Boys Like You

“I looked everywhere for Malcolm…but he was gone. I was frantic, yelling his name and shouting at the kids like a lunatic. This mother came over to me and asked me what was wrong. When I told her that my brother was missing, she looked around and then she shook my shoulders. She asked me when I’d seen him last and I told her…I told her that I’d fallen asleep and then I couldn’t speak anymore. The look in her eyes…I’ll never forget. She knew I had let it happen.”

I thought that I was all cried out, but hot tears burned my itchy, blotchy skin.

“I screamed in her face. I yelled, ‘It’s not my fault,’ but it was. And then when I found his inhaler in my bag, I just knew that something bad had happened. It was too hot. He needed his inhaler. By this time, the place was crawling with cops. I don’t know who called them. It wasn’t me. But they were there and they were asking me questions, and every time they did, I saw that woman’s face. I saw her accusation.”

My voice broke.

“I saw the truth.”

“Oh God, Monroe. You don’t have to do this,” Nate breathed into me, his nose near mine, his dark eyes shiny.

But I did.

“They found him almost immediately, in the trees that cut through the park. I think he was trying to get back to me because he was in trouble, but I was asleep and totally unaware. I bet he yelled for me. He had to have, and sometimes I hear him, you know? I hear him screaming, ‘Roe, where are you? Come get me!’

“He was already gone when they found him, and by then my mother had made it to the park.” I shook violently at the memory. At the sound of my mother wailing. At the image of her pounding her fists into the police officer’s chest. Her nails were scarlet. Blood red and pointy.

Funny the details you remember.

“The coroner told my parents later that he died because of a severe asthma attack, and I remember my mom asking about his inhaler. ‘Where was his inhaler?’ she kept asking, saying it over and over. I could never answer, but I think that she knows. I’ve never told her or my dad that I had his inhaler. That I still have his inhaler. I never told them that…”

I clung to Nathan, trying to block out the sounds of Malcolm’s cries and the images of his face. My chest was so tight I could barely breathe, but eventually it fell away and I was nothing but a limp bag of bones and flesh.

“Jesus, Monroe. I’m so, so sorry.”

I was hollow. Spent.

“Yeah,” I answered slowly. “Me too.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Nathan

I woke up because the sun was in my eyes. It wavered for a bit and then disappeared again.

Shit. It was morning, and we were still in the maze. My hair was damp from the dew, but with Monroe still in my arms, burrowed beneath the blanket I’d brought, I was warm and dry.

It felt right somehow to be here with her, and I realized that for the first time in a long time, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

I don’t think I slept much, but then how could I? I was still so angry for Monroe. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to smash and destroy and get rid of the anger inside me. It had festered and pulled real hard, just like it had the night after my accident when I’d woken up in the hospital, and Trevor didn’t.

But I did none of that. I held Monroe until she’d fallen asleep, and then with no one but the lonesome owl nearby to hear me, I cried like a baby.

I cried for a little boy I’d never met and his sister who had come to mean everything to me in the space of a few weeks. I cried for Trevor. For his mom and dad. I cried like I hadn’t cried since I was a kid in fourth grade and my collie, Abram, died. The bus had pulled up to my driveway, and there he was, lying in the middle of the road, killed by a car or truck.

I had to pull Abram out of the way for the bus driver, and I remember dragging his big body all the way to the porch, where I sat and cried until my dad came home.

We never got another dog after that, because me and my parents couldn’t deal with the dying thing. Still couldn’t. Here I was, nearly eighteen and still having trouble.

Everything fell out of me, and no one witnessed it except whoever the hell was up there, looking down on us. I wasn’t sure if I liked him or not. I mean, what kind of God lets shit like this happen to little boys?

What kind of God lets someone like me get behind the wheel and destroy his best friend?

“Shit,” I muttered, wincing as a ray of light fell into the center of the maze again, hitting me in the face like a big F U.

I guess it was his way of telling me that He didn’t let any of us do anything. If we screwed up, it was on us. We had to own it. We could think. We could do.

It was up to us to make the right choices, but maybe it was up to Him to help with the fallout.