Zac
Three days passed and I don’t think Parker came out of his room once. Not even to go to the bathroom or anything, which was the part that really amazed me. It was almost as if he wasn’t even there. We didn’t have to work around him anymore. We could openly talk about things and not have to worry that he was in the room to overhear. I don’t think any of us minded having a break from all of that, but we all got increasingly worried as nothing we tried to lure him out of his room worked. No noise came out of the room, which was really strange because I’d never thought a guy like Parker could stay that silent for that long. Even still, no one went into the check and see that he wasn’t dead.
The door wasn’t locked, but we all acted as though it was. We could have walked in there any time, unannounced, dragged Parker out of there and made him stop closing up and shutting down somehow. But none of us did, partly, I think, out of guilt and fear. When we had all complained about nobody telling Parker anything and threatened to do it ourselves, we hadn’t really thought about how we would feel afterwards about it. About him now knowing that we had all, as he had pointed out during his rather loud fight with Taylor, lied to him since before he had even gotten there. Lied to him before we had even left Rochester to come back home. We didn’t know how guilty we would feel about that before and now we were afraid to confront him because we knew that it was going to be hard, not only for Taylor and Annie, but for all of us to look him in the eye. We had all thought that Taylor, Annie, and Lawrence were the only ones directly involved in this. But it was all of us. All of us had lied. None of us had made good on our threats and actually told him what he deserved to know.
At least, that was how I felt about it. It was hard to guess how anyone else felt. Isaac probably felt the same since he often was there with me whenever I went to try and get Parker out of his room, trying to think of things to get him to come out. I even told him I’d let him win a round of some video game if he came out, a rather shocking thing considering my history of merciless video game playing, but there was no response. Isaac offered to let him hear a new song he had written that no one else--not even Taylor and I--had heard yet down in the garage. he wanted to know what Parker thought of it. But that didn’t get us anywhere either.
“Guys, just leave him be,” Taylor said, leaning against the door frame of our bedroom, his arms crossed over his chest.
We nodded and got away from the door and went back into the
bedroom, all sitting in our respective places in the room--Isaac at the desk, me on my bed, Taylor leaning against my bed, book open.
To all outer appearances, Taylor seemed to be pretty indifferent to the fact that we hadn’t seen or heard from Parker in days even though he was in the same house as we were. But really I knew he was just more afraid than any of us to approach Parker. Even though we were all connected, we had all lied, it was still true that Taylor was at the center of it and that, after Gina and Annie’s deceit, his hurt the most. The only thing was that Gina and Annie weren’t in the same house as he was in and Taylor was.
Speaking of Annie, she hadn’t really been seen much around the place, either since the day Parker had actually found out. It seemed as though from my mother’s account of things (when Taylor was out of the room) that Annie was pretty mad that she hadn’t gotten to tell him herself. Or maybe not so much mad as hurt. I felt a little bad about that. Parker wasn’t exactly giving her a chance. But at the same time I knew that she had brought it upon herself. If she had been honest from the start, then maybe Parker would have reacted differently.
Maybe not.
As we were all sitting there, silently doing nothing, the muffled sounds of our younger siblings’ voices out in the hall could be heard. We all listened for a minute, but couldn’t make out their exact words. It was clear, however, that they were going back and forth between discussing something quietly and offering something, much the way Isaac and I had when we stood outside Parker’s door. There was no doubt that that was where they were now. Trying to same method of getting him to come out of his room.
Taylor sighed. “Damnit,” he said, getting up from his seat on the floor and moving to the door. He opened it and stuck his head out. “Guys,” we heard him say, “just leave him be, okay?”
It was said in a much more gentle tone than it had been to us. While Taylor didn’t sound angry, there was something about the way that he insisted we not bother Parker that was a little...peevish. At least enough to get us all to obey, which presumably they did when he came back into the room.
“Lighten up, Taylor,” Isaac said from the desk. “They’re just trying to be nice.”
“I know,” he said. And that was all he said as he sat on the floor and once again opened the book that he hadn’t really been reading. The same book he hadn’t really been reading for three or four days. Not since the day Isaac confronted him about the knife in the bathroom.
It was almost like that part of the past few days had been forgotten. Our time to recover from the information given and then react to it in the proper way had been screwed up when Parker had insisted that we stop keeping secrets from him. He had known he was screwing it up, too. Even before he had gotten into the questions, we could hear him apologizing for it being so soon after the last dramatic confession from Taylor. Taylor had been doing an awful lot of dramatic confessing lately.
It wasn’t so much that we were ignoring it. Mostly we were once again waiting for Taylor to make the first move about it and since he seemed more worried about Parker at the moment, so were we. It was probably the wrong thing to do. Of course Taylor was going to hide from the fact that we all knew now. It was more just an excuse not to talk about something that made us uncomfortable and probably would have him,
too. Every once in a while someone asked him how he was feeling or if he
was okay, but he would just shrug and answer in the affirmative if he answered at all. It felt like we were in much the same place we had been before. Any progress gained from Taylor confessing to us what had really happened had been halted when the matter with telling Parker had insisted on being attended to. It wasn’t as though Taylor was going to stand there and lie to Parker just so he could have more time to get over the fact that we all knew his secret. If anything, it just motivated him more to tell him. Whether because it was a time for secrets to be finally told or because he didn’t want the concentration to be on dealing with what had happened to him, I wasn’t sure.
“He’s going to have to come out sometime,” Isaac said in continuation of what he had said a few minutes earlier when Taylor had chased the girls and Mackenzie away from Parker’s door. “It’s easier if we have him come out on friendly grounds rather than pressuring him to come out and talk about Annie and how he feels about her and all of us now.”
“He’ll come out on his own,” Taylor said, not looking up from his book. “When he wants to. He’s not going to come out just because the rest of us are bribing him to do so.”
I sighed. “Guys, don’t fight,” I said only because I could feel the tension in the room mounting and knew that it wouldn’t do any good. It was one of the few fights between them I was able to stop these days. Because this one was’t going to be as silent as the others. “You’re both right, he can’t stay in there forever and he probably will come out on his own. But it doesn’t hurt to offer to be friendly to him, you know.”
Taylor’s frown deepened, but otherwise he seemed to be ignoring me.
Isaac nodded at what I said, rolling his eyes in Taylor’s direction.
“I saw that,” Taylor said.
We all smiled a little bit. Some of the tension eased.
“Don’t feel bad, Taylor,” I said, adding some of it back. I put my hand on his shoulder. “He had to know sometime. Annie wasn’t going to tell him. You did the right thing.”
“Even if he hates me forever, is it still the right thing?” Taylor asked me, turing toward me as best he could without really moving his body.
“Yeah,” I said. “At least he knows. Now it’s up to him to decide what to do with that knowledge. It’s better than not giving him that decision at all. Even if he does hate you forever for it.”
“Parker doesn’t seem like the type to hate people,” Isaac spoke up. “Not even for forever.”
Taylor shrugged. “How much do we know about him that we can make that assumption?” he said.
He was right. When it came down to it, we didn’t know much about Parker at all. Being in his presence for what probably added up to about two months’ worth of time and then the e-mails and short phone calls during the time we were separated probably wasn’t enough time to actually get to know him all that well.
“You’re twins,” Isaac said, a little smile on his face. “Maybe you know more about each other than you think.”
Taylor rolled his eyes at this.
“That’s true, too,” I said.
“I’m sure,” he said.
We were all silent for a minute.
“I’m bored,” I said, interrupting the pause.
“I’m bored, too,” Isaac said. “Let’s do something.”
“Bug Parker some more?” I suggested.
“No,” Taylor said, though he was smiling. “Practice?”
“Nah,” Isaac said.
“I thought you said you had a new song?” I said.
He shrugged. “I lied.”
“Oh,” I said. That said something about what Isaac’s real intentions were when he had invited Parker to go to the garage with him to hear his music.
“How about a nice friendly game of soccer?” Taylor said. “We can recruit Jessica, Avery and Mackenzie if we have to.”
“Nah, I think just the three of us will do fine,” Isaac said, standing up. “You coming, Zac?”
“Yup,” I said, getting up from the bed. Taylor stood from his sitting position, letting his book slide from his lap.
“Be careful with that thing,” Isaac laughed. “That’s one of my favorite books, you know.”
“Sorry,” Taylor said with a shrug. “Forgot it was there.”
“Yeah, sure,” Isaac said as he began to walk out of the room and we followed him, down the stairs and to the garage where we retrieved our ball and began to play. Brother against brother.
Please, Mr. Postman, I've been waiting so patiently...
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Nine
Please, Mr. Postman, I've been waiting so patiently...
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Nine