We Are the Ants(92)

I sat down on the grass and buried my face in my hands. “Why are you being nice to me, Marcus? Why now?”

“Do you want to know the truth?” He passed me the flask again, and I swallowed a couple of gulps, feeling the alcohol loosen my limbs and my brain.

“Sure.” I was only half listening. I could still hear the distant sounds of the carnival, but it occurred to me how isolated we were.

Marcus sat across from me and pulled his feet in so he was sitting cross-legged. “I’m not strong like you, Henry. My parents expect me to be their perfect son; my friends expect me to be Mr. Popular. It’s so hard to be everything to everyone. I feel stretched thin sometimes. You’re the only person who doesn’t expect anything from me.”

I sat up and tried to clear my head, but my thoughts were stuck in a pool of tar, and I couldn’t pull them out. “You’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Marcus sat forward, his eyes were unfocused and red. “I knew in the beginning I was just not-Jesse to you. You needed someone to take your mind off of Jesse, and I was not-Jesse. But I fell for you, Henry, and I thought you’d fall for me too.”

“You. Attacked. Me.”

Marcus crawled across the grass until his face was so close to mine that I could smell his rancid breath. “I f*cked up.” Marcus brushed my lips with his, and I didn’t turn away. “Is this all right?” Here was Marcus offering to be not-Jesse for me again. All I had to do was accept, and I could blunt the pain of living for a little while longer.

I looked at the stars, wishing the sluggers would abduct me so that I didn’t have to make a choice. That’s what this was all about, after all. Making choices. Diego had made a choice. My mom had made a choice. Charlie had made a choice. Even Jesse had made a choice. It had been a selfish, stupid, heartbreaking choice, but one he’d made for himself.

Marcus pushed himself onto me, the weight of his body against mine made it difficult to breathe. A rock dug into my back while Marcus kissed my neck, his hands pulling at the button on my jeans. I didn’t have to choose. I could close my eyes and let it happen the same way I was going to sit back and let the world end. Marcus rubbed his hips against mine and struggled with my zipper.

I didn’t have to choose. It was easier not to choose.

“I can’t . . .”

“What’s wrong?” Marcus cupped my head with his hand and stroked the side of my face with his thumb, kissing me hard, desperately.

“Stop.” I wedged my hands between our chests and tried to shove Marcus away. “I don’t want to do this, Marcus.”

Marcus stopped kissing me. “You’re a f*cking tease, Henry.”

“Get off me!”

Marcus grabbed a handful of my hair and slammed my head into the ground. The world melted and blurred. There were so many stars. Too many. There shouldn’t have been that many stars in the sky. I tried to name them, but there were constellations I’d never seen.

Torpid from the booze and dizzy from hitting the rock, I tried to fend off Marcus, but he was yanking my jeans down around my knees. This was another slugger hallucination. Only an hour ago I was laughing with Audrey, I was seeing myself the way Diego saw me. Somewhere along the way I’d stumbled into this nightmare world where Marcus was on top of me, panting in my ear and telling me what a f*cking loser I was. How he was going to f*ck Space Boy, and no one would believe me because no one believed loser space boys.

I pressed my head against the rock, digging it deeper into the cut on my scalp, clutching the pain, using it to drag me out of the fog. I elbowed Marcus in the face and scrambled to my feet, pulling up my pants and sprinting toward the flashing lights and laughter and nauseating smell of popcorn.

Marcus screamed my name. He tackled me by the bleachers, and I fell on my wrist. It bent back in a way wrists weren’t supposed to bend, but I ate the pain, swallowed it down with blood, and became stronger. I kicked like an animal until I connected with something that made him howl. And then I ran again. I didn’t look back this time either.

I spotted Ms. Faraci standing by the candy apple booth.

“Henry?” Ms. Faraci dropped her apple and brushed my hair from my eyes. It was sticky with blood. The color drained from her face. “Henry, what happened?”

Now that I was safe, I finally looked back. Marcus wasn’t there, but Diego was. He trotted toward us, panic in his algae eyes. “Henry, I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He saw me cradling my wrist, touched the blood on my ear. He saw my pants undone, hanging off my hips. “What happened?”

“Were you attacked again?” Ms. Faraci asked. She guided me to a quieter spot behind the roasted nuts tent. The smell made me want to vomit.

Diego followed us, his eyes an expressionless wasteland.

“Henry? Tell me what happened.” Ms. Faraci grabbed her cell phone out of her purse. “That’s it. I’m calling an ambulance.”

“It was Marcus McCoy.”

Ms. Faraci dialed 911.

“What was Marcus?” Diego’s voice was flat; he hardly sounded like the boy I knew.

“I need an ambulance and police at Calypso High School. One of our students has been attacked.” Ms. Faraci regarded me like she was afraid I was going to shatter to pieces in front of her.

“What did Marcus do?”