Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 387(@300wpm)
One of the mannequins tips over, lands with a crash.
Is that a yes?
“I can’t stop seeing them,” says Kyle, distressed. “Kaleb, he cried something out to me, my brother, but what was it?”
No one can hurt you anymore. It ended back there, all of it, your suffering, it’s all over. Tristan still has a hold of Kyle below. The sensation of pleasure radiates through Kyle’s body. It’s ever so difficult to focus on anything else. You are in control now.
The last thing Kyle feels is in control. Everything is rapidly spinning away from him. His parents, his identity, his life.
“Did I die in that house, too?”
No. Everything will feel a hundred times more. Every touch, like a hundred touches. Every bite, a hundred. Also your sorrows and your joys. You are a hundred times more alive now than you ever were.
“But I—”
Tristan’s lips catch Kyle’s right then, silencing him.
All he tastes is blood. Without seeing it, he feels the red all over his lips, Tristan’s lips, everywhere. Seasoning his cheeks. His hair. Earlobes. Down his arms to his unsteady hands, under his fingernails, all of the sticky, sticky red, everywhere.
Somewhere in his bloodstained kitchen, back home, there is a calendar hanging on the side of the refrigerator. It shows a single event planned for this weekend—his football game.
Kyle suspects he won’t be able to attend anymore.
There may never be another game in his future. Only this one which has started with Tristan, this game of running away, of living in shadows, biting fingers, picking out clothes …
A game that has no end, no winners, and no prize.
Tristan takes hold of Kyle’s face by the chin and aims it to his own. Do you remember what they did to you? That family? Your so-called friends and teammates? All the events that brought us here? Look into my eyes, Kyle. Now. Look into my eyes and focus.
It’s a beautiful kind of trap, every time Kyle dares to obey and bring his heavy eyes to Tristan’s.
The world fades, everything along with it. Every emotion Kyle bears is solved, at once made weightless and trivial.
All of his troubles are obliterated. His worries and doubts.
This is how it has been since the day they met.
Tristan’s otherworldly hold over him.
Kyle’s helpless fascination.
“Vermilion,” Kyle chooses. “The left one, the darkest red.”
Tristan’s smile returns. We are going to have so much fun in this new world together, you and I, so much wicked fun.
But first, he adds, you will need pants.
2.
Tristan.
—∙—
“Well, someday I’ll be dead and gone, and you can make all the rules and live however you want, I don’t care. While you’re under this roof, you walk your little brother to school. Y’know how kids can be. They’re assholes. Pass the pepper.”
It was Kyle’s mother who said that.
Kyle was in the middle of eating breakfast. His dad sat at the head of the table, a sports magazine in one hand, a fork of scrambled egg in the other. He never interfered. In anything. Just a silent, soulless face at the end of the table.
Kyle passed the pepper, and his mother eyed him across the table. “Thank you, dear.”
Kaleb, sitting in the mismatched chair next to him, stayed quiet as he studied from a math book, chewed on toast. Dad let out a sigh, turned a page in his magazine. Mom stirred sugar into her coffee. Typical morning to a seemingly typical day.
On the curb just outside the house, Kyle’s brother turned to him. “You don’t have to walk me. I’m thirteen years old. It’s embarrassing. Mom’s just overprotective and crazy.”
Kyle frowned. “You sure? Kids can be assholes.”
“Yes, I’m sure.” Kaleb pulled on the straps of his backpack and set off. Two houses away, he looked over his shoulder. “I said I’m fine, you don’t have to watch me.”
“Go on,” said Kyle. “Promise I won’t follow.”
Despite the promise, Kyle did trail behind his brother for three and a half blocks, past the cemetery, past the park, but keeping his distance, even though he was sure Kaleb knew he was following anyway. The weather was unseasonably nice this time of year in central Texas, a cool front having blown in over the weekend. Kyle stayed by the road and watched his brother from a distance, enjoying the breeze on his face as Kaleb made his way to the entrance of the school.
The kid would be in high school next year, and Kyle would be graduated. He could still remember the bedtime stories he’d read to his younger brother to lull him to sleep. There was one about a town filling up with spaghetti. One about a cat on the moon. One about a prince who stole the rainbow.
He was growing up too fast.
Kyle headed the other way to the high school, backpack slung over his shoulder. With the grey sky overhead, morning wind tossing his bangs, he drew headphones over his ears and turned on his Walkman, listening to whatever mix tape he had made last night, drowning out the world with his music as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his letterman jacket.