White Rabbit(61)

He stares at me, wide-eyed—looking scared and lost and ashamed—and I watch him struggle to say something. “Rufus. I … I d-didn’t—”

“You know how I feel—how I felt about you,” I whisper abjectly, my skin pulsing with the memory of his touch. “Maybe you were experimenting, or maybe I was just a rebound from Lia, I don’t know, but I had feelings for you. You know that, and you’re taking advantage of it, and that’s so messed up!”

“How can you say that?” His mouth drops open. “How can you even think that?”

“How can I think anything else?” Tears come faster than I can wipe them away. “I loved you. I still love you, you fuck—You can’t do this! You broke my heart and now you want to play with the pieces? It’s messed up and I won’t let you. It’s not fair.”

I always thought it would feel good to get these words out, and yet I feel just as bad as ever, my misery a subdermal tattoo that cannot be removed. I try to tell myself the satisfaction will come eventually; but then Sebastian bends forward over the steering wheel, burying his face in his hands—and when his shoulders start to shake, I realize that he’s crying. Choked, gulping sobs fill the Jeep, and I slowly petrify, caught in the crossfire of vindictiveness and shame.

Is this what I wanted?

I can find no words to say while he weeps into his hands, and so I just sit there—stiff and hot and embarrassed—and watch my fingers like maybe they’ll do something to save me. Sebastian speaks again at last, his voice a tiny, broken whisper. “He knows.”

“Huh?” I look up.

“He knows,” Sebastian repeats mournfully, his face a quivering wreck of fear and distress. “He knows. About … about me. About us.”

“I don’t … Huh?” I think about the BMW cutting us off on the race to the highway; it seems evident that my brother escaped the gunfight at the So-Not-Okay Corral, and maybe Sebastian is afraid he recognized the Jeep when he hit us—deduced that we were the noisy spies who instigated the night’s second round of fireworks. “Do you mean Hayden? Because I don’t think—”

“My dad.” He cuts me off with a convulsive breath, cheeks wet with tears, and I stare at him uncomprehendingly. “My dad … he kn-knows about us.”

“What?” I still don’t get it. “How?”

“He knew I’d been hiding something. He thought it was drugs.” A dull, ironic laugh escapes from him, clogged with nightmares, and he starts trembling. “All the stuff I’d been lying about since February, the way I’ve been acting since … since we broke up? He knew something was going on, and he thought it was drugs. It’s one of his big issues, and when they found white rabbits on campus at the university in the spring, he really went off the deep end.” Sebastian pauses, staring down at his knuckles where they blanch in his lap. “Tonight he finally … he searched my room.”

“No.” My blood runs cold just imagining it happening to me—my mom reading the bawdy notes that Lucy and I scribble back and forth in Ms. Gibson’s class, the mortifyingly erotic poems I wrote about my student teacher from freshman English, the browser history I still haven’t deleted from my laptop. I’d sooner roll down a freaking dune of dirty hobo glass.

“He found those pictures of us from the photo booth in Montpelier,” Sebastian continues. “I was at Jake’s place all day, helping him set up for his party, and when I came home to pick up my speakers, Dad was waiting for me. He had the … the photos, and when I walked in he, he just—” His voice stops, and he takes another breath, swallowing twice. “He started shouting. I’ve never seen him so mad before, Rufe. It was like … he was looking at me like he didn’t know who I was—like he didn’t even want to know.”

Sebastian starts to shake all over, weeping uncontrollably, looking smaller and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him.

Clearing my throat, I ask, “So what happened?”

“I ran out.” His voice cracks. “I was so scared, Rufus. For real, I’ve never been actually scared of my dad before tonight, but … if you could’ve seen him…” He shakes his head. “I panicked. I just turned around, ran out of the house, and drove away. He’s been calling and texting for hours, and I’ve been too afraid to even check the messages.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” He looks over at me like a terrified little kid. “What if he kicks me out? He’s really serious about church, and he’s always making my mom change the TV channel if there are gay guys on it … What if I go home and, like … and it’s not my home anymore? I don’t know what to do!”

Wracking sobs shake him all over, and I slide across the seat, pulling him into my arms. He collapses against me, pressing his face against my chest, and we stay like that for a long time. Holding Sebastian again feels wonderful and gut-wrenching all at once, and I try to keep my mind clear—try not to fall through the big trap door over my heart—but question marks swarm in the air, deafening and distracting, and when his tears finally ebb, I have to ask. “Sebastian, why did you still have those pictures?”

He had insisted on keeping the strip of photos from our date in Montpelier—those four little frames of us making out in an oblivious state of hormonal euphoria—and up till now I’d just assumed they’d been destroyed along with anything else that might remind him of our relationship.