Page 158

“He’s tough,” I assured him. “Trevor’s a fighter. He’ll pull through.”

Mason shook his head again. “You don’t know that.”

He was right. I didn’t. But I knew what it was like to watch someone slip away, to stand there useless while they disappeared from your life entirely. And I knew what it felt like to realize you waited too long to say everything you wanted to say because they weren’t around to hear it any more.

“He’s strong,” I told Mason.

“He is,” he replied, barely audible. “But I wasn’t.” He seemed to swallow whatever else was on the tip of his tongue, and we both just sat there in shared silence.

Mason wasn’t just talking about himself. He was talking about me. And suddenly I was looking at my own wrecked self staring back from a fifteen-year-old’s blank, blinkless eyes.

I put my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shake it off. Just continued to sit there watching the sky where the helicopter had disappeared, and I planted myself next to him doing the exact same thing.

“He’s gonna be okay,” I said after the crowd started to disperse, and the camp appeared to do its best to return to the normal everyday activities.

I meant it too. Trevor was going to be okay. He had to be okay. Because if he wasn’t, Alvin wouldn’t be okay. And if Alvin wasn’t okay, I didn’t know how I’d survive it.

It was a selfish thought. But it was also the truth. I needed this kid to pull through and I needed to figure out what the fuck I was doing with my life. Because whatever this was, it wasn’t working…

Mason didn’t say anything more after that. He just stared at the empty sky. And for a long time, I stared at it too.

CHAPTER 35

Icame back to camp three days later with a duffel bag over my shoulder, a hospital visitor sticker still stuck to the side of it, and enough rage packed behind my ribs to qualify as a controlled substance.

Trevor was alive.

That was the sentence everybody kept repeating like it erased the rest of the absolute bullshit that happened.

He was alive. Alive did not mean fine. Alive did not mean he hadn’t woken up coughing so hard I thought he might cough up a lung along with it. Alive did not mean I hadn’t watched a fourteen-year-old boy stare at the ceiling and whisper that he didn’t want to come back to camp but didn’t want to leave Mason to the same fate.

So, no, I wasn’t grateful. I was fucking furious.

The shuttle barely rolled to a complete stop before I hopped out. Camp Dix looked exactly the same and that offended me somehow. The cabins stood beneath the trees. Kids screamed near the rec field. Maybe the most insulting… that fucking lake glittered through the trees like it hadn’t almost swallowed a kid whole.

I stared at it for a second too long. Then I smiled, not because I was happy. That shit was far from happy train for me. But I had an idea to make a few shit-fucks very unhappy too.

“Alvin.”

I knew the voice but I kept walking.

“Alvin.”

Still walking. Footsteps followed me across the dirt.

“Would you stop for a second?”

I stopped but it wasn’t because precious fucking Darius asked. It was for Mason, who was standing ahead of us near the staff cabin.

His eyes immediately went to my face. “How is he?”

“He’s stable.”

Mason exhaled hard. Darius went quiet from behind me, and I continued forward.

“He’s still coughing a lot,” I said. “Doctors said his lungs sound better than they did the first night. They’re watching him for infection and a bunch of medical mumbo that made my head hurt but means it’s looking okay, dude.”

Mason nodded but the poor kid still looked unsure. “Did he ask about me?”