Chapter Thirty-Seven

Zac

“Ike,” I said as my brother walked out of the bathroom, his hair dripping wet. I had been waiting outside the bathroom since he had gone in there, trying to look as inconspicuous about it as possible. After what Taylor had said to me in the garage earlier, I had decided to go to him with it. I wasn’t like him. I couldn’t keep something like that in for a long time. I knew something had to be done about it and I knew that me and him were probably going to have to be the ones to do it.
He jumped half a mile.
“Yes, Zac?” he said once he had recovered. He gave me a look that asked the obvious question of what I was doing outside the bathroom, but he was smart enough not to ask it out loud. It wasn’t uncommon for me to do strange things and at that point, the people I did them to didn’t really question it very much.
I looked from left to right quickly, making sure no one was watching us.
“I think you were right,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?” he said.
I nodded.
“What, exactly, was I right about?” he asked.
I sighed.
“Taylor,” I said. “What you told me before.”
Suddenly his eyes got wide and I was being shoved into the bathroom. I nearly slipped on the wet floor, but caught myself in time to see him quietly closing the door behind us.
“Did you find a knife in the bathroom again?” he asked, his voice urgent.
I shook my head. “He talked to me earlier. In the garage.”
“What?” he said, suddenly sounding slightly hurt. Isaac was usually the one Taylor went to with problems. “What did he say?” he asked.
I hesitated. “You know how we accidentally came upon him in the cemetary the other day? How we saw him at that funeral?”
Taylor had pretty much implied that I wasn’t to tell anyone about this, but I knew that, in order to tell the story right, Isaac needed to know.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Well, that was for a guy named Collin Windsor or something like that,” I said. “Taylor and Parker’s biological father.”
His jaw dropped. Apparently he was a lot quicker with these things than I had been.
“What?” he said.
“God, Ike,” I said, sitting down on the edge of the tub, “he had a picture of this guy. You should have seen it. I mean, Parker and Taylor look...exactly like their father. Exactly like him.”
He looked lost.
I rested my elbows on my knees.
“After he told me that, he started talking like he was going to do something,” I said. “He kept saying how he couldn’t take it anymore. Stuff like that.”
“Oh God,” he muttered.
“Isaac,” I said. “I’m getting scared. What if he does do something? What if he does try to kill himself? I don’t know what to do.”
He shook his head. “Neither do I.”
“Should we tell Mom and Dad?” I asked.
He hesitated. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I mean, obviously, yes, but if we did, they might just make things worse. They’ve both been so weird around Taylor lately.”
“What do we do?” I asked. I was pretty well near tears now. Taylor wasn’t exactly renowned for his optimism and sunny outlook on life, but this was inconceivable.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Tell Parker?”
“We’d have to tell Parker everything if we told him about this,” I pointed out.
“Try to talk to him? Or would he just run away from the conversation?” he said.
“You know how Taylor is,” I said. Then, thinking better of my words.
“We have to do something,” I said.
“Let me think about it,” he said. “But we do have to do something. I’ll think of something. Just let me think about it.”
I nodded, knowing that it was supposed to be a kind of reassurance to me, to free me of worry. But I also knew that I would be thinking about it anyway. I had been thinking about it all day. I would be thinking about it all night and until we did something about it. Probably long after that, too.
“Okay,” he said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I wouldn’t have believed me either. Taylor doesn’t exactly act like a likely candidate for that stuff.”
I got up from my seat on the tub and, together, we left the room.

The point of this you shall soon see, I promise.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Eight