“The place was called Lake Crest,” he says. I wait for more, but his silence indicates that he wants a response from me. I don’t know what Lake Crest is, where it is, what it means, but I want more—I think I need more. Even if it terrifies me.

“Okay,” I say, my voice quiet, unthreatening. I cut a small square of padding and two strips of tape to cover Andrew’s stitches. He remains on the tub, his hands still clutching—holding on. I’m delicate with my touch, but the tape doesn’t stick, so I run my finger softly along each strip against his face. When I look to his eyes again, they capture mine.

“Lake Crest is a place they send boys who need to be broken…when they fuck up and do something wrong. It’s run by the state, and a guy named Nick Meyers. The first time Nick choked me, it was because I refused to kiss his feet…actually kiss his feet. He held my windpipe in his hands while security stood behind me with a Taser, just in case I decided to fight back.”

Oh my god!

“The second time, I decided to try. The volts sent me to my knees.”

My eyes close involuntarily.

“Some of the boys did him favors. That’s how it worked there. You were either on top, on the bottom, or invisible. Favors put you on top. I tried real hard to be invisible, but they wouldn’t let me. The ones who did him favors would leave the campus late at night, coming back with large envelopes—sometimes coming back with stab wounds and beaten faces.”

“Nick kept after me. He didn’t like that I said no, that I wouldn’t bend to his needs. I was a threat to his secrets, because I saw more than the others. I paid attention. Money passed through his hands like water, and I saw it all. I didn’t want any part of it. I only wanted to survive. And there were so many things to endure. So many factions, gangs within gangs, groups you needed to be in with and out with. I only wanted to be left alone.”

His eyes find mine again, but his words pause, his jaw working back and forth while he thinks. I think he’s trying to protect me from knowing too much after knowing nothing at all.

“I wrote you letters. Dozens.”

His eyes penetrate me. Mine grow wide, my stomach becomes sick as I clutch the sink again, letting my legs have their way this time as I slide down to sit on the floor, my world spinning.

“You never wrote back. Not once.”

No!

His voice sounds angry, but only at first. It breaks quickly; the realization squelching years’ worth of hate and doubt caused by some unknown force. I never knew. I would have written. I would have traded him, saved him—loved him. I needed him. My heart was broken.

And I needed him.

He needed me.

He needed me…more!

“One day, I said yes.” He looks down again, running his thumb over the long scar on his belly.

“He did that?” I ask, my words crackling from my chest, my eyes barely able to look at the long line that slices through him.

Andrew nods.

“I said yes just so I could get out, so I could find you. I had to know why you weren’t writing, where you were…if you were okay. I never collected what was due to him that night. I never had any intention of meeting his people at all. He found out before I could make it to the bus station to buy a ticket with the money I’d hidden under a loose tile on my floor. You were a forty-minute bus ride away—but I never got to see you. At least not then. I had to continue to live off of your memory. He took me into his office as soon as we got back to campus, hitting me until I could no longer stand. And when the guard pulled my arm over his shoulder to carry me on my weak legs back to my room, he told them to wait for one more second so he could give me something to make sure I’d never forget. The knife was small, but sharp; more of a razor. I bled for days—just deep enough so it would heal on its own…in time.”

It’s all too much. His story—his life!

“Andrew,” I whisper, my lips dry, my mouth drier. My throat aches, and my heart hurts as it never has before.

“You didn’t know,” he says, his mouth half open, his eyes back to the lost place. I shake my head to confirm his assumption. He notices. “All this time…you…you didn’t know.”

“I would have come. I swear, Andrew…if I knew what had happened to you…I would have made them…” I’m breathless with my words, my plea cut short before I can tell him I would have made them stop, would have confessed the truth.

“Em? You home?”

Lindsey’s shout and clamor through the front door rocks me like thunder, and I stumble to my feet, clearing the counter of the remains of my work on Andrew. I look to him, expecting him to be just as frozen, just as stunned and worried about what to say, what to do. Instead, he’s already standing, pulling his sweatshirt back over his body as he moves toward the sink to wash his hands.