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I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to leave this place.
But where would I go? I hate home, too.
I wander down the hallway in a daze.
As I pass the door to the boy’s bathroom, I hear a sound that breaks through the fog.
Sobbing. Desperate, anguished sobbing.
A boy is crying, harder than I’ve ever heard before.
Crying so hard it seems like it will kill him.
I listen and I think,Thank god, someone understands. Someone felt how horrible that was, how intolerable.
His grief is my grief. In fact, his grief is even worse.
I can hear the depth of his pain, dwarfing my own. It’s a private, lonely sound, and yet I feel a compulsion to comfort him.
I push the door open and slip inside.
I weave my way through the labyrinth of sinks and stalls, cupboards and closets. The boy is way back in the furthest corner of the space, his echoing sobs making it difficult to find him.
My head throbs and I can hardly see straight.
Still, I’m driven on, pulled helplessly toward the boy.
Maybe I’m not here to comfort him. Maybe I want solace myself.
I find him at last, a lone, tall figure, hunched over the very last sink, his face in his arms, his shoulders shaking as he cries like his heart is breaking. I barely register the lean body, the white-blond hair. I walk up unheard behind him and place my hand on his shoulder.
He whirls around, grief turning to fury in an instant.
I’ve made a terrible mistake.
This is no boy—this is Dean Yenin.
And he looks ready to rip out my jugular with his teeth.
His face is wet with tears. He knows that I see it. He knows I heard him crying.
He seizes me by the throat and slams me up against the wall, my head jolting against the tiles.
His fist draws back. I catch one glimpse of bruised and swollen knuckles, before he propels it directly toward my face.
I shriek, squeezing my eyes tight shut.
I hear the shattering of tile as his fist hits the wall next to my ear.
I open my eyes and immediately regret it, because Dean’s face is right against mine, his eyes purple fire and his nose pressed against my cheek. He hisses, “If you tell anyone . . .anyone . . .I’ll fucking kill you.”
Dean lets go of my neck so abruptly that I fall to my knees on the cold floor. A piece of shattered tile cut my cheek—a droplet of blood falls from my face to the floor, blooming red against the white marble.
By the time I look up, Dean has disappeared.
I kneel there for a long time, shaking helplessly.
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