Page 118 of Don't Let Me Go
“Barbie Boy!” one of them shouts in surprise. It’s Rex Miller. He was one of the jerks who Audrey had to rescue me from freshman year. Only Audrey isn’t here now. No one is.
My hands start to stake again, and my body breaks into a cold sweat. Every instinct is telling me that I’m in danger, that I shouldrun. But the seven varsity-jacket-clad footballers are a wall of meat and testosterone between me and the door.
“What are you doing here?” Rex asks. “Trolling for some weekend mall dick?”
Keeping my head down, I try to push past him, but Rex blocks my way.
“Um, rude.” He snorts. “You can’t say hello?”
I look up from the floor so I can tell him to his face to fuck off. But when I do, my breath catches in my throat.
It’s Rex’s hair. It’s the exact same shade of orange as the boy’s hair in Paris. The one who was dragging the naked corpse through the streets. The one who pinned my arms behind my back and ...
My blood runs cold.
Are Rex and his friends going to be the ones who kill me? Are they going to jump Jackson and me on my birthday? Is that how we’re going to die? The victims of some fucked-up hate crime?
“Hey, Earth to Iverson.” Rex takes a step toward me. “I said—”
“Don’t touch me!”
I scramble backward, and my foot slips on the polished bathroomfloor. My legs slide out from under me, and I crash against the tiled wall, banging my head against the metal casing of the paper towel dispenser.
“Holy fuck!” Rex gasps, stifling a laugh.
There’s a sharp pain on the side of my head. I touch it, and when I pull my hand away, my fingers are red with blood.
“Yo, are you okay?” one of the other boys asks.
Run, my mind is screaming.Run!
Clutching my head, I stumble toward the bathroom door. This time Rex lets me pass.
Blind with panic, I race down the corridor and into the food court, stopping only when someone steps in my path.
“Riley? What’s the matter? What happened? Are you all right?”
I throw my arms around Jackson.
“I don’t want to die,” I cry as every part of my body trembles with terror. “I don’t want to die!”
Chapter 46
Jackson
I drive Riley back to his house in silence. Both of us know what has to happen next but neither of us wants to say it. Even after we’ve pulled into his driveway and I’ve killed the engine, we continue to sit in silence, neither of us daring to look at the other.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, I say the words that one of us has to.
“We need to break up.”
Riley doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even look at me. He stares straight ahead at his house. Through the large bay window, I can see a man who must be his father sitting at the dining-room table in front of a laptop.
“If there was some way that we could be together and I knew you’d be safe, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” I continue, pulling each word out of my throat like a fishhook. “But we can’t take the risk. If something happened to you because ofme, I would never forgive myself.Never.”
My body is shaking almost as much as my voice. I have to look away from Riley to stop myself from completely losing it. I know ending things with him is the only way to keep him safe. To keep us both safe. But that doesn’t make it any easier.
I feel like I’m ripping out my own heart.
