time when I came back from Marbury, and it was three days later.
Fuck you, Jack.
Wait.
Phone calls.
I look through the recent numbers.