Finding Zach (15 page)

“Yeah, it’s hard,” David said absently, concentrating on his own defenses. “And with you dead I’m just that much more vulnerable…. Hah!” he said triumphantly as his avatar weaseled out of a booby trap. “Just wait ’til this goes online and you’re dealing with other players.”

“It’s been too many years since I’ve played these kinds of games,” Zach admitted. “I’m way out of practice.”

David shot him a teasing grin. “You weren’t that good before.”

“Shut up,” Zach retorted. “I’m gonna get something to drink. You want anything?”

“Yeah, whatever you’re having.”

The game was getting intense. David’s avatar was on the defensive now, with the computer focused solely on him. Although, he thought in the part of his mind that wasn’t concentrating on the game, it probably didn’t make any difference to the computer; it was probably his own perception that made it feel like the game was getting more challenging. His avatar made it up a level, racking up a few more points, and the pressure got worse. He skated through another booby trap, but just as his crime boss took over the munitions organization, the Feds burst in and pulled a St. Valentine’s Day massacre, taking out not only David’s avatar, but his entire hard-built organization. “Goddamn
dog-fucker
,” David yelled at the computer.

There was the crash of glassware exploding on the flagstone floor of the game room. David whirled to see Zach standing empty-handed, his eyes black holes in a white face. “Zach?” he asked faintly in dismay. “Are you okay?”

Zach stared at him blankly. David got up and started toward him, but Zach took a step back, then held up a hand. “Don’t come closer,” he said hoarsely. “There’s glass everywhere.”

Annie came running in, broom and dustpan in hand. “Are you guys okay? I heard the glass break—did you trip, Zach, honey? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Zach said numbly. “I’m… I’m okay.” And he turned and bolted out the door.

“Davey?” Annie met her son’s eyes in confusion. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” David said, his voice equally confused. “He went to get something to drink while I was playing the game. I just lost and yelled at the computer—maybe I startled him or something, but why did he run out like that?”

“Better go after him,” Annie said. “He went toward the patio. Just make sure he’s okay. I’ll get this.”

“Thanks, Mom,” David said, stepping around the shattered glass and heading for the patio.

Zach was nowhere in sight. David stood a moment, looking around in puzzlement; then a flicker of movement drew his attention to a shadowy corner in the landscaped area on the other side of the pool. Zach was sitting on the low rock wall that edged the flowerbed there, half-hidden beneath the overhang of a yew bush, his heels tucked up on the edge of the bank and his arms wrapped tightly around his knees. “Hey,” David said softly as he approached. “I’m sorry I startled you. It’s okay, Mom’s cleaning up the glass….”

“Is she mad?” Zach interrupted dully.

“No, of course not. Shit like that happens, you know. You didn’t have to take off like that.”

“Yeah, I did,” came the muttered reply. “Sorry. I’m okay. You don’t need to hang around.”

“Hey,” David said again, and sat on the wall, but in the sunlight. “I don’t
need
to do jack, but I want to make sure you’re okay. Did I scare you, yelling at the computer?”

“No,” Zach said.

“Cuz I’ve been yelling at the damn computer all morning, so I didn’t think much of it.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I think I did. I think I said something that freaked you out. Can you help me out a bit here? Just so I don’t do it again?”

Zach swallowed and put his forehead against his knees. “You didn’t do anything.”

“You’re full of shit. You looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

“Guess I kinda did,” he muttered.

David draped an arm over Zach’s shoulder. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“How did I know you were gonna say that?”

Zach didn’t answer, but shifted a little so that his head rested against David’s shoulder. David tilted his head so that his cheek rested on the top of Zach’s head. Zach’s hair smelled like coconuts and vanilla from the shower he’d taken after their run: warm and sweet and clean. “What did I do?” David whispered gently.

“I forgot,” Zach said. “I forgot you said that when you were really mad. I didn’t remember where I got that. But I remember now. When you were really mad, or frustrated.”

“Said what?” David asked in puzzlement.

“The,” Zach swallowed. “The dog thing.”

“Dog thing?” Enlightenment dawned. “Oh, jeez, did I say ‘dog-fucker’ again? Mom is always yelling at me about saying that. She says it’s not only rude, it’s inelegant.”

“Don’t say it again,” Zach said. He hunched his shoulders. “Please don’t say it again.”

David ran his hand gently over Zach’s cropped hair. “I won’t. Mom’s right. It isn’t cool. I should be able to come up with a more creative insult than that. I am an
artiste
, after all.”

“Yeah. Just not the dog thing.” Zach reached up and rubbed the scar on his neck again.

David froze. Suddenly things were frighteningly, terribly clear. He felt incredibly stupid. “Jesus,” he whispered. “The dog thing—the collar, the cage….
Fuck
, Zach….”

Zach was instantly five feet away, standing with his hands fisted. “It’s
nothing
,” he hissed. “Nothing.”

“What did that fucker do to you?”

“None of your fucking business,” Zach snapped, and stalked away.

David caught up with him easily, grabbing his arm. “Jesus, Zach, don’t do this. Don’t clam up on me like this. Please. I’m trying to understand.”

“The only thing you need to understand is that my life is none of your fucking business, David. Why don’t you give me a break and go back to New York and your boyfriend, okay? Because I don’t need you here poking around in stuff that’s
none of your business
.” Zach jerked away from David’s grip and walked quickly away across the patio to the path to the garage.

David sat down on the rim of the pool and pulled off his running shoes and socks so he could dunk his feet in the water. Stupid, he berated himself. He knew better than to push Zach, knew Zach would take refuge in anger whenever he felt threatened. But the whole dog thing freaked David out to no end, and what he was thinking—the terrible things he was suspecting…. He felt sick.

A shadow fell over the sunlit water. David looked up.

“Hey,” Zach said wearily.

“Hey,” David replied.

Zach sat, cross-legged, on the edge of the pool beside David. “How’s the water?”

“Cool, but pleasant.” David kept his voice neutral.

“Uh-huh.”

Silence, broken only by the soft plash of the water against the tiled pool wall. Finally Zach said, “I’m sorry about the New York comment.”

“You had your reasons,” David said. “But for the record, there is no boyfriend.”

“Uh huh.”

More silence. David gazed down at his feet, pale and quavery beneath the surface of the water.

“You got the whole dog thing,” Zach said.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s what he made me. His dog. When I came back two years ago, I didn’t talk. I barked.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Zach reached down and stirred the water.

“Put your feet in. I promise I won’t look,” David said.

“Okay.” Zach pulled off his shoes and socks and rolled his jeans legs up to mid calf, then put his feet in. “Feels good.”

“Yep.”

Zach blew out a sigh, a short, quietly explosive sound. “He took the ‘fucker’ part of ‘dog-fucker’ literally.”

David closed his eyes. “
Shit
.”

“Yeah.”

“I was afraid of that. I was just sitting here thinking, God, I hope that what I’m thinking happened didn’t happen, but it did, didn’t it?”

“That’s pretty convoluted, but I think you got the point.” Again, that softly explosive sigh. “I wasn’t just his dog. I was his whore.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Something in his voice made David look at him. There was a tightness in his face, white lines around his mouth, and his lips had gone thin, as if that “yeah” had been the only thing he could have gotten out at that moment. David looked away, giving him time to collect himself.

It took a while. Finally, Zach said, “That’s done. I was kind of freaked to tell you, but it’s done.”

“Was it as bad as you thought it would be?”

“Yep.” Zach tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “But it’s done. I don’t have to worry about telling you anymore.”

“Out of the dark, into the light,” David said.

“Huh?”

“Things. Secrets. They’re always worst when they’re kept in the dark. They grow, like mushrooms and mold. But you put them out into the sunlight and they wither up. It’s like Vitamin D for the soul.”

“Poetic…. What are you thinking?”

“You sound like a girl,” David said. “But I guess under the circumstances you’ve got the right to ask. What am I thinking? I’m thinking it’s too bad that bastard got killed because as mild-mannered as I am, right now I think I could take him apart barehanded. I’m thinking that I want to go throw up. I’m thinking that if it had happened to me I’d be fucking catatonic and the fact that you aren’t just fucking amazes the hell out of me.” He reached over and took Zach’s hand. “You are fucking amazing, Zachary John Tyler. You are God and I worship the ground you walk on.”

“You aren’t disgusted? You don’t think I’m a coward because I let him do that to me?”

“You didn’t ‘let’ him do it. He just did it. ‘Letting’ wasn’t involved. I know that much about rape, Zach.” He looked at Zach’s white, strained face and his heart broke. God, he loved him. He wanted to hold him tight and safe and never let him out of his arms, but instead said, “So let’s go finish cleaning up your dirt bike so you’re not hauling around fifty pounds of mud when we take them out Saturday, okay?”

Chapter 11

T
HEY
drove out to Mueller State Park at the crack of dawn in David’s Saturn, their mountain bikes hung on the rack David had added to the back. The sky was a bit overcast when they got there, but by the time they biked up to the higher altitudes, it was blue with a vengeance. The last two miles were ridden in silence, both of them focused on getting to their destination: a small, sheltered alpine meadow off the beaten track, far away from the campgrounds and regular hiking trails. Zach practically fell off his bike, crawling over to the little creek that bisected the meadow. “Don’t drink,” David called from where he was pulling both bikes off the trail and onto the grass.

“Not,” Zach panted back at him, and splashed a handful of water on his heated face. The water was one degree away from frozen, and he gasped at the shock.

“Bugger, it’s hot,” David said.

“Uh huh,” Zach said. He sat up and gave the meadow a once-over. “Looks the same. I don’t remember the trail being that long, though. My legs are killing me.” He rubbed his thighs through the knit fabric of the bike tights he wore. The tights were more form-fitting than he was comfortable with, but he’d put a pair of gym shorts over them so he didn’t feel quite as exposed, and at least his legs were covered. David, of course, was wearing shorts; ragged denim cutoffs that looked like they’d seen not only better days, but better decades. “You’ve been living in fucking New York for over a year—how come you’re not hurting?”

“You kidding? I rode
everywhere
in New York. It’s the worst place in the world for driving. Yeah, okay, it was taking your life in your hands every time you got on the bike, but it beat taking the fucking bus.” David pulled off his T-shirt and wiped his face with it. “You thirsty? There’s more water in the panniers on my bike. And sandwiches too—you know Mom.”

“DB’s the best,” Zach acknowledged, carefully not looking at David’s bare chest. He staggered to his feet and limped over to the bikes, pulling out a couple bottles of water and the bag of sandwiches. “You hungry?”

“I will be in a few minutes,” David said, flopping onto his back in the mossy grass. “I just need to cool off a bit.” He rolled the T-shirt up and tucked it under his head.

“Don’t stay that way long,” Zach said, “you’ll burn to a crisp.”

“Yes, Mother,” David said sleepily, and yawned.

Zach took a drink of water and sat cross-legged beside David, his back to his friend, and looked out over the valley. A long way away, he could see the trailhead with its service buildings and parking lot; it was distant enough that people only appeared as small, brightly colored dots. Up here, it was peacefully silent except for the sough of the wind in the stand of trees a half-mile away, the trickling sound of the water, and the faint cries of birds even farther off. And, behind him, a soft, sporadic snoring. He grinned to himself. This had been one of his favorite places when he was a kid; at least two or three times a summer he and his family had hiked or biked up that trail to picnic here. He couldn’t have pinpointed why; there were plenty of places just as peaceful, just as beautiful as this one on his own family’s land. But something about this meadow called to him. No, not called. Spoke. Whispered. Here, it seemed to murmur, in the sound of the wind and the trickle of the water, here was Someplace. Long ago, before he’d stopped believing, he’d thought this place magic, and somehow it still felt that way. Magic. As if the wind and the water and the sunlight were all ingredients in some mystical spell.