Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“Tell me about the cocaine.”
Jeremy froze.
The warmth of the shower was immediately forgotten; Jeremy felt cold all over as his heart left cracks along his ribcage. Every second of silence that stretched between them felt heavier, and then Jean said, “Torres said it at the table tonight. The candy,” he said, as if Jeremy didn’t remember the moment with agonizing clarity. Jean drew two lines in the air with his fingertip and looked Jeremy’s way at last. “He didn’t name you, but he meant you. Didn’t he?”
“Yes.” It was so quiet Jeremy wasn’t sure Jean heard, so he tried again. “Yes.”
Jean looked away. It was the answer he’d known he would get, but it wasn’t the one he wanted. Jeremy laced his fingers together and squeezed until he thought he’d break his knuckles. It did nothing to help his nerves.
Jean said again, “Tell me.”
Jeremy looked at his bed, where someone had already pried the blankets up from the corners, and went to sit on Jean’s. Jean had to shift to make room for him, and they settled down facing each other. Jeremy looked past him and watched the time change on the clock. One minute, two minutes; he still wasn’t sure where to begin. The banquet was obvious, but the truth had older roots.
At three minutes, Jeremy said, “The summer after Bryson graduated high school, he totaled his car. Cracked his skull in two places and shattered Annalise’s hip.”
Those long days watching over them at the hospital still haunted him. His siblings had been so pale and worn they were strangers to him. It had taken months of therapy to get them moving again. Neither had fully recovered: not from their physical injuries, not from what Mathilda had demanded from them in the aftermath.
“They were both prescribed some pretty good pills during recovery,” Jeremy said, “and Bryson just... never stopped taking them. I’m still not sure how he got ahold of them when his prescription ran out, since Mom and Warren both work at the hospital, but I never asked him. I didn’t care,” he added, forcing the words out as they tried to stick in his throat, “because he always had a bottle or two that he was willing to sell me for cheap.”
“You were also injured?”
“No.” Jeremy lifted one shoulder in a listless shrug when Jean fixed a piercing stare on him. “But Bryson said the pills would make everything at home easier to handle, and I was desperate enough to believe him. They did and didn’t. But then Christmas my senior year he came home with something better for me to try.” Jean already knew what was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier for Jeremy to say: “Cocaine.”
Jeremy picked idly at the sheets. “I should have said no, but that year was... rough.” Nan’s death, Leo’s betrayal, the ceaseless arguments about Exy and his sexuality, the daily traffic stops by cops wanting to push the Wilshire agenda on Warren’s behalf—it all seemed so childish and self-centered compared to Jean’s more brutal tragedies. Further proof that he was a soft-spined failure, as if his mother needed any more evidence to make her case against him. Jeremy crushed that line of thinking with everything he had and said, “I just wanted something that would keep me together until summer practices started at USC. And it did, mostly.”
“Mostly,” Jean echoed.
“I made a lot of friends,” Jeremy said. “I lost a lot more. And the Trojans knew something wasn’t quite right.” It was a weak way to say they hadn’t trusted him, and that the other freshmen had kept as far from him as possible. Rhemann had sat him down for a dozen careful lectures as he tried to sort out his recruit’s mood swings and unpredictability. Shame had Jeremy swallowing back a rush of bile.
Jean said nothing. Jeremy could only stand the silence for so long before he had to press on. “Colorado’s vice-captain had spent a few years quietly ferreting out gay players in the western district, yeah? Every year they’d meet up at the banquet and sneak away somewhere to let loose. I was recklessly indiscreet in high school, so he knew I was safe to invite. Said there’d be drinks and weed and crackers, pick your poison kind of thing, so I brought enough coke to share. It was a big hit,” Jeremy said, “up until Noah—”
Jeremy hugged his arms tight to his stomach, desperate to keep that black hole contained. “Police came looking for me after they identified him. Took them a while to finally pinpoint where I’d gone, but when they showed up...” He raised his hands in a helpless what can you do and said, “Only two of us were out of the closet back then; the other seven were cruising along as carefully as they could. But there we all were, drugged and drunk and tangled up with each other in this little hotel room. Officers called it in to dispatch as a ‘faggot orgy’ before any of us really understood what was going on.”