Page 56 of Deviant
I don’t sit down. Instead, I grab my keys off the side table—where I left them when I came in—and move to the door. And I know,I knowI should stay, and I know what leaving is going to cost me, but I can’t make my feet stop.
The door opens, and the night air hits me, warm and thick and smelling like summer and cut grass. I pull the door closed behind me and walk fast to my truck.
I hear the door open behind me.
“Rhett.”
I get to my truck, hand on the door.
“Don’t you dare get in that truck.”
I get in the truck.
I see him in the rearview mirror, standing in the driveway in the dark, hands at his sides, watching me go. He doesn’t chase me down the drive.
He just stands there and watches me leave.
And that image, Colt Dawson standing in the driveway in the dark, watching me drive away without chasing me, is somehow the worst thing that has happened all night.
I drive home with both hands on the wheel, every window down, the night air roaring through the cab, and I don’t think about the look on his face when the headlights came through the window. I don’t think about the way his voice said my name in that room. I don’t think about what his expression looked like when I walked out the door.
I don’t think about any of it.
Or at least, that’s what I tell myself repeatedly as I drive home.
I pull into the ranch and sit in the dark cab for a long time. The house is quiet. The barn is quiet. Everything is exactly where it’s supposed to be, and I’m the only thing out of place.
I have been the only thing out of place my entire life, and I am so tired of it.
I go inside.
I lie down.
I stare at the water stain on the ceiling.
And I think about Colt standing in that driveway, not chasing me, which is the most devastating thing he has ever done.
COLTON
Twelve years old
It took months for me to convince Aunt Aria to let me come with her to Scary Movie Night at Thornwood Ranch. I’m twelve and I’ve seen scarier things than whatever is on this television, but I’m not going to admit that because Dawson Thornwood looks like he’s about to cry, and I don’t want to make him feel worse.
The living room is packed. Mrs. Thornwood’s boys are spread across every available surface—Cash upside down on the armchair, Dawson pressed into his mom’s side with a throw pillow over his face, and Rhett sitting on the floor, in front of the couch.
I’m on the couch, one cushion over from where Rhett’s shoulder is.
I have three classes with Rhett Thornwood this year. He’s quiet in most of them. He’s the kind of kid who always knows the answer, but waits to see if someone else will say it first. I noticed that about him the same way I’d started noticing things about certain boys—not the way I noticed girls, which was barely at all.
The movie gets loud. Something on the screen makes Dawson yelp into his pillow and Cash fall off the armchair, laughing. Mrs. Thornwood even covers her own eyes while pretending to still be watching.
I reach for the popcorn bowl that’s between me and Rhett. My fingers close and wrap around something warm. I look down and find Rhett’s hand already in the popcorn bowl, his knuckles underneath my fingers. He pulls back so fast the bowl rocks and kernels scatter across the carpet. Then he gives me the most repulsive look.
And then, it’s gone, and he reaches back into the bowl himself, ignoring me.
I pull my hand back into my lap, look back at the television, and don’t say anything.
I didn’t know it would feel like that. I knew something was different about the way I noticed people. I knew I didn’t feel the same as other boys in my grade when it comes to girls at school. My heart didn’t thump particularly hard when it came to girls in the same way it does for boys. But I thought maybe I was a late bloomer or something.
