“Then don’t,” she said. “You’re really freaking me out here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, backing away from her. “I have to leave.”
“Danny, wait,” she said.
But I couldn’t say any of the things I wanted to, and I couldn’t stand to hear her call me that name again. I started to walk away.
“I’m sorry,” I said over my shoulder, and then I turned a corner and she was gone.
? ? ?
That should have been the end of it. I should have disappeared after that. But I didn’t. If I had, I wouldn’t be here telling you this story, would I?
? ? ?
I called a cab to take me to the airport. With the stack of cash I’d been building up over the weeks, I bought a ticket to Toronto on the first flight in the morning and then sat in a chair under a flickering fluorescent light to wait.
For a long time I just stared blankly out of a window, watching lights coming and going outside. Then, slowly, the numbness started to ebb. I began to think. The question got louder and louder in my head until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Did I really need to leave?
Did anything have to change just because I knew the truth now?
As fucked up as it was, the Tates and I had the perfect symbiotic relationship. They needed me to deflect suspicion away from them, and I needed them to live something resembling a real life. If I left, it meant living on the run again, alone and on edge. If I stayed, knowing what I knew now, I’d actually be more secure than before. Lex and Patrick knew I wasn’t Danny, which meant I no longer had to fear exposing myself. I would not only have a roof over my head, and a damn nice one at that, but I would have a new kind of freedom. And I’d have Mia, and Ren, which was already a lot more than I’d ever had before.
Over the loudspeaker, a voice announced that my flight to Toronto was starting its preboarding.
As much of a sham as continuing to live as Danny Tate would be, if I was honest with myself, which I sometimes was, it was still better than any of the alternatives. The Tates and I would all be better off if we kept living with our lies.
I stood, looking down at my ticket. To my left, the line was forming to board the plane. To my right, the airport exit. I took a deep breath, then another, and then I threw my ticket into the trash, walked out of the terminal, and caught a cab back to Hidden Hills.
? ? ?
Slipping under the covers of Danny’s bed after sneaking back into the house as the sun rose made me feel like some kind of grave robber, and it was hard to sleep.
But when I woke up, I smelled pancakes and Lex smiled at me when I entered the kitchen and handed me a plate and it didn’t feel that different.
? ? ?
Nicholas drove me to school as usual, and as usual we didn’t speak. We went our separate ways as soon as we were inside. Him toward the library, where I knew he met Asher before classes. Me to Mrs. Deckard’s classroom, where Ren had French first period.
She arrived a minute or two before the bell was due to ring. I saw her footsteps slow down as she spotted me waiting for her at the other end of the hall, but there was also a tentative kind of smile on her face.
“Hey,” I said when she reached me.
“Hey, you’re here,” she replied. “I thought maybe I wouldn’t see you today.”
We hugged the wall, staying out of the traffic of kids heading toward their first class.
“Yeah, I was being crazy last night,” I said. “Things just kind of . . . got to me, all at once, and I lost it a little bit. I’m sorry.”
“Are you feeling better now?” she asked.
I nodded, even though it wasn’t entirely true.
She frowned. “Are you getting help, Danny? I think you need to be talking to someone. Someone qualified, I mean.”
I kept my face perfectly still even though it felt like my heart was now somewhere in the vicinity of my stomach. I’d scared her. She thought I was crazy. She didn’t want me talking to her anymore.
“I . . . yeah, maybe you’re right,” I said.
“What you’ve been through, it’s too much for anyone to go through alone,” she said. “I want to be here for you, but last night . . . You know you can always talk to me, but . . .”
You scared me. I can’t handle this. I don’t want this.
“I get it,” I said, backing away from her.
She caught the bottom of my shirt between her fingers and pulled me closer, lowering her voice. “Wait. I like you and I think you like me, too. But . . .” She sighed. “I just don’t think you’re ready—”
The bell rang above us.
“I’ve got to get to class,” I said, pulling away from her. I didn’t need to hear the rest. I’d heard it enough times from enough people to get the gist.
I don’t want you.
She tried to grab my wrist. “Danny—”
“See you later,” I said, and joined the flow of students in the hallway.
Normally, that’s when I would have disappeared. Become another face in the crowd, one so unremarkable that it just melted away.
But now I was Danny Tate, and the crowd parted around me like the Red Sea before Moses, faces turning toward me, people saying my name, offering me fist bumps and invitations and all the attention I’d soaked up just one day before. Now that I knew Danny had died at the hands of one of the people who was supposed to love him the most, that he was probably nothing more than bones now, it all felt suddenly gross and ghoulish. I spotted a restroom up ahead and ducked into it, closing a stall door behind me and locking it. I sat cross-legged on top of the toilet seat and held my head in my hands, taking deep breaths.
I ignored the squeak of the door opening until a voice said, “Danny?”
Fuck.
There was a knock at the stall door. “Hey, man, it’s just me. Asher.”
I reluctantly stood and unlocked the stall. “Hi.”
The door to the restroom started to open.
“Out of order, try the next one!” Asher said, pushing a wide-eyed freshman back into the hall. He closed the door behind the kid and jammed the stop into the crack at the bottom of the door so no one else could enter. Then he turned to me. “You didn’t hear me saying your name in the hall just now?”
“No, sorry,” I said.
“I guess a lot of people were trying to talk to you all at once,” he said with a knowing look.
“Did you want something?” I asked. Asher had barely spoken to me since Nicholas started giving me the silent treatment, so I didn’t see why he’d bother now unless he was here on some mission from his boyfriend, which I had less than zero interest in.
“You don’t look so hot, man,” he said. “Are you feeling okay? Do you want me to get Nicholas?”
I laughed. “Nicholas doesn’t give a shit if I’m feeling okay.”
“I know it may seem that way, but you’re wrong,” he said. “He’s really struggling right now, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t—”
Whatever Asher was selling, I wasn’t buying.
“Look, thanks for the concern, but I’m fine,” I said. “I should get going.”
I kicked the stop out from under the door and got out of there.