Whispers louden and tighten around me like a rope. I can’t move.

Jace frowns and glances over his shoulder toward Ernie and Bert. His mouth moves but I can’t lipread

what he says.

A warm panic stretches up my calves like little shots of electricity. I want to retch.

Jace leaps up from the bench, and the pained expression on his face tells me he’s heard the

whisperings too. The way he swiftly moves toward me tells me more. Not only has he heard, but he

knows it’s true.

My throat aches and my vision blurs with tears. I struggle to blink them back. The sun makes the

moon on Jace’s shirt glint, and his eyes beg me not to run.

That’s when I realize I’m reeling back from him. I’m not ready to have him know. Not like this. I

shake my head. Go away, go away, go away!

When he keeps coming, I turn on my heels and run through the whispering courtyard, behind the

back of the school, and over the soccer fields to the far corner, which is void of life and traps me with

chain-link fences.

“Shit.” I kick at the fence and it rattles.

Panic sweeps through me harder and faster. I need a stone. Need to calm down. I need a bloody

stone!

My breathing is strangled and my chest hurts as I drop to my knees and feel through the grass for a

rock, a stone—something. Blades of grass slice through my fingers as I comb the ground. My sight is

blurry and a tear drops onto the back of my hand. I smear it on the grass and continue to hunt.

I grit my teeth shakily, to stop myself from doing any more of it. Get it together. So what he knows?

He was going to find out eventually.

“Cooper!”

It’s his voice. He’s found me.

Like I didn’t want him to.

Like I hoped he would.

He’s across the soccer field, jogging over.

I search desperately for a stone, digging into the soil like it will unearth my peace. When it doesn’t,

I sit on my haunches and stare at my empty, dirty hands.

“Cooper,” Jace says again, standing before me wearing a worried frown.

“I can’t find one,” I say. He drops to his knees in front of me, shuffles forward and pulls my hands

so I’m kneeling too. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me tightly.

“Are you okay?” he asks against my hair.

“Yeah, no, I mean, whatever, right? Just rumors.”

He shakes his head.

“Fine,” I say and draw away from him to search the ground. “It’s true.”

Jace breathes out heavily and helps me look. After a few minutes, he shakes his head. “Stuff it,” he

says and stands up, pulling me with him.

“What?” I say.

He balls up his fist and presses it into my open palm. “I’ll be your rock. Do you think you can

handle that today?”

I squeeze his warm fist. His pulse—or is that mine?—beats under my finger.

I’ll never look at his hand the same. It will always remind me of this day, this humiliation, this

anger, and this exhilarating wave I’m riding that’s drawing me closer to something I’ve only dreamed

about.

I need to be honest. I look up at him and swallow. “I’m sorry, Jace.”

“Why? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

I shake my head. “I’m sorry because you weren’t meant to be the last person to know, to be told by

a bunch of losers. You were meant to hear it from me. I wanted to tell you last night at the river.”

He sucks in his lips and nods before looking through the chain-link fence to the busy street. “You

want to go home?”

“Cut school?”

“So what?”

“Okay. But I’m supposed to be at Mum’s the rest of the week.”

“I know,” he says as we head across the field. “Let’s go there then.”

limestone

“So this is what your room looks like,” Jace says, taking in the single bed, the desk littered with

books, and the thirty toolboxes stacked against the back wall. I use the toolboxes to compartmentalize

my rocks and keep everything in order. Each is labeled according to the month and year it represents,

running all the way back to when I was two and picked up my first limestone.

Jace stands in the middle of the room, and I wonder if he’s imagining me studying or playing

computer games at my desk, trying and failing miserably to do push-ups on the round red rug, coming

in wet from the shower with only a towel wrapped around my waist, jerking off to the thought of him

under the bedspread—

You wish!

I turn on music to fill the silence but I keep it low so we can talk.

The springs in my mattress squeak as Jace sits on my bed. His reflection stares back at me from the

photo I have of Mum, Dad, Annie and me that’s on my desk.

“I have a confession,” Jace says and I startle, standing up from my chair. It swivels in a full circle

behind me before bumping against the desk.

“Confession?”

Jace bites his bottom lip and pushes off from the bed. He walks around the room, touching the

dresser and studying the stones I have on display. He looks at me through the large square mirror above

the dresser. “I wasn’t asleep when you left my tent that night.”

I pause. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he says, turning around and leaning against the drawers, “I shut my eyes when you

dragged your sleeping bag out. After a few minutes, I snuck out and . . . well, I overheard you and

Annie.”

“You were spying on me?”

He folds his arms and looks ashamed. “I was curious what you were up to.”

“Curious?” I have no thoughts of my own, and I scramble to accept what he’s telling me.

“I wondered what you were doing. I thought I might scare you for a laugh. Pounce on you or

something.”

“Pounce?”

Jace winces and chuckles. “Trust you to focus on that poor choice of word.”

I don’t know what I’m saying but I start speaking. “So there wouldn’t have been any pouncing?”

Pushing off my dresser, Jace struts toward me. He shrugs as if he’s answering his own question. “If

you want there to be pouncing, there can be, okay? Plenty of it. In fact, let’s start now.”

Jace touches my chest and pushes me onto the bed. I barely process what’s happening when he

leaps on me, pinning me to the mattress. His greenstone slips out from the collar of his shirt and hangs

at my throat. “So you’re gay,” he says, and this time I’m aware of what he’s saying. I detect an

undercurrent of anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Because it’s you. You’re the one I’m attracted to. You’re the one that makes my heart go berserk.

When I don’t answer, he rolls off me. I instantly miss his weight. Miss his focused stare boring into

me for answers.

“As you can see, I’m okay with it. Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

“No,” I say, and it comes out croaked. What I really need to know is if I’m projecting feelings that

aren’t like that.

But of course they’re not. I’ve seen his porn stash after all. He’s told me he’s interested in Susan. I

can’t even believe the warm lie that he’s faking all that because he’s afraid to come out—because why

would he be? He’s okay with me being gay, and he knows his parents are okay with it too. Nothing’s

holding him back. Because he doesn’t harbor any secret feelings toward you.

I still want to ask. I want to know.

Don’t destroy the illusion that he cares for you above and beyond a friend. You like imagining that

one day he’ll realize he wants you and ravage you like the hero in a corny romance—

“You can tell me anything. Just want you to know that.”

We exchange looks. “I have nothing else to tell. That’s it. My big secret, exposed. If you want to

put some distance between us, I’ll understand.”

Jace sits up. “What the hell?”

“I just mean—”

“I know what you mean. You think I’m worried you’re going to jump me?” He laughs. “You’ve had