Hell Followed with Us(24)

“All right,” Nick rasps. His hand hovers by his shoulder where the Grace held him down. “All right. You want to join the Watch?”

“I do.” More than anything. I do.

He looks to the Grace.

“Good. You start tomorrow.”





The Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, Youth Services, is a crucial resource for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other queer and questioning youth. From providing free meals for those in need to readying students for a career through job counseling and volunteer work, we do everything we can to offer opportunities to those who need them.

—Acheson LGBTQ+ Center official website



It took Nick a long time to learn to lie.

If he was going to be honest, it took him a long time to learn most of the things that seemed to come naturally to everyone else. Like realizing someone meant “Fuck off” when they pretended he wasn’t there, or how to speak without rehearsing the wording of a sentence a dozen times, or figuring out that sometimes it was better to make up something that wasn’t true and pretend it was. He’d gotten good at compensating for it over the years. He’d had to. Being autistic was just another thing his parents could hold over his head, could carve into his skin as they reminded him what a failure he was.

But lying was different. Because once Nick learned to lie, he became disturbingly good at it.

He’d spent so long memorizing the rules of interacting with people that he could twist them to his advantage. There are scripts people don’t even realize they follow, and if you fit that script, or tweak it just enough to throw them off, they drop their guard. There are certain ways to say things, and if you get them right, you can say whatever you want. People hear what they want to and fill in the gaps themselves. There are patterns. There are tells. It is embarrassingly easy.

That’s why lying is his job and not Erin’s. Erin’s job is to make the truth palatable, and if she can’t do that, then it’s Nick’s job to hide it.

Speaking of Erin, Nick has just woken up and is looking for her when something happens in the kitchen. Nick sticks his head in to see if Erin is there, which she is not, just in time for Calvin to shove Aisha against the sink and scream, “Fucking liar!”

Sadaf and Carly jump up from their breakfast so quickly, it sends their chairs screeching back on the tile. The sound feels like worms crawling up Nick’s spine, but there’s no time to do anything about it because Calvin has his hands on Aisha and no, no, absolutely not. Nick bolts across the room and grabs Calvin in a headlock, one arm under the jaw and one on the back of the head.

Calvin twists in his grasp as Nick drags him away. He spits, curses, and claws at Nick’s sleeves. “Liar! Goddamn fucking liar—let me go!”

Aisha braces herself on the counter, gulping down air. Sadaf tucks against her side while Carly stands in front, one hand on Aisha’s shoulder to keep her steady.

“Stop,” Nick snarls. Calvin’s back is flush against his chest, and the heat and pressure is suffocating. “Stop.”

Calvin jams an elbow into Nick’s ribs. Nick grabs the elbow and wrenches it back until Calvin howls.

Nick says, “Cut the shit.”

He drops Calvin to the floor, where the boy coughs and chokes, pounding his fist on the tile. The first thing Nick wants to do is shake himself out, get the awful feeling off his skin, but Aisha is trembling, which means Nick has to keep it together. Okay. He can do that for her.

Calvin whines from the floor, “You almost broke my arm.”

“You’re right.” Nick does not say that the move would have simply dislocated it. “I almost did. If you have a problem, you come to me. Not my people. Me. Am I clear?”

“Your people,” Calvin spits. He flings a hand at the skeletal pantry. Aisha flinches. “Fuck you. Where the hell is our food?”

Nick’s throat slams shut. Of course it’s about food. When one person finally snaps, it means everyone is thinking it, at least a little bit. Seraph was right; they’re going to starve out by summer if they don’t do something drastic, and soon. The mental image of losing people to a lack of water when the rains stop coming, to heatstroke when summer breaks, to starvation when the animals begin hiding from the heat and the Vanguard turns their back—it hits like an iron pipe to the back of his skull, every time.

But nobody gets to put a hand on his people.

“There is enough,” Nick says. “And we will be getting more.” Every word is careful. Every word is perfect. He doesn’t know if he’s lying, so he has to pretend that he is. Lying keeps Aisha safe—it keeps them all safe. “If you touch her again, we’re going to have a lot more problems than a broken arm.”

Calvin says nothing to that, so Nick turns to Aisha. “Are you okay?”

“I guess,” Aisha manages, which is also a lie, but Nick doesn’t press. He just nods.

“If he does this again, you come tell me immediately.”

Aisha’s voice hitches when she speaks. “Can I go back to my room?”

“Of course. Sadaf, Carly, go with her.”

Then it’s just him and Calvin. Calvin’s face is wrinkled in anger and pain.

“That was a bad decision you just made,” Nick notes. “You won’t make it again.”

That’s when Erin comes running in, still in the silk scarf she sleeps in, her mask lopsided on her face. “I just saw Aisha crying,” she says. “What happened?”