Chapter 5

"The real surprise, kid, is that you're out of your fucking mind!" he says quite seriously. "I wouldn't be surprised to learn you've lived one life for two. Want to talk business?"

"No." I shake my head. "I'm not interested. I just want to make sure we understand each other."

"Then you had better congratulate me, Wright!" Walberg smiles again. "It's my birthday today!"

A couple of minutes ago he sent his long-haired girlfriend to the fire, but she's clearly missing him and hovering nearby. I nod my chin in her direction.

"Congratulations, Ray. I see you've already started celebrating."

He notices her look too and laughs:

"Oh, no! The night's just getting started, kid! So be nice and don't drag this out!"

When I return to my friends, Tilda is no longer with them. Her laughter comes from the dark along with a man's, and I tell Lucas:

"It's fine, Palmer. Walberg won't talk about you. Go home and pray Chris gets away with everything."

"What about you?"

"I'm staying."

"Me too." Holt nods beside me, and I'm mostly glad of that. The closer the night presses in, the stronger the bitterness and pain I keep trying to strangle inside me roll over me, and he knows it.

A couple of hours later, Nicholas and I are still at the Bluff. We're hanging out with Ray and his friends, drowning the adrenaline in our blood with alcohol and dancing by the fire.

The booze hums in our heads, sweat runs down our bare necks, I press some Latina girl I've just been with against my side, and I hear Nick drunkenly confess, shoving her away and gripping my shoulders hard with one arm:

"I love you, man, even if you're an asshole! And Lucas too! But if he drags us into shit like this again, I swear I'll be the first to punch him in the face! Come on," he demands, "say you love me too, like a brother! Say it, Carter!"

Lucas and I are friends, but Nicholas and I are much closer. We grew up together, our fathers are partners, and there's no secret we don't know about each other. But when he ruffles my hair in a rush of euphoria, I'm not sure he hasn't had time to inhale some weed. Nick's eyes are shining strangely. Though I'm pretty drunk myself right now, too drunk to figure it out.

Nick starts messing with me. I jokingly hit back, and we both fall laughing into the grass beneath the deafening rock, where I suddenly make out the words of Andy Black's song "This Is My Resurrection" and freeze when I hear a familiar voice...

"Carter, go home right now! It's time! You're already completely wasted, and considering you aren't eighteen... Dude, this is too much!"

No, I lied. I do have one secret from Nick after all.

Alex. Him again. He came for me, the fucking golden boy. As proper and well-trained as I remember him.

I'm drunk and stretched tight as a wire. A wave of reckless bravado slams into me, clenching my fingers into a fist. With that fist, jumping to my feet, I cut through the air in front of me, trying to reach Alex.

It's not my first drink or my first cigarette. It falls and goes out, and I kick it with the toe of my sneaker, which is sturdy enough to hit someone in the balls. To really drive it home.

That's how it seems to me. And that's how it really is.

"Fuck off!" I lunge forward, but stumble and slam my shoulder into someone's car. Swearing, I turn around. "Fuck you!" I yell, trying to grab Alex, but I drop onto my ass on the ground and hear "Shut up!" in response.

I don't care. I throw an empty bottle at him and tell him to fuck off again. Alex is dead and I'm alive, and I get to decide whether to shut up or scream at the top of my lungs.

"Hey, man! Who are you talking to?" Nick catches me by the collar of my T-shirt and throws me to the ground. Dropping beside me, he locks me in a hold. "You've had too much, asshole. Calm down!"

But there's no chance of that. The music from the speakers cuts out, and everyone turns toward us. They shift closer, and the night air, heated by sweaty bodies and campfire smoke, grows thicker.

Everyone here loves a show, and one of the guys laughs loudly, calling me "Psycho." But a couple of moments later, after I've managed to throw Nick off and get to my feet, he chokes on a groan, doubling over.

Even drunk, I'm stronger and faster than every one of them, and I'm ready to prove it as many times as necessary.

"Carter, stop... Carter!"

"Alex?!"

I could swear I see him, my brother. He's standing at the edge of the cliff, at the line between light and dark, in jeans, a tank top, and an unbuttoned shirt with the collar folded in. His dark hair is rumpled above his smooth forehead, his lips are parted as if he hasn't finished speaking, and in his blue eyes burns the same old light of hope: the dreamy boy with the small smile that always made the shadows retreat in my dark soul.

Alex.

Even dead, he keeps believing in me and seeing someone else in me. Someone different from this rotten pack of young trash surrounding us, and I'll never know the answer: Why?

"Why not me, Al?"

Once I promised you I'd never ask myself that question. But I lied. Since you died, I've asked myself every day. Every fucking second I'm alone with myself and my reflection, I ask myself, "Why?!" And it breaks my heart.

"That week I was grounded, I kept my promise, like you asked. It was only the next night that I came home just before dawn, and Father wasn't surprised. His older son had always lived by his own rules, and he was forced to start reckoning with that, exactly as I'd counted on. But you weren't. You were always stubborn.

We were standing at the corner of Fourth Street and the square where we had played so many times as children. We had run into each other there early that evening, face to face, so identical and yet so different, and we were arguing. Arguing, goddamn it, about something that in the final minute of our life together meant absolutely nothing!.. And at that same time, forty-year-old Billy Bowen was already driving his truck down Mile Road and shouting along to a song: "Hot girl, wink at me! Can't you see I need a break!" That was what he'd tell them later... When something went wrong.

First a loud pop, a turn, a sharp hit on the brakes, and by the time Billy realized the front tire had blown and tried to do something, the loaded truck was already skidding toward the shoulder.

No one was to blame. An accident. Later, the shipping company's lawyers would be able to prove that.

But then I didn't see it. The truck. I was standing with my back to the road and yelling at you, but you noticed.

The moment the screech of brakes deafened us, you slammed into me, shoved me away, and you...

I swear it felt like I had time to catch your hands. They were so close, and your fingers had already touched mine... And if I hadn't been falling, I could have pulled you out, Al. I could have! But one instant decided everything.

You were crushed, brother, like an empty foil chip bag. Pop. Smack. And you were gone.

Only a bloody streak on the road... and the darkening horizon before my eyes, split in two.

Fuck! Alex, I hate you! For what you did to yourself! For what you did to me!

Because until I die, I'll live knowing that it wasn't supposed to be you who died there. It was me!