He pushes off the wall, and I fist my fingers, realizing they’re chilled to the bone.
“You’re just like every other bitch in this school. They all wanted it.”
I take in deep breaths as I watch him walk down the hall to the lunchroom, trying to slow down my pulse.
I don’t care what he thinks he can get away with. I’ll talk to my mom tonight and take this to the principal. If she doesn’t handle him, then we’ll go over her head. He’s not threatening me again.
I move to make my way up the steps, but I see the men’s room door Trey came out of and remember the black necklace.
He must’ve taken it from Manny. If Manny’s in there, why hasn’t he come out yet?
I look around, not seeing anyone in the hall, and hurry to the bathroom door, slowly pushing it open.
“Manny?” I call out.
Why the hell am I doing this? He won’t want to see me. I’m sure he’s fine.
“Manny, it’s Ryen,” I say.
I don’t hear anything, and for a moment I think the bathroom is empty, but then I hear a shuffle and step inside.
Inching past the empty stalls, I walk along the sinks to the hidden space where the hand dryers sit.
Manny is standing with his back to me, his backpack dangling from his right hand, and his head bowed.
He’s shaking.
“Manny?”
He raises his head but doesn’t turn around. “Get out,” he demands. “Get the fuck away from me.”
“Manny, what happened?”
I step to the side, trying to see his face, but then I see something, and I stop. Blood trails off his ear and down his neck.
The hole on his lobe where a black gauge used to fit is now empty, and he’s bleeding, although it looks like it’s stopped.
Trey. Oh, my God, did he rip it out?
I take a step toward Manny, but he flinches, moving away.
Of course. Why would she help? He sees me just as dangerous as he sees Trey.
He thinks I’ll victimize him. And why not? I’ve done it in the past.
Grief fills my heart. How many times have I made him feel alone?
I stay rooted, not wanting to make him scared, but I want to help. “It won’t always be like this.”
“It’s always been like this,” he retorts.
I stand there, thinking back to grade school. Manny and I got along okay until fourth grade when I…changed. But even before that he was on the periphery of whatever was happening. He was small and lanky, never picked for sports and often got in trouble for not turning in assignments. I knew then that he had it a little stressful at home, but other kids don’t understand things like that. They just judge.
“When I was little,” he goes on. “I used to be able to go home and get away from it. But now we’re older. We have Facebook, and everything they say about me during the day, I get to see online every night.”
I can hear the tears in his voice, and I want to get him some napkins to clean up the blood, but I don’t want him to stop talking, either.
“One of you assholes pushes my tray into my clothes and dumps food all over me, and the first thing everyone does is take out their phones. And then I have to relive it through pictures on my newsfeed every hour—even days and weeks later. Over and over again. I can’t get away from it anymore. Not even when I leave school.”
I never thought about it like that. When we were younger, the dynamics of friendships and fitting in were only difficult at school. When we went home, we were free, and most of us, hopefully, felt safe there. Now, the only thing we leave at school is school. The pressure, the gossiping, the bad feelings, it follows us home online. There’s no break from it.
“It’s constant. The humiliation…”
“It won’t always be like this,” I say again, moving closer.
“My family sees it, my sisters and their friends. I embarrass them.” He shakes, sobbing again. “That’s why I get high.”
He pulls a rag and spray can out of his backpack, and I move forward, a lump stretching my throat.
“As high as I can get as often as I can get,” he says, “so I can bear the fucking pain of breathing and eating and looking at people like you.”
“Manny...”
“When everything is painful…” He drops the backpack and sprays the inhalant on the rag. “You start to ask yourself ‘what’s the point?’ No one cares, and you start to care even less. You just want the pain to stop.”
He brings it to his nose, and I lunge out, knocking the cloth out of his hand and grabbing the can.
I wrap my arm around him and pull him into me, both of us starting to cry. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I whisper.
I drop the stuff on the floor and hold his frail, shaking body as tears stream down my face. What the fuck? How did we get here? He wasn’t like this as a kid. Neither of us were like this.
He breathes hard, and I think about all the times I didn’t think of him and all the things I wasn’t seeing. All the times I ignored what was happening because of the fear of being alone, empty, and ashamed of who I was.
We were kids once, and we liked ourselves. We were happy. How did that change?
I pull away and toss the stuff into the garbage, wetting some paper towels for him to clean off his neck.
Handing them to him, I lean down on the counter and try to calm the sobs in my chest.
This is crazy. How can he hurt himself like that? He has to know it gets better. The world will open up, and we won’t feel so trapped. You just need to hang on.
But I look over at him, seeing tears coat his face, bags under his eyes, and him staring off. He absently wipes the blood off his neck, looking completely fucking empty and like he’s done hanging on.
I wipe my tears away and try to steel my tone. “It won’t always be like this.” I want him to know that.
But he just looks over at me, looking like he’s hanging on by a thread. “When does it get better?”
My heart aches. Yeah, when? How long does he have to wait?
There should always be hope—we change, our environment changes, and our communities change. It will get better.
But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless in the meantime, either. I can’t change his life, but I can do this.
I pick up his backpack and stand up, handing it to him. Taking his hand, I lead him out into the hallway, seeing him toss his wet cloth in the trash on the way out.
We walk across the hall to the lunchroom, and I relax my grip on his hand just in case he wants to let go of me.
But he doesn’t. We walk hand in hand to the lunch line, already hearing the deafening noise fade a little and murmurs drift around the room.
I give him a tray and take one myself.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks in a low voice. “You don’t like me.”
“I’ve always liked you.” I turn my eyes on him. “And I need a friend.”
My being an asshole was personal to him, but it wasn’t personal to me. I never stopped liking Manny.
We move down the line, and my back is hot. Hopefully it’s my paranoia, feeling all those stares. If not, I guess I’ve laid down the gauntlet. And without Misha here this time to protect me. Here we go.
“I always eat in the library.” He looks around nervously.
I take a Jell-O cup. “The lunchroom is where we eat.”
“Everyone’s looking at us.”
“It’s because you have a better ass than me, that’s why.”
A laugh escapes him, but he quickly diffuses it, probably because he’s not sure if he can trust me. I don’t blame him.
We load up our trays with chips, mac and cheese, and brownies. I also get a soda, because fuck it, I’m hungry, and I want to drink some calories today.
After we pay, I walk over to a round table and glance back, making sure he’s following me.
His eyes dart left and right, carrying his tray and backpack, and he’s probably nervous as he
ll. After all, I can’t remember the last time I spotted him in here, and everyone is looking at us.
I keep my eyes forward and set my tray down, having a seat. He quickly slides into a chair on the other side of the table, and even though the hairs on my skin are standing on end and I’m aware of every damn person in here, I inhale a deep breath and give him a reassuring smile.
“See?” I brag, opening my Coke. “It’s getting better already.”
But then something smashes down in front of me, my food splatters, and I gasp, instantly stilling as mac and cheese hits my arm and hair.
What the…?
“Whoa!” Howls sound off across the room, followed by laughter, and I know it’s coming from my old table. People around us take notice and start laughing, a few taking out their phones to take a pic.
I sit there, frozen.
I look up, seeing a fat, cheesy noodle dangling from my hair over my forehead, and I lock eyes with Manny as he reaches over and picks up the red apple that had come crashing into my tray. He stares at me, looking surprised, but then his eyes shoot up to the noodle, and he snorts.
“Hey,” I snap. This isn’t funny!
But he’s smiling anyway, shaking with laughter.
I roll my eyes, feeling my stomach tighten into a knot, but I set my drink down and pluck the noodle out of my hair. Grabbing a napkin, I start to clean off my arm where thick cheese is sticking to my skin.
“Hey,” a male voice says.
I look up, seeing J.D. pull out a seat. He grabs the apple away from Manny and flings it across the cafeteria, back to where it came from. I don’t look, but I hear a crash and squeals.
“What are you doing?” I ask, watching him lean back in the seat, relaxing.
He shrugs, taking my Coke and unscrewing the cap. “Well, when your girl screws your best friend, it’s time for a new girl and a new best friend, I guess.”
“We like you more, anyway,” someone else says.
I turn my head to see Ten taking a seat next to Manny. He looks over at the kid. “Hi.”
Manny sits slumped, suddenly appearing frightened to even look at anyone. “Hi,” he mumbles.
J.D. takes a sip of my soda.
“When did you know?” I ask him. I’m sure Misha wouldn’t have told him.
“Slightly before I wrote the message on the lawn, outing her.”
I shoot my eyebrows up, and Ten stares at him, shocked. “That was you?” I shoot out.
Holy shit. If he knew then, how did he just stand by and play dumb around them this whole time?
“I guess I was afraid to stand on my own,” he explains. “Until I saw you doing it five seconds ago.”
“You’re not Punk,” Ten gauges as more of a question than a statement.
J.D. just shakes his head. “Uh, no. It was just that one time.”
I momentarily wonder if I should tell them who Punk is, but no. Wrong time, wrong place, and I’m not sure Punk is done yet. I don’t want to come out of the closet until I’m ready.
I finish cleaning off and open my bag of chips, grateful that everyone in the room has seemed to resume their conversations. Thanks, no doubt, to J.D. and Ten’s arrival.
I guess what I always thought is actually true. There is safety in numbers.
“So I got a limo for prom,” J.D. tells me, looking around at everyone. “Group date?”
Ten nods, but Manny and I are silent. I trust Ten, but I’m not entirely sure about J.D. yet. Everything I’ve noticed from him the past couple of weeks tells me he’s on the up and up, but now I’m paranoid. I don’t want to get suckered into going to prom and whoops…now I’m soaked in animal blood like in Carrie.
“This isn’t a joke, is it?” I ask him. “You’re cool?”
He looks at me thoughtfully. “If Masen’s not there, they’ll have to go through me to get to you.” And then he glances at Manny. “You, too. And believe me. No one likes to go through me.”
I can’t help but smile. He’s a hundred-eighty pounds of future USC football player, and while he’s always been pretty harmless, people know they shouldn’t mess with him.
“Sounds good then. I’d love to.” I turn to Manny. “You?”
“You got a dress?” Ten pipes up, asking him.
Manny frowns, shooting him a dirty look. “Do you?”
Ten smiles, and Manny seems to relax a little.
He doesn’t answer, but I’ll call him later. He doesn’t trust us, and I don’t want to push him right now.
Everyone gets busy eating. J.D. steals food off everyone’s trays, and I take out my phone and go to text Misha. I hope he doesn’t mind getting asked to prom.
But then I think better of it and go to Google to find his Facebook. I’ve read so much about his life, and now I’d like to see it, I think. I’m guessing the last thing he wants to talk about is prom, but I’d like to put it out there sooner rather than later for him to think about at least.
But as I type in Misha Lare Grayson into the search engine and scroll to find what I need, I’m suddenly lost in more information than I can handle.
My stomach sinks, and my heart races.
Oh, my God.
The Cove looms ahead, massive and imposing under the gray clouds. I park next to Misha’s truck and climb out of my Jeep, making my way to the entrance.
Now I know why he stopped writing three months ago.
I should never have let it go as long as I did. It was completely selfish to sit there and wait for him to come around and write me back—assuming his issue was small and insignificant—and that protecting the status quo of our relationship was more important.
Of course he wouldn’t have stopped writing for anything trivial. He’d been committed to me for seven years. Why did I think he’d be so cavalier about dropping me all of a sudden?
And now I know why he’s been hiding out here, away from his dad, too. It all makes sense.
Almost.
Walking into the park, I feel the cool breeze from the downpour yesterday brush my arms. The air is thick and weighted, and the clouds overhead threaten more of the same. I hug myself against the slight chill.
Looking around, I walk past the rides and old gaming booths, spotting the field house ahead. I enter and make my way down the dark stairwell, instantly seeing a light down the corridor.
This place freaks me out. I’d heard some people from Thunder Bay were buying the property and had plans to tear down the old theme park and turn it into a hotel with a golf course and a marina and all that, but it might’ve been just a rumor.
I’d be sad to see the place go, but yeah… I turn corners half-expecting to see death clowns cackling among the decay.
Too many horror movies, I guess.
Misha’s room is lit up, and I see the lamp on the bedside table turned on as well as some candles on another table across the room. He’s lying back on the bed, his feet on the floor and his ears covered with headphones as he taps his thigh with a pencil.
There are a few boxes that look filled with his belongings sitting next to the door, but other than the bed, table, and lamp, everything else is packed away.
I smile softly, unable to tear my eyes away from him. The way his foot is tapping to the beat that I hear playing out of his headphones, the way the ring in his lip makes his mouth look like something to eat, and his dark brown hair—damn near black—wispy like he was just outside in the wind.
My heart aches, my stomach somersaults, and my lungs fill with air that sends a shiver down my spine.
I love him.
Stepping over, I climb on top of him, straddling his waist and planting my hands on either side of his head. He jerks and opens his eyes, his gaze turning gentle and happy when he sees me.
He pulls off his headphones. “Are you okay?”
I know he was probably concerned about leaving me at school around Trey and Lyla without him. I nod.
I’m tempted to tell him about my day. Trey’s threats, Manny in the bathroo
m, J.D. and Ten at lunch. But no more distractions.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Annie?” I ask him.
His expression turns somber, and he slowly sits up. I move off him, sliding onto the bed and sitting at his side.
“I would’ve,” he says, avoiding my eyes as he turns off his iPod. “I was just waiting for us to calm down.”
I can understand that, but I’m not talking about when he came here as Masen. I’m talking about in his letters.
“I heard about it and saw the name online,” I tell him, “but…why did you tell me your last name was Lare?”
When I heard about the seventeen-year-old girl who died on Old Pointe Road from a heart attack, I’d read her name was Anastasia Grayson.
Annie, I gather, is short for Anastasia, but Misha never told me his real last name?
“Lare is my middle name,” he replies. “A family name. Everyone in Thunder Bay knows the Graysons, and my grandfather is important. There’s always been pressure to be and act a certain way. It was so aggravating as a kid, and when I started writing you, I saw it as an opportunity to kind of be free. Not really thinking that a kid our age probably wouldn’t know who Senator Grayson was anyway.” He gives a weak laugh. “I legally changed it to Lare when I turned eighteen, though. It suits me a lot better.”
So I guess I wasn’t the only one pretending to be someone else.
“She was an honor student,” he explains, “an athlete, and she was always picture perfect. I wondered how she did it—how she found the time and energy to be everything she was—but it wasn’t until too late that I realized what she was doing to her body. There were signals and we missed it. Taking money out of my wallet, the hours she kept, the decreased appetite…”
I’d read the details when the police finally released her name all those months ago. She was jogging, it was late, and she was alone. Her car was dead, so they guessed she was trying to run to a gas station or something.
She’d collapsed with her phone in her hand, and by the time help got to her, she was gone. It was later determined she’d been abusing drugs for quite some time.