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Chapter Text

Bryce knew that the end had come.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t felt it creeping up in his dreams. Death had been waiting for him like it had been waiting for Hannah Baker.

Death had been waiting for him, maybe, for nineteen years.

He didn’t feel afraid, even as pleaded with them to come back. The time had passed for fear, after all, and there was nothing he could do about it, now. But it was so cold on the pier, and then so cold in the water. So cold, so…

So he closed his eyes and he thought to himself:

“I would do anything, switch anything, to take it all back. To bring Hannah back.”

There was Jessica, too, and Chloe, and the others. So many others.

But Hannah had been the one to pay the permanent price for his rampages. For the way he had played with people, had tried to break people.

So his last thought was for Hannah.

An ungrantable wish.

The water was so cold… And he couldn’t make it up again…

***

Bryce’s first thought was that he was falling, and his second thought was that he had hit the ground, collided with it, in a full body slam, like a tackle. Like colliding with a glass door – something he had done in his life more than once.

He opened his eyes slowly, carefully, and allowed the light to slip in, wondering if he had arrived in Hell.

If so, it was a particularly grassy hell, which was not the way he had ever heard it described. Might be a good thing, as Bryce wasn’t a huge fan of the heat. That made him picture the beach in Antigua, covered in sweat and complaining as he sipped this and that drink because, despite being surrounded by all of the trappings of wealth, he had felt completely alone.

Poor little rich boy, a voice echoed in his head.

He realized, slowly, that he was flat on his back and looking up at the sky. At the stars.

And then at a light, flashing in his eyes.

“Hey! You! Who are you?”

Bryce blinked and managed, with faulting motions, to push himself up to a seated position. He found himself staring at a flashlight and, behind it, a girl with long, wavy dark brown hair.

A girl who…

Hannah.

Bryce’s body seized up.

“Well? What is it? What are you doing on my front lawn? It’s two in the morning. And who are you?”

Bryce rubbed at his eyes.

“I’m, uh, Bryce. Sorry. Long story.” He rose to his feet. “You’re… uh… Hannah Baker, huh? I heard you…” He looked around and noticed it was the first stop on the tapes. Hannah’s first house. “I heard you just moved here.”

“You heard right. Now… You need to get off of my lawn. No offense, but the whole thing is kind of weird. I came out here and you just… dropped from somewhere. Were you in a tree, or what?”

“Not exactly,” Bryce replied. “It’s a long story. I wasn’t spying on you or anything, I was just…” He figured he could come up with a story, but if had been sent back to save Hannah and then himself by extension, then he shouldn’t be starting off by lying to her. “I was actually coming to see you.”

She gave him a suspicious look.

“Coming to see me? What exactly have you heard, Bryce?” She spat the name, and he rued the day his parents had decided that was the one to go with; it lent itself too easily to being snapped by people. Maybe that had been the point – his mother may have realized she would be yelling it more often than not.

“I heard,” Bryce began, trying to figure out when, exactly, he had transported back to. There were rumors, apparently – but Hannah didn’t know who Bryce was. It must be the summer before her freshman year, his sophomore year. “That you are a really nice friend. That you go to bat for people. It’s such a bunch of back-biters at our school that I figured I should meet you before you got corrupted.”

Hannah tilted back her head and laughed.

“Of all the things you were going to say, I’m not sure that was the one that I expected… at all.” She took a step back and sat down on one of the decorative rocks along her walkway. “I heard Liberty has been spreading quite the rumors about me and I haven’t even made it there yet.”

Bryce shivered, and then he shrugged. The school had been primed to attack Hannah before she had even stepped foot in there. He would need to fix that.

“I’m sure they’re saying things about me, too. But Justin doesn’t mean anything by that stuff. He’s just trying to distract from his own stuff. I’m actually… like Justin’s best friend, basically. I’ll get him to fix the rumors.”

“How?” Hannah asked, putting her hands on her hips. She looked suspicious, reluctant.

“Just trust me,” Bryce replied. “He’ll listen to me.” He bent down and brushed some dirt off of his pants. “Anyway… It’s late. I’m going to go home.”

He turned and waved, and started to walk.

“Don’t you live across town? In that big mansion?”

“I mean, yeah. But I can walk.” Bryce took another step, then hesitated. “So, I don’t actually know how to get there from here without driving… does that make me seem like a sheltered rich kid?”

Hannah grinned, a big genuine grin for the first time since Bryce had dropped on her lawn – hell, actually, since Bryce had ever known her.

“Well then, Richie Rich – you need a ride?”

Bryce broke into a grin then, too – one that almost made him forget the real reason he was there, and all the things he needed to prevent. Why had he never truly talked with Hannah before? Why had he only ever looked at her as a target?

He tried hard not to shudder at the thoughts of his own past self – if he succeeded, then that wouldn’t be him anymore. Was that how it worked?

Or would he always be the same underneath, if someone chipped off the paint?

“I would love a ride.”

Chapter Text

Hannah’s little car had charm to it, making Bryce wonder, not for the first time, what it would have been like to grow up in a place where instead of getting the most expensive of everything, he got things that were meaningful.

Which, in turn, led him to another thought, a much more concerning one – what would happen if he went back to his house and the other Bryce was there? He couldn’t imagine that, as nonchalant as his past had been, he would probably have some sort of reaction to seeing a slightly older and more weather-worn version of himself walking into his house.

He would have to cross that bridge when he came to it. Clearly, he had been brought back for a reason. The promise he had made as he sank in the water – he shuddered, pulling the… Hillcrest? Was he wearing the Hillcrest jacket still?

He was. Hannah hadn’t asked about it. She probably just thought he was nuts.

She might not be wrong about that.

He felt as if he had been awake for days, his head swimming. All of the pain in his body was gone, somehow, but the fatigue remained.

“Thank you, again. Hannah. It’s… it really means a lot.”

“Well, you know. Trying to get to know more people around here, ever since Kat moved away.” She looked up at him with a nervous smile.

“You go to Hillcrest, huh?”

“No… Uh, Liberty. It’s complicated.”

It was.

Hannah turned her wheel to the left and then looked at him again.

“Are you weird?” she inquired. “You seem kind of weird.”

“Yeah, probably,” Bryce said, and Hannah seemed to accept that as an accurate explanation for all of it.

When she pulled up to the Walker house, she smiled at him, and he tried not to look at her.

He did manage to pop the door open with shaking fingers (his fingers never used to shake; no matter what he was doing, they never used to shake) and stepped outside.

“See you at Liberty,” he called to her.

“See you there,” she called back.

And then Hannah Baker drove away.

***

Bryce walked up the pathway to his front door, feeling as if it was a longer walk than it had ever been before. Maybe because it had been so long since he had been back at the house.

He hoped that his parents were home, though he didn’t know what he would tell them. He didn’t want to be alone, not now. Not when he had so much to figure out.

He pressed the code into the back door sensor and let himself inside, finding the place dark. He switched the light on, made his way upstairs, pulled off the Hillcrest coat and turned the heat up even though the place was already balmy.

If he was left alone, he was sure that he would start crying and never be able to stop. So he resolved that he shouldn’t be alone.

There was one person he knew that he could call. One person who, on any other day, might have had to show up already because he needed Bryce.

Well, now Bryce needed him.

There was a phone plugged into the wall, and Bryce picked it up, selected Justin’s name and pressed the “call” key.

***

“Listen,” Bryce blurted upon Justin’s entrance to the living room. “I need a promise from you.”

“This better not be a dead body,” Justin responded, then let out a nervous laugh. “Please tell me it’s not a dead body, Bryce?”

“It’s not,” Bryce assured him, and managed to not add “yet” as he didn’t think that would help Justin’s nerves any. “But I have some things to tell you and I need you to just go with me on this and believe me that I’m not lying to you.”

“…Did you get… taller?” Justin asked.

“Justin.”

“Your cheeks are puffier than when I saw you the last time.”

“Justin!”

“Okay, okay.” Justin followed Bryce into the den and sat on a lounge chair. “I’m all ears, Bryce. Whatever you need.”

“I need a whiteboard,” Bryce said, and before Justin could reply that it wasn’t something he generally carried on him, Bryce had run up to the attic, retrieved one, and returned to the den. “Okay,” Bryce said, picking up a marker. Neither of them spoke until he had written the numbers 1-13 down the whiteboard, with a name and description alongside them.

“Did you really just write on the board that Alex Standall has the Best Ass?” Justin inquired. “I mean, I’m not judging you or anything, but…”

Bryce looked over at his list and sighed.

“Not exactly. I mean, trust me, I haven’t looked at his ass.”

I don’t really want to look at the rest of him either right now, but that’s a problem to deal with later.It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

Bryce turned his marker around and began to tap each item as he explained, “Let’s just say that we know a girl who’s… suicidal. And here are reasons that she might hurt herself. She likes a boy – that’s you – who starts a rumor about her…”

“Actually, that was you who passed around that picture. Is this Hannah we’re talking about?”

“Okay, so, yeah. Kick a man while he’s down. But anyway – then she gains a friend but loses her because,” he pointed to Alex’s name, “her name ends up on a list of who has the best ass, and her friend is on the worst ass list – and her other friend put here there. Then, ah, she’s stalked by a guy and a girl is her friend, first, but then turns her back on her. Another boy asks her out, then humiliates her, and then another is just, well, petty.” Goddamned Zach. Well that would be another thing to put on the back burner. “Then, her poem gets stolen and…” He swallowed as his marker hit where he had simply written the words “Tape Nine.” He shook his head and kept going, “A stop sign gets knocked over which leads to a death. Then – well, Clay Jensen is right here but I don’t totally get why.”

“Hey, Bryce, why is your name on this list?”

Bryce chewed his lip and hit “#13” and said, “And then the school lets her down. When all that happens… what you get is a dead girl. And we’re not going to let it happen. So Justin… are you with me?”

Justin stared at the list and then looked back at Bryce, curling his hand into a fist.

“I’m always with you, Bryce.”

Chapter Text

Bryce tapped the first item on his list again.

“Well, this first one is pretty easy. If people ask you about Hannah… just tell them the truth, that nothing happened,” he began. “Which brings us to item number two.”

“Jessica? The tall, pretty girl with the beautiful brown eyes?”

Bryce looked at him.

“I’m guessing you’re volunteering for that part of the mission. But the only reason Jessica and Hannah stop being friends is because of Alex’s list – so we should actually start here.”

“I’m a little scared to ask but… Bryce, how do you know all of this?”

“I can’t tell you. You need to trust me. Please, Justin – trust me.”

“Okay, okay, I trust you,” Justin said and paused, “Do you think Jessica would go out with me?”

“I am entirely certain Jessica would go out with you. You’re a catch, Justin,” Bryce said flippantly, then looked at him; for the first time, he really looked at him. “Justin… You’re a good person. Truly good. You’re just… hurting, a lot, all the time. And I hope… when you feel ready to talk about it, I’d like to hear it. And Jessica would be lucky to have you – and you’d be lucky to have her too, I think.” He sucked a breath through his nose, trying to steady himself. “But first we need to deal with Alex and his stupid list, so he can’t pass it around in Hannah and Jess’ class and stop them from being friends.”

“But how do we stop him?” Justin asked, still looking a little shell-shocked from all that Bryce had just said. “Neither of us has a class with either of them. No sophomore does, I don’t think. And are you even sure he’s the one who made the list? Usually, when I see stuff like that, one person starts it but then it just kind of… spirals into something else.”
Bryce considered the fact that he may have actually started the list at some point prior to his re-emergence, and rubbed his own face. Why had he made such a mess of his own life that he had to go back and fix it?

“So we’re going to just need to make a whole other list.”

“Of who has the best ass?”

“Well, the original list had a lot of different stuff on it. Best Face, Best Lips, Best Ass… Best, uh….” Bryce tried to remember. He had started more than a few similar lists in his own classes, but now he looked back with a twinge of regret. As self-assured and cocky as he had always been, how exactly would he have felt if he had seen his own name next to “Butterface”, really? But of course, the lists had always been of girls… “That’s it!”

“What’s it, Bryce?” Justin asked, rubbing his head. “You know, you have been acting really different today. What’s going on?”

“These lists, it’s always guys rating girls and… well, it makes the girls feel like shit, whether they get voted good or bad. What if we all rated ourselves? Each other?”

Bryce flipped the whiteboard over and wrote all the categories he could remember: Best Lips, Best Ass, Best Face, and Best Legs.

“I don’t know that Best Tits would apply. Best Abs? Best Chest?”

“This got kind of gay, Bryce,” Justin commented. “You really want to pick out which of our friends has the best legs? I don’t know what any of these guys’ legs look like.”

“Well, who has the worst legs?” Bryce asked, then thought a moment and scribbled in a name. Justin laughed.

“Why does Zach have the worst legs?”

“Don’t ask.”

***

On the first day back at school, Bryce successfully accomplished exactly two things – he interrupted a few people talking about how Hannah was “such a ho” and informed them that he had sent the photo around on Justin’s phone and that it wasn’t what they thought anyway (less successfully, he had followed it up by telling some senior girl that he had seen her father in town and that he looked like a foot so she shouldn’t be talking), and he successfully cornered Tyler Down in the hallway and pulled him aside. By the wrist.
(Bryce reminded himself that he really needed to stop grabbing people by the wrist.)

“Hey, Tyler.”

“Oh, um, hi Bryce,” Tyler mumbled, eyes darting around as if he was looking for an escape route but finding none.

“I need your help,” Bryce said, and Tyler stared at him as if he had grown a second head in the last few moments. “I need you to snatch Alex Standall’s list when it comes around – it’s a Hot or Not list – and replace it with this one.”

He pressed the folded up list into Tyler’s hands and gave him a pleading look.

Tyler opened it and then looked up at Bryce curiously.

“Hey, I’m on this. ‘Best Smile’. Someone really thinks so?” A blush rose to Tyler’s cheek before he looked back at Bryce, one more time, and hurried off.

***

At the end of football practice, as Bryce shut his locker, he overheard a few of his teammates talking about the list.

“Who even started that thing, anyway?”

“Who put Bryce down as Best Ass in the Freshman Class? I mean, he’s not even a freshman.”

“That’s the problem you have with thinking about whether Bryce has a great ass or not?”

Bryce smirked. Well, so far he had unscrewed at least three of the reasons on Hannah’s list. Some of the others might not be that easy, but he was coming up with a plan. He was going to be a new Bryce, a better Bryce, and the world and Liberty were going to be better for it. He would save Hannah, and that would mean he could save himself too.

He made his way out of the locker room and leaned against the brick wall of the school, waiting for Justin. He really owed him a drink for helping him out with this whole thing, anyway.

As he did, a kid he vaguely remembered walked by – a tall, brown-haired kid. Some senior. Mark… Perry? That was his name. He was just a safety on the football team, but on the baseball team he was captain and had a hell of a batting average.

Mark ignored Bryce – made sense, as Bryce was just a lowly sophomore – and brushed by him, his backpack knocking Bryce in his hip.

The movement jostled something loose from the backpack, just enough for Bryce to see the very top of it.

It was a Polaroid picture.

Oh, yeah, Bryce thought, his body going ice-cold, I need to do something about that, too.

Chapter Text

When Bryce made it home after practice, he found his mother and father both sitting in the dining room, eating.

“Hey,” he said, looking back and forth at them. They seemed a little bit blurry, kind of, and out-of-focus. He was seized by an urge to run over to his mother and wrap his arms around her, cling to her and tell her everything. To apologize for everything he had ever done and everything he might ever do.

But he couldn’t do it with Barry goddamned Walker there.

“Well, hello, Bryce,” Barry crooned. “I thought you would be out with your friends. Your mother and I just got back from Rome.”

“Nice flight?” Bryce inquired in response, pulling up a chair and sitting down before looking around. He marked the place in his mind, let out a sigh as he recalled how he had lost it once. There was only one thing, he realized slowly, that made him feel nostalgic about this place.

He pulled back the chair as quickly as he’d plopped down in it.

“Bryce?” Nora asked.

“Mom, can I talk to you, later, when you have a minute?” Bryce pressed, feeling as if he were making an appointment.

“Well, yes, but…”

He didn’t wait for the response.

“I need to call Justin.”

***

Justin was staring at Bryce all over again.

“So… you saw a senior with a Polaroid picture, and that means that there’s some kind of, um, like… conspiracy that we need to stop?”

“Exactly.”

“Or, I mean… he could just have a Polaroid. What if he took a picture of his dog or something? Or… maybe he works for the school paper and that’s… like his thing?”

“Justin, you promised to trust me, remember.”

“I do trust you, Bryce. I promise I do. But like… there’s a lot of gears going in your head and to be honest, I don’t really, like, see how they’re connected? Maybe I’m just missing something.”

Bryce let out a sigh.

Of course it wasn’t making sense – he had information that Justin didn’t have, information Justin would hopefully never have.

“Maybe we could bring it to someone at school?” Justin prompted a moment later. “Like, aren’t teachers supposed to have to do something if somebody is being hurt?”

They exchanged looks, considering the number of times Justin had shown up to school without a meal, dirty and covered in bruises (more than either could count) and the number of times teachers had commented on it (once, when their fifth grade teacher had yelled at Justin after class for “having an odor” and Bryce had swiped the teacher’s expensive watch the next day).

“I mean, they’re… supposed to,” Justin emphasized again. “What about that counselor?”

“Ms. Antilly?” Bryce asked, remembering the name (spoken in Hannah’s voice). “I’ll go in and talk to her tomorrow.” He bit his lip. “Until then, just let me know if you see anything weird, okay? Like, anything weird at all.”

Maybe Ms. Antilly would be more helpful than Mr. Porter – he could remember Hannah’s tape about how she had gone to him and he had told her she should get over it and move on, how he had questioned her.

Bryce hadn’t gone back to him after he had been referred to the programs he hadn’t followed up with, feeling himself a lost cause, but maybe he should have asked him why? Why had he let Hannah walk out that door?

Maybe it was some kind of discomfort with the whole thing. Hopefully Ms. Antilly would be better.

“I’ll go to her tomorrow,” Bryce vowed. “You want to watch a movie or something?”

***

“Mr. Walker! What a surprise!” Ms. Antilly seemed to be the only person in the history of the world who actually was excited to be a high school guidance counselor, and Bryce felt a pang of regret for bringing this particular issue to her as opposed to where to apply for college or what his most suited career would be.

Neither of which he ever really figured out, if he was being honest with himself.

“So, Mr. Walker, what can I help you with today?” she continued.

It was something in that upbeat, peppy tone, the way she seemed actually happy to see him. The way she hadn’t seen the other Bryce – the way she seemed to automatically hope for the best for him.

All of those things, coming together, made it that when he opened his mouth, he just couldn’t tell her.

So he cleared his throat and told her, “It might be good to check in with Tyler Down. I think he has a rough time sometimes.”

Then got up, grabbed his bag, and ran into the hallway.

Straight, as it happened, into Hannah Baker.

“Hey! Slow down, speed racer,” she exclaimed.

Bryce whirled around.

“I need some advice.”

“Okay, let’s walk and talk,” Hannah replied, beginning to walk. “What’s the issue, and how can I help?”

“Let’s say I know about something bad happening at the school. But I don’t have any proof, and the way I know is a little weird. What should I do?”

Hannah turned around and smiled at him.

“Well, then I would get proof. Like, I would go and Nancy Drew that shit.”

“Like… be a detective?”

“Are you asking? Hell, yeah. I mean, if you want me to be in on this. I will totally be a detective with you.”

“You don’t even know what it’s about,” Bryce pointed out.

“Who cares? Let’s dig up some dirt on Liberty. We could have our own PI firm. We could call it… Brannah Investigations.”

Bryce laughed.

“Why am I first?”

“Because the alternative is Hyce, which sounds like someone tried to make more than one house, but failed. I’ll draw up a business plan. See you after class.”

“A business plan?” Bryce called after her, “I thought this was more like some kind of secret club?”

But Hannah Baker had walked down the hall, and Bryce watched her go.

Chapter Text

Bryce, Hannah, Justin (who had been sleeping over) and a maid named Carly (who was both “done with this shit” and “went to art school for this”) spent the better part of the next night painting a large sign that announced Brannah Investigations was open for business.

“We should put up flyers,” Hannah suggested. “And get a designated phone line.”

“Like the Baby-Sitters Club?” Carly inquired. Both Bryce and Justin stared at them.

“You can’t tell me that neither of you know about the Baby-Sitters Club?”

Bryce and Justin exchanged a glance of confusion.

“The what?” Bryce asked.

Carly and Hannah looked at each other and each grinned, before starting to sing almost in unison:
“Say hello to your friends!
Baby-Sitters Club –
Say hello to the people who care!
Nothing’s better than friends!
Baby-Sitters Club –
Cause you know that your friends are always there!”

“Okay, then,” Justin said, moving slowly away. “So we’re going to have, like, a phone number just to contact us? What about when we’re all in school?”

“Well, I’ll be here,” Carly said, “I could be the receptionist. Please. Anything is better than dusting more antiques that no one ever looks at.”

“You’re hired!” Bryce declared. “Effective immediately. I’ll get my mom to sign some stuff. She won’t care... probably.”

“We’re getting a little off track, though,” Hannah said, “I mean, this will get us a lot of new cases, but we also have to remember why we started this. Because of the Polaroid thing. We have to make sure we catch Mark and his friends so they can’t hurt anybody, and we need to make sure the proof is enough to get them arrested, or at least kicked out of school.”

“If we could get the Polaroids themselves, that might do it,” Justin said, “That would be proof, right?”

“Depends on what they’re Polaroids of,” Hannah said. “Listen, these kind of guys, they know how to keep it under everyone’s nose. It’s probably going to be something that looks like something, like, innocent. I saw this soap opera once on MTV where guys were running a point value on how many girls they could, well, you know. It probably just looked like an innocent game.”

“Well, how did they get them in the end?” Bryce inquired.

“I think the one guy – he was cute and rich and in love with the girl who was the target – ended up getting put in jail because the girl’s friend acted as the bait,” Hannah replied.

“We’re not using you as bait, Hannah,” Justin and Bryce said in unison.

“Well, I wasn’t going to offer to be bait anyway, but thanks.”

***

Over the next three weeks, Brannah Investigations gained three cases.

The first, brought to them by Chloe Rice, involved finding out if someone else on the cheerleading team was stealing her earrings, or if she really was just losing them.

Hannah discovered that they had been falling out of Chloe’s locker and then being hoarded by Tyler, who thought they were Hannah’s and wanted to return them all at once to impress her.

Chloe was appreciative, if somewhat creeped out, and went to a lunch at Rosie’s in which they discovered they had nothing in common other than both favoring Chloe’s particular style of earrings, but Tyler wasn’t that inclined when Chloe suggested getting him a clip-on pair of his own.

The second case was a girl from Claremont Prep named Jennifer, who brought to them the issue that as the only scholarship student in her class, she was being bullied by some of the popular girls. She also suggested that she had the ability to charm snakes and could use them to attack the lead bully, but really didn’t want to take it to that level.

They ultimately compromised with suggesting that she put Nair in the mean girl’s shampoo and also set her up on a date with Tyler, which apparently went very well.

The last case came from a Hillcrest boy by the name of Winston Williams.

He wanted to hack into the Hillcrest computers, with aims that weren’t entirely clear and seemed somewhat suspicious. Since none of the staff knew how to do it, he went away empty-handed.

But Bryce knew that he might be seeing Winston again, one way or another.

***

Bryce awoke one morning in October in a cold sweat, dreaming of falling from the pier and being strangled by the icy water underneath. It wasn’t for the first time – but now, as he climbed out of bed he was hit by a memory from long, long before the night on the pier.

Two nine-year-old boys, sitting in Bryce’s bedroom and illuminated only by flashlight. Telling the scariest stories they could think of.

“We should go to bed,” Bryce announces. “I’m tired.”

“I don’t wanna sleep,” Justin protests, and Bryce looks at him.

“How come? Tomorrow’s Saturday. We can play video games early and we can get breakfast wherever you want. Jose will bring us…”

“That’s not it,” Justin replies, “It’s just… I’m scared of sleeping because I’m afraid I’ll wake up and… he’ll be there.”

“Who?” Bryce asks, but Justin has clammed up by now. He’s white as a sheet. “Okay, then, we won’t sleep at all. We’ll stay up all night.”

Bryce examined the memory now, the reality of what Justin might have been trying to tell him. He would have to talk with him about it at some point – but he didn’t know when the find the right moment. And who was he to ask Justin about that?

But he had been there for Tyler. At least, he had tried to be.

And maybe he had the wrong idea, anyway. Maybe Justin didn’t even remember saying any of it – it had been a long time ago.

Bryce got into the Range Rover and drove to school.

During gym, he kept his eye on Mark Perry. He watched the boy’s swagger, the way he smirked and glided.

Bryce couldn’t help but see glimmers of himself in Mark, and he had to wonder if that was where he had learned it. Who had he been, when he had been younger? Was he always destined to turn out to be how he was? Or was he destined to turn out however he was now? And had Mark been the first at Liberty with the Polaroids or was he only the latest in a long line, anyway?

Bryce perched on the bleachers. The only thing that was certain was that Mark had to go down. He had to break the cycle somehow.

He just had to wait for the right moment.

Chapter Text

Bryce didn’t get a chance to talk to his mother without his father, or the constant ring of the phone as Nora planned some dinner party for Barry’s associates, until the second week in October.

He caught her coming into the house, ready to slip upstairs, and reached out to grab her hand – not her wrist, her hand, more of a plea than a demand.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Bryce? What’s wrong?” Nora looked at him, her facial expression moving from annoyance to concern. “What did you need to talk with me about?”

“Can we sit… uh, somewhere?”

So many rooms, and none of them seemed like they would be fitting to discuss any of this. He missed the yoga studio, the one not built yet and maybe never built if things changed. Maybe he would live long enough to build one of his own.

“Sure. We can go in the study.”

They walked over, and then, Nora took a seat across the table and Bryce took one on the other side.

“So, what did you need to talk with me about?”

“Mom,” Bryce began, “I really shouldn’t have to make… like, an appointment to talk with you. You and Dad are always so disconnected that… well, it’s weird. I need you to…” How could he ask for the Nora (calling her “Mom” still seemed somewhat weird) he had known when he was at his lowest, breaking down in the studio, without all of the push for it? And was that really what he wanted, or did he want to be left alone after he’d grown so bitter about it in the first place? “I just want you to, like, take an interest.”

She looked at him and frowned.

“Bryce, I do take an interest. I just… thought that it would be better for you to have the freedom to decide all of these kind of things for yourself.”

“I don’t always make the best choices, though. I’m… like fifteen. Don’t put me in charge of anything.” He laughed, but it rang a little hollow and more than a little desperate. He wished he could tell her everything – but getting committed probably wouldn’t help his plan at all, and that might be how she would react. It would be a pretty fancy place, no doubt, but a “nut hut” was still the same thing whether it was fancy or not. “I need to ask you something, and I want you to talk to me honestly. How do you stop somebody who’s trying to do – or is doing – something really bad, but you don’t have any proof yet?”

Nora looked at him.

“Well, depends on who’s doing the bad thing, Bryce. People are more willing to hear about what someone’s doing if they can picture it already.”

“Mark Perry,” Bryce told her, and she gave him the saddest look she had ever seen.

“Even you are going to need a lot to go up against the Perrys, Bryce. You try and cut him, he’ll bleed blue and then turn it right back on you. And since he can’t pick a fight with us… He’ll find someone else to target.”

Bryce looked back at her.

“Justin.”

Nora nodded.

“So you’d better shoot to kill. Metaphorically, that is. You’d have to knock him off his pedestal so hard that he’s toxic waste. And I can tell by the look on your face exactly what kind of thing Mark Perry might be up to.” She reached forward and gave Bryce a quick hug. “It might be a losing battle. Trust me. I know.”

***

He approached his father the next day, when he got home from a business trip. He still felt bitter in ways he could not temper.

“Dad,” he managed, looking him dead in the eye. Bryce had decided he was going to be a man this time around, not a spoiled child. And he would have to look his father dead in the eye and call him out to be able to achieve that.

“Yes? Bryce? What is it?”

Barry was flipping through papers and barely listening to Bryce.

“I want to meet Caitlin.”

Well, he was listening to him now.

***

The thing that amazed Bryce most about Caitlin was the ways in which she really did look like him. She had the same flushed, rosy cheeks and blue eyes, but she had red hair instead of brown and she was sharp and thin.

She was also quiet, and she seemed to be examining Bryce as he managed a few after-school special sentences about how he needed to know her.
If he was honest, he didn’t know why he was here.

“Why do you need to know me?” she piped up a moment later. “I never even knew I had any brother. Or any Dad, either.”

Bryce shrugged.

“Half the time I don’t know I have one, either.”

“And I don’t need one,” Caitlin continued, but her voice was wavering a little.

“I don’t know much about what I can do about our Dad, but if you want me in your life… I’ll try and do my best.” That was all he could really promise these days, after all.

Caitlin looked him over again, suspiciously.

“Okay. Deal.” She smiled again and then asked, “So do you like… drive?”

***

Brannah Investigations took on four cases in the month of October, the most notable of which was marked by a tearful Tyler Down walking in and presenting Bryce and Hannah with a rock that had been thrown through his window, with a note wrapped around it threatening Tyler with “the worst pain ever” if he didn’t slip all the answers for the upcoming History test into a certain locker.

Bryce glowered as he looked it over, and Hannah observed him.

“Do you have an idea of who this is?”

“I know exactly who it is,” he replied, “And I’m ending it now.”

***

On Halloween, Bryce drove to Tyler’s house to pick him up.

When he got into the car, Bryce told him, “I talked to Monty, and he’s going to behave himself. If he doesn’t, we could always just light him on fire or something.” Tyler let out a nervous laugh.

“I don’t think I would want to go that far,” Tyler, who was dressed like somebody who, he explained, was from Naruto, whatever that was, replied. “I just… Didn’t know you cared about what happens to me? I mean, back in middle school, you always seemed just kind of larger than life. Like…”

“Like Richie Rich.” Bryce remembered what Hannah had said.

“Well, I was going to say more like Montana Max.”

Bryce chuckled.

“Ouch. So, hey, what do you want to listen to on the way over there? Like, not to judge but you seem like you would listen to… Linkin Park or something like that?”

Tyler looked at him.

“Well, I’ve actually been listening to this one song, like, a lot lately. You’re gonna think it’s stupid, though.”

“Try me. Load it up. Here.” Bryce passed him his phone, “I have Spotify and Amazon and all that shit. It’ll play in the car speakers.”

Tyler scrolled through for a moment, and then “Waving Through a Window” from Dear Evan Hansen began to play.

And Bryce thought.

The song had just ended when they pulled up to Monty’s house. Bryce honked his horn, which earned him a scream from inside the house that included the phrase “fucking Range Rover” before Monty and Estela walked out.

“Lemme in the front, Bryce,” Monty declared.

“Nah, man. Tyler’s riding shotgun. He has good tunes,” Bryce said.

“Whatever. Where are we going? Like a party or what?”

Estela looked down.

“We’re going trick or treating,” Bryce told them. “I just gotta drive over and get Caitlin.”

“Who the hell is Caitlin?” Monty asked.

“My sister.”

“Since when do you have a sister?”

Bryce shrugged.

“What are you supposed to be, anyway?” Monty pressed, as he climbed into the backseat.

Bryce turned his head around, and Estela let out a shriek.

“He’s Rainbow Dash, Monty! Look, look, I’m Flutterfly.” She fiddled with some sort of unicorn horn on her head.

Monty, who apparently had not gotten the memo and was dressed like he always was, blinked.

“I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. Drive, Bryce. Drive.”

Chapter Text

November 2nd flew across Bryce’s calendar so quickly that he barely knew what hit him.

He felt seized when he woke that morning, and he felt trapped, wrapped in his blankets and wanting to scream.

He stumbled down the steps and out the door, into the pool-house to find Justin fast asleep on the couch.

Something about having Justin there – again, always again – made him feel safer, made him remember everything he had once taken for granted.

He considered waking Justin up, but it was an hour until he had to get up for school, after all.

Let him sleep.

***

As soon as Bryce made it to his locker, Hannah Baker marched over to him.

“We need to talk,” she declared.

“Okay, okay.” He stepped out the side door and looked around, noting no one else on the patio.

“First things first, we need to bring some new people in to help out with Brannah Investigations. If we count you, me, Carly and Justin – who has yet to actually do any work but, I see, you had business cards printed for – we still aren’t going to be able to keep up with cases if they increase.”

“Okay,” Bryce said, “Do you want us to like, put an ad on Craigslist or what?”

“No, I have someone in mind. There’s a guy I work with at the Crestmont. Clay Jensen – you know him?”

Bryce rubbed his face.

“Yes, I do. Okay, okay, bring him in.”

“Sounds good,” Hannah said, she pivoted and began to walk away.

“Wait!” Bryce called, “What was the second thing?”

Hannah turned back around.

“Friday is the Homecoming game. Our perfect chance to get into the Clubhouse and find some information about Mark Perry.” She reached up and tapped Bryce on the shoulder. “Go Tigers.”

***

That night, Bryce drove out to the pier, parked and walked up to the water’s edge. He looked down and breathed in the scent of the river.

Maybe it was waiting for him, and maybe it wasn’t. But he felt like he needed to see it, now, to fully grasp what was real and what wasn’t.

The water was so dark, and cold, and he knew that full well. And it felt like it was rising.

Suddenly, Bryce became aware of the feeling that someone was standing directly behind him.

He whipped around, fearing that it was Zach coming to break his leg and arm, that it was Alex come to push him into the deep all over again, but it was neither.

Tony Padilla cocked his head to the side and seemed to examine Bryce’s face.

“Uh, hey, Tony,” Bryce managed.

“You seem pretty different than the Bryce I knew last year,” Tony mused. “I’ve already seen you sticking up for Tyler, sniffing out Mark Perry, and stopping that little list before it got too far. Most of those aren’t usually in your nature, Bryce.”

“…What do you mean, already?” Bryce inquired. There was something in the way Tony was looking at him that sent a chill up his spine.

“Let’s just say I know more than you might think,” Tony replied. “And I might be a good person to know. If you… have questions, that is.”

Bryce opened his mouth to ask one; hell, to ask any of them, but as soon as he blinked, Tony was gone. He didn’t hear the squeal of tires or the tread of footsteps; he was just gone.

***

“So the night of the Homecoming Game, we need to get the key to the Clubhouse from… well, somebody who has it,” Hannah said. “Mark’s probably got his guarded, but there have to be some other people, too. Would the coach have one? I mean, you said it’s supposed to just be a storage space. I imagine there has to be staff with a key?”

“But we also don’t know the Polaroids are even at the Clubhouse,” Justin pointed out. “They might be carrying them around.”

“Not on the field, though,” Bryce said, “Unless someone has it in their locker. But anyone can get into those easily enough.” He remembered slipping things into Zach’s locker to tease him about Hannah after he had testified. God, he had been such an asshole. It was no wonder someone wanted him to literally jump in a lake. Or river. But close enough.

“Even though we’re on the team together, the seniors kinda keep to themselves. They don’t really screw around with underclassmen. You might have a better shot than me. What if we made a move at the dance? They might have it on them and we could brush by them.”

“Too bad you shut down my reputation, guys. I would probably get a lot of dances,” Hannah said dryly.

“Wait, hold on,” Justin said, “What if we wait until they’re at the dance and then I break into Mark’s car? We know he probably is the one carrying all this shit. That’s where he would put it. All secure and shit and thinking no one will check it.”

“Do you know how to break into a car, Justin?” Hannah inquired.

Justin’s eyes flashed something that was either pain, pride, or both.

“You would be surprised.”

***

“Only, so vital question, who are all of us actually bringing to this dance? We should make sure our dates are all solid and up for this,” Hannah said. “So, um, I think I’m going with Clay.”

“He asked you?” Justin inquired.

“No, but whenever I mention the dance he looks at me and starts choking, so I think it’s a distinct possibility.”

“Justin?” Bryce inquired.

“I, um, was gonna think about asking Jessica,” he replied.

“You should,” Hannah said. “Flash that smile. I think she’ll be into that. And what about you, Bryce? Who’s going to be the lucky woman?”

Bryce tried to remember who he had actually brought to Homecoming in sophomore year the first time around. It hadn’t been Chloe; he wasn’t seeing her yet.

And asking Chloe felt wrong, for more reasons than he really wanted to contemplate.

He looked at the board. He’d flipped it over to face the wall, as Hannah might be more than a little weirded out by it, but he had it committed to memory now. He could picture each upcoming reason in his mind – Tyler seemed less stalkery these days and as far as he knew, Courtney wasn’t up to anything in particular.

Marcus wouldn’t be until September. Ryan…

“I’m going to ask Sheri Holland,” Bryce declared.

She would be an ally in this. She had been one before, he had been sure, when it had been Clay breaking into the clubhouse.

***

Bryce drove over to Sheri’s house, dressed in his tuxedo and trying to keep his breath from getting caught in his throat. He hadn’t been over there before, and he didn’t really know much about her or her family either. She was a cheerleader – he knew that much – but other than that she smoked some weed and she apparently wasn’t a great driver, his knowledge was limited.

Her house was a little rowhouse with stone steps and a tree in the yard.

He walked up the steps and knocked on Sheri’s door.

She was dressed in a long, blue dress and her hair was up.

Well, if it was going to be a night of investigations, at least he could try and give Sheri a night to remember. He would just have to get her up to speed, and hope that she didn’t get too annoyed about being brought into all of this.

***

At exactly eight-fifty five, Justin made his way to Mark Perry’s car, while Hannah and Bryce, stating they were going to the bathroom, slipped out the back and made their way to the clubhouse.

“Shit, it’s a combination lock anyway,” Bryce declared, looking the shed door up and down. “Why didn’t I remember that?”

“You still haven’t answered how you even know about this. Well, we can crack a combination lock, right. Or maybe we can just break it open?”

“Then they’ll notice that we broke it,” Bryce replied, “And then the full force of the baseball team comes down on us.”

“What about the football team?”

“They’re just not that good. Liberty only cares about baseball.”

Hannah picked up the combination lock.

“Well, I’m not exactly sure, but I have an idea of what it might be…” she said, and began to turn the dial.

“You two want to share what you’re doing breaking into this shed?” a voice said behind them, and Bryce and Hannah both whipped around.

Coach Rick was standing there, and he did not look happy.

“Oh, shit,” Hannah whispered.

Chapter Text

For the first time, Bryce felt like he knew what that line “I was blind but now I see” was all about.

He was sitting in Coach Rick’s office, again, listening to his lecture.

“You’re not quite ready for the clubhouse,” he told Bryce with a chuckle. “When you get there, I’ll tell you all about it. I know you like that Baker girl, but there’s time. When you’re a senior, then I promise I’ll tell you all about it and the fun you’ll have there. But you gotta wait, my friend. Don’t get too big for your britches.” Something had come over his eyes, again, just like the last few times he had pulled Bryce aside. “I was your age when I founded this place, s you gotta pay your dues before you get to reap the rewards. That was why you wanted to get in, right? That Baker girl caught your eye? You wanted to… reward yourself?”

When Bryce made it to his car, he knelt to the side and threw up.

***

The next week was Thanksgiving, and Bryce sat at the table while the maids and cooks served dinner.

“Where’s Justin?” he asked his mother.

“He went home, I think. I haven’t seen him since last night.”

“I’ll be back,” Bryce said, getting up from the chair.

“Bryce, you sit back down,” Barry declared.

“Nope,” Bryce said, “Keep it warm til I get back with Justin.”

***

Bryce hopped in the Range Rover and drove to Justin’s house. He had driven by it more times than he could remember, the door hanging open and gesturing for Justin to get it, but he had never really driven to it, driven to it and parked and came inside.

He had always assumed he was above that sort of thing. Of course, he knew better now.

If only that he really didn’t know very much about anything at all.

Bryce parked in front of the Foley house and walked up. All of the houses looked the same – “government housing” Bryce’s mom had called it once when they dropped Justin off here – but he knew Justin’s house number.

He knocked on the door three times, then paused, then again before calling Justin’s number and getting his voicemail.

Nothing could have happened to Justin, right? Bryce wondered. Nothing had happened to him the first time around. This newer, better, cleaner timeline couldn’t have led to…

Unless perhaps there was a trade in there somewhere. Justin for Hannah. Justin for Bryce.

No.

Bryce began to knock faster and harder, getting no answer.

When there was still no answer, Bryce jiggled the doorknob. A moment later, he reached in his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and slipped out his credit card. An old trick, but maybe it would work – he slid it between the door and the wall and “popped” it. To his surprise, the door opened, and Bryce rushed inside.

“Justin!” he called, over and over. He looked in each room and then, failing that, ran upstairs.

He was lying on a bed in the bedroom – one of two, it seemed, from Bryce’s quick appraisal of the tiny house – under the covers and sleeping soundly.

“Justin,” he called again, and reached down to shake him.

Justin burst up in a second, striking out and nearly hitting Bryce in the chin.

“Jesus! Bryce! What the hell are you doing in here?”

“Well, you weren’t answering the door.”

“I was sleeping!”

“At six on Thanksgiving?”

Justin looked back at him and shrugged.

“C’mon.”

Bryce pulled him up off the bed and began to walk with him.

“By the way, tell your mom I’m sorry about your door, okay?”

****

They served more turkey, stuffing, and a whole blueberry pie when the boys got back, and the two ate and talked long after the Walker parents retired upstairs, chuckling and pouring wine and telling secrets.

“And that’s how I found out what nipples did,” Bryce finished, flashing a grin. Then he paused. “Justin… uh. While you’re a little drunk. There is a question I had… but not here.” Justin rose and headed for the pool house, but Bryce continued, “Not there, either. Come to my room.” He flashed him a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. How could it, when it was a question that Bryce was sure he already knew the answer to?

***

“Justin, you said something to me a long time ago,” Bryce began. His voice was wavering – how was it wavering? “And I wanted to ask you about it.” He told Justin what he remembered from the night they were nine, the night Justin had almost tipped his hand into exactly why he hadn’t wanted to go home. The night when Bryce, already sheltered, had shown he had no idea what it was like to live Justin’s life. The night Justin had clammed up and never mentioned it again.

“Oh, it was nothing,” Justin said, “Just some dick that my mom was dating. I barely even remember.”

Bryce remembered the words he had spoken to Tyler down in a different lifetime.

“It was something.” He raised his eyes to meet Justin’s and said it again. “It was something.”

Justin sucked in a shuddering breath, closed his eyes and then opened them again. He looked at the wall, at the bed, anywhere but at Bryce.

And then he told him everything.

***

Bryce wasn’t sure how he ended up, exactly, with his nose in Justin’s hair, or how he ended up with his arms wrapped around Justin’s middle.

Justin stirred in his arms, mumbling in his sleep, shaking, and Bryce ran his hand down Justin’s back. He could feel his spine, could run his fingers over it.

Bryce had cried before. That wasn’t anything new. But the tears that pressed at his eyelids and made him clamp them shut threatened to be something else; threatened to be never-ending.

Justin had deserved so much better. He always had. But Bryce hadn’t realized that he had deserved so much better for so long. He made himself blink back the tears and take a shuddering breath as he opened his eyes.

“Bryce?” Justin whispered, his eyes opening slowly. He looked up at Bryce, who could read the look as nervousness; no, more than that. Terror.

“Hi, Justin,” Bryce whispered back, “It’s still early. Sleep.” He wasn’t sure what propelled it, and he didn’t let himself think about it, but he pressed a little kiss to Justin’s forehead.

“I’m sorry,” Justin said, and Bryce shook his head.

“I am. I should have asked a long time ago. You can always stay here, okay? No questions asked.”

“I don’t wanna…” Justin began, and Bryce nodded, reading the ending as both “be on the hook” and “take advantage”.

“You won’t. I want you here. I’m going to need your help in a lot of ways.”

Justin would keep him on track. Justin always seemed to know the way.

Bryce ran his finger through Justin’s hair, softly and carefully.

“Feels nice,” Justin whispered, and his eyes shut again.

Bryce thought about what he could remember from being five years old. His favorite thing had been a weird little British video his mother had liked to play – it was just a bunch of nursery rhymes, one right after the other.

There had been one in particular he had liked most of all.

Bryce wrapped the blanket around Justin, held him close, and without letting himself think about it, softly sang:
“I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear,
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear…
The king of Spain’s daughter came to visit me,
And all for the sake of my little nut tree…”

He snuggled in, close to Justin, and whispered every song after that that came to mind until they both fell into a deep slumber.

Chapter Text

November floated into December, and the autumn turned to a light chill – though, as everyone liked to point out, “cold” by California standards wasn’t really all that cold.
Bryce attempted to get back to the clubhouse several times, but each attempt was foiled by Mark or Coach Rick purposely standing too close, with a harsh, knowing chuckle that made Bryce want to scream or punch something.

The Tigers were 4-3 by the time Christmas break rolled around, and Brannah Investigations had found one missing wallet, stopped someone who went to Hillcrest from accidentally uploading several home movies of them singing “Never Had a Friend Like Me” to their Pomeranian, and helped prove that a girl from Claremont Prep hadn’t actually been smoking in the bathroom and it had been her twin sister instead.

Bryce began to usher Justin up to his bed, each night. Each night, they laid next to each other, and watched TV – game shows, QVC, any old thing that was on TV. They didn’t talk about what Justin had told him, because Bryce didn’t really know what to say. He decided the important thing was just to show Justin that nothing would be different.

Even though everything had changed long before that, and that was the important thing.

***

Liberty High School started winter break the day before Christmas Eve. Something about not having as many extra days to spread around because of something with the school board.

“Do you need to grab anything from your house?” Bryce asked.

“What?”

“Well, you’re coming to mine for Christmas?” Bryce prompted.

“What?”

Bryce stared at him.

“Listen. Justin…” He started, then paused. “3-6-9-8.”

“What? Are you giving some girl’s measurements?”

Bryce laughed out loud.

“Not unless she’s Tinkerbell. That’s the code to the house. You live here now, okay?”

“What?”

“Stop saying ‘what’ so much,” Bryce told him. “Go get your stuff. Whenever you’re ready. Come home.”

Maybe one day Justin would still move in with Clay Jensen. But until then, he deserved better than a pool-house and the need for an invitation.

***

Bryce awoke on Christmas Eve to the sound of rapping at his door. He rolled over and hit the floor, before scrambling to the door with his shirt off and his hair sticking up.

Nora was standing there, smiling.

“Morning, Bryce,” she said, then peeked past him, gave Bryce a look, and said, “Good morning, Justin.”

“Uh, good morning Mrs. Walker,” Justin stammered from the bed.

“I was wondering if you two boys might not want to help me decorate the tree? It’s already up, but looking a little bare. Then you could invite some of your friends over for dinner, if you’d like.”

“Sure,” Bryce said with a smile. “I’ll text Hannah and Jess… Oh, and Clay,” He considered it for a moment. “And Tyler.”

“What about Zach and Monty?” Justin asked. Bryce chewed his lip at the mention of both those names, but then shrugged. It was Christmas Eve, after all.

“We could send a group text to the whole team. See who wants to come,” Bryce said. “Monty can bring Estela and…” He looked at Nora. “Can we invite Caitlin? Her and Estela seemed to have fun together on Halloween.”

Bryce and Justin kept listing names as they pulled some clothes together and made their way downstairs, and kept it up as they decorated the tree.

Chloe and Sheri.

“What about Courtney Crimsen?”

“Is Alex around?”

“What’s that girl who hangs out with Clay? Skye Miller?”

“I guess we could invite Marcus if he promises not to talk about how he’s going to be in Congress by the time he’s thirty…”

“Oh, what’s her name… Nina?”

While the sheer number of texts sent to the student body threatened to rival the turnout of previous Walker parties, they ended up with the turnout of people able to get away or having nothing better to do on Christmas Eve being: Hannah, who had to get home later but was waiting for her parents to finish at the store, Skye, who stated “hates this kind of stuff” but was won over by the promise of tiny sausages in tiny rolls, Monty and Estela, and Caitlin. Also, Bryce’s grandfather, who he threatened to roll out in the street after he tried to hand his plate to Estela for the second time.

Bryce, noticing a perturbed-looking Carly in the corner, gave all of the household staff the night off, pick of any of the food, and a few bottles of his father’s favorite wine, figuring that punishing him pre-emptively wouldn’t be entirely out of alignment with his new life. Plus, anyone working in his house had done more than enough to earn as much booze as they could carry.

When dinner was done, Nora walked over to the sound system and put on a Christmas mix, cycling through “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and then “Sleigh Ride” before starting to drum out, “I really can’t stay…”

“Switch it!” Hannah and Skye exclaimed at the same time, laughing. Skye did a slash across her throat with her hand.

“It’s so creepy,” Hannah said. “Like Michael Myers creepy. And you know what, I used to like it, and then… I just started to analyze it too much.”

“Well, I think at the time it made sense because women weren’t supposed to seem too eager to have sex with a man,” Nora replied, clicking through a few other songs that Bryce didn’t recognize. “But in today’s day and age, despite the fact that we still love to label women ‘easy’ if they actually show any interest in sex… it still comes off creepy.” She paused and chose another song. “Bryce, do you remember this song? You used to love this when you were little.”

The speaker began with the ping of a piano and then a voice singing, “I believe in miracles and I can tell you why…”

“Yes, I do,” Bryce exclaimed, probably a little more excited than he should have been, and jumped up.

“Oh, I know this song,” Skye chimed, jumping up too before looking around a little nervously.

“Dance?” Bryce offered, extending his hand, and Skye accepted it and they began to sway in tune to the music.

“All hung with lights for Christmas,
Twinkling ev'rywhere,
The world turns bright for Christmas,
And if that isn't a true blue miracle,
I don't know what one is…”

Hannah stood up and offered her own hand to Justin. Monty offered his to Estela and Nora, stepping forward, smiled and offered her hand to Caitlin.

Bryce let his eyes twinkle too, looking at the lights on the tree and how they flickered and blinked. How everything felt peaceful, for once, even though he knew it wouldn’t last. If he was going to fight to be the person he should have been all along, it couldn’t last.

“But the greatest wonder of them all,
Is not what's happening around you, it's the way,
You start to be,
Yes the greatest wonder of them all is how your,
Heart is filled with love,
You start to light up like a Christmas tree…”

His hands felt nice in Skye’s, and he attempted to swing her around like he had seen in the movies but only succeeded in getting them tangled in each other’s arms.

Skye burst into laughter and slowly shifted, putting her hands on Bryce’s hips.

“I think it’s like this.”

Bryce, as Skye spun him with a little flourish, caught a glimpse of Justin and Hannah out of the corner of his eye.

Justin was snapping a picture, and Bryce could just about hear him saying to Hannah, “Now, that is a true blue miracle right there.”

***

Hannah went home after her parents texted her that she was off work. Caitlin went back to her mom’s, and Monty and Estela departed to go roller-skating somewhere, according to Estela (Monty claimed it was a football game in the park). Justin had staggered upstairs after apparently eating one too many slices of pecan pie.

This left Skye and Bryce, who was helping himself to the wine and humming “True Blue Miracle” all over again.

“Listen, I’m about to go,” Skye began, “But…” She pulled out a chair, moved it as close to Bryce as possible, and then sat in it. His head jerked up at her tone, sobering quickly. “The reason I came here today was sort of to check you out. Not like that,” she added quickly, then lowered her voice. “I heard you’re trying to take down Mark Perry.”

Bryce leaned in, eyes a little wider.

“And I know at least one person who would like to talk to you.”

Chapter Text

They met at the pool-house, with Skye leading two girls who Bryce didn’t recognize, at least not at first. As he looked them over, he recognized one as a girl in his grade named Nina Jones, who he had seen hanging out with Jess at some point, but the other still remained a mystery.

She was a tall Latina who was looking Bryce up and down with suspicion.

“Bryce, this is Nina, and this is Stephanie.”

“Listen,” Nina started, “I don’t want anything that I say to leave this room. Nothing came from me. And I only came here because Stephanie did. I didn’t want her to have to come alone.”

“I promise. It won’t leave this room,” Bryce agreed. “So what can you tell me about Mark Perry?”

Nina gave a slow, steady breath, and then she began to speak. Bryce didn’t say a word, but while she spoke and not while Stephanie spoke next. There was nothing to say. They were stories he knew, stories he could predict, because the clubhouse hadn’t changed much and was destined not to change much either.
He wondered if these were the same stories girls had had to tell to themselves, had to keep inside, since Coach Rick had started the clubhouse back when he was in school.

How many girls with the same story as Hannah on tape 12, how many slowly fading away?

Bryce listened, and when Nina and Stephanie looked at him with a gaze that clearly said “well, what do you want from us now?”, he found that he didn’t really know.

“We have to do something to stop this,” he said. “The clubhouse has to go. Mark has to go.” Coach Rick had to go, too, but that might be a task for another day, and that would be something that would be up to him.

Nina let out a hollow chuckle.

“It must be nice to be you, Bryce. You think you can snap your fingers and things will always go your way. It isn’t like that for everyone.”

“Then that’s why it should be me,” Bryce replied. “It should be me fighting for this. Magic touch.”

“Yeah, until you’re seen with the likes of us,” Stephanie said with a snort. “I don’t think even you can go up against Mark and Coach Rick. They’ll turn on you so fast that it’ll make your head spin.”

“If you think that… then what made you come here in the first place?” Bryce asked. If it was a losing cause, then why had they come here? Why had Jess gone to the police in that other time, put herself through the wringer to watch Bryce skate off with probation? Why had Tyler told Bryce what Monty had done to him? Why even try at all?

“Because I can either stay silent, or speak up,” Stephanie replied, “And I stayed silent for a while. A long time. And this might blow up in my face but… Maybe it’s better to try. But you have to be willing to go down with the ship, Bryce. If this is just some trick to look good on your college applications, I will literally stab you in the neck.”

“It’s genuine,” Bryce replied. “I can’t explain why… It’s a long story. But trust me. This is something I need to do. And whatever happens to you, to either of you, from now on, happens to me.” He extended his hand, and Stephanie put her own on top. Nina joined, reluctantly.

“Here we go,” she mused, “One more into the breach.”

***

Bryce dreamt of the pier all over again, dreamt of water and the way his blood had felt when the cold had hit it. When he burst out of his nightmare, he found Justin looking at his phone with a worried look on his face.

“What’s up?” Bryce asked, rubbing his eyes and trying desperately not to look as disoriented as he felt.

“My mom needs me to come back to the house today. She’s worried.”

“About what?” Bryce inquired.

“About Skip.”

Bryce blinked, then came to the conclusion that Skip must have been the precursor to Seth. If Seth was the improvement, that didn’t bode well.

“And what does she want you to do about it?”

“I don’t know, just stick around I guess. She wanted me to come by and get some stuff, keep it safe. Like my birth certificate and her social security card. Stuff like that.”

“I don’t know, Justin,” Bryce said, hesitating, “Shouldn’t she be doing this stuff herself? It sounds like it’s not really safe. For you.”

“I gotta do it, Bryce. It’s my mom.”

Bryce’s mind was firing at all cylinders. Something had to be wrong here. Something had to go wrong here.

“Then I’m coming with you.” He put his hand on Justin’s. “Whatever’s going on, we go together.”

***

At lunch, Bryce sat with Justin, Hannah, and Clay.

“I’m going to go out for Grease, I think,” Hannah declared.

“You are?” Clay asked. “That’s great! I mean, the drama kids all seem pretty all right, don’t they? I mean, as far as drama kids go. Who are you going out for?”

“I don’t know. Rizzo, I guess? I mean, Rizzo has all the best songs. Might as well go for the gold. I just hope I can actually carry a tune under pressure and I don’t just get up there and squawk.”

“I would definitely squawk,” Clay agreed. Hannah peeked over at the other two boys.

“Bryce? Justin? You guys haven’t said a word.”

“We’re fine,” Justin said quietly.

“Fine,” Bryce agreed. “This is fine.”

***

“Bryce, just, you don’t need to come in,” Justin stammered when they pulled up in front of the house.

“Justin, I’m not gonna pick on you for having a small house. I’ve been to your house before. The oven doesn’t work, the toilet clogs and anything you pour through the sink goes straight through. I learned all that when we were what, ten?”

“First of all, that was the other house, the one on Westmont. Second, I don’t mean the house. I mean…” Justin gestured to the driveway, indicating a Ford Escape that was parked there.

“If you’re going in, I’m going in.”

Bryce had handled Seth before, after all. What was he to be afraid of in some dude named Skip of all things?

“I don’t want to have to go past him to get in, though,” Justin pointed out.

“So we sneak in. The bedroom window, or how about the basement?” Bryce started off for the side of Justin’s house before he might have to explain where he had gotten so good at breaking into houses. “Look,” Bryce pointed out, “We can make it on to this lower, little roof and then, boom, jimmy your window open, and then we’re in.”

***

It took several tries, as well as Bryce deciding to “stop skipping leg day”, but they made it on to the dormer roof and into Justin’s room.

“All right. Get whatever you need, man. And then, whoof, we gotta get home because I am worn out,” Bryce said, moving backwards to plop down right on Justin’s bed. Justin moved to start gathering up a few things, before cocking his head to the side.

“I should check on her.”

“Well, make it quick,” Bryce replied, “If this guy’s there and he’s a problem, just tell her we can get her a hotel or something. Just don’t get into a…”
What followed next was an earsplitting crack. Bryce wasn’t entirely sure what had made the sound, but his ears rattled so hard that he was sure he had heard a gun go off, or the loudest car backfire.

He exchanged looks with Justin.

“Let’s go,” Bryce started, but he was quickly cut off.

“That little shit is here! I hear him!”

The sound of another crack, then a thud.

More screaming: “Come here, you little piece of shit! Get down here! Sneak in here like a little fuckin’ thief, like you’re too good…”

“He’s not here.” That was a lighter voice, a woman’s voice. “C’mon, Skip. Come back to bed. Justin ain’t here. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Bryce swallowed. He had gone up against Seth, sure, but he had had the virtue of a semi-public place and, ironically, his reputation for violence to protect him there. He wondered if he could get back out the window with Justin in tow before they were noticed.
Justin, meanwhile, hit the floor on his belly and slid under the bed. Bryce, after looking around to try to find a better idea, was driven to join him when he heard another thud and another yell.

Bryce found himself behind Justin, eyes wide, listening to Justin’s heavy breathing.

“You little shit! Come out! You can’t come crawling back here! No one wants you! Come out!”

Bryce’s hand moved to touch Justin’s arm, and he tried to slide past him to put himself between Justin and the unknown, but the space between the bed and the floor was far too narrow.

They waited.

Bryce wasn’t sure how long it was before the banging, yelling, and stomping died down.

Justin slid out from under the bed, brushed himself off without looking at Bryce, and led him down the steps.

Amber Foley was lying on the couch, eyes half shut.

“What’d you need me to come get, Mom?” Justin asked her.

“What? Ah, nothin’. I don’t know why you came back at all. You know it gets Skip hot under the collar.” She yawned and blinked. “Oh, hi, Bryce. Didn’t see you there.” She rolled over and went back to sleep.

They went out the front door, back to Bryce’s Range Rover, and didn’t say anything at all.

Chapter Text

In the beginning of February, baseball started back again, which unfortunately placed Bryce across from a smirking, glaring Mark Perry three afternoons a week.

It occurred to Bryce that this must have been what everyone on the team felt about him after the tapes, and he tried to make it a point to stop shooting Zach nasty glances at practice. After all, he was already shooting nasty glances at Mark, and trying to do too many at once made Bryce look kind of cross-eyed instead of menacing.

He still hadn’t been able to break into the clubhouse, or even find another time to do it, nor had he figured out what to do with the information Stephanie and Nina had given him. He figured that unless they wanted to go forward – and Nina, apparently, definitely didn’t – he shouldn’t say anything until he had the cold, hard proof of the Polaroids, or at least something that couldn’t be disputed by Mark’s version of Warren.

He should probably get Warren on the case, too.

More immediately, however, the event of the next tape was coming up. Marcus’ tape.

And Bryce had a plan.

***

“Sheri, have I ever told you that you are super, super beautiful?”

“What do you want, Bryce?” Sheri leaned forward and gave him a death glare.

“I need your help. This is my survey for Oh My Dollar Valentines,” Bryce replied. “I need you to put Hannah Baker as my top pick.”
Sheri rolled her eyes.

“The science of Oh My Dollar Valentines is very… scientific, Bryce. And anyway,” she reached out and began to input Bryce’s responses. “It matches you with Chloe Rice and – whoo hoo hoo – me.”

“It’s not like that, Sheri. I kind of owe Hannah and so I want to take her out somewhere nice. And I need an excuse. We’re just friends.”

Sheri cocked her head to the side.

“You want to ruin my matchmaking. Marcus already said he was going to ask Hannah out. It’s going to be super cute.”

“Marcus is an ass.”

“So are you.”

“You went with me to Homecoming,” Bryce reminded her.

“Yeah, cause you have nice cheeks. Not… the ones that got you on that list.” Sheri looked at him and then sighed. “It’s science, Bryce. You can’t mess with science.” Bryce shot her the best puppy-dog look he could muster, and Sheri sighed. “Only because I heard through the grapevine that you have been really nice to Tyler Down recently.” She pressed a few buttons and then printed out a slip of paper, handing it to Bryce. “Number one match, Hannah Baker. As requested. What’s that phrase, ‘the heart wants what the heart wants?’”

“Thank you, Sheri. I mean it.”

Sheri smirked.

“The ironic thing is, Hannah matched with you first.”

Bryce blinked.

“Me? Not Clay Jensen?”

“Well, I overheard Clay and Jeff doing their surveys, and Clay did his as Holden Caulfield.”

“Who?”

“The guy from Catcher in the Rye. We read it last year. Don’t you jocks ever write your own papers?”

Oh, yeah. Chloe had written that one for him in freshman year. In Bryce’s defense, it had actually been like five years before.

Bryce wondered if part of redemption was going to be having to write his own papers. He would have to start doing the reading this time around in English.

“I’m taking that as a no,” Sheri said, then narrowed her eyes. “Also, if you’re not into Hannah, and you ignored the fact that you matched with Chloe, who’s gorgeous. Not to mention me – I’m nothing to sneeze at – then who are you into, Bryce Walker? Because you seem different. You’re definitely into somebody.”

Bryce smirked.

“Your algorithm isn’t set up to match us, yet. Maybe next year.” He ran his finger over the slip of paper. “Thank you, Sheri.”

“Anytime.”

***

When Bryce saw Hannah in the hallway next, he hurried to catch up.

“Hey, Hannah.”

“Hello, Bryce. What’s gotten you so out of breath?” she asked, chuckling.

“Did you do that Dollar Valentine?”

“I did…” Hannah shifted the books she was holding in her hands. “Good cause, right? Cheer Camp. It’s like, right next to the American Heart Association.”

Bryce laughed.

“So, guess what. You’re my number one pick. I was, uh, so did you want to go somewhere? For Valentine’s Day? I mean…”

Hannah smiled, then blushed a little.

“I mean… Go where? Like… go out, or go to Hell?”

Bryce laughed a little more nervously. He considered that his previous iteration had had much less trouble hitting on girls.

“As exciting as going to Hell sounds, I was thinking… well, we could go to Lakewood Park?”

He wasn’t sure where the idea came from. He hadn’t been to Lakewood Park since his parents had taken him and Justin when they were ten. Why hadn’t he gone back?

Oh, wait, now he remembered.

But the suggestion was already out there, and Hannah’s joy seemed to be brimming over already.

“Lakewood Park? Oh my God… That would be great. I’ve never been – it wasn’t that close to my old house. I heard it’s great. I’m so in. When do we leave?”

“I’ll pick you up at like… nine on Saturday, so we can get there by ten?”

“That’d be great.”

She ran up and gave Bryce a hug, then clapped her hands a little.

“Lakewood Park!”

***

“Since when are you dating Hannah?” Justin asked, lying on Bryce’s bed and watching as Bryce opened his closet and went through his closet, pulling out several different polo shirts and trying them against the khaki pants he had decided on.

“We’re not dating, we’re just… going on a date. It’s for Dollar Valentines. I want to give her a nice day.”

“At Lakewood Park?” Justin asked, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you weren’t a fan of that place.”

“Well, Hannah is.”

“You must really like her.”

“As a friend. We’re just friends.” Bryce selected a blue polo shirt and pulled it on.

“Wasn’t it kind of a… thing the last time you went there?”

Bryce cocked his head to the side.

“I’m supposed to be the douche, Justin. Not you.” He cocked his head to the side. “Cold, bro. Cold.”

***

At nine-thirty, a stretch limousine pulled up in front of the Walker household. When Bryce pulled the door open, he found Hannah sitting in the back.

“Bryce, you didn’t tell me you were sending a limo? This is nuts.”

“Do you like it?”

“I mean, yeah, I like it. But jeez… Sonny Warbucks. Damn.”

Bryce laughed.

“I’ve been upgraded from Richie Rich?”

“I suppose. I heard Tyler called you Montana Max, which I’m jealous I didn’t think of first.”

“Nothing wrong with the good life, Hannah,” Bryce replied. He picked up a bottle of champagne. “Champagne?”

“Maybe on the way back. I’m going to be getting on some roller coasters, after all.”

Bryce turned his head, going more than a little pale.

***

The limo dropped them off at Lakewood Park and the driver, Marco, stated he would be back to pick them up around six.

“So, what do you want to get on?” Hannah asked excitedly. “I need some mini donuts at some point, and I want to get on that big coaster up there. Do you like roller coasters?”

Bryce was sure he choked on his own air.

“I love them,” he stated.

“Well, then, let’s start with the teacups, and then… that line doesn’t look too bad. We should get some cotton candy and funnel cake, too.” Hannah looked up at him. “Am I talking too much?”

“No,” Bryce said, “No, not at all.”

***

Three rides on the teacups, a bucket of mini donuts, and a “Guess Your Age” attendant guessing that Bryce was thirty-four later, they made their way towards “that big coaster” at the entrance to the park. It was known as Domination, which Bryce would normally be cracking a dirty joke about.

But Bryce was not laughing now. As they stood in line, he tried to come up with a hundred ways to get out of the line and still save face.

And then they climbed into the car and the lap bar went down, and Bryce’s knuckles clung to the bar for dear life. He could actually feel tears in his eyes.

“Bryce? You okay?” Hannah asked.

“…Uh, yeah. I’m good,” he said, as the click-click-click-click of the track brought them up to the highest point.

“Just relax,” Hannah told him, and Bryce didn’t have time to reply before he was heading downward so fast he couldn’t catch his breath.

***

By the end of the day, Hannah had brought Bryce on the hanging coaster, the looping coaster, the corkscrew coaster, and something that took people and spun them upside down while also going around in a circle.

He had to admit, however, it was a pretty good day, especially when they went on the Musik Express and Hannah bumped into him, crushing him against the side of the car. The way she tipped back her head when she smiled, the light in her eyes. He could see why Clay Jensen had been willing to do whatever it took for her. Maybe now, he would get the chance.

On the way back, they did break into the champagne, and Hannah said, “So, fess up. You don’t actually love roller coasters, do you? You were white knuckling it so hard.”

“Well, I did actually have fun. But… uh, the last time I was at the park I tried to go on – well it wasn’t Domination then, it was that other one, Steel Air, well I went on it with Justin and…” Bryce took another sip of champagne. “We got to the very top and then… I got so scared that I peed.”

Hannah’s jaw dropped.

Then Bryce finished, “…on Justin.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“People started screaming and they had to take the train back down and take us off. Marissa had to buy us a bunch of Lakewood Park clothes to change into. It was…”
Hannah dragged her hand down over her face.

“That’s pretty bad. I can’t say I ever did that, but I went on the Round Up with Lindsay back in my old town and threw up on my phone. Then had to retrieve it from where it had attached itself to the side of the ride. Then Lindsay called me Hannah Montana for a week – something about how Hannah Montana made her want to throw up.”

Bryce laughed.

“That’s harsh. And she was your friend?”

“I kind of ran with mean girls in middle school,” Hannah told him. “Never again.”

“Never again,” Bryce echoed. There was a pause as the limo pulled up to Hannah’s house.

“Thank you for today,” she said, opening the door. “And for not peeing on me.” She leaned in and pressed a kiss to Bryce’s cheek. “Dollar well spent.”

Chapter Text

Bryce looked up at the list, crossing off Marcus’ tape from the list. Next up would be Zach’s attempt to ask Hannah out, her rejection of him, and his subsequent stealing of her compliments. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t as bad as what Bryce had done for sure, but it did seem more than a little petty.

Then again, he might be still harboring a bit of a grudge against Zach, if he were being honest. He had been avoiding him at school for most of the year, as every time he saw his face he would hear the sound of bones cracking, his own voice pleading “please stop” and Zach continuing to pummel him. Served him right, probably, but that didn’t make seeming him any easier.

He tried not to remember the way he had strode up to Jess the day after her party with a smile on his face, a wave and his usual pleasant demeanor. It had been a different person, then, maybe, a robot, someone sleeping who did not awaken for a very long time.

But Jess’ party, 2.0, would be coming along soon enough.

Now, it was time to deal with Zach.

***

Bryce didn’t take Communications class, though if he had had enough time to actually choose his classes this time around, he might have done so to make this part easier. He wasn’t sure, though, if he even knew he would make it this far. So far, with the exception of the fallout of the photo, nothing had happened. As far as he knew, at least – he had tried to keep Tyler busy with a sundry list of school events and Courtney and Hannah seemed friendly but not overly close, as far as he had seen.

Bryce wasn’t in Communications class, but Justin and Sheri were.

Both of whom, apparently, were good for a “no questions asked” request from Bryce.

Not that he had time to start putting it into motion, however, before the shit started to hit the fan.

***

Bryce started out at lunch sitting next to Justin, as always, with Zach across from them, Jeff Atkins on Justin’s other side, Monty somewhere down the end and a few other jocks scattered around that table and the other nearby. Thankfully, Mark and the other seniors were nowhere to be found.

Hannah was sitting alone at her table, reading what Bryce had found on a very obvious walk-by to be Perks of Being a Wallflower. Bryce wondered where Clay was. She What about Jess and Alex Standall? Maybe there were variables he hadn’t accounted for. He was just about to walk over and sit by her – and was weighing out the possible negative ramifications of doing so if Justin didn’t follow him – when Zach abruptly stood up from the table and said, “Hey guys. Watch this.”

“Are you going to try my spoon trick?” Bryce inquired. “It only works with metal silverware. Not this plastic crap.”

Zach ignored him and walked over to Hannah’s table. Bryce craned forward, feeling slightly out of breath, starting to remember the way Zach had asked Hannah out before… but that had been after Marcus. He had talked to her after that disaster of a “date”. What the hell was he doing now? It was all wrong.

“Hey,” he said to Hannah, and Hannah looked up.

“Hey,” she echoed.

“What are you reading?”

“A book.”

There was a long pause.

“So, hey,” Zach said, “Marcus said he was trying to call you to set up a date for Dollar Valentine. He said you didn’t answer. Uh, I was kinda hoping you would be on my list.”

Hannah looked at him but didn’t say anything. Courtney Crimsen took that moment to walk over to a vantage point close to Bryce, presumably to catch a glimpse of whatever drama was about to unfold.

“Listen, I think you are, like, smoking hot. And… well, if you weren’t answering the phone to Marcus on V-Day, what were you up to anyway?”

“Oh, um, me and Bryce went to Lakewood Park.”

Zach’s face changed, then, in a way Bryce never would have noticed before. A coldness came into his eyes. Bryce had seen that look exactly once before.

“Oh, I get it. Bryce, huh?”

Hannah opened her mouth, but Zach didn’t let her finish.

“I should have known. I guess that stuff people were saying about you before was all true.”

“Hey, what the hell?” Hannah snapped. “You want to retroactively tell me what I should have done for Valentine’s Day?”

“Apparently not, since you wanna be another notch on Bryce’s bedpost. If people start talking about you again, you did it to yourself this time.”

Hannah glared back at him, and he turned and walked away, starting back to the jock table and then glaring at Bryce, who opened his mouth but didn’t get anything out before Zach marched off again.

“Talk about a Nice Guy complex,” Courtney mumbled, seemingly to Jeff, before walking away.

Hannah got up too, and ran. Bryce was left wondering if he should follow or whether it would do more harm than good.

***

He didn’t follow, not yet, but he did come up with a plan.

“Justin,” he said as soon as they met up after practice, “I’m going to need some help tonight. Make sure your wrist is ready.”

Justin’s eyes went wide, and Bryce choked on some air.

“Uh, because we’re going to be writing things. I should have led with that.”

“Writing what?”

“Wait and see, young Padawan.”

“What does that even mean?” Justin asked. Bryce shrugged.

***

Bryce was going to need someone else. Someone who wasn’t in the class. Someone whose handwriting wouldn’t be recognized. Because he was going to need to not only make sure Hannah got some compliments, but he was going to need to find a way to distract Zach just the same.

He couldn’t ask Hannah for obvious reasons, and Sheri and Skye were both in the same class.

He was walking through the hall when he found himself face to face with a set of posters, declaring different issues: Global Warming. Is Technology Killing Us? Are Aliens Real?

And, lastly, written in perfect, calligraphy-like script: The Importance of Service Animals. By Jessica Davis.

***

“Jess.”

“What do you want, Bryce?” Jess inquired, turning her head and putting her hands on her hips.

“Why does no one ever say like, ‘hi, Bryce’, ‘how’s it going, Bryce’…”

“What do you want, Bryce?”

“How would you like to do a good deed?” Bryce inquired.

“Does this involve you taking your clothes off?”

“No.”

“Does it involve me taking my clothes off?”

“Also no.” Jessica sighed.

“Okay… Tell me more,” she said finally.

***

Bryce, Justin, and Jess sprawled out in the poolhouse, each with a stack of Post-It notes in front of them.

“So you want me to set up Zach and who?” Jess asked, shaking her hand with the rollerball pen between her fingers.

“Chloe. He’s very into her. I’m like 100% sure.”

“Okay,” Jess said. “Let me get to work.”

“Who else is in this class, anyway, Justin?”

“Uh, Hannah of course. Skye. Sheri. Zach… A guy named Pratters. Oh, and some girl everyone calls Fatty Martin,” Justin said.

“That is so not her real name, Justin. Rude.”

“What is her real name?” Bryce inquired.

Jessica looked up from what she was writing to say, “Patty. Martin. Patty Martin,” before rolling her eyes.

By the end of the night, they each passed their notes towards Justin. Bryce grabbed one of Jessica’s and flipped it open.

“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? - It is the east, and Chloe is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon…” Bryce looked at her. “Ooh, did you write this?”

“It’s Shakespeare, dumbass,” Jess shot back. She picked up one of Justin’s notes and stated, “Your spelling sucks, Foley.” Then she reached over to Bryce’s pile. “Let me look at yours.” She reached out and grabbed one of the notes meant for Patty. “Okay, so, ‘I am very sad that you have been fat shamed by people. I was also picked on due to my weight and called ‘quarter pounder with cheese’’.” She looked at Bryce. “Someone called you that?”

“Some Hillcrest kid at camp,” Bryce supplied.

“And then it continues, ‘But then, I realized I am insanely good looking and that they are just jealous. And I hope you realize the same of yourself. Though no one is as insanely good looking as me.’ Are you the vainest person alive, Walker?”

“How do you even know she’s hot?” Justin inquired. Bryce shrugged.

“Took a guess.”

Jess and Justin sighed.

“Why do I hang out with the two of you?” Jess inquired, and they both shrugged.

***

The next morning, Bryce and Justin came into school as early as possible. Bryce hung by the door as Justin popped each of the notes into each of the bags before slapping a piece of tape across Hannah’s bag to make it harder for someone else to stick their hand in there unnoticed.

“Hey, there’s one more I’m gonna slip in, give me a second,” Bryce said, and waited for Justin to walk back over to his locker.

There were really two more.

On a note for Hannah, Bryce scrawled: You’re a beautiful person.

Then he hesitated, picked up another piece of paper, and wrote, Justin, you’re vital to me. I’d be nothing without you.

He slipped the notes into the bags, turned, and rushed away as quickly as he could.

Chapter Text

Bryce drove to Eisenhower Park. He left the Range Rover in the parking lot and walked over, finding Hannah sitting on the bottom of the rocket slide.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Hannah inquired.

“Hazarded a guess,” Bryce replied. “We haven’t really talked since Zach’s… uh…”

“Outburst? Pinning a letter ‘A’ to my chest?” Hannah inquired.

“Only because you were out with me, apparently,” Bryce replied. How ironic, that Bryce was the one who had ended up with the – at least at this point in time – unfounded reputation.

Hannah chuckled.

“Well, my news is more fitting than I had planned, with our new reputations. I’m Rizzo now, apparently. In Grease. I was cast as a random Pink Lady in the last song, but now the girl who was supposed to play Sandy got mono and doesn’t seem like she’ll be better by the show next month, so Lina Achoa is Sandy now. And Lina was Rizzo so… apparently the director felt like my audition was good or something so boom, now I’m Rizzo.” Hannah shrugged. “Which is terrifying. Because yeah, I could be like ‘tell me more, tell me more’ with six other people, but Rizzo is pretty major.” Hannah rose from the slide and walked to the swings, plopping into one of them. Bryce followed, sitting beside her.

“I think you’ll do great,” Bryce said.

“Will you come to the show?” she asked. “It’s the 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 25th.”

“You know I will,” he replied. “I have a baseball game on the 25th, but I should be able to hit one of the other ones.” He swung his legs, letting the swing lift him off the ground. “I saw the movie a few times when I was little. I remember my mom being annoyed that Sandy had to change herself for a guy.”

“I mean, it’s a good point,” Hannah said, swinging as well. “We should’ve done Hairspray. Tracey didn’t change for anybody – the world changed for her.” She looked over at him. “Oh, and I’m going to some poetry thing on Friday at the library. You wanna come with? Clay is mounting refusal because he only wants to bring his robot fanfiction and apparently that doesn’t fit the parameters.”

***

Bryce had never been anywhere as quiet as the Evergreen Library Poetry Club. Everyone was sitting in a circle, looking at one another in some sort of expectation, though what that expectation was of, he wasn’t sure.

When Ryan Shaver caught Bryce’s eye, he let out an audible snort.

“It looks,” Ryan said, “Like we have a few… newcomers to our group. Hannah, welcome. And I’m not sure I’m… acquainted with you?”

Bryce raised his hand and waved at everyone.

“Bryce. Walker. Nice to meet you all.”

He awkwardly took a seat, feeling unsteady on his feet.

“Does anyone have anything they’d like to share with the group?” inquired the librarian who seemed to be actually running things, despite Ryan’s attempts to take over.

Hannah got up to the podium and shared a poem – not the poem she had mentioned on her tape, but a different one. Bryce noticed that despite the lack of the clear despair and cry for help of the other poem, there was still a sadness there. A grappling.

It was only fair that Bryce should go next, then.

He walked to the podium and opened the folded piece of paper, wondering if he would find himself at a loss for words.

And then he read:
“I walk along the pier,
Wondering if this is the day.
The time.
The moment.
In the river, the mirror is unbroken.
And the mirror shows your face,
Not my own.
I don’t know if I will find the pieces, or when
But the time is tick-ticking in my mind.
Every moment a piece, the puzzle, the river, the pier.
The cold.”

As soon as he read it, he hated it – the feeling of revealing way too much to people who don’t care, who don’t want to know and would use it to poke holes in Bryce’s perfect calm.

He was surprised to hear the group applauding, and even more surprised to see a look in Hannah’s eyes that he couldn’t quite read: was it pride, or was it worry?

***

Bryce went to see Hannah in Grease on opening night. He found himself sitting a few empty seats over from Clay, who was craned forward and watching her every move. When she sang “There Are Worse Things I Could Do”, Bryce was sure that he saw Clay wipe a tear away from his face.

If he was being honest with himself, he was wiping away one too.

***

The day before closing night of the show, Bryce and Justin stood in the baseball diamond, Bryce pitching as Justin, despite baseball not being his preferred game, hacked at it with the bat.

Bryce heard the sound of footsteps on the grass and turned to see Hannah, out of breath and carrying her bookbag.

“Hey, I’m so glad you’re here, Bryce. Hey, Justin.”

Justin gave a little wave.

“Uh, so, Bryce. Here’s the thing. So the guy who was supposed to play Doody – one of Danny’s friends, right? He got himself in trouble cause he didn’t come to school today, and the rules are you don’t come in, you aren’t in it. So, um, they’re gonna let him go on tonight since it’s in like two hours but tomorrow they need somebody to play Doody, and um, I might have said you could do it.”

Bryce, who was in the middle of pitching to Justin, turned and stared at Hannah with a wide-eyed stare. Justin missed hitting the pitch, instead looking at Bryce, and the ball rolled out of view down the grass.

“I mean, but, uh, singing? Like he sings a whole song? And… um… I have a baseball game that night and…”

“Don’t you have, like, a backup?” Hannah asked. “I think you’d be great. Listen, most of his lines are just ‘hey, Danny’ anyway, and…”

“What are you guys talking about?” asked a voice. They turned to see Jessica walking over, having picked up the ball and rolling it in her hands.

“Grease,” Hannah replied.

“Ooh, I love that show,” Jessica said, then stepped one foot to the side and playfully tossed a pitch at Justin, one that went whizzing by his head.

Bryce and Hannah exchanged looks.

“So, what do I need to do again?” Bryce asked.

Chapter Text

It was early morning, before school started, on the day of closing night. Bryce lifted the catcher’s mitt, attempting to intercept each of Jess’ pitches as she lobbed them across the diamond.

While doing so, he attempted to sing the chorus of “Summer Nights”.

Jessica and Justin, who were having more fun with the whole thing than Bryce felt they really should have, had taken over the roles of Sandy and Danny, while Hannah attempted to fill in for the entirety of the Pink Ladies.

“All right,” Hannah said after the song had finished, “Then we have your big song ‘Those Magic Changes’, you memorized it, right?”

“I did,” Bryce said, a bit uncertainly.

“Then you’re just in the chorus on ‘Greased Lightning’, uh, chorus in ‘We Go Together’… Then ‘Hand Jive’ is the big dance number, you’re gonna dance with Frenchy, uh just look for Sarah Stern, that’s who’s playing her. Then… uh… Danny’s song you just do some background on, and then you do ‘Rock n’ Roll Party Queen’ and then we finish that shit out with ‘All Choked Up’ and ‘We Go Together’. Did you look over your lines?”

“Yes,” Bryce managed to choke out.

“And with the dancing, worse comes to worse, just do whatever Robby Corman does.”

***

Bryce, upon showing up backstage, did manage to locate Sarah Stern, who was getting put in a fancy pink wig for Frenchy, as well as Robby Corman, who was going to be playing Roger and singing “Rock n’ Roll Party Queen” with him, if Bryce didn’t pass out or fall off the stage first. At least he, Hannah, and Justin had managed to catch Jess up to speed on the clubhouse situation, though Coach Rick had been furious when Bryce had put Jessica forward as his replacement due to his “family emergency”.

More surprisingly, as Bryce attempted to figure out exactly how to apply foundation to his face without getting it streaked all over his fingers, he saw Alex Standall walk into the dressing room.

“Hey,” Alex called. “I heard you’re standing in for Doody.”

Bryce hadn’t particularly recognized him in the black leather jacket and wig, but Alex explained that he was playing Kenickie and would be belting out “Greased Lightning” for the final time.

“They made me cut out ‘she’s a real pussy wagon’,” he complained, “But I might put it back in.”

“But they left in ‘did she put up a fight?’” came a call from Hannah, who stuck in her head and gave Bryce a wink. “You’re gonna knock ‘em dead. Oh, and ‘Marty’ wants to chat with you when you get a second.”

“Get out of here, Hannah,” Alex teased, “There’s naked boys in here.”

“Ooh, sexy,” Hannah said dryly. “Break a leg, everybody.”

***

When they all sat down in the library and listened to the director, Mr. Carlisle, encourage everyone, Bryce caught a look at who Hannah had meant by “Marty”. Marty, who was one of the Pink Ladies, was being played by none other than Stephanie Rodriguez.

Bryce slowly took a seat at the table she was sitting, and was quickly flanked by Hannah.

Mr. Carlisle said, as Bryce looked around again and felt a frog in his throat, “I’d like to welcome Bryce Walker to the cast. He has graciously agreed to play Doody for us tonight.”
Bryce did have to admit it was the first time he could remember being called “gracious” in his life.

When the cast was dismissed, Stephanie reached out and touched Bryce’s hand.

“It’s good to see you here. We should talk later when we get a chance about, you know, all that stuff…”

Bryce nodded.

“On it,” he said, “If I don’t pass out on stage first.”

***

The first fifteen minutes of the show went well. As Hannah had promised, most of Bryce’s lines consisted of something along the lines of “Hey, Danny” and he managed to deliver most of them on time. He managed to look vaguely like he knew what was going on during “Alma Mater Parody” and “Summer Nights”.

But then, it was time for Bryce’s, or Doody’s rather, big show – “Those Magic Changes”. He gripped his guitar in his hands so firmly that he was sure it would dig grooves into his hands.

“I just started taking lessons over the summer. I’m working on a G chord. I already know a C, an A minor and an F…” Bryce managed, slowly hitting the chords as they had been taught to him right before the show – at least, he hoped those were the right chords.

“Why don’t you play something for us, Elvis?” the guy playing Danny Zuko inquired.

Bryce sucked in a breath and introduced, “All right… Magic Changes, by Ronnie Dell…”

And then he began to sing.

***

At intermission, he went over his dance for “Hand Jive” with Sarah Stern, before finding Robby Corman and gesturing for him to come aside.

“So, uh, for our little song, what if we kind of did a dance together?” Bryce inquired. He moved to take Robby’s hand, and the boy flinched. There was something in his eye that reminded Bryce of Tyler. “Oh, sorry – I…”

“What if I took yours?” Robby asked a moment later, reaching out to take Bryce’s hand in his, slowly swinging him into an awkward but rather in-character dance. Bryce smiled.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

***

Bryce and Robby shuffled off stage after “Rock ‘n’ Roll Party Queen” to a cheering crowd, and Bryce hung by the wings and peeked through the curtains as Hannah began to sing.

He chewed his lip, blinked his eyes, and watched.

“Hey, Bryce, you okay?” Alex whispered.

“Yeah, uh, something in my eye,” Bryce whispered back. “She’s really good.”

“…But to cry in front of you… that’s the worst thing I could do…”

Alex looked at Hannah, then back at Bryce.

“She really is.”

***

Bryce, guitar in tow, stepped forward and took a bow before returning to his place beside Robby in the line.

He heard somebody yell in the audience, “Whoo! Yeah! Bryce!”

His head felt giddy, fuzzy, and perfect.

“Hey,” Hannah asked, as they stepped offstage. “You coming to this cast party?”

“Yeah, let me go see if…”

She was cut off as she was tackle-hugged by Clay.

It was then that the doors opened and Justin and Jessica, still dressed in a Liberty baseball uniform, walked through and up to the stage.

“Bryce, you were great!” Justin said, “I, uh, well, I caught the first act and then went to Jess’ game.”

“How’d it go?” Bryce asked.

Jess’ eyes lit up and she grinned.

“No-hitter!” she exclaimed.

“Shit, I put myself out of business,” Bryce mused. “We got Ginny Baker here.”

“Who?” Jess and Justin both echoed. Bryce brushed it off.

“You wanna come to this cast party? I mean, I think you guys can come. Or I’ll smuggle you in.”

***

Bryce sat at a table, around which the drama staff had decorated the entirety of the cafeteria for the cast party. There were opened boxes of pizza and cupcakes all around, and off to the side of the room was a karaoke machine at which people were requesting different songs.

“I’m sad that you didn’t do it,” Bryce said to Alex.

“Do what?”

“Say ‘pussy wagon’.”

“Well, when I’m a senior,” Alex said, “Then they can’t do anything to dock me in the next year.”

Hannah walked over at that moment and plopped down next to Bryce.

“You should sing a song with us,” she said. “What do you want to sing?”

“I don’t know… What do they have up there?”

Hannah bolted up and then came back.

“Oh my gosh, I know the best thing.” She cupped her hands and whispered in Bryce’s ear, and he laughed.

Then Bryce looked around.

“We will do that one… But also… Uh, do you know if Tyler is around here anywhere? I thought I saw him snapping pictures for the yearbook…”

“Do you think you can usher him over? I’m gonna go request a song…” As Bryce went up and selected his song, Jessica got up with Justin and Stephanie and were singing “Satisfied” from Hamilton.

When Hannah found Tyler, Bryce waved him over, handed him a microphone, and then nodded to one of the staff members.

They started up “Waving Through a Window”, and Tyler looked like he was about to cry as Bryce slung an arm around his shoulder.

Ten minutes later, Bryce, Justin, Hannah, a reluctant Clay and an event more reluctant Tyler walked back on to stage.

“It’s rainin’ men! Hallejuah, it’s rainin’ men! Amen!”

***

Bryce was flying high as he made his way back to the Range Rover, followed by Hannah, Clay and Justin.

Jessica was already standing in front of the car, leaning slightly on the hood.

“There’s one more thing,” Jessica said. “You’re right, Hannah – the code was 6-9-6-9. Our boys are predictable.” She reached into the pocket of the letter jacket and extended her hand. Between her fingers she held a Polaroid photograph.

Chapter Text

Bryce paced back and forth in the pool-house. He was standing in front of a group that consisted of Justin, Hannah, Clay, Stephanie and Jessica.

He felt like he was expected to make some sort of stirring speech. After all, now they had their evidence. Not only that, but they had found a way to get into the clubhouse itself. Now, all they needed to do was figure out what the hell to actually do with the information they had gathered.

Bryce looked at the others and began, “Let’s get down to business… to defeat… the Huns…”

Hannah looked at Stephanie.

“We don’t actually know him. He just showed up one day and never left.”

But Stephanie had jumped up from her chair and began singing, “Did they send me daughters… when I asked… for sons?”

Hannah looked back and forth between the two and shrugged.

“I mean,” she said, “It’s your case. If you want to spend five minutes singing Mulan, I suppose that’s your right.”

Five minutes later, Bryce started up again, “So we are going to compile everything we know about the clubhouse, and then… Stephanie, are you sure you’re ready?”

“I’m going to go to the cops,” she said firmly. “It’s time. I’m tired of watching him walk the halls like he’s King Shit.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait for Warren to get back?” Bryce asked. “He’s in Fiji on his honeymoon, but he should be back next week.”

“If I don’t go to the cops, I’m gonna probably wipe that smirk off his face, so I think I should go soon,” Stephanie said, “Plus, the longer I wait, the more people will do that ‘why did she wait’ crap. Might as well get it over with.”

“Well, with the Polaroid, we can prove that she was there,” Jess said, “And maybe this will inspire more girls to come forward. And who knows what they might have on him already? Perry is probably shady as shit. I think if we pull the thread, a lot of shit is going to come out.”

“It sounds like Coach Rick knows more than he’s telling, too,” Clay pointed out.

Bryce nodded.

“But we all need to come together on this and support Stephanie. Because… Stephanie is ‘A Girl Worth Fighting For…’”

“BRYCE!”

***

The day that Stephanie, flanked by Hannah and Jess, went in to tell Sheriff Diaz of what Mark Perry had done was two days before Spring Fling.

Bryce decided he would go in the day after Spring Fling to corroborate whatever he could based on what Coach Rick had said to him, possibly after touching base with Warren if he could get him on the line.

The day prior to Spring Fling, Stephanie approached Bryce in the hall.

“Hey, Bryce.”

“How did it go yesterday?”

“I mean… it went. That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, though.”

“Oh?” Bryce leaned in a little bit.

“The other day, uh, randomly breaking into songs from Mulan with you… That was the most normal I’ve felt in a very long time. So I was wondering if maybe… if you weren’t going with anybody else… if you might want to, uh, go to Spring Fling with me?”

Bryce smiled.

“I mean… Sure. Okay. I’ll… come get you at eight?”

“I’ll be there.”

***

Bryce’s limo, containing himself, Justin and Jess, and Clay and Hannah, pulled up to the little rowhouse where the Rodriguez family lived at exactly eight o’clock.

Bryce opened the door, hopped out, and made his way to the front door, ringing the bell.

It opened a moment later.

A tall, older woman stood there, looking at Bryce with a look of clear suspicion.

“Yes? Hello?”

“Hi. I’m… Bryce Walker. I’m here to pick up Stephanie for the dance?”

The woman opened the door a little further and let Bryce step in. The house was cozy – pictures on the bookcases, a throw rug in the middle of the living room floor, gray couches covered in pillows.

“Listen,” the woman said, “Before I bring my daughter down, let me tell you. My name is Aleida Rodriguez, and I know exactly who you are. And I don’t care how much money you have, Bryce – Bryce is a very silly name, isn’t it – I don’t care how much money you or your family has, Bryce. And I’m not sure why you have taken up for my daughter. I’m glad that you have. But if I find out you have some sort of hidden agenda with my little girl, you are going to be fed to lions at the zoo. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Crystal,” Bryce said.

Mrs. Rodriguez clapped her hands.

“Let me go get Stephanie. She’s been looking forward to this dance so much.”

She walked up the stairs and, a moment later, Stephanie walked down the steps in a blue dress, smiling uncertainly.

“Hello,” Bryce said.

“Lions,” Mrs. Rodriguez reminded him, and Stephanie shot her mom a warning look before stepping out the door. “Be home by midnight.”

Once the door shut behind them, they looked at each other nervously.

“You look, uh, ‘tranquil as a forest but on fire within’,” Bryce said.

When they climbed into the back of the limo, Stephanie was still giggling uncontrollably.

“What did you do, Bryce?” Jess asked, but by now Bryce was giggling too. “Ugh. Let’s go.”

***

Bryce and Stephanie managed to not fall over one another during either the first slow dance or, more impressively, “Cotton-Eyed Joe”.

It was when they had cleared the floor and Clay and Hannah were dancing to a song that was apparently called “The Night We Met” courtesy of Bryce’s Shazam app, that Stephanie walked over to speak to Jess about something.

Bryce was alone, long enough to reply to a text from Carly about how if Barry didn’t stop leaving his shoes at the bottom of the steps she was going to throw them at his head and, if she did, would Bryce write her a good letter of recommendation anyway.

That was when Bryce looked up and Coach Rick was standing right in front of him.

“Walker, let’s talk.”

***

They stood outside for a long while before either of them spoke.

“So, what did you want to talk with me about?” Bryce inquired.

“You’re hot for the Rodriguez girl, huh?” Rick replied, and Bryce blinked and didn’t reply. “You need to talk to your girl and get her to stop telling stories about my players. About your players. We’re a family, Walker. And if you wanna be a part of it, sometimes you gotta help out a little. Find out what the girl wants, to make this go away, and it’ll be better for both of you.”

Bryce tilted his head to the side and looked at Coach Rick with a glassy stare.

“Or what?”

“Or what? First things first, who is going to believe that girl against Mark Perry? She’s nobody. And you might think you’re untouchable because your last name is Walker, but your stock hasn’t always been so clean, if you catch my drift.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bryce asked, and Coach Rick let out a laugh that left Bryce a little uneasy.

“Aha. Well, I might’ve been a Liberty kid, but my brother was a smart one. He went to Hillcrest. And there’s some… shall we say… interesting things in the Hillcrest yearbook about your mother. So… Just a bit of friendly advice. You might want to tread lightly.”

With that, he tapped Bryce on the shoulder and walked away.

Chapter Text

Bryce mulled over Coach Rick’s words as he lay in bed. Hillcrest – why did it always come back to Hillcrest?

Despite having the Hillcrest letter jacket still sitting in his closet, Bryce didn’t have a way on to Hillcrest grounds to see whatever was in the yearbook or whether it was a bluff made up by Coach Rick to scare him off. As far as Bryce knew, both of his parents had always been exactly two things: rich and boring.

If he tried to get into Hillcrest, he would be turned away if he didn’t go there, unless he knew someone…

Suddenly, Bryce’s mind filled with the memory of being at a house, a Hillcrest party, watching Monty punch some kid…

What had his name been?

Winston Williams. That was it. Winston Williams went to Hillcrest. He had even stopped by Brannah Investigations once.
He would be Bryce’s in.

He remembered how Monty had whirled around and beat Winston for no reason. Well, for seemingly no reason. What had happened right before that? Winston had said something to Monty, something kind of friendly, something…

Bryce bolted up in his seat.

“Bryce?” Justin asked lazily. “You okay?”

Bryce leaned down and pressed a kiss to Justin’s lips, then asked, “Justin… did you ever think that maybe Monty might be gay?”

***

Montgomery de la Cruz looked like he wanted to murder Bryce. He was glaring at him up and down, letting out what was almost a hiss as he examined the polo shirt that Bryce had gotten him, and Justin too, to wear in order to infiltrate Hillcrest without detection.

“No one is going to believe that Justin and me belong at Hillcrest,” Monty complained.

“Speak for yourself,” Justin replied, “When I was eleven, Bryce’s dad brought me to Take Your Child to Work Day because he thought I was Bryce.”

Monty stared at him.

“True story. He only figured it out when Justin’s mom showed up cause the school called,” Bryce explained. “He had them all going the entire day.”

“Where were you?” Monty asked.

“Playing video games and eating Lunchables, man. Having the life. Anyway, Justin has proven he can play rich well, but let’s do a refresher. Both of you, repeat after me.”

“Okay,” Justin and Monty chimed.

Bryce picked up a yardstick and flipped over the whiteboard, even though he didn’t currently have anything written on that side.

“Phrase 1 – I am looking to invest my trust fund in up and coming ventures. Phrase 2- My father used to always go to the Lakeview Club. Phrase 3 – You simply must go to the South of Italy. With these three phrases, you will blend perfectly into Hillcrest.”

“What’s the Lakeview Club?” Justin asked.

“I have no idea,” Bryce replied.

***

When they arrived at Hillcrest, Bryce approached a boy who he remembered as Dean Holbrook, one of the kids who had given him shit at Hillcrest, and inquired as to where he could find Winston Williams and the library or yearbook office, in one or the other order.

“How come?” Dean asked, “And I’ve never seen you three before.”

“Well, you certainly would not,” Justin replied, “Our parents are deciding whether this school will be up to their standards. Might I introduce – Bryce Walker, of the Walker Coffee fortune, and this kind sir Señor Montgomery de la Cruz. His father is Ambassador to Spain and is considering many different institutions for his only son.”

“And who the hell are you?” Dean shot back.

“Justin Prescott Huntingdon Foley III, my good sir. My mother… Amethyst Caroline Foley is a renowned actress for the West End, and could not tour this institution herself as she is currently staring in the revival of Cats. I am quite sure you understand.”

Dean looked uncertainly, but said, “I saw Winston in the yearbook office, actually. He’s on, well, the yearbook. Just take a curve right there at Andover Hall and you’ll find it right away.”

They walked over, finding the yearbook office easily. As promised, Winston Williams was sitting at a computer, clicking through a number of different pictures.

“Excuse me?” Bryce called. Winston’s head whipped around, and he looked over the three in a stunned silence.

“Who are you guys?” Winston inquired.

“Bryce, Justin, Monty,” Bryce explained, pointing to each. “I was wondering if you would let us look at some old Hillcrest yearbooks.”

Winston stood up.

“Well, that depends on what you’re looking for. How far back are you looking? Do you know what year the person would have graduated?”

Bryce hesitated.

“Uh… the 70s maybe? I think 1977 or 1978 might have what we’re looking for.”

Winston stood up and ran his fingers over each volume of the yearbook, bringing down 1977 and 1978, and then 1976 for good measure, and spreading them across the table.

“What are we looking for?” Monty asked, flipping through several pages of the 1976 yearbook, “All I see is a bunch of guys wearing ties.”

“Look for the name Nora. Or Chatham,” Bryce said, flipping through 1977.

“Wait, we’re looking for your mom in here? But why would she have anything to do with Hillcrest? I mean,” Justin began, “Hillcrest is all dudes, right? Did it used to be coed?”

Bryce flipped over a page, running his finger over each glossy page.

“I got something,” Justin said, clumsily running his fingers over a page in the 1978 yearbook. “But… Like… Um… I don’t know.”

Bryce hesitated.

“What does it say?”

Justin hesitated too, then opted to hand the opened yearbook to Bryce.

Bryce looked down at the page. Underneath the smiling pictures of four boys on the same page were written:
Hat’s off to Never-Say-No Nora!
And to Nora – Cathouse – Chatham!
Nora only said no once and she didn’t hear the question!
Don’t go to a Whore-a, just call little Nora!

Bryce stared at it for a long time, so long that the other three boys craned in.

“It’s the kind of stuff that’s on the walls at Liberty,” Monty said.

“What, you expected Hillcrest to be different just because everybody’s rich?” Winston asked.

At some point, Monty and Winston walked out of the room. Only Bryce and Justin were left. Bryce rose from the spot and copied the page.

And then he stared off into space for a very long time.

***

“What are you going to do about that page?” Justin asked, finally, on their way home.

“I don’t know yet. And where did Monty go, anyway?” Bryce asked.

“I saw him and Winston playing some game in the field with some other guys. The one, you know, where that girl used the mallet to take off the guy’s head in that Genesis song.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I guess he’ll let us know if he needs a ride.” Bryce sighed and started the Range Rover.

***

Justin made himself scarce in Bryce’s room, while Bryce walked to his parents’ room and knocked on the door. He could count on one finger the number of times he had come here in his life – it had always felt out of reach, a forbidden place.

The door opened, and Nora poked her head out.

“Bryce? Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

“Could I talk to you?” Bryce asked. “Alone? Not with Dad?”

He shouldn’t have even asked. His father was still in bed sleeping, or on the phone, or doing whatever else.

“Sure. Let me get something on. Give me five minutes.”

***

Five minutes later, Nora Walker was looking over the photocopied page from Hillcrest’s yearbook.

“Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised,” she said.

“What happened?” Bryce asked.

Nora sighed.

“You know what happened, Bryce. Some version of what always happens. I was at Claremont Prep. I went to a Hillcrest party. I had a little bit to drink…” She paused, then said, “I told a teacher at Claremont and she told me I shouldn’t have been there. Called my father. He let me have it… Then it was all around school, both Claremont and Hillcrest. Then I was either a liar, a girl with a bad reputation, or both.” Nora shrugged. “Water under the bridge. I finished at Thacher in Ojai.” She looked down. “How did you even find this?”

Bryce explained, as quickly as he could, and then said, “Mom… What happened… It wasn’t your fault. But… if Coach Rick knows about this stuff, however he does… If he’s going to try to do something to hurt you… Maybe I can talk to Stephanie and we can figure out another way.”

Nora smiled.

“I don’t think there is another way, Bryce. If Stephanie wants to go after Coach Rick and his ilk… you go with her. And you burn it all down.”

Chapter Text

Bryce walked into the police station, sans Warren, the next day and told Sheriff Diaz and Deputy Standall everything that he knew.

He didn’t know what he expected – for them to immediately burst from the station and scoop up Mark Perry and Coach Rick both and cart them off to jail? He should have known it wouldn’t happen that way considering it hadn’t happened that way with him, even when it had happened in the end.

At the very least, hopefully Mark would get kicked out of Liberty, or politely asked to leave. Even that didn’t seem to be happening immediately, however.

He felt as if he tuned out as he told them everything that he knew. It was easy for him, he knew – after all, it really was a story that had happened to somebody else.

***

The next day, he came to school with his head held high. He was well on his way to fixing things, and most of it he could fix at Jess’ party, which wouldn’t even be until after the summer. He would be able to spend the summer lounging by the pool, sipping margaritas and showing Justin the good life. Maybe they would even go to the South of Italy.

And then, when he had stopped at his locker, he heard footsteps coming up behind him.

He turned to find Stephanie and Nina both standing there, looking at him.

“Can you please tell me, Bryce, why I have this in my locker when I didn’t even make a report?” Nina asked, thrusting a Polaroid picture into his hand. It was a shot of Nina at track practice, running. Bryce flipped it over to see written on the back Better Run Faster.

Stephanie reached forward and handed Bryce a Polaroid as well, this one showing Stephanie walking home.

You aren’t that hard to find, this one said on the back.

“Jesus Christ,” Bryce said. “Listen, both of you hitch a ride with me today, to be safe. And we better show these to somebody. I’m going to see you at lunch. I won’t let anything happen to either of you.”

Nina snorted.

“If only we could believe that.”

She and Stephanie walked away.

Bryce, his ears still ringing, opened his locker.

Plastered in the middle was a Polaroid.

It must have been taken by someone outside the Walkers’ house, looking into Bryce’s bedroom. It showed Bryce and Justin, deep in a kiss.

He flipped it over to see, Bi bi, Bryce? written on the back.

***

“Dude, put that away!” Justin hissed at lunch, after Bryce slipped the threatening Polaroid across the table to him.

“Ooh, what is it?” asked Hannah. She quickly snatched it from Justin’s hand and examined it. “Is this supposed to be threatening, or just homophobic?”

“I think it would be considered biphobic in this case,” Jessica said, peeking over at the picture.

“Can everyone stop looking at this?” Justin asked. “Come on, guys. Bryce. How are you putting me on blast like this?”

“I’m not,” Bryce said, “And it’s not anybody’s business but you and me. But… it looks like somebody else is interested, and I think we can narrow it down.”

“Do you think they’ll try something?” Stephanie asked. “Should I invest in a .357 Magnum?”

“That’s very specific,” Jessica said.

“Well, it worked for Dirty Harry.”

“I have one of those at home.”

“All right guys, no guns. Seriously. Guns freak me out,” Bryce said. “But we need to stick together. If Mark or Rick or whoever is trying to freak us out, he wants us all… split apart or something.”

“What I want to know,” Nina said, “Is why I got one. Could it be that they don’t know which of us went forward? This means there could be a bunch of girls they’re threatening, and it could be anyone in that stack of Polaroids.”

“Some of them might not even go here anymore, though. There’s no way we could figure out who everyone is, and if they’re being threatened, they probably don’t want to talk to us,” Jessica said.
It was at that moment that Mark Perry sauntered up to the lunch table, flanked by two other baseball players whose names Bryce didn’t remember.

“Well, hello there,” he said. Stephanie went pale, while Nina glared at him.

“Hi, Mark,” Bryce said. “What can we help you with?”

“I just wanted to check in – I got a call from the police that somebody has been telling lies about me and some of our other teammates. I wanted to make sure, you know, that we’re all on the same page if anyone is spreading around some bullshit.” Mark looked over at Nina, then at Stephanie. “Nancy, right? And… was it Maria?”

“Fuck off,” Stephanie hissed. “You know my name.”

Mark tilted back his head and chuckled.

“Oh, Bryce. You know how these girls are. They pant at the sight of guys like us. So, you know, just don’t get taken in by a victim story. They love that.”

Bryce stared back at him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mark. If there’s a girl accusing you of rape, well… Maybe the simplest explanation is that you raped them?”

“Occam’s Razor,” Jess chimed in.

“What?” Mark asked.

“The simplest path between two points,” Jess replied.

“When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras,” Hannah continued, “Especially with you being so kind as to come over here and… defend yourself?”

Mark looked around the table and flashed everyone a look again.

“I wouldn’t want to be the girl who has her reputation ruined around here. It can be kind of rough, can’t it Hannah?” Mark shot back.

“Some reputations are a little worse than others,” she replied. “Isn’t there somewhere you’re supposed to be?”

Mark shot them one last look before turning and walking away, stopping at another table and saying something they couldn’t hear before continuing over to his table.

“I’m guessing whoever sits over there is one of the other girls in the Polaroids,” Nina mused. “What a great club to be in, huh guys?”

“I don’t think he’ll actually do anything, though,” Clay said, chiming in for the first time. “Right? I mean, it all has to be bluff.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Nina said. “While I hesitate to say that Bryce is right about anything, sticking together is a good plan. Especially sticking near him.” She looked at Bryce. “Mark might not be afraid of much, but he’s probably afraid of the Walkers.”

“You come out of a coma and you just see all of them,” Clay quipped, gaining a look.

“So we stick together?” Jess said, completely ignoring him. She put out her hand and looked at Hannah. “FML forever?”

“Well, we would need Alex for that,” Hannah said, “Do we want him in on this at some point?”

Jess looked at her.

“I don’t know. It’s a lot to catch people up on. But I just gave myself a good idea of where we can figure out our next step, without prying eyes.” She looked over at Justin. “By the way, the two of you – super cute. I’m all for that.”

Justin groaned and leaned into the cafeteria table.

****

“I’m glad you guys finally got here. For some reason, every time I go here, they play this song that goes ‘let me give you hand, I have an extra I’m not using’. First of all, ‘give you hand’? Second, he has an extra hand he’s not using? How many hands does he have? Is he some kind of human-octopus hybrid?” Hannah said by way of greeting as Bryce, Justin, Jess, Clay, Nina and Stephanie took their seats at Monet’s.

“It’s okay, Hannah,” Clay said, patting her hand, “It’s all right.”

“Okay, so what’s the current status on all of this jock bullshit?” Jess inquired.

“Well, I found my name listed in some choice graffiti in the bathroom,” Stephanie said.

“And I’m pretty sure some girl tried to kick me in the hallway,” Nina chimed.

Bryce hesitated, not wanting to throw his own story into the ring, but thinking back to how he had attempted to, in his new effort to actually be involved in schoolwork, say something regarding A Separate Peace in English class. He couldn’t even remember exactly what he had tried to add to the conversation, but he did remember that the boy next to him quickly underscored what Bryce said with a cough that seemed to sound remarkably familiar to a certain anti-gay term.

He had made sure to keep an eye out when he walked down the stairs after class, remembering the tactics at Hillcrest.

He was cut out of his thoughts by Jessica.

“We have to do something about this,” she declared.

“I don’t know. It might just make it worse, and I don’t want to screw up the investigation after all this,” Stephanie said. “Do you guys have any ideas?”

“Well, we would need like, the whole school to be on our side if we wanted to stop this in its tracks,” Hannah mused.

Jessica and Bryce exchanged a look.

“You look like you have half of an idea, Bryce,” she said.

“And you look like you have the other half,” Bryce replied.

“I just want to know how many hands that guy had,” Hannah declared. “That might be how many hands we need for this.”

Chapter Text

“Well,” Hannah began, “We’ve got the place. We have the people. Well, enough people to get it started. Now, we just need the specifics. Should we play something over the loudspeakers? Like a song or something?” They were all back at Monet’s.

“Not the ‘hand’ song,” Clay pleaded. “We’ve been over this like, all weekend.”

“No, I mean, like, a protest song. Like, uh, ‘Working Class Hero’ by John Lennon?”

“Well, that’s a bit off the point. Also, isn’t John Lennon controversial now or something?” Jess asked.

“Everyone loves a reformed man,” Hannah pointed out.

“How about ‘NO.’ by Meghan Trainor?” Jess asked. “I mean, it’s right on point.”

“Yeah,” Hannah said, “I mean it is, but since it’s telling girls to say no, what if it implies that these girls didn’t? Like, girls have been saying ‘no’. Liberty just doesn’t listen.”

Justin raised his hand, saying, “Uh, I might have something. I mean, it’s not about… this, exactly, but I think it might be a good choice.”

Everyone leaned in.

***
At the beginning of the next Tigers baseball game, Jessica Davis – starting pitcher – walked across the field, followed by Stephanie, then Hannah, then Nina.

In the stands, Justin switched on the boombox and began to play “Long Long Way to Go” by Phil Collins.

As each line played, another person walked down from the bleachers and joined the line.

Some of them sang. Some of them held signs.

“Turn it off if you want to…
Switch it off it’ll go away,
Turn it off if you want to…
Switch it off, or look away…”

When Skye walked down from the bleachers, Bryce followed her.

He looked around as they were joined by Alex.

By Chloe.

By Tyler.

By Courtney.

By Jeff Atkins and Scott Reed.

By the end of the song, Bryce lost track.

***

It may have been due to the protest and everyone’s desire to be one of the crowd on one side or another, or it may have been the fact that Liberty High School just had a relatively short memory and had moved en masse into bullying somebody else, but Bryce’s last few weeks of sophomore year were relatively unremarkable.

And then it was summer.

***

One day in June, Bryce awoke to Justin pulling on his shoes and socks.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Bryce inquired, rolling over and mumbling quietly. “Where you going?”

“I need to go get something back at the house,” Justin said, “I’ll be back in like an hour.”

“No, wait,” Bryce said, sitting up quickly. “You’re not going back there on your own. I remember what happened last time – I need to come with you.”

“It’s quick. I just need to get into the basement.”

“But what is it? Come on, Justin. Let me help.”

Justin dragged a hand over his face.

“It’s corny and stupid. I can’t tell you.”

“Yes, you can. You sleep in my bed. Privacy is kinda out the window now, man.”

Justin looked at him.

“Yeah, what is that all about anyway? What are we doing?” He paused, seemingly realizing that Bryce was neither going to let the subject go nor let Justin go off alone. “Back when I was a kid… When my mom had more good days than bad… She had this old record player. She said she got it when she was growing up. In the 80’s, you know? And she used to play all these old records. And my favorite was always the Genesis ones. She had all of them, man. Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, she even got ‘Calling All Stations’, that one they did after Phil Collins left – that was on CD though, that was some 90’s shit right there – and I would be up in my room and I would hear… well, she loved this one song, ‘Turn It On Again’, and it would start ‘One, two, three, four’ and when I heard that, I knew it was a good day.”

Bryce looked back at him.

“So you want to go back and get the records?”

Justin nodded.

“I mean, I can make you a bitchin’ Phil Collins playlist on Spotify, man. Tarzan and everything, it’ll take like ten minutes.”

“It wouldn’t be the same, Bryce.”

Bryce sighed and pulled on his shoes.

“I’m coming with you.”

***

They stood in Justin’s basement, looking through every dusty, old, rotting cardboard box full of odds and ends.

They did find a few old records, but no turntable and no Genesis records – just the soundtrack from Flashdance and a Wham! album that looked unplayable and was covered in smudges of white powder.

“It was a dumb idea anyway,” Justin whispered, “She must have sold them all.”

***

They didn’t talk about it. Not for days. But Bryce saw how Justin’s step slowed and his face seemed to fall, the way his tone would lower in the middle of a conversation and he would suddenly droop.

“That Foley kid. Is he ever planning to go home?” Barry asked Bryce that night.

“It’s just temporary,” Nora said, “You barely even know he’s here. Don’t worry about it, Barry.”

***

Bryce and Justin were awakened to the sound of someone knocking on the main door.

“Oh,” Bryce said, bolting up. “That’s for me.”

“What?” Justin inquired, and Bryce hopped out of bed, made his way down the steps, and signed for the delivery.

“Where do you want it?” the delivery man asked, and Justin had appeared at Bryce’s side before the man started wheeling the huge box into the poolhouse.

“What the hell did you buy?” Justin inquired.

Bryce smirked.

He waited for the delivery van to drive away before taking out a box cutter and letting the box fall to the floor, leaving Justin staring at a shiny, green-and-white jukebox.

“What?” Justin said. Bryce tried to smirk again, but only came out with a blush.

“It’s for you. Look at the songs.”

A moment later, with the machine plugged in, Justin cycled through the choices.

“It’s all Genesis,” he said, and Bryce could have sworn he saw him rubbing at his eyes.

“Pick one.”

Justin clicked the buttons to page through each song, staring at the screen in a sort of daze. Finally, he arrived at one.

“I always liked this one, uh, it’s kinda rare. It was just on, like, a single. It was a B-side. Or something.” He let the song begin to play.

Out of the speakers came:
“Well there's a place where two worlds collide
The pile of stone against the pull of the tide
You can stay with your feet on the ground
Or step into the water, leave the dry behind…
On the shoreline
Meet me on the shoreline
Where you can only swim if you try…”

“It’s, uh, called ‘On the Shoreline’,” Justin said. “That part might be obvious.”

“I like it,” Bryce said, as much as the lyrics were bringing up images he wasn’t ready to talk about. Not now, maybe not ever. He wrapped an arm around Justin, instead, and leaned in to kiss him. “I don’t know what this is, Justin. But I like it. And I hope you do, too.” He watched as Justin blushed.

“I like it, too,” Justin said, “And this… I can’t ever repay you for this.”

Bryce put his hands on Justin’s hips.

“You already have. Dance with me?”

Justin’s eyes blinked a moment and then he nodded.

“Okay.”

Chapter Text

Before Bryce really knew what was happening, the summer had ended and school was back in session. He would now be a junior.

For the fall, he had selected an English class, a gym class, yearbook, and, ironically, Peer Communications.

He had also cornered Nora and asked her to do him one very big favor.

“Do you think you could get Monty de la Cruz into that boarding school you went to? Thacher?”

And Nora hadn’t asked any questions. She had simply said she would do what she could.

***

In Peer Communications, Mrs. Bradley explained, “Welcome class. I want you all to be as excited as I am about the chance to finally get to know your fellow classmates. You’re going to, I hope, leave this class better communicators and, as a result, better people.”

Bryce took the first available seat, that happened to be behind Jessica Davis.

“I want to introduce our compliment bags,” Mrs. Bradley said, “Where you can leave anonymous words of encouragement for your classmates, though it’s always better to leave a compliment face to face. We had a lot of success with this last year.”

Jessica turned around and winked at Bryce.

At the end of class, she reached out and poked his shoulder.

“Hey, listen,” she told him, “This Friday my parents are out of town and I’m throwing.. like… a party? You should come to it. If you don’t have anything better to do.”

Well, it was officially showtime.

He tried to keep his voice level when he told her that, “Yeah, I’ll be there. Sounds cool. I’m there for that,” but he knew his voice was shaking and he was talking too much. Jess cocked her head to the side but didn’t say anything other than that she would see him there.

***

Bryce, with Justin in tow, arrived at Jess’ party at ten o’clock on the dot. They sat by the pool and watched as Clay and Jeff arrived and then, lastly, a reluctant-looking Hannah.

“Hey,” Bryce called to her. She was the key to all of this night – or, well, he was. He didn’t really know anymore.

“Hey,” Hannah called back, “You’re at this too, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s the place to be… I guess.”

Hannah laughed and picked up a beer.

“Hey, you know, I saw Clay around a second ago,” Bryce said.

“I’ll have to catch up with him. Make sure he doesn’t get too drunk,” Hannah said and laughed. “What’s going on, though? You look… kinda worried.”

A drunk guy fell backward, bumping into Hannah and narrowly missing spilling his drink entirely on her.

“Jeez,” she said, “All right, let’s get out of the line of fire. Okay. And you don’t look too good.”

“It’s nothing,” Bryce called over the music.

“It’s something,” Hannah replied. “Let’s go talk.”

***

There was only one room unoccupied, waiting for two people who wanted to have a conversation.

“Isn’t Jess’ stuff just super cute? Look, she has a rock collection. She told me once that she used to water them,” Hannah said as the door swung shut. She plopped down on Jess’ bed and started nursing her beer. Someone had handed Bryce a drink at some point, and it smelled like tequila when he sniffed it. “Well, shoot. What’s going on?”

Bryce took a swig of his drink and could feel his head get bigger, ballooning, airy, floating. He found himself sitting cross-legged on the floor, though he hadn’t realized entirely why.

“You’re going to want to finish your drink for this,” Bryce said quietly. “And probably get a few more.”

Hannah did. She finished her beer, went back for another, then took her place on Jess’ bed again.

And then Bryce told her everything.

***

Hannah blinked at him when he had finished the story – the tapes, the pier, coming back, everything he was trying to make right.

“Bryce, I wish I could say I didn’t believe you, because to be honest it’s… a lot,” she began. “But for some reason, I do believe you.”

Bryce looked back at her, not speaking, waiting to see if she would say more.

“And if I take your word for it that this is all true – that you’re not having some kind of a breakdown – then I want to thank you for telling me.”

“Thank me… for what?”

“For trusting me.” Hannah reached over to Jess’ nightstand and picked up one of her pet rocks, rolling it over in her hand before putting it back. “Though I’m curious. Why did you tell me?”

“I felt like you deserved the right to know the truth. To know who I really was. I didn’t want to be… pulling one over on you,” Bryce said.

“Maybe this is who you really are, Bryce,” Hannah replied. “If this is a redo… then there’s probably a million Bryce’s out there and a million Hannah’s too. There’s probably ones where you do the right thing and plenty where you do the wrong thing. There’s probably some where I’m the one who pushes you over the edge instead. Hey, don’t snort. You know it could just as easily be you, especially with what you told me about Tyler. Jesus. I hope you’ve got a plan? About Monty?”

“I do,” Bryce said. “He seemed happy at Hillcrest. I’m seeing if my mom can get him into boarding school.”

“Liberty is pretty toxic,” Hannah agreed, picking up another rock, “If it wasn’t for all that last year… fighting for Stephanie and everything… maybe I would be that Hannah. Maybe I would have been that alone. I mean… I am her, sometimes. You just get lonely and down and nothing really fixes it.” She gently tossed the rock and then caught it again, then looked at Bryce. “Were you with Justin before? When you were the… I don’t know… other Bryce?”

“No… That’s new.” Bryce hesitated. “And he doesn’t really… know anything about this, and I want to try to keep it that way. Especially not about… Jess, you know.” His head snapped up. “Oh shit. Jess.”

“Well, you’ve been in here with me,” Hannah said, “You didn’t do anything to her and it’s…” She looked at the clock on the wall, “Nearly one AM. Hey, wasn’t I supposed to be trying to tap Clay this whole time? You’re a cockblocker as well as a time traveler. He probably went home already. But Jess has got to be around here somewhere. I mean… it’s her house.”

Bryce’s head felt fuzzy and he leaned against Jess’ bed for support.

“Can you… check Jess anyway?” he mumbled, “And… Sheri… Jeff. The stop sign…” None of what he was saying seemed to be making any sense, and it was coming out way too slow.

And then Bryce’s eyes slipped shut and he didn’t remember anything after that.

Chapter Text

Bryce’s eyes opened slowly, and he was aware of something being covering his forehead. He blinked, then let his eyes dart from one side to the other. He was suddenly also aware of someone else being in the room with him.

He stood up, quickly, and watched as a Hot Wheels car fell to the floor.

Hannah Baker burst out laughing.

“You were passed out,” she said, “And I made you into a suitable race track.” She picked up a tiny Hot Wheels ambulance and showed it off.

“Jess?” Bryce asked, rubbing his head.

“Is completely fine. I checked in on her and Justin a few times and they were drunk and reading the Berenstain Bears to each other.” Hannah shrugged. “That’s where I got the cars from. They’re in Jess’ brother’s room, still, waiting for you to vacate Jess’ room already. I tried to slide you into bed but you are huge, dude.”

“So you played with Hot Wheels on my face?”

Hannah shrugged.

“Well, I had to pass the time some way. Also, Sheri went home about an hour ago in a Lyft, and you paid for it.”

“How did you manage that?” Bryce asked.

Hannah held up his phone.

“Your passcode is your birthday. What are you doing for that, anyway? It’s in, what, like a month?”

“You’re taking everything I told you last night… very well,” Bryce mused. Hannah shrugged.

“I already knew Liberty was shit. The idea that it’s even more shit in another dimension is like… well, I don’t know what Stephen Hawking’s high school life was like, but if it was anything like ours, I think he’d be on board with the theory.”

“Like ours?” Bryce asked.

“Yeah,” Hannah said. “You made your choice, right? You’re one of us now. You could have come back and been that Bryce all over again and known what not to do. Knew exactly how not to get caught. Instead, you decided to make it right.” She reached down and offered Bryce a hand. “But we’ve got a lot to fix. So I’m glad you told me because… I don’t think you can do it alone.”

“There’s only two tapes left, though,” Bryce replied.

Hannah chuckled darkly.

“I don’t think it’s going to end with the tapes, Bryce. Not now that we’ve riled up Mark Perry and Coach Rick. I think we have a whole new shitstorm coming for us.”

“So what do we do next?”

“I guess we follow the tapes,” Hannah replied. “I’ll see you at your house in a few weeks.”

“To do what?” Bryce asked.

“To celebrate the death of Tape 12. Then we go from there.”

***

Hannah helpfully gave Bryce and Justin a ride home, leaving Jessica to sleep it off to the background noise of Eureka’s Castle in her younger brother’s room. On the way out, they made sure to chase any other stray partygoers before locking the place up.

“Jessica’s pretty,” Justin declared drunkenly as he stumbled into Hannah’s backseat.

“So are you,” Bryce replied. He gave Justin a gentle, protective, pat on the hand.

“Both of you need to sleep it off when you get home,” Hannah said, “And me, I need to get back to the store.” She sighed.

“What’s wrong?” Bryce asked.

“Nothing. Just… life is weird, isn’t it?”

“You’re right about that,” Bryce agreed.

“I wanna pet her,” said Justin.

“Who?” Bryce and Hannah asked.

“Jessica,” Justin said.

Hannah groaned and pulled up in front of Bryce’s house.

“All right, there you go. Justin, it’s that way. You’re still drunk as a skunk. So follow Bryce. Oh, by the way, Bryce?”

Bryce turned his head.

“They’re doing auditions next week for the fall musical. It’s 42nd Street. You should go out for it.”

“What’s it about?”

“Tap dancing. I think.”

“I can’t dance.”

“Neither can I,” Hannah said, “Well, see you there.” She drove away.

Justin hobbled into the house and up the stairs, as Bryce walked towards the bathroom in the hallway.

“Where have you been?” Nora called, from her room.

“I was over a friend’s,” Bryce replied.

“Which friend?”

“Uh, Jessica Davis.”

Nora stuck her head out of the master bedroom and looked at Bryce.

“You smell like tequila. In other news, your friend Monty got accepted to Thacher. When I called to try and throw my alumni weight around, it turned out he had already been accepted. Apparently your friend wrote quite the essay.”

Bryce beamed and made his way to the top of the stairs, then into his room.

He curled up next to Justin and fell fast asleep.

***

“Dude, you aren’t even going to believe this.”

Monty was running to catch up with Bryce the next day in the halls.

“I got into a real fuckin’ private school. A boarding school! And that guy Winston from Hillcrest said he’s switching there too. Apparently he was fed up with Hillcrest or something, I don’t know. All parties, no parents. I don’t have to deal with my dad’s shit anymore.” He turned to look at Bryce. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

“Why would I wanna send you away, man?” Bryce said and laughed. “Now the whole team is going to suck ass next year. But… you know what they say about boarding school girls.”

“What do they say about boarding school girls?” Monty asked.

Hannah walked up and inquired, “Yeah, Bryce, what do they say about boarding school girls?”

Bryce shrugged.

“I don’t actually know, but they’re probably wild or something.”

Hannah looked at him and said, “I feel like you probably drastically misunderstand what goes on at, like, a convent.”

Monty rolled his eyes.

“Later, losers,” he said and walked off.

“So Monty is off to be the next George W. Bush?” Hannah inquired.

“Who?” Bryce asked.

“He was president like five minutes ago? Anyway, he went to boarding school. And was a cheerleader. I don’t know why I know this.”

“Freddie Mercury also went to boarding school,” Bryce replied, with a look.

“Whoa,” Hannah said, then looked in the direction Monty had walked. “Monty? Really?”

Bryce nodded sagely.

“I never would have guessed. Did you like…” She lowered her voice, “Create an alternate universe where everyone is gay?”

“No, Monty… that was pre-existing. And I’m not gay.”

“You sleep with Justin.”

“Sleep with, uh, yes, but not… sleep with. At this point.” Bryce looked around with more than a little nervousness. “I’m not gay though. Justin is… different.”

“Who’s gay?” Clay asked, walking up.

“You misheard him,” Hannah said, “He said, ‘where’s Clay?’ And there you are.”

Clay rolled his eyes.

“Seriously. Screw you guys.”

Hannah and Clay walked off to English, while Bryce made his way to Peer Communications. Outside the door, he felt a hand touch his shoulder, and turned to see Tony standing there with his hands in his jacket.

“So you chose to let Hannah in on the secret. Interesting play, Bryce,” he said, then smiled. “I can’t wait to see what happens next.” And as surely as he had appeared, he was gone.

Chapter Text

Bryce was sitting on a chair in his sunroom when his phone rang, indicating that it was Hannah.

He picked it up and greeted, “Hey.”

“Hey, so when am I coming over your house so we can kick Tape 12 in the nuts?”

“I’m not sure we phrased the plan exactly like that before, but… um are you free now? Justin is at some basketball meeting and my parents are in Greece, I think. And the staff went home. So if we want to talk about… all this stuff, the tapes and all that, we have privacy.”

“I still can’t believe you have staff. Why do you have staff?”

“Cause my parents are rich?”

Hannah chuckled.

“See you in ten.”

***

The first thing Hannah said to him when she walked through his front door was, “So, did you go out for 42nd Street?”

“I did,” Bryce said, “And nearly fell on my face. Why did I let you convince me to do that?”

“Because you owe me like, a hundred times over and you know you’ll be awesome at it? Hey, do you have any food in here? I’m starving.”

“I ordered a pizza,” he said, “Pepperoni. In the kitchen.”

When she walked back into the living room, Bryce noticed she had cut her hair, short and wavy.

“New hair,” he said.

“I got Clay to cut it,” she replied.

“Is that a euphemism?” Bryce asked.

“That’s for me to know.” She plopped down on Bryce’s couch and placed the box of pizza on the coffee table. “You got anything good to watch, man?”

He tossed her the remote and she began to cycle through Netflix.

“Oh my God, we should so watch this.”

“Watch what?” Bryce asked.

“Hide your eyes, you’re gonna judge me.”

Bryce chuckled and slid his hand over his eyes dramatically.

“Okay,” Hannah said, “You can look, now.” Bryce plopped down on the couch next to Hannah and looked at the screen.

“Wait… is this High School Musical?”

Hannah took a bite of her pizza and nodded, before saying, “Yes, yes it is, young Padawan.”

***

“See, now you have to do the whole dance to the song or it doesn’t count.” Hannah got off the couch and demonstrated in the midst of the room. “We’re…all…in…this…to-get-her…”

Bryce, against his own sense of self-esteem, followed her motions and then looked at her.

“How do you even know this movie this well?” he asked.

“Oh, I had a friend named Leslie. Before I started hanging out with Lindsay and her ilk… Leslie was like, a preacher’s daughter and she was obsessed with High School Musical. So was her mom. And they would have birthday parties that were basically like… cake, food, soda and High School Musical karaoke.” Hannah sighed. “It was actually a lot more fun than hanging out with Lindsay. But she moved back to Albuquerque and that was that.”

“And then then the rest was history,” Bryce mused.

“Tell me about it.”

As the credits rolled, Hannah turned to Bryce and said, “We should go out on your patio. It looks like it has a great view?”

“Sure,” Bryce said, and rose from the couch.

And that was when what sounded like a firecracker rang out, followed by the sound of one of the windows of the sunroom shattering. Bryce was rooted to the spot, eyes wide, and Hannah grabbed his arm and tried to pull him.

“Let’s go! Come on, let’s go!”

Finally, after what seemed like an hour, Bryce’s feet began to move. They ran towards their original destination – the patio.

“We need to hide,” Hannah said.

“Where?” Bryce asked. His eyes still couldn’t seem to quite focus.

Hannah pushed the back door open and looked around.

“Well, I have an idea, courtesy of the other me.” She pointed ahead. “There’s a tarp on the hot tub… We go under that.”

“Maybe they left?”

The sounds of footsteps on the front lawn – or maybe, in the house – quickly dispelled that notion.

Hannah reached in her pockets and pulled out her phone and a few other items, tossing them under a chair on Bryce’s patio.

“Hot tub,” she said. “Now.”

They took off like a flash, or at least Hannah did, with Bryce being pulled along for the ride. She pulled up the tarp and slipped under, finding enough space between the water and the tarp to breathe.

Bryce slipped in, too, and looked over at her. There was something very wrong that he couldn’t put words too. It was too dark to see clearly and the water seemed to be growing, somehow, sliding up towards him.

“Let me go get the…”

“No,” Hannah said, grabbing his arm. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Whatever force Hannah had used to pull Bryce back in worked too well, as he slid backwards and found himself below the water.

Alex, fuck, help! Help me, I can’t… I can’t… Help me, I can’t!

Water running into his lungs, his legs can’t work, trying to fight, falling…

“Bryce! Bryce!”

Arms were pulling him upwards and a voice was talking to him in worried whispers.

“Bryce, it’s okay, it’s okay! I think they’re gone. But we should go. Just to be sure, we’ll go to my house okay? Bryce? Bryce?”

Everything seemed dark. It felt as if whoever it was who was talking to him was talking to him above a wave, and he was below it.

“Bryce, come on, work with me, okay.”

Light flooded into his eyes and the sky was full of stars.

***

“We can get to my house from here, I think. Then we’ll have Justin meet us there.”

Bryce was walking down the road, dripping water everywhere, not sure where he was going.

“And we can get here from there. My other self walked home from your house, right? My other self walked a lot. Why did I even have a car? It’s like I never used it.”

They kept walking. Bryce couldn’t see Hannah very clearly – Hannah, that was who was walking with him – but he felt her hands guiding him along.

“I’ve got you, Bryce. One foot in front of the other – oh, look, it’s Blue Spot. We can call from here, okay? Wally will probably let us use the phone there…”

She guided him up to the door of the store. It really did look blue, a sort of cold and calm blue.

Hannah’s voice was murky as she explained the situation.

“Bryce? Bryce? Do you remember Justin’s number? …Bryce?”

Bryce couldn’t find the words to say anything in response.

“Okay, okay. Wally, can you call a cab company instead? Is that a thing people still do outside of movies – call cabs?”

Wally pulled up the phone, dialed and handed the receiver to Hannah.

“Evergreen Cab!” Bryce could hear the man on the other end of the line yell at her.

“Well, um, okay, hello. I need to hire a cab. I need you to go to Liberty High School at seven o’clock and find Justin Foley. He doesn’t know you’re coming. He’s… um, tall, blondish hair. Sorta spindly. I need you to take him to this address. And there’s fifty dollars in it for you if you do.” She paused. There was something muffled on the other end. “No, I promise, this doesn’t have anything to do with drugs. Or sex work. It’s a long story though. Thank you.”

She hung up and looked over at Bryce.

“C’mon, Bryce.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Wally asked.

“I think so,” Hannah replied.

***

“What the hell happened to the two of you?” Justin asked when he arrived at Hannah’s. “Why are you both wet?”

Bryce let out a chuckle. They were both in a change of clothes – Bryce’s stolen out of Hannah’s father’s closet – but their hair was still clearly drenched and they were both shivering periodically.

“Oh good, he’s finally coming around,” Hannah said, before summarizing the events as quickly as she could to Justin. “I also called the police to let them know to ride by the Walkers’, but I don’t know what to do next.” She wrapped a blanket around herself. “It had to be Mark Perry or Coach Rick, but they must be getting desperate to take a pot shot at the Walkers.”

“You seem pretty self-contained for someone who just got shot at,” Justin said to Hannah.

“Well, thank you? I guess? I’m just glad that my parents are out of town. I don’t really want to explain to them why I have two boys in my bed.”

Bryce, at the mention of “bed”, collapsed into the warmth of Hannah’s mattress and pulled the blanket up over him. Hannah rolled over beside him and, to his surprise, he felt her wrap her hands around his middle.

“This is weird,” Justin said, “But I guess I’m coming in.” He laid down beside Bryce and scooted up to him, with Bryce draping his own arms around him and holding him close.

“One of us is going to fall out of bed,” Hannah mused sleepily. “G’night…”

Bryce yawned and mumbled, “Night Hannah. Night Justin.”

In the now comforting darkness of Hannah’s room, he smiled to himself as he was sure he heard her singing, half-asleep, “Together… together… together everyone…”

Chapter Text

Hannah turned to Bryce while Justin was in the shower, getting ready for them all to go to school.

“How are you feeling, Bryce?”

Bryce’s throat was rough, and he wondered if he had been yelling in his sleep.

“Okay,” he managed. “Did I… talk in my sleep, or…?”

“You slept like a log,” Hannah replied, “You and Justin both. I got up a few times but you were both still down for the count.” She reached up and rubbed at her eyes. “We have to tell somebody about somebody trying to kill us.”

“Yeah, but who?” Bryce asked.

Hannah walked over to the mirror by her bedside and opened a drawer, taking out an eyeliner and starting to apply it.

“Well,” she said, “What was Tape Thirteen about? The other Hannah’s last hurrah before throwing in the towel?”

“Well, she went to Mr. Porter. The guidance counselor.”

“Well, that’s who we go to, then,” Hannah declared. “We go straight to Porter and we tell him about us getting shot at.”

“Are you sure? I mean… it didn’t work out that well the last time. He basically blamed her – you – her? – for what I did.”

“Listen, Bryce, I’m just trying to kill time until I have to drag my happy ass into the Crestmont and put in my two weeks notice, because instead of working where I want to work… with Clay, you know, and the Crestmont is great too… My parents want me to be free labor in the store cause they can’t hire anyone else. So not looking forward to it. If the order of the day is victim-blaming, then, well, let’s go get victim-blamed.”

***

“Usually, when I have two students come into my office, it’s because they got into a fight,” Mr. Porter mused, looking across from Hannah to Bryce and then back again.

“Well, you missed it, I’ve been putting Bryce in lockers for months now,” Hannah replied dryly. “I’ve also stolen his lunch money a few times.”

Bryce coughed into his hand and looked back and forth before saying, “Um, so we’re here because Mark Perry shot at us.”

“What?” Mr. Porter echoed, “Shot at you?”

“Yeah, last night,” Hannah replied, “I was over Bryce’s, and…”

“You were over Bryce’s?” Mr. Porter asked. “Was anyone else there?”

“No, just us. And then, um, we heard like a loud noise, and a window broke, and we ran and hid in Bryce’s hot tub.”

“You hid in Bryce’s hot tub… from… a gunman?”

“Exactly. Hot tub water is gross, by the way. I’m pretty sure I swallowed some of Bryce’s sweat.”

“Hey, I bathe twice a day,” Bryce protested.

“Is it in that hot tub? Because I could see that.”

“Let’s get back to this claim that Mark Perry shot at you two,” Mr. Porter said. “Did you see him?”

“No,” Bryce admitted, “But it’s either him, or maybe Coach Rick, or someone else on the team.”

“And is there a reason Mark Perry or someone else on,” he looked at Bryce, “Your baseball team would want to shoot the two of you? Is this some kind of… love triangle thing?”

Hannah snorted.

“Please. Whoever it was took a potshot at us because Bryce talked to the cops about the clubhouse.”

“The clubhouse?”

“Is there an echo in here?” Hannah asked. “Bryce turned in Mark for what he did to another girl – lots of other girls. Shortly thereafter a bullet goes through his window?”

“That’s a very serious thing to accuse someone of, Hannah,” Mr. Porter said. “Bryce, what is your take on all of this?”

“I’m sure that’s who it was,” Bryce replied. “He put threatening messages in people’s lockers, too.”

“People? What people?” Mr. Porter asked. Bryce’s face started turning red with frustration.

“The girls he attacked.”

“Can you give me some names?”

Bryce and Hannah exchanged looks.

“The police know the names. Well, one of them at least. I don’t want to drag anyone else into this,” Bryce said, “But he should be out of Liberty. They both should. Coach Rick was trying to get me to stand down, too, and I didn’t. So this was the next step.” He paused. “I guess he wanted us to stick to the status quo.”

As angry as Hannah looked, she did let out a little laugh in a cough.

“I can’t expel a student without proof,” Mr. Porter said.

“What proof do you want? One of us with a chalk line around us in front of Bryce’s house?” Hannah snapped. She let out an huff and got to her feet, then looked over at Bryce. “Let’s go. We won’t be getting anything here.”

As they made their way out the door and down the hall, Bryce said, “If it’s any consolation, he becomes a better therapist later.”

“Maybe that’s only if I die,” Hannah said with a shrug. She turned and started off towards class.

“Hey, Hannah,” Bryce called.

“Yeah?”

“What if I worked at your parents’ store instead?”

“What?”

“Yeah. I could work there. Maybe Justin too, if he wants. Then you could stay at the Crestmont with Clay.”

“You would do that?”

Bryce shrugged.

“It might look good on my resume,” he replied, “And you could get me free popcorn?”

“It’s a deal,” Hannah said and smiled, “Oh, that cast list is going up today. You ready to tap dance?”

“Not really,” Bryce said, “But I’ll try.”

***

“Look, it’s up on the door,” Hannah said, poking her finger towards the list on the door to the drama room. She peeked up at it and ran her hand down the list, “Look, you’re Bert Barry!”

“Should that mean something?” Bryce asked.

“You sing like, one song I think. And I’m… Really? I got Anytime Annie?” Hannah turned and looked at Bryce. “Why am I always cast as some girl with a reputation?”

“Well, it means you’d be a shoo-in if we do Sweet Charity next,” Bryce replied.

Hannah looked at him.

“I didn’t know you knew Sweet Charity,” Hannah said, “Hidden depths.” She read down further. “Rehearsals start on Wednesday. And did you really meant what you said about working at my parents’ store? I mean… that’s a lot. I don’t know if they could pay you much. Or, like, anything.”

“You think I need money, Hannah? If they can toss Justin something, I think he’d be glad, but me? Rich people work for free all the time. Just call it an internship or something.”

“An internship at a suburban drug store?”

“Why not? I can be the next Sam Walgreens.”

“I appreciate your attempt to combine Sam Walton and Walgreens into, somehow, one person. I’m also already afraid. But I’ll pitch it to my parents. This should be good,” Hannah said, “You know, if we don’t… get shot first.”

Chapter Text

Hannah, followed by Clay, plopped down in front of Bryce and Justin at the lunch table.

“Hey, losers,” Hannah declared. “I notice you haven’t been hanging out with the baseball team ever since they tried to whack us.”

“Uh, yeah,” Clay said, “About that. Why were you over Bryce’s house getting shot at again?”

“We had theater stuff to practice,” Hannah replied. “If you would consider trying out next year, then you would be invited.”

“I’m not tap dancing,” Clay said.

“Your loss,” Hannah replied. “Anyway, I talked to my parents, and you two are hired.”

“You two which two?” Justin asked.

“You and me. We got jobs at Hannah’s store,” Bryce explained.

“We were looking for jobs? Since when?” Justin asked.

“It’s not my store. It’s my parents’ store,” Hannah chimed in. “And you start on Saturday. Please show up not looking like a pair of dickheads.”

“I’ll try my best,” Bryce replied.

“Hey,” Clay started, “Isn’t Crestmont doing like… a Rocky Horror thing on Halloween?” Clay asked.

“It is. I better be working that day. Or I’ll come in anyway. Magenta, dream role,” Hannah said. She looked at Bryce and Justin. “You two coming?”

“I don’t know what my reputation will be if I start walking around looking like Frank N. Furter,” Bryce said.

“First of all, the cat’s out of the bag that you clearly know more musicals than you let on. Secondly, I would like to wager into a bet – with you, Helmet – that Bryce could do anything at all and somehow still remain popular.”

“Nah,” Clay replied. “High school crowds are very fickle. I’ll bet you twenty dollars that Bryce would be persona non grata if he stepped outta line.”

“I beg to differ,” Hannah replied.

“Are you two really plotting to make a fool out of Bryce?” Justin asked. “I’m in.”

“Et tu, Justin?” Bryce inquired, shaking his head.

“Speaking of group projects,” Hannah said, “Your birthday is in, what, four days? What are you doing for a party?”

“I don’t know. I mean… considering… some things, I don’t really know how I feel about parties these days. I guess I’m kind of… grown out of it?”

“But you were at Jess’ party the whole time,” Clay pointed out. “What happened?”

“Justin reading ‘Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers’ to Jess happened,” Hannah said. “That lesson comparing people you meet to moldy apples put me off a lot of things too, no lie. But… what if we just had the core group together? Some pizzas, some movies, some cake? Just… you know, casual?”

“Hannah… are you inviting people over to my house?” Bryce inquired.

“Yeah, basically. Happy early birthday, Bryce.”

***

“So, we’re definitely sure no one is going to try to kill us all at this party?” Hannah inquired, putting out some chips.

“Well, this was your idea,” Bryce reminded her, “But we updated the alarm system. I don’t know what that’s going to do. I think as long as we keep everyone outside, someone would have to actually get into the house to do anything. Plus, I don’t think they’ll try the same trick twice if it didn’t work once. Who did you invite, anyway?”

“The usual suspects,” Hannah replied. “Clay. Jess. She’s bringing Alex? Uh, Stephanie. Skye. Jeff. I tried to invite a few more people from the team but Zach still won’t talk to me, so this is shaping up to be the nerdiest popular kid party ever.”

“What about Tyler?” Bryce asked.

“Tyler Down? I mean, I didn’t ask him offhand, but yeah, I can see if he wants to come. Any particular reason? I mean, since you defused Monty and all.”

Bryce decided that saying he felt safer with Tyler around would be a weird thing to say, so he shrugged and said, “He can take some pictures. Plus… He’s all right. Oh, and Hannah?”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure Tony gets an invite, too.”

***

Everyone who had been invited came. It wasn’t as many people as a Bryce Walker party had had in the past, but he definitely knew all of them this time at least.

Tyler and Tony were positioned behind the outdoor sound system. It was weird for Bryce to see Tony with other people around, and wondered if this would stop him from giving Bryce more cryptic messages. Then again, probably not.

Jessica and Alex were sitting off to the side of the pool at a table, having been ushered out of the pool-house for safety reasons. Alex was, apparently, still annoyed about it.

“I was going to finally beat the last level,” Alex said, as Jess rolled her eyes.

“You’re a nerd,” she said, “All this beautiful weather today and you want to sit in there and fight zombies?”

Hannah and Clay had gotten into the pool itself and were periodically climbing out and jumping back in – Hannah with ease and Clay with the general demeanor of someone who may or may not be about to break their neck.

Jeff had arrived in tow with Zach as well as Scott Reed, and the three of them were eating chips at another table as well as drinking, already, despite it only being four o’clock. Stephanie and Skye were attempting, unsuccessfully, to get enough people together to play Cards Against Humanity.

And Bryce and Justin were hovering just outside the pool-house door, looking at one another for a long time before stepping out into the patio. It felt like walking on some sort of a precipice.

“Hey, yeah! The birthday boy, whoo hoo!” Zach declared as they walked out, and attempted to start up everybody clapping. However, since Jeff and Scott were the only people who heard him, they were the only people who clapped.

“Getting in the pool?” Justin inquired. Bryce hesitated.

“Maybe, yeah.” Bryce scooped up a beach ball and stuck his feet in the water, sitting down on the ledge. His breathing started to increase. Justin, meanwhile, jumped in.

“Bryce, you all right?” Justin asked. Hannah and Clay, from their spot in the pool, looked over too, with Hannah swimming over to peek up at Bryce.

“Can you not swim?” she asked.

“I, uh,” Bryce started.

“How do you have your own pool and mansion and you can’t swim?” Hannah continued. Bryce shrugged.

“My parents kept saying they would teach me the next time they had a free weekend, but, you know… Then they would be in Aspen or something.”

“For the record,” Justin chimed from the 4-foot section, “I can’t swim either.”

“Well, listen, you are both learning how to swim. Drowning is a leading cause of death and I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t teach you both,” she said. “We can’t lose the store’s two newest employees, or we would have to hire new ones.”

“I can’t swim either!” Clay declared.

“Yeah, all right, you too Helmet.” Hannah leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “I don’t want you drowning either.”

Over at the DJ booth, Jess was talking to Tyler and gestured a title on the laptop. A moment later, “Non-Stop” from Hamilton began playing.

Bryce had finally found his way into the water and was walking towards the center of the pool when Hannah tossed him the beachball, smiled, and said, “History has its eye on you, Bryce Walker.”

Chapter Text

Bryce and Justin arrived for their first day at Baker’s Drug Store at nine o’clock, dressed in polo shirts (provided by Bryce, who had a closet full of them) and looking as if neither had gotten enough sleep the night before.

“So,” said Hannah, who was already dressed in her Crestmont uniform, “My parents left me to train you too. Please don’t screw up.”

Hannah spent the next fifteen minutes showing them how to use the register and where most of the things in the store were.

“I’ll be back from the Crestmont at six. Do you think you two can handle this?”

“Definitely,” Bryce said.

“Yeah, I mean, uh, I think so.”

Hannah looked between them and then walked out.

“I’m not even supposed to be here today!” Bryce declared as soon as she was out of earshot, and Justin grinned in reply.

“So, do we just wait for somebody to come in?” Justin asked. “What do we do until then?”

“I don’t know,” Bryce said, “I guess we just wait here and then when someone comes in… we sell them stuff?”

They stood behind the counter and looked at each other for a long time.

“Did you ever get a quarter stuck up your nose?” Justin inquired.

“…No. Why, did you?”

“Yeah, once,” Justin replied. “My mom held me upside down until it fell back out of my nose.”

“Did it?” Bryce asked.

“Yeah. Eventually.”

The door jingled, and a woman entered the store, carrying a pack of paper in her hands, which she slapped down on the counter.

“I need to return this paper,” she declared.

“Uh,” Justin started. “Um… Why?”

“Why? Did you just ask me why?” the woman snapped.

“Yeah, why?” Bryce inquired, “I mean… it’s paper. You’re going to need it eventually.”

“My son does not need this paper! This is college-ruled paper!” She picked up the package and slammed it down on the counter again, with emphasis. “My kid needs wide-ruled paper! You need to exchange this for wide-ruled paper!”

Squinting at the directions for how to do a return that Hannah had taped up, Bryce inquired, “Uh, well, when did you buy it?”

“I don’t know when I bought it! Why does it matter when I bought it?”

“I mean, like, do you have the receipt?” Justin tried, helpfully.

“No, of course I didn’t keep the receipt! I just want to return this, and get the wide-ruled paper! Is that so difficult? Are you two dumb?”

“A little bit,” Justin replied with a smile, He walked back to the stationary section and picked up a pack of wide ruled paper. “Okay, uh, I think we hit this, and then we scan what she’s returning… And then… uh, it says this is one cent?”

“What?” the woman screamed.

“Yeah, uh, ma’am,” Justin said, “This says you can only get one cent if you return this and, uh, the other paper is $1.99. So, uh, yeah. You owe us $1.98 for this wide-ruled paper.”

The woman picked up the offending college-ruled paper and lobbed it straight at Justin’s head, then marched out the door in a huff.

“You okay?” Bryce asked, looking at Justin and checking if there was any kind of a bump on his head.

“Oh, no, I’m okay. I just didn’t realize this job was so dangerous.”

Bryce grinned and countered, “I’m not even supposed to be here today!”

***

“Okay, so I’m probably entering at the wrong time, since I just heard you say ’37 dicks’,” a voice declared.

Bryce and Justin both whirled around to find Kat, former Liberty High student, standing in front of the counter and holding a pack of Twizzlers.

“Oh, yeah,” Bryce said.

“Hi, Kat,” Justin chimed. “I thought you moved.”

“I did. Like two years ago. I’m just in town for a job interview. I see you two don’t have to worry about that.”

“You’re looking very nice, Kat,” Bryce said.

“Shut up,” Kat replied. “What the hell are you two stooges doing working at Hannah’s family’s store, anyway? Are you two up to something?”

“They hired us,” Justin replied, flashing his trademark grin.

The door opened and Hannah walked in, dressed in her Crestmont uniform.

“Hi, guys,” she said, then turned and let out a happy squeak when she saw Kat. “I didn’t know you were in town! I’m so glad I ran into you.”

“Did you really hire Tweedledumb and Tweedledee to work in your store?” Kat asked.

“Hey. That’s bullying,” Bryce protested.

Hannah laughed.

“They’re actually pretty cool. Bryce, in particular, has changed quite a bit since the days you were calling him, what was it, Frat Boy Darth Vader?”

“Justin, I am your father!” Bryce declared in a deep voice.

“That would complicate things,” Justin mused.

“Are you dating one of these two?” Kat asked.

“Nah, I’m dating Clay,” Hannah said.

“Okay, okay, fair enough,” Kat said, “Though remember, I had picked out Zach for you. Though it could be worse.” She looked over at Bryce and Justin, who were fighting with rolls of brown wrapping paper as if they were light sabers. “What’s his deal now? You said he’s better?”

“Yeah, he’s turning over a new leaf. It’s super cute. It’s kind of like watching Cher donate her ski equipment at the end of Clueless.”

“Hey!” Bryce protested, looking up from the ground as Justin beaned him with the pack of college-ruled paper.

“Charming,” Kat mused. “When I came in, they were discussing something to do with ’37 dicks’.”

“Oh, they were quoting Clerks again,” Hannah replied.

“What’s your thoughts on that, Hannah?” Justin asked, “Should a guy date a girl who’s, uh, been with 37 dicks?”

“37 dicks describes most of my classes at Liberty,” Hannah fired back. “But what about you two? How many girls have you been with?”

“A lot,” Bryce and Justin chimed.

Hannah snorted.

“Double-standard.”

“What about you, Hannah? And…” Justin started.

“Don’t even ask me,” Kat warned.

“I’ve only been with one person,” Hannah said, opening her Twizzlers.

“And how many dicks though? As we know from Clerks, dicks are separate,” Justin said, and Bryce snickered.

Hannah looked them both in the eye and began to nibble her Twizzler in a very suggestive fashion, before grinning, biting off the Twizzler, and saying, “None.”

Bryce yelped.

Kat looked at Hannah.

“Boys? What can you do?” Kat asked. She crossed her arms and laughed. “Dicks are separate, is right.”

“I was always Team Veronica, anyhow,” Hannah said, and then shrugged. “All right, boys. Get on out of here and Kat and I will lock up.”

“What are you two going to do together?” Bryce asked.

“…Probably watch Clerks.”

Chapter Text

“So, Clay and I went over the details of the bet,” Hannah began on the next school day at lunch.

“We’re still on that bet?” Justin asked.

“Okay, so,” Hannah explained, “The three of us each come up with one thing Bryce has to do before lunch is over. Then we see if he is more, less, or the same amount of popular after lunch.”

“But we still haven’t determined exactly how we will, well, determine this. We need like… what do you call it… an operational definition for popularity,” Clay said.

“Do I get any say in this?” Bryce inquired.

“No,” Hannah replied. “Justin, you first.”

“Uh,” Justin began, looking around at the three of them. “Why am I even in this? Umm… Bryce, you have to go ask out the nerdiest girl in the whole school, in front of everybody.”

“And Bryce, you have to, in at least one conversation, mention Ready Player One,” Clay chimed.

“And lastly…” Hannah leaned in and whispered something, and Bryce turned pale white.

“You guys are having fun just picking on me, aren’t you?” Bryce said. “Well… and who would be the nerdiest girl in school? Honestly, they’re all kind of hot. My type is pretty broad.”

“Skye,” Justin suggested. “I don’t know if she’s the nerdiest, but she’s the least popular. But you have to do the nerd book thing to somebody else. Somebody popular. Skye would probably let you off about that, or she might even like the damn thing.”

Bryce sighed and stood up, looking around and fixing Chloe Rice in his sights. He sauntered over.

“Hi, Chloe.”

“Oh, hi Bryce,” she said, looking at him and nervously putting a hand in her hair.

“So, uh, listen. Chloe, I was wondering if you might want to hang out later and have a chat about searching for Halliday’s Egg?”

Chloe blinked at him.

“You know, uh, in the OASIS. If we find Halliday’s egg, then, uh, Halliday will give us a lot of money.”

“Are you drunk, Bryce?” Chloe asked, then walked away.

“It’s in the Tomb of Horrors I think!” Bryce called after her.

Hannah and Clay both grinned at each other.

Then Bryce sighed, walked over to Hannah, and said, “All right. Do it.”

Hannah proceeded to cue up a song on her phone, then climbed on top of the table, with Bryce following her. Then, Clay pressed “play” and a moment later, the opening notes from “Bop to the Top” from High School Musical began.

“I believe in dreaming
And shooting for the stars…
Baby to be number one
You got to raise the bar…” Hannah began singing.

It seemed that there was not an eye in the cafeteria that wasn’t fixed on the two of them; or perhaps their target was specifically Bryce himself. He certainly felt that it was, as if everyone was boring holes through his eyes and deep into his soul.

But yet, he sang when his part came up.

And when he hopped down from the cafeteria table, he happened to notice Skye Miller looking at him, with a look on her face as if she wasn’t sure quite what to think of the spectacle.

He walked over to her and flashed a smile that he hoped was charming but more than likely came off as if he was trying to figure out if he had just swallowed a fly or not.

“Hey Skye,” he called, “Do you want to go to Homecoming with me?”

Skye looked over at him.

“Is this part of a bet?” she inquired.

“Parts of it,” Bryce said. “You wanna go search for Halliday’s egg?”

She shook her head and smiled.

“Sure. I’ll be there at eight. Whatever.”

***

“I can’t believe that you convinced me to do this,” Bryce complained as Hannah went back to the makeup case and added a little more rouge to Bryce’s cheeks, which to be fair had already been pretty rosy to begin with. “I was kidding when I said I might play Frank N. Furter.”

“Well, I called your bluff,” Hannah replied. She had on her Crestmont outfit, but underneath was the costume for Magenta, and she had already done her own makeup.

Behind them, Clay was also dressed in his Crestmont uniform, but was ready to put on an awkward pair of glasses to play Brad. To his chagrin, a Claremont Prep girl who was a full foot taller than him was playing Janet.

“A little more lipstick,” Clay commented, and Bryce shot him a glare as he grinned.

“I’m beginning to feel like I didn’t actually win this bet,” Bryce stated.

“You weren’t actually in the bet. You were just our experiment. Our Frankenstein’s monster,” Hannah said. “You know, people keep calling him Frankenstein, but that’s wrong. Frankenstein was the scientist.”

At that moment, Justin burst through the door, declaring, “Why?”

He was dressed only in a gold speedo, and if it wouldn’t have resulted in Hannah having to reapply all of his makeup, Bryce would have actually cried with laughter.

Not to mention, Justin actually looked pretty good.

***

Bryce learned a few things from the Crestmont shadow cast of Rocky Horror.

First, he learned that trying to walk, let alone dance, in high heels, was an extremely difficult task. Two, he learned that most of the people who show up to the Halloween Rocky Horror showing are drunk.
And three…

“Whooo!!!” Bryce heard somebody yelling from the audience as Bryce threw playing cards out into the audience during the “cards for sorrow, cards for pain” part of “I’m Going Home”, and when he looked out to see who it was, noticed that it was Scott Reed, armed with a water pistol.

Apparently the Rocky Horror Halloween showing was better attended than Bryce thought.

He tried not to think of how this might impact his reputation at school on Monday (if “Bop to the Top” hadn’t already been the last nail in his popularity coffin) and instead got up and gave a somewhat shaky bow as the credits rolled.

“Who wants to come up and do the Time Warp with us?” Hannah inquired. She looked rather in her element, with her nails long and her arm around a now-speedo clad Clay. A few people came up – space permitting – and Justin still hid off to the ground from where he had “died” as Rocky.

“No one who knew me was out there, right?” he asked Bryce.

“Nah, nobody,” Bryce agreed. “Your secret’s safe.” Hopefully.

Chapter Text

It was early November – November 2nd, actually, that day having come back around again and crept behind Bryce’s ears, whispering to him that the pier was never very far away and would never leave him alone – until. Until what? He didn’t really know.

When Bryce made it downstairs, having rolled out of an uneasy dream of walking the pier, his parents were both sitting at the table, which was unusual enough for him to wonder if this was some sort of an intervention.

“Uh,” Bryce began, “Hello?”

“Bryce, honey, we wanted to remind you that the trial starts today,” Nora began.

“I mean… yeah, I know,” Bryce said, “I did the deposition last week.” In reality, no he did not already know. He had forgotten the trial was coming up, his head full of the tapes and the pier and, most of all, Justin.

Justin, who slowly stepped into the room and looked over at him with a worried gaze. Part of him did want to let Justin know that he had his suspicions about how this would all play out, but he couldn’t tell him that without telling him everything else. And it wouldn’t do any good to tell him, either.

“Well, are you prepared?” Barry asked him, forcing Bryce to turn his gaze away from where Justin stood. “You know, lawyers just love to get people in a bind. They’ll have you admitting to all kinds of stuff that isn’t even true.”

“Bryce isn’t the one on trial here, Barry,” Nora reminded him.

“He will be, soon. First it’s the Perry boy and I tell you, next week it’ll be Bryce. They point the finger at anybody these days. Bryce shouldn’t even be pulled into this at all. He doesn’t even know that girl…”

Bryce looked at his father, then at his mother.

“I’ll be fine,” he told them both, “After all, we know Mark Perry did it.”

With that, he went to the car, with Justin following behind him.

***

“Lose those glasses. You look like Dexter,” Hannah mused as soon as she saw him heading into the courthouse.

“Dexter didn’t wear glasses,” Justin pointed out.

“Patrick Bateman, then,” Hannah continued.

“He didn’t wear them, either. At least, I don’t think so. The only part of that movie I remember is the business cards. Oh, and that ATM machine. That was creepy.”

Bryce had reluctantly accepted his parents’ offer of Warren advising him at the deposition, despite the fact that he wanted to forget all markers of his old life and, especially, his own trial. But there he was, again, looking as if he was missing a tee-time as he gestured for Bryce to enter the courtroom.

He stepped forward, sucking in a breath with the thought of, “Here goes nothing.”

***

“Mr. Walker, you’re a junior at Liberty High School. Is that right?”

The prosecutor was a woman with a light brown bun tied behind her head so tightly that Bryce wondered if her whole head was going to fall off. It was the same prosecutor who, in a different world, had tried Bryce’s own case, but he couldn’t remember much about her then. She had seemed a weird, shadowy presence, not quite real.

A lot of things had seemed not quite real back then.

Bryce cleared his throat and leaned into the microphone.

“That’s correct.”

Warren had warned him not to say anything besides what was being asked, had warned him that Mark’s lawyer would try to find a way to discredit him, and then he would march onward to discrediting Stephanie.

“Scorched Earth. That’s how these guys play,” Warren had said, and Bryce knew that was because he had done it himself.

“And how do you know Mark Perry?”

“Uh, he was on the Liberty Tigers with me.”

“And that’s what?”

“The baseball team.”

“And how did you come to know about the clubhouse?”

Bryce’s mouth was moving, but he couldn’t tell what was coming out, not exactly. After all, he couldn’t exactly tell the court that he had come from the future, but he didn’t want to lie, either.

He had barely had time to catch his breath when the prosecutor retreated to the bench and was replaced by Mark’s defense attorney.

“Mr. Walker, did you ever see Mark Perry have sex with a girl against her will?”

Bryce hesitated.

“No,” he said, feeling as if he was falling into a pit already.

“And did Mark Perry ever tell you that he had sex with a girl against her will?”

“No.”

“In fact, you rarely, if ever talked to Mark Perry. Is that true?”

“Yes.” Bryce’s cheeks were firing red. He thought that it would be easier this time – this time, he was on the right side of things. This time, he had planned it all out. This time, it was supposed to be different.

“So how did you come by this knowledge about the clubhouse, then, a tradition you have admitted you weren’t invited to be a part of?”

“I saw a Polaroid,” Bryce said, “Mark had it in his backpack. I saw it as he was walking by. It showed a girl…” As Bryce explained it, his pulse began to race. This wasn’t going to go well. He could tell.

“And how could you be certain as to how this photograph came about? Did you ask Mr. Perry about what happened?”

“No.”

“Then what did you do instead?”

“I talked to Stephanie Rodriguez and she told me what happened,” Bryce said. “She told me how all of the photos came about.”

“Objection! Outside the scope of the trial.”

“Mr. Walker, you will only speak about the photo of Ms. Rodriguez.”

Bryce groaned. This was going to be a trainwreck.

***

“You did great, Bryce,” Hannah said, running over to meet him. She threw her arms around him. “Stephanie will be so proud of you.”

Bryce looked back at her, not that sure. All of his answers had seemed like he was lying, or not expressing himself right, or missing out on something important that the judge would then not even let him say.

He did accept Hannah’s hug, though.

“I just don’t know… Stephanie’s supposed to testify tomorrow and what if the lawyer does the same stuff to her as she did to me? They tie you in knots.”

“That’s their job,” Hannah said. “But let’s get to school. Enough Court TV for today.”

***

Bryce was sitting in the pool-house, playing video games with Justin, when his phone rang. When he saw that it was Stephanie calling, he paused the game, picked up the phone and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

“Hey,” he said.

“The prosecutor just called. Mark is doing a plea deal.”

“Well that’s… I mean… is that good?” Bryce asked. “What’s he agreeing to do?”

“Three months probation,” Stephanie replied, “But at least he’s agreed to transfer out of Liberty so I don’t have to see him again.”

“Three months probation?”

“Yeah, I know, it’s a whole lot of nothing. But at this rate… Honestly I’m just glad that I don’t have to testify. I’ve haven’t been sleeping for a week, just thinking about everything I did and every wrong way they could make me look. I don’t know. Is that selfish?”

“No. It’s not. Listen… It’s your decision.”

“Yeah. I think… I think I’m going to say it’s okay. I don’t know if they even care what I think, all that ‘the state versus’ and all that, but… the fact that he does have to say that he did do it… That means a lot, honestly. It means I didn’t… imagine it or misconstrue it or any of that shit. It means it happened.” He heard her take a breath and then she said. “I heard already where he says he’s going to transfer to.”

“Where?” Bryce asked, even though he already knew what the answer had to be.

“Hillcrest. What the fuck goes on at Hillcrest?”

“I don’t even know.”

Chapter Text

The Homecoming dance was three days after Mark’s plea-bargain, and Bryce arrived at Skye Miller’s house with a corsage and a limo. She stepped out on to the front step with a smile, looking a little nervous.

“Hi, Skye,” Bryce said, “Ready to go?”

“Yeah,” she replied, walking slowly in heels. Bryce wondered how anyone managed to walk in those at all.

They arrived early, standing over by the food table, and chatting to Clay and Hannah as they arrived. Justin arrived shortly thereafter, with Jessica, who were both in a heated discussion with Zach.

“I just don’t think it’s a sport.”

“How about you try to do a somersault in mid-air, Zach? When was the last time you did that on the football field?” Jess yelled at him. “In a tiny skirt, no less. None of that helmet and padding crap. If you fall in cheerleading, you just fall and hit the ground, BAM, BOW, SPLAT.”

“Clearly,” Skye said dryly, “A matter of international importance.”

“Well, to be fair,” I said, “I don’t think I would be able to do cheerleading.”

“You mean girls wouldn’t line up to see you in those tiny shorts?” Skye inquired. “Now, that’s a lie.”

Bryce snorted.

“I mean, maybe. I don’t know about that.”

“Oh, I love this song!” Jessica exclaimed, running out on the floor with Justin to the tune of “I Like To Move It”.

Bryce’s gaze slowly wandered over to them.

“Listen, Walker, answer me one thing,” Skye said.

“Uh, what?”

“Why do you ask me to this dance when you’re clearly into Justin?”

Bryce’s cheeks reddened and he tried to look anywhere but at Skye, but then he was back to watching Justin and Jessica and that was clearly no good, either.

“How many girls are you planning on taking to school dances until you finally get up the nerve to just ask him?” Skye asked, and Bryce didn’t have an answer to that.

***

Two weeks later, Bryce gathered with Hannah, Stephanie, Alex, and the rest of the cast of 42nd Street for opening night.

Bryce’s character, Bert Barry, was one of the people who wrote Pretty Lady, which was the show within the show that the characters of 42nd Street were putting on, and Hannah was one of the chorus girls, known as “Anytime Annie.”

Bryce’s role seemed to largely consist of him rushing out and being worried about whether they would be able to pull off his show, up until the final opening of Pretty Lady, after Dorothy (played by Stephanie) had broken her ankle and been replaced by the new, bright tap dancer Peggy Sawyer (played by Lina).

As Peggy, accompanied by Dorothy, sang “About a Quarter to Nine”, Bryce and Hannah prepared to sing their only song together.

The curtain lifted on the two of them in a painted train car, and Bryce, struck again by stage fright but only for a moment, began to sing:
“Now that we have had the rice and flowers…
The knot, is tied…”

Hannah sang in response,
“I can visualize such happy hours…
Close by, your side…”

And then back to Bryce:
“The honeymoon in store, is one that you’ll adore,
I’m gonna take you for a ride…”

They were off to the races, now, finishing their duet before the chorus chimed in on “Shuffle Off to Buffalo”.
Bryce tried not to think about how the Liberty graduate who had come to review the show had misunderstood the girl playing Maggie when she sang, “First you serve ‘em with subpoenas, then you take ‘em to the cleaners,” as, well...

And then, as the curtain came down, they shifted to the final song and final tap dance.

Once they were out of earshot, Hannah grabbed Bryce’s arm and skipped along, singing loudly, “First you serve ‘em with the penis! Then you take ‘em to the…”

“Cleanis?” Bryce prompted.

They all burst out laughing.

***

For Thanksgiving, Bryce invited Hannah and Clay over. He expected that his parents would be away, off on some business trip or skiing at Aspen, but they stayed home due to “flights being grounded”.

“We’d love to have dinner with you and your friends,” Nora said, and while Bryce figured he should have found that comforting, he found himself seized with foreboding.

What was he going to do with his parents talking to Clay, Hannah, and Justin? That could only go horribly wrong. Despite the fact that Justin actually lived in his house, and Hannah and Clay had been over multiple times, they had encountered Nora only briefly and Barry not at all.

“Sure,” Bryce said instead, and he wondered if he would be able to keep it together. Since the trial and its weird sense of déjà vu, it had been a lot harder. His head had felt as if it was swimming more often than not, and he only didn’t feel like screaming when he was surrounded by people. “I’d like that.”

***

Nora had sent the maids to the kitchen and had taken over the job of opening the door to the house herself, and Bryce listened from the stairs as she let in Hannah and Clay.

“It’s so great to finally properly meet you. Barry is just finishing something in his office and will be down for dinner, and Bryce must be around here somewhere.”

“Hello, Mrs. Walker,” Hannah greeted, and Clay nodded in echo.

“I’m here!” Bryce said, half-stumbling down from the staircase. He had put on his best blue polo. He hadn’t realized until today that his closet did consist at least ninety-percent of polo shirts.

“Bryce,” Nora said with a smile. “Your friends are here. And go find Justin. Dinner is almost ready. We have turkey and ham and duck…”

“A turducken,” Clay blurted, and Bryce laughed.

“No,” Bryce and Nora said at the same time.

Bryce walked off, feeling as if the three of them couldn’t get into any conversation too awkward while he went to the pool-house – Justin must be there, he assumed, because he hadn’t seen him since he had woken up this morning. He chastised himself for being so nervous at leaving his mother alone with Hannah and Clay. What did he expect to happen? For Hannah to tell Nora what Bryce had told her? But then she would have needed to tell Clay, too, and it seemed that she hadn’t, though Clay still seemed to regard him with some slight suspicion.

He found Justin laying in the pool-house, his body slumped on the couch and his head lolling to the side.

“Hey, Justin,” Bryce called, “They’re ready for dinner. Justin?”

He began to shake Justin, gently. He hadn’t seen this before, not in person, but somehow it seemed familiar to him, all too familiar.

“Hey, wake up.”

“I’m awake,” Justin mumbled, his eyes still closed.

“We need to get in for dinner, okay?” Bryce said. He offered his arm to Justin and led him to the pool-house’s bathroom. He ran water and cupped it in his hands, flinging it at Justin’s face.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Justin said again. “What’s going on?”

Bryce looked over at him.

“You’re okay, right?” he asked. “Justin, tell me you’re okay?”

“I’m okay,” Justin replied. The light began to slowly dawn back into his eyes. He walked over and pulled a shirt on, then gave that dazzling Foley smile to Bryce. “I was just sleeping. It’s fine.”

***

Bryce sat between Justin and Hannah at the table, watching as Barry Walker surveyed them all. He spent an extra second looking at Hannah, a long extra second, and that extra second made Bryce’s hair stand up on end.

“So,” Barry said, “I finally get to meet some of my son’s friends. Hannah, is it? And Clay? And…” He looked over at Justin and narrowed his eyes. “I think I’ve seen you before.”

“This is Justin,” Bryce said. “He’s been my best friend since I was nine.”

“That’s right. Justin. The one with the junkie mom, huh?” Barry prodded. “How’s she doing?”

Justin looked down at the plate and mumbled something.

“Amber’s doing well, Barry,” Nora cut in, “She works at that hotel downtown.”

“Oh, really?” Barry continued, “What does she do? Clean rooms? Throw out used condoms?”

“Barry,” Nora warned.

Bryce’s eyes flashed.

Justin opened his mouth to say something, but Bryce cut him off.

“She’s front desk manager at the,” Bryce hesitated only for a second as he came up with the first luxury hotel he could think of, “Trump Plaza.”

To Clay’s credit, rather than pointing out that that hotel was not only in Atlantic City but no longer in operation, chimed in, “Senior front desk manager.”

Hannah scooped up some of the turkey and put stuffing over it, adding, “Hospitality is a thriving industry, I hear. Six of the ten newest millionaires got their start in the hotel industry.”

Justin warily looked at the three of them, but didn’t beg to differ.

“Well, that’s good,” Barry snarled. “Someone pass the cranberry sauce.”

Nora looked at him.

“Go get it yourself.”

Chapter Text

A few days after Christmas, Bryce’s phone rang. He peeked at it to see that it was Stephanie who was calling. He hadn’t heard from her, except in passing, since the day Mark had taken the plea bargain, and he hadn’t called her because he hadn’t known what to say, and had been worried about somehow saying too much. What if she felt that Bryce had pulled her into this for nothing? Mark hadn’t been punished, not truly, and instead seemed to have simply been rehomed to become Hillcrest’s problem. And that ignored the fact that Coach Rick was still there, and Bryce couldn’t shake the feeling that he was not at all happy about Bryce’s interference – he hadn’t said a word to Bryce in the halls but had narrowed his eyes at him.

Bryce felt like Coach Rick was waiting… but for what?

Maybe Stephanie was calling to drop that second shoe.

He answered the phone after it vibrated twice and put it to his ear.

“Stephanie, hey, is everything all right? What’s going on?”

“Everything is better than all right, Bryce. I feel… free. I feel like there’s a weight that I’ve been carrying around for months and now, I can finally breathe. I can finally look around and not see him everywhere.”

“But he’s not even going to jail,” Bryce pointed out, “I mean, you might see him around. I’m not trying to be a killjoy, though. You sound really happy.”

Stephanie chuckled on the other end of the phone.

“You don’t understand. It doesn’t have much to do with Mark Perry. It’s… just, well, me. I’m finally able to stop carrying this around and wondering what people would think if they knew.”

“Well, that’s really good…” Bryce continued, still not entirely sure why it was him she was calling to talk about this with and not Nina or someone else who would understand where she was coming from.

“I wanted to call you because I want to have a party. To celebrate. And I’ve heard that you throw better parties than anyone else in this town.”

Bryce hesitated for only a second before saying, “Okay. Well… I’m in. Just let me know what you’d like to see.”

***

That Friday, Bryce woke up again to find that Justin wasn’t lying there beside him. He crept down to the pool-house to see Justin lying there, again, looking a little dazed and a little worried.

“Hey, Justin,” Bryce called. “You all right?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Justin said, not getting up from the couch.

“If there was something… you would tell me about it, wouldn’t you? Best friends, after all. Brothers.” And more, Bryce echoed in his head. So much more.

“Of course,” Justin said. His eyes were still closed.

“Okay.”

Bryce walked over and kissed Justin on the cheek. He seemed clammy and stiff.

“Please, Justin. Just be careful.”

Bryce felt like he was spinning out of his depth.

Justin’s mouth sleeping twisted into a little smile.

“Just let me know when the party’s starting. I’ll be there for it.”

“Okay.”

Bryce gave Justin’s knee a little squeeze.

“You’d better be.”

***

Justin sat in the passenger seat of Bryce’s Range Rover, with Clay and Hannah in the back.

Bryce pulled up in front of Alex Standall’s house and honked his horn.

“What the hell?” Alex asked as he stepped out on to the porch.

“Get in, loser!” Bryce exclaimed, “We’re going to do karaoke at my place!”

Alex looked around, seemed to think about it for a moment, and then climbed in the back next to Hannah. A moment later, they had pulled up in front of Jessica’s place and were honking the horn.

“Will this car even fit any more people?” Hannah inquired.

That was answer, at least somewhat, in the next twenty minutes when Hannah peeked up at Bryce from behind Jessica’s shoulder and Clay, to his seeming surprise, had Stephanie sitting on his lap.

“Hi, Stephanie,” Clay said.

“Hi, Clay,” Stephanie replied. “Sorry if that’s your leg.”

“It’s not my leg,” Clay said awkwardly.

“Speeding up, speeding up,” Bryce said as he made his way back to the house.

***

“When did you get a karaoke machine?” Hannah asked.

“Last week,” Bryce replied, “I don’t know. I saw it, and I just had to have it.”

“Perks of being Montana Max!” Hannah declared.

“Or Richie Rich,” Bryce replied.

“Montana Max is better, which reminds me, we should go find Tyler,” Hannah said. “I don’t think we could have fit him into that car.”

“Not on top of me at least,” said Clay, who was still a little red.

“I’ll go get Tyler,” Hannah offered. “Clay, you stay here and recover.”

Ten minutes later, she arrived with Tyler in tow.

“So, where’s this karaoke?” Hannah prompted, cutting into the serving of drinks that Bryce had begun. Justin still looked a little under the weather as he cupped his hands around his untouched glass of bourbon.

“In the pool-house,” Bryce told Hannah, leading them all over there. He watched as they each took a spot on a different piece of furniture. What an odd crew they were, he mused – usually he would have been here with Justin, Zach, Monty and the rest of the jocks, but here they were. People affected by the tapes that, now, would never be recorded.

Alex clicked had picked up one of the controllers of the karaoke machine.

“Hey, look at all these songs,” Alex said. “What ones do you want to do?”

“Eh, I don’t know, what do we have?” Hannah asked. “Ooh, this one. Bohemian Rhapsody.” Hannah grinned. “We should have Bryce since ‘I’m just a riiiiich boy…’”

Bryce rolled his eyes at her, and Hannah tossed him the microphone.

“Bring your pipes up here, Walker. I want to see what you can do!”

Alex picked up another microphone and sang, “Is this the reallll life?”

***

They had been singing until nearly eleven o’clock when Bryce drove Hannah, Clay, Tyler and Stephanie home, leaving Justin to sleep on the couch in the pool-house.

“Thanks,” Tyler said as he got out, last. “I had a lot of fun, even if I don’t really know why you invited me.”

“Well, we’ll all get together again soon,” Bryce promised. “Take care of yourself.”

Tyler shrugged.

“Okay.”

***

Bryce drove back to his house, parked in the garage, and walked into the pool-house.

Justin wasn’t there.

He must have gone upstairs, Bryce figured, though Justin rarely went up to Bryce’s room if Bryce weren’t there to invite him.

He wasn’t up there either.

He tried the bathrooms, the back deck, and even the pool and hot tub. Nothing.

Bryce’s blood went cold. Something was wrong.

“Mom!” Bryce called, knocking on his parents’ door. When Nora came to the door, Bryce asked, “Have you seen Justin? I can’t find him anywhere. He was… sick, or something. Maybe the flu?”

Before Nora could reply, Barry’s head appeared in the back.

“I told your little junkie boyfriend that he could go.”

“Go?” Bryce echoed.

“Found him rooting through the medicine cabinet. He doesn’t belong in my house, Bryce. Keep your stray dogs at the pound next time, son.”

Chapter Text

Bryce ran into the Range Rover, noticing that the clear sky was quickly darkening. Fitting.

Justin had to have gone back to his house; Bryce refused to consider any alternatives to this. He wouldn’t allow himself to remember the way that that other Justin had disappeared off the face of the Earth, only returning when Clay had retrieved him.

That had only happened, Bryce told himself, because of what Bryce had done to Jess. And Hannah. And Hannah’s death, and a hundred other circumstances that hadn’t happened this time around.

So Justin… had to be… at his mom’s house. Bryce willed it to be so.

He parked on the street in front of the housing complex and jumped out in a flurry, running up to the front door and knocking on it in a flurry, not caring how late it must be by now. He needed to see Justin, needed to make sure that it was all right. Maybe this had begun to avenge Hannah, but Justin… Justin was everything.

The door opened a moment later, and the man Bryce recognized as Seth Massey, current boyfriend of Amber Foley, stepped out on to the ledge.

“What the hell are you thinking, banging on my door like that?” Seth raged. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Bryce motherfucking Walker. Where’s Justin?”

“Justin?” Seth hissed. “That little shit broke in here and took a thousand dollars from me, and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Somehow I doubt that’s the whole story.” Bryce strode forward, allowing himself to be face to face with Seth, so close that he could feel Seth breathing on his neck. “What did you do to Justin, and where did he go from there?”

“I told him he had to leave,” said a voice from behind them. Bryce turned his head to look behind Seth, finding Amber standing in the living room. “Seth didn’t want him here, so I told him he had to go. He took some money and I think he got on a bus.”

“A bus to where?” Bryce yelled, barely keeping it together. All of the bitterness and rage he had successfully kept at bay this last year whispered in his ear that Seth would be a quite deserving target.

“He didn’t say,” Amber said. She picked up a beer from the table and began to drink it. “I don’t know why you’re so worried. Justin isn’t a soft, rich kid like you. He’s always been able to take care of himself.”

“He shouldn’t have to,” Bryce fired back, then narrowed his eyes on Seth.

He thought of the crack of Zach’s leg on the football field. He could have Seth on the ground in a few seconds flat, and it wasn’t as if Amber would be able to do much to pull him off once he began to rain down blows on him.

Bryce raised his fist. It would be so easy.

But it would be minutes, maybe hours, that Justin would get farther and farther away from him.

So he settled for shoving Seth as hard back as he could, looking at them both and saying, “If anything happens to him, you’re both dead. Tell whoever you want.”

And then he walked away, the rain soaking his hair, his clothes, and his step.

***

Bryce’s attempts to call the Evergreen Greyhound station that night resulted in a recording letting him know that he could purchase tickets on the website, so he went there first thing in the morning. The station was falling apart, the chairs gray and chipped, and a machine in the corner lured people in to try to play a claw machine with the repeated announcement, “There’s no limit to what you can win!”

Bryce looked around the station, hoping that maybe whichever bus Justin was trying to get on hadn’t left at night, but the only people there all appeared to be over the age of sixty or, in the case of one small family, under the age of ten.

Bryce walked over to the counter and looked at the woman behind it, taking a deep breath and then saying, “My friend came here last night. I think. Blonde hair. He might have been wearing a hoodie.
About my age. Do you know where he bought a ticket to?”

“Kid, I can’t tell you that. Shouldn’t you be in school? If your friend is running away on a bus, he ought to be in school too.”

“I’m looking for him. He did run away, but I’m trying to get him back. I just need to know where he went.”

The woman looked at him and sighed.

“Listen, do you want me to call Child Protective Services? Or the police? They can probably go get him if he’s younger than eighteen, but then he’ll end up in foster care and all of that. Or you can just hope that your friend comes back on his own. But I can’t tell you where he went, unless you wanna bring in the cops. Even then, your friend probably paid in cash and there’s no record.”

“What about security cameras?” Bryce pressed. The woman shrugged.

“By the time we’d look through that, your friend would probably be long gone.”

Bryce pressed his fingers into his temples.

“Can you at least tell me which buses left last night?”

“There were four or five. One went to LA. Another went to Oakland. Then, Allende in Mexico. And I think there was one to San Francisco. Good luck.”

***

When Tony Padilla opened the door after Bryce had been banging on it for ten minutes, he greeted him with the statement, “I think my father wants to kill you.”

“I’m sorry for waking everybody up. But I need your help. On multiple levels.”

Tony looked at him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” he asked.

“Aren’t you?” Bryce countered. Tony shrugged.

“I show up every so often. Liberty hasn’t really noticed all that much. Kind of a running theme.”

“I’m looking for Justin. He vanished last night, and I think he might have taken a bus to somewhere.”

“Why would I know where Justin is?” Tony replied.

“Come on, Tony. Don’t you pull that stuff with me. You’ve been hinting – well, more than hinting – that you know a lot about what’s happening. What happened to me, I mean.”

Tony stepped out the door and closed it.

“And you want some spoilers to help you out,” Tony replied flatly.

“Not me, Tony. Justin. I don’t know where he’s gone and I don’t want anything to happen to him. I need to find him and bring him home.”

“To what? What do you need to bring him home to? Presumably he left for a reason.”

“My dad kicked him out. But I’ll figure it out once I find him. But you know about where Justin must have gone… the other time. These are the buses that left here last night, and I need to know which of them he got on.”

He handed Tony the list, and Tony gave Bryce a side-eye.

“You’re asking me if Justin pulled a Party of Five and ran off to Mexico? You have been in Spanish class with him, right?”

“Okay, so not Mexico. Where, then?”

Tony searched Bryce’s eyes for a long time, then tapped the list.

“He went to Oakland. Word of advice – you’ll want to get help from the person who got him back last time.”

“Clay,” Bryce declared.

“That’s right. Now, I have a garage to run, so get out of here.”

Tony turned to go back into his house, and as he did, Bryce called, “Hey. Why were you in Spanish class, anyway? When you speak perfect Spanish?”

Tony shrugged.

“You get class credit for baseball. I need to take my free credit where I can get it. Now, go find your boy.”

Chapter Text

Bryce called Clay and Hannah, who quite frustratingly were actually at school.

He received a call back from Hannah first, in the afternoon.

“Justin’s gone missing. He’s in Oakland. I need you and Clay to help me find him,” Bryce blurted.

“Well, I mean I guess I’m always up for a road trip, but why specifically Clay though?”

“Clay helped find him in the other… I mean, when the other Justin went missing in the other…”

“Well, why did he go missing the other time?”

Bryce hesitated.

“Well, because of all that stuff I told you about,” he replied.

“I barely know Justin. I don’t know whether to be flattered or confused, or maybe offended, that he would run off if anything were to happen to me. But, well… Let’s go find him. And when we get back, I need you to go out for Les Mis with me.”

“What’s that one about?”

“Everything is bad, and everybody dies, but it’s all kind of grand and meaningful so everyone likes it anyway.”

***

They set off on their first trip to Oakland the next morning: Clay and Hannah had both told their parents that they had “the flu” before sneaking out, and Bryce had refused to talk to either of his parents since Justin disappeared and, thus far, hadn’t told them anything at all.

The city was larger than Bryce had imagined it would be, and attempting to find a Justin-shaped needle in an Oakland-shaped haystack was proving much tougher than he had hoped.

By the end of the first day, they had checked four homeless shelters, been offered drugs by three different people, and Hannah had been asked how much she charged by another three. And no one had seen Justin at all.

***

Bryce slowly went back to school, but he found the days to be emptier without Justin there, especially as he watched Hannah and Clay grow closer. Even as they came out with him every evening to look for Justin all over again, he noticed the small touches and cheek kisses when they seemed to think Bryce wasn’t looking.

He wondered where in the world Justin could be.

He would be safer with Bryce’s arms around him. He would have to be.

***

Christmas came and went.

The only thing Bryce wanted was Justin’s return. But he was still nowhere to be found.

***

“I don’t know, maybe we should have Alex’s dad out looking for Justin,” Hannah said as the three sat in the Range Rover. “I feel like we’ve been over every possible place he could be, and no luck. Are we sure that he even went to Oakland? What if he’s been somewhere else the whole time?”

“Or if he’s dead,” Clay spoke up. Hannah elbowed him hard in the ribs.

“He’s not dead,” Hannah and Bryce said at the same time.

“How are you both so sure?” Clay shot back. “He ran off after using drugs. What happens when people use drugs? A lot of times, they die.”

“Thanks for the afterschool special, Clay Jensen,” Hannah said, taking a bite out of her sandwich, “But Justin’s alive. We just don’t know where he is. Did he ever mention anyone in Oakland, Bryce? Any kind of a friend or family member he might decide to stay with?”

“No, nobody. I think… He’s got to be somewhere on the streets. But it’s getting cold… It’s already gotten cold. I feel like he has to be in a shelter or something,” Bryce said. “I’m just not… I should have seen the signs. Or something. And when we do find him, I have to figure something out. I can’t make him go back to living under the same roof as good old Barry after what he did.”

“But he was doing, what, Vicodin in your house? That’s basically just like heroin. I mean, I think my parents would be a little mad, too,” Clay said.

“You’d be surprised,” Bryce retorted.

“Okay, Clay, I love you but you sound like an idiot. However… you might have hit on something there. If Justin’s addicted, he’ll have to go to where the drugs are, won’t he?” Hannah asked.

“You’re proposing we go buy heroin?” Clay asked.

“Well, yeah.”

Bryce reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of Oxy.

“I can do you one better,” he said. “We’re not buying. We’re selling.”

***

They had to chase away quite a few would-be buyers of Bryce’s Oxy before, finally, someone told him where “that little brown haired guy” would be – and then demanded why he would be a better buyer than himself.

“Because you suck,” Bryce replied, then sighed. Ever since he had decided to become a better person, at least in the most recent nearly-dying iteration of it, he did feel more abnormally guilty whenever he said things like that. “Please go to rehab or something,” he mumbled as an afterthought.

They sped off from the street corner to another, where the guy had promised they would find Justin – or maybe, just another brown-haired guy that looked something like Justin. They had been directed to five of them already. Bryce had begun to lose hope from the number of reed-thin men of around his age who he had pushed over to see someone else’s face.

He wondered if maybe he had encountered Justin already and just hadn’t recognized him, if the heroin had changed him so completely as to make him unrecognizable.

But no. He would know Justin. He had to know Justin.

There were bodies lined up against the side of the building, all wrapped in torn winter coats and hunched over on themselves.

“Oh my God,” Hannah whispered, and Bryce knew exactly what she meant. Having driven by these scenes for the last month and a half had been one thing, but actually having to step inside this world was another.

Bryce might have been the most out of his depth, but he knew that neither Hannah or Clay had dreamed of anything like this, either.

And this was Justin’s world now.

Bryce shook each person one by one, apologizing, “Sorry man” to each to turned out not to be Justin.

“Someone must be looking for each of them, too,” Hannah said to Clay, but Bryce wasn’t sure.

After all, who had been looking for Justin the first time around? Who would have brought him back if Clay hadn’t needed him to testify? Maybe Bryce’s crimes had simultaneously driven Justin to the street as well as back home again.

But Clay’s parents had adopted Justin later. Justin’s eyes had filled with care whenever Clay was mentioned, the last few times Bryce had seen him then, with the same dedication he used to show for Bryce. Before Bryce shattered his trust.

He wouldn’t do that this time.

“Clay,” Bryce called, “See if he’s over there.”

It had to be Clay. Maybe Clay was the key, or maybe Bryce was just grasping at straws, hoping that Clay’s presence would activate something to bring Justin back.

So Bryce didn’t really expect it to work, and when he heard Clay call, “Justin? Justin!” he didn’t respond at first.

And then he did, running at full speed, looking at Clay with an arm knotted around the arm of another bundle, the bundle that was Justin Foley.

“Justin!” Bryce yelled. “It’s me. It’s Bryce.”

Justin gave a soft murmur in response, and then some thrashing, attempting to get away from Clay and nearly succeeding. But with Bryce grabbing his other arm, they were able to deadlift him to the Range Rover.

Hannah opened the door.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Get us to a hotel,” Bryce said. “And Hannah…” He tossed her the keys. “You drive.”

Chapter Text

They found a small motel after about a five-minute drive, and thankfully Bryce’s fake ID was as successful for renting a room as it had been for buying beer back at Blue Spot Liquor. The man behind the counter didn’t ask any questions about why the three of them were carrying an unconscious man, either.

They carried Justin upstairs and Hannah opened the door with the keycard.

“Here, get him on the bed,” she instructed, and Bryce and Clay laid him down over the blankets.

“Justin?” Hannah asked. “Justin? Can you hear us?”

There was a moan in response from Justin, and Bryce looked down at him with a mix of alarm and relief.

“Hey,” Bryce called, gently moving Justin to his side and placing a blanket over him. “You’re safe. Justin, it’s me, Bryce. I came to get you.”

“Bryce?” Justin echoed.

“It’s me,” Bryce agreed. “I’m here.” He placed his hand to Justin’s forehead. “You’re burning up…”

“Should we take him to a hospital?” Hannah inquired.

Bryce shook his head. He thought of the hospital trying to call Justin’s mother – what would happen then? No, that was a last resort.

“I’ll let him sleep it off for a little while… You guys should get home.”

He needed space to figure out just what he would do, and while Hannah and Clay might give good advice, that wasn’t what Bryce needed now. He needed only to be around Justin, to keep him safe, and to hear his breathing. To remind himself that Justin was here and that he hadn’t lost him again.

“Are you sure?” Hannah asked.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Clay agreed.

“We’ll be right here,” Bryce said. “If your parents get worried, then that’s just another thing to contend with. Tomorrow I’ll bring Justin… well, somewhere. Once I figure out where that somewhere is.”

Hannah hesitated.

“And you’re sure?” she asked again. “Because we can stay.”

“No… You guys should get home. I’ve got this.”

Bryce absolutely did not have this.

***

In lieu of coming up with a real plan, Bryce laid down next to Justin and wrapped his arms around him, whispering that he was safe.

Justin looked dizzy and out of it, and he was quiet other than a periodic whisper of Bryce’s name. Other than that, however, he seemed fine. His breathing sounded normal, which was the sole thing Bryce had remembered from Health class the first time around.

And then, rather suddenly, things began to change.

Justin began to curl up into a ball, dry-heaving, and crying out.

“Justin? Justin?” Bryce tried to call, and he managed to get him into the motel’s bathroom just before he started to throw up.

Justin’s seeming fever of earlier had ballooned into him seeming to be hot all over and covered in a deep sweat that kept soaking through his clothes, even after Bryce managed to get him into a sweatshirt and pants that Bryce had sitting in his backpack.

Bryce stared at his phone, panicked. The idea of calling Nora or, far be it, Barry, felt alien, and even if he asked Hannah and Clay what to do, it wasn’t like they would know any more than he did.

Bryce found himself back at Hannah’s question.

Should he bring him to a hospital? If he did, he was opening up Justin to a world of trouble for running away and using drugs.

He pressed his fingers to his temple and then let out a sigh.

It was time, again, to really hope he could use that old Walker ability to skate through without any consequences – and hope he could use it to apply to Justin this time.

***

Once upon a time, it had been very easy for Bryce to lie.

He had been able to sit up in court, smile sheepishly, and talk about how Hannah Baker’s sole wish in life was to have sex with Bryce in his hot tub and it wasn’t really his fault if he couldn’t commit to anything further.

He had been able to tilt his head to the side and tell Chloe that they’d had it all wrong, and that of course Jess was just making up all this stuff because they had hooked up and she didn’t want the backlash.

Bryce had lied just as surely as he blinked to save his own skin.

So why was it so goddamned hard right now to stammer out the bullshit he had concocted about how his family was “taking care of Justin, you know, we try and, uh, give back to the community” and no he didn’t have any of the documents showing that but if the hospital were to call Nora and Barry they would fax them all over right away and of course it was all legal and the Walkers were like, grade A foster parents and by the way Bryce was pretty sure they had donated a wing to this hospital, uh, what was its name again?

It sounded like even more of a lie than the stupidest lies Bryce had ever told in his life.

Thankfully, the nurse just stared at him, seeming content to let him run his course, and then told him that they were going to admit Justin and do some tests to see what was going on with him, and that if Justin said it was okay they would tell him all about it once they had some more information.

And Bryce sat in the waiting room and, befitting the title, waited.

***

It was four or five hours later, and pushing three in the morning, when the nurse emerged.

“Uh, is Bryce Walker here for Justin Foley?”

Bryce rose, nodding.

“That’s me,” he said quickly.

“Okay, let’s talk in here.” The nurse led him over to a curtained area that should have felt more private than it did. The nurse, who looked to be barely older than Bryce, looked at him and let out a little sigh. “So, your friend Justin signed a release for us to discuss his condition with you. We gave him some fluids and antibiotics and he’s doing better, but we’re concerned. We sent out for blood tests, but if the tell-tale signs are correct, then we won’t be able to see anything until about eighteen to forty days after exposure.”

“Exposure to what?” Bryce inquired.

“You may want to take a seat,” the nurse said, and Bryce knotted his hands together and shook his head. He would stay standing.

“The flu your friend has – the parts of it that don’t seem to be connected to withdrawal - is generally a first sign of HIV infection. And your friend’s intravenous drug use does tend to maximize the risk. He’s going to be fine to go home by tomorrow, and you want to make sure he gets enough fluids so he doesn’t end up back in the hospital, but you also want to make sure that he comes back in to get retested in a few weeks.”

Bryce’s head was spinning. When the nurse walked away, he looked down at his phone, wondering again who the hell to call.

He saw that he had one new message, and when he clicked it, he found that it was from Nora. The message was two words: We moved.

Chapter Text

Bryce stepped into Justin’s hospital room and sat in a chair next to him, watching as his chest rose and fell. He felt bad at the possibility of waking him up, but he was driven by a need to let Justin know that he was there, and that Justin was safe. He wondered if Justin had ever truly felt safe in his life.

He reached out and gently kneaded his fingers against Justin’s hand, soft and careful.

He heard a moan as Justin’s eyes opened, and he looked back over at him with a slow, dawning surprise.

“Bryce?”

“It’s me,” Bryce replied, intertwining their fingers. “They said you should be ready to go home today.”

“Home?” Justin echoed.

“Yeah. With me.” Bryce smiled, trying to hide all the worry. “My mother apparently moved in with my grandfather, so we’re going to go there.”

“Bryce, I can’t…”

“Yes. You can. Why did you run away? Was it something that I did? Or that I said?”

Justin shook his head, then pulled back his hand to dab at his face with his sleeve.

“I… Your dad caught me taking pills out of the medicine cabinet, and he yelled at me and told me to go. I went home and… Seth beat me up. And I couldn’t go crawling back to you, not after that.”

“But Justin…” Bryce shifted his spot to lean in closer to Justin and grab his hand again. “Why would you do that stuff? You know what it does to your mom. I’m not judging, I just want to understand.”

“Sometimes I just want to forget,” Justin said, looking away from him. “And yeah, I know I shouldn’t. But all that stuff just piles up inside of me and I have to… dull it.”

“I get it, I think,” Bryce said. “I…” He hesitated. “I have no right to judge, man, like I said. I’ve done all kinds of shit. But for me it’s the other way around. Sometimes I think… I’m dull all around, Justin. And there’s not always a lot that makes me feel anything. So sometimes I would do… bad things, horrible things, just to feel something. But that didn’t work either.”

“What kinds of bad things?” Justin asked. Bryce shook his head.

“It’s not for me to put on you. Never.”

Justin seemed to think about that for a little while.

“So what worked?” he asked.

“You. Being around you.”

Bryce leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek, and Justin let out a whimper.

“Bryce… I told them to tell you, I… You shouldn’t, because I…”

“You might be sick?” Bryce prompted, leaning close.

“Yeah. I don’t wanna get you sick.”

Bryce leaned in to kiss him again.

“I’m not worried,” he replied, and he gently moved to nuzzle his neck. “Not worried at all.”

***

Justin slept in the back of the Range Rover as Bryce drove from Oakland back to Evergreen, which was only about a half an hour drive.

Bryce pulled up in front of the Chatham House, got out and opened the garage door, and then parked the Range Rover beside one of his mother’s cars and then opened the back.

“Justin, we’re here.”

Justin let out a murmur of annoyance, but followed Bryce into the house.

“We’re here!” Bryce declared loudly.

Nora stepped out into the living room, looking over Bryce and Justin.

“Justin! You’re back,” she said. “It’s good to see you. Bryce… Liberty called. They’re not very happy with you. They said you missed a week of class.”

“I’ll be back in time for Les Mis rehearsal on Monday,” Bryce said.

“Where have you been?” Nora continued, ignoring that comment.

“Oakland.”

“Oakland? You brought our Range Rover to Oakland?”

Bryce shrugged.

“When did you move here?” he asked instead.

“Well, your father and I… we had quite the row after he pulled that stunt on you, Justin, and then it just was… untenable. So we’re separated, and I think it’s for good.”

“Good for you,” Bryce said. “Good riddance to him.”

“It’s not always that easy,” Nora pointed out, “But thank you for the vote of confidence. I will ask both of you to be as conscientious as you can about my father. He’s a little bit… old-fashioned – you remember, Bryce.”

“So don’t be too gay,” Bryce said, “Got it. I’ll be as straight as an arrow.”

Nora rolled her eyes.

“Since when are you gay, anyway? I thought you and Stephanie Rodriguez were a couple, or you and Hannah Baker.”

“Hannah is with Clay Jensen,” Bryce replied. “And just trust me on this. The female population of Liberty doesn’t need me in the dating pool. Justin is stuck with me.”

“Justin?” Nora asked.

Justin shrugged.

“Well, anyway. There’s a suite of rooms upstairs. You two have your pick of them. Just stay out of the guest house.”

Bryce opened his mouth, but quickly shut it as the sound of wheels rolled into the living room. Harrison Chatham entered, grumbling, followed by two figures who Bryce found very familiar.

“Bryce, Justin,” Nora began, “These are Amara Josephine Achola and her daughter…”

“Ani,” Bryce blurted, stepping forward.

“Yeah,” the girl replied, a little bit wide-eyed. “Ani Achola. Please to… meet you?”

“Pleased to meet you too,” Bryce said, shaking her hand.

Amara Josephine shot them a glare, then looked over at Nora.

“Amara Josephine, Ani, this is my son Bryce and his…” Nora looked at Amara Josephine and then shrugged, “His boyfriend Justin.”

“What?” Harrison yelled. “What did you say?”

“Nothing,” Nora and Bryce replied.

***

“So your family just has like… massive amounts of massive houses?” Justin inquired, laying back on one of the beds in Bryce’s preferred bedroom. “What does your family even do, anyway?”

“I’m not sure,” Bryce admitted. “My grandfather’s loaded but I’m not sure how he got it. Or how he kept it – he’s been married three times after my grandmother.”

“Maybe they let him keep the money just to get away from him,” Justin mused.

“Probably.” Bryce offered Justin a beer, which he accepted. “When I went down to get this I heard him asking Ani if she ever fought a lion.”

“I think I’d have said yes,” Justin said. “Maybe it would shut him up.”

Bryce grinned.

“Maybe I’ll float that next time.”

Justin blinked, rolled over and looked at him.

“It kind of seemed like you and Ani had met before.”

“Nah,” Bryce said, “It’s just that unmistakable Walker chemistry.”

Justin snorted.

“I thought you’re gay now.”

“Gotta let the girls think they still have a chance,” Bryce bragged. “Don’t want to crush anyone’s dreams just yet.”

Justin picked up a pillow and threw it at him.

Chapter Text

Bryce and Justin fell into a rhythm in the next few weeks. Despite Justin having claimed the right bed for himself in Bryce’s room, every night ended with him climbing into the left.

Justin got his blood test results back the next month, and it announced what both of them had feared.

“I mean, if you want me to move out, I can,” Justin told him, and Bryce cocked his head to the side.

“Why would I want that?” Bryce asked.

“Because I’m… I’ve got…”

“Justin, get your ass back in this bed,” Bryce instructed, and when Justin did, Bryce set upon his cheeks, his chest, his lips. “You’re here to stay this time, Justin. And nothing will change that.”

“But you could get…” Justin argued from beneath the onslaught.

“Or I could get pushed off a bridge and drown and die,” Bryce replied, “I’ll take my chances.”

Justin blinked.

“I mean, I guess you could, but it’s not that likely.”

“You’d be surprised.”

***

Justin had kept his diagnosis between he and Bryce and, with some prodding, Amara Josephine (“you live with a nurse. You should take advantage of it”), but Hannah and Clay still came around like clockwork.

Bryce and Hannah had gone out for Les Mis in the midst of all of the current havoc and had been given the roles of Monsieur and Madame Thenardier, because apparently the theater teacher felt like they made a good couple even when that couple was evil.

Justin, meanwhile, had tried to quit both basketball and football before Bryce had, with the power of Google, uncovered that unless he bled on someone, it really wasn’t any of their business and he didn’t need to tell them about the results. That had, reluctantly, gotten him back into the last few football games of the season, but how that was over.

“We should have a party for Tyler’s birthday,” Bryce declared after a week of near-boredom. “It’ll be great.”

“Will it, though?” Justin asked, and Bryce shrugged.

***

“How’s Justin?” Hannah asked, as she and Bryce left the second-to-last dress rehearsal of Les Mis. “He’s been kind of quiet when I’ve seen him around.”

“He’s been having a tough time since he got back,” Bryce said. “I mean, he’s kicking himself around about stuff he did on the streets, and I’m sitting there like, if you only knew the things the old me did… But of course, I’m not going to tell him.”

“Because you want him to stay innocent, or cause you don’t want to risk him not liking you anymore?” Hannah asked. “I mean, you took a risk in telling me.”

“I’m still not sure why you do hang out with me.”

“Who can resist time travel?” she asked with a shrug.

Bryce snapped his fingers.

“Oh, I wanted to tell you. Next week we’re having a party for Tyler’s birthday.”

“Does Tyler know?” Hannah inquired.

Bryce didn’t reply.

“Did you want me to be the one to tell him?”

***

Tyler Down’s 17th birthday party guests consisted of the following: Bryce, Justin, and Ani (hosts), Hannah and Clay, Jessica and Alex, Skye, and of course, Tyler.

Tony had sent his regrets, along with a picture of his new boyfriend, Caleb, without a shirt on, as if that was all of the explanation necessary.

“Hey,” Hannah declared as she looked over the pool to the Chatham House, “No hot tub, huh?” She winked.

“Nice place, Bryce,” Tyler said, “And thank you again for this… This was really nice of you.”

Bryce shrugged.

“And we have the place to ourselves all night, everybody. My mom went with my grandfather and Amara Josephine to some kind of weird seniors steam room retreat,” Bryce explained.

“That absolutely tops the list of things I never want to see,” Jessica said, reaching down to grab a cheese curl. “Way too many old saggy man balls.”

“Thanks for the mental image, Jess,” Bryce replied.

“Hey, check out this moon,” Alex spoke up, “Isn’t it great?”

“Yeah, if you’re a werewolf,” Hannah retorted. “Hey, we should put on a horror movie with this ambiance. You still have Netflix, Bryce?”

“What kind of a question is that? Of course I have Netflix.”

***

On Netflix, they located the original Evil Dead, then scattered around the living room, each grabbing a drink and strategically passing around the multiple bowls of chips and other snacks.

“I wouldn’t even go anywhere near this cabin,” Ani declared. “People in these movies do this stuff to themselves.”

“That’s not fair, Ani,” Jess said, “You can’t really predict your cabins to end up having… what… demons? In it. Bugs, yeah, demons no.”

Bryce sat next to Justin and leaned his head on his shoulder, finding that nobody commented and no one seemed to notice. That was nice.

The film was in its last twenty minutes, and on the screen Ash was contending with a lightbulb full of blood, when the sound of a creaking step was heard.

“What was that?” Jessica exclaimed, turning her head around. Alex laughed.

“This movie’s really getting to you!” he exclaimed, and Jess threw a pillow at him.

“Shut up,” Jess retorted, “I really did hear something. Bryce, is your mom back early?”

Bryce shook his head.

“No, I’m pretty sure she would have called me.”

They heard it again, another creak, and then the sound of tapping on the window.

It was Ani this time who let out a yelp.

“Come on, guys, are you trying to scare me on my birthday?” Tyler asked. “Is this some kind of elaborate hazing?”

“If it is, no one told me about it, and it’s my house,” said Bryce, pausing the movie and then rising from the couch. “Maybe it’s a deer or something.”

He turned his head and looked around, spotting a shadow outside the window.

“Uh, maybe there is someone out there,” he admitted. “Maybe we should all get to the…”

But Bryce didn’t have a chance to say where they should all get to, because a rattling sound rang out from above.

“That sounded like it was inside the house,” Hannah ventured, “That’s… not good. Don’t you have a security system after last time?”

“Last time?” Skye asked.

“Uh, you see guys, I do,” Bryce said, “But I turned it off when you guys were all coming in.”

Everyone exchanged looks in silence that was suddenly cut into by another sound of tapping on the window, and then the sound of creaking stairs.

“Oh my God,” Jess exclaimed, “We are seriously in a horror movie right now. What are those horror movie survival rules from scream again?”

“Well, don’t do drugs,” Clay said, “I remember that’s one.”

“Well, we’re fucked,” Justin said.

“Don’t have sex,” Hannah said, “That’s another one.” She looked around. “Who here’s a virgin?”

Everyone looked at Tyler.

“Well, yeah, okay, man,” Tyler said.

“He’s worried about Pillow Pants,” Bryce quipped.

“Now is not the time to quote Clerks II, Bryce,” Hannah chastised. “We need to call somebody to come help.” She took out her phone, looked at it, and then looked back at Bryce. “This cannot be happening right now. No signal.”

In turn, everyone pulled out their phones to find that Hannah wasn’t the only one, and that none of them had a signal either.

“Okay, now I’m starting to get a little bit freaked out,” Jess said.

“You’ve been freaked out this whole time,” Alex told her.

“You’re not helping.”

“Guys,” Skye said, “Maybe we should split up and see if there really is someone in the house. This place is huge – no offense, Bryce.”

“Why would I be offended by that?” Bryce asked.

“Because it probably means you’re overcompensating.”

“Okay, let’s get back on the subject,” Hannah said, “We should absolutely not split up, because I’m pretty sure that’s a horror movie rule too. We are absolutely not splitting up and I’m putting my foot down.”

***

They decided to split up into groups of three.

“All right, Montana Max, you go with Babs and Buster here,” Hannah said.

Ani blinked.

“Am I Babs Bunny in this scenario?”

“Yeah,” Hannah said. She pointed to Bryce, “Montana Max,” then to Ani, then Justin, “Babs, Buster…” She thought about it for a moment, pointed to herself and said, “Elmyra.” She pointed at Clay and Jessica, “Hampton and Plucky, I guess…” She looked at Alex, “Uh, Dizzy Devil…”

“Hey,” Alex said.

“Furball,” she pointed to Tyler. “And Monty would be Go-Go if he was here.”

“This does feel accurate,” Tyler mused.

“I was looking at it more like Animaniacs,” Ani said, “‘Come join the Walker brothers and the Walker sister Dot…’”

Bryce and Justin both chuckled.

“Okay, now I have the Animaniacs song stuck in my head,” Jess said, “But more importantly… We need to find out who or what is creeping around this house before they make themselves known.”

“So, like I said,” Hannah said, “Even though I still don’t think we should split up… Bryce, Justin, and Ani, you go together. Clay and I will go with Jess. Skye and Tyler, you go with Alex.”

“Why can’t I go with Jess?” Alex asked. “She’s my girlfriend.”

“No, she isn’t,” Jess replied.

“That’s exactly why,” Hannah said.

“Listen. Isn’t another horror movie rule that the black guy dies first?” Jess asked, “That makes Ani and I most at risk.”

“I think that was only in Scary Movie,” Ani replied, “Not to mention, I think Brandy made it pretty far into I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, so maybe it only applies to guys.”

They heard the sound of rattling, and this time Tyler was the one who screamed.

“We need to go figure out where this guy or these people are,” Skye said, “And we need some kind of weapons.”

“My family doesn’t believe in guns,” Bryce offered.

“We should have had this at my house,” Jess said, “Blow ‘em all to smithereens.”

Bryce shuddered.

“…But we have a couple of baseball bats.” He pulled a suitcase out from underneath the couch and handed a baseball bat to Skye, then Clay, and then kept one for himself. “Let’s do this.”

***

“This feels like it was a really bad idea,” Ani mused as they made their way through the attic. “I think Hannah might have been right about not splitting up. I feel like a sitting duck.”

“There’s only so many places for someone to hide,” Bryce replied, “If we all stay close, we should be able to flush him out.”

“Look at Bryce, talking like a hunter!” Ani declared. “Have you ever had to hunt anything besides a keg?”

“Who do you think it is?” Justin cut in. “A robber, or…?”

“And what did you two mean by ‘the last time’, anyway?” Ani asked.

“Well, somebody shot at us once at my old house. Me and Hannah,” Bryce replied.

The door to the attic opened, and the shadow of an unknown person stepped inside.

“Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed. “Who’s that? Clay? Hannah?” He hesitated. “Alex?”

There was no answer, and as the footsteps got closer, they could see that whoever it was who had entered was dressed entirely in black, and had some kind of mask over their face.

“Get out of here,” Bryce yelled, trying to sound braver than he felt.

The figure didn’t respond and simply moved closer, reaching into his (at least, Bryce guessed that the figure was a him) pocket and retrieving what looked to be some kind of a knife.

Bryce backed up, stepping in front of Ani and, he hoped, Justin. Because as he turned his head, he couldn’t see Justin’s face at all.

“Justin?” he called.

“Look up,” Ani whispered, and Bryce stared up to where Justin had climbed up on a dusty old table and was wielding a tiny penknife.

“Come and get us!” Justin yelled, “If you want to get AIDS, that is!”

Before Bryce’s wide eyes, Justin cut his own hand, leapt off the table, and then began to run after the assailant.

The man turned and ran, stumbling into the trap door in the middle of the attic, and then falling down the steps.

Chapter Text

Bryce stood staring at the sight for a long while, until the sound of rushing footsteps jogged him out of it – it was the sound of the other party-goers rushing over to see what had happened.

“Oh my God,” Hannah exclaimed. “Anyone know how to do CPR? I think this guy hit his head.”

“Yeah, I do,” Jess said. “Somebody go call 911.”

“I still don’t have any service,” Tyler pointed out.

“There’s a landline up here,” Bryce said, trying to shake himself out of shock. He picked up the ancient-looking phone and put it to his ear, then called 911.

“Justin, come down with me,” Ani instructed.

Justin shook his head.

“I shouldn’t…”

“We need to put a bandage on your hand,” she said firmly. “Come down. Right now.”

Bryce hung up the phone after giving his address, and walked down the steps to see Jess counting off compressions.

“Who is he?” he asked, and Jess yanked off his black-ski mask in time to give a few rescue breaths, and in time for the others to see…

“Holy crap!” Clay exclaimed, “Is that… Coach Rick?”

“Will someone get Justin a bandage already?” Ani asked, having begun to apply a nearby rag to Justin’s hand. “My mom has a First Aid kit over in Bryce’s grandfather’s room.”

Bryce, the only person really expected to know which room that was, rushed off to his grandfather’s room and ran back with the First Aid kit.

When he came back, he took out a bandage and started to wrap it around Justin’s hand.

“I don’t want you guys to get…”

“I think that’s only if they have an open cut or something,” Tyler piped up. Everyone looked at him. “What? I paid attention when we watched The Ryan White Story, okay?”

Ani bagged up the rag and tossed it in the trash can under the sink, washed her hands and came back.

“Has anyone called 911 yet?” she asked. “Now that hopefully we have service. I guess that was this guy too? Who is he?”

“It’s a long story,” Bryce said. “We have a lot to catch you up on. And yeah, they said they’re on their way. That old phone just saved us all.”

“Ooh, is it rotary?” Alex asked.

“Why are you excited at the possibility of a rotary phone?” Hannah inquired, blinking at him.

At that, there was the sound of knocking on the front door.

“In here,” Bryce called.

***

“I don’t know if I can walk in this hat,” Hannah mused, taking a slow step across the stage.

“That’s not usually a phrase that’s put together like that,” Bryce mused.

“Well, it’s true. If I lean at all, this hat is going to fall off my head.”

“Well, it’s France,” Bryce considered.

“But you sing with a Cockney accent,” Hannah pointed out.

“Yeah, I can’t say that I entirely understand what’s going on with that,” Bryce admitted.

“All right, all right,” the director said as he walked to the center of the auditorium. “Everyone had better be willing to do their best tonight, because the last dress rehearsal… well… Gavorche’s mother called and said he’s going to be here tonight, despite his fall the other day.”

“Do you think he remembers the kid’s actual name?” Hannah whispered to Bryce.

“Probably not.”

“No talking you two,” the director said. “I’m up here right now.” He paused and put his hand above his head. “And if I keep being here I’m going to cancel this entire show. That last rehearsal was a mess. Also, whoever yelled ‘in bed’ after ‘is this simply a game for rich young boys to play?’, don’t ever do that again.”

***

“I’m glad our son Gavroche recovered,” Hannah mused during the intermission.

“Wait, what?” Bryce asked, who was still a little worried about the sheer amount of cheers Hannah’s line about him having “not much there” had gotten.

“Gavroche is the Thenardiers’ kid in the novel. Try and get some culture, man.”

“Really?” Bryce asked. He scratched his head. “Mind blown. I might have to try and read this, then.”

“Don’t read the unabridged version, though. Apparently it’s got like 400 pages about the Paris sewers, which is information people don’t really need to know.” Hannah looked around and then lowered her voice. “Kind of like how in the novel of The Godfather you get to learn all about Sonny’s penis.”

Bryce blinked.

“What?”

“Like I said, man. It’s time for you to get some culture. I’ll get you some books for your next birthday.” Hannah poked him in the ribs. “You can read, right? You haven’t just been having other people read for you this entire time because you’re rich enough to do that?”

“Five!” called the director.

“Thank you, five!” the cast yelled back.

***

Hannah, Clay, Justin and Bryce sat in the Range Rover.

“Hannah has promised to get me some culture,” Bryce pointed out. “Oh, and by the way, I can definitely read.” He paused. “But I did have people writing my papers for a while. But not anymore.”

“Hey, why didn’t you share?” Justin asked. “I’ve been doing my own all along, and all mine suck ass.” He paused. “I have like five of them to write now that I’m back.”

“Well, if you hadn’t run away…” Clay started, and Hannah kicked him.

“I’ll be glad to help you with your papers, Justin,” Bryce said.

“Aw, they really like each other,” Clay said.

“Well, the sex might have been some indication,” Bryce retorted, and both Justin and Clay looked at him.

“Thanks for the mental image,” Clay said, “But I hope you plan on giving me the gift receipt for that.”

“I hate to interrupt three men giggling inappropriately about gay sex, but I’m really going to miss doing Les Mis. The lyrics are so beautiful. ‘To love another person is to see the face of God.’ I mean, that’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”

Clay paused, looked at Bryce and Justin, and then said, “Even if it’s these two?”

Hannah smacked him on the shoulder.

***

There was a knock at Bryce’s door the following night, and there was a manila envelope with a book stuffed inside.

On the first page was a pink Post-It note with a note on it: What could have been, huh Bryce? I’m glad no one had to make you an offer you couldn’t refuse. – Hannah

When he got back to his room, Justin was sitting on Bryce’s laptop, rubbing at his eyes.

“I don’t think I can read anymore,” he said, “And I have to do a paper on some book or other. I’m trying to find something short. This ‘Story of an Hour’ is like, a page long, but I can’t figure out what to say about it.”

“Close that,” Bryce replied. “It’s story time.”

Justin perched on the bed.

Bryce cleared his throat, moved the Post-It to the next page, and began to read, “Amerigo Bonasera sat in the New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her…”

Chapter Text

Bryce had been on epic spring breaks his entire life. He could remember, spanning back to the age of seven or eight, going to Milan, Paris, Barcelona, Fiji, Cabo, and basically every other tourist paradise known to man.

By the time he was fourteen, his parents would send him off on his own as long as he stayed on the same continent.

This year, he found himself tuning out his mother asking him where he would like to go.

“I won’t really be able to come along this year, with your grandfather as he is, but…” Nora was saying, and Bryce shook his head.

“It’s not really important,” he told her. “I want to stay behind with Justin. Or go somewhere close.”

Nora pursed her lips and looked at her son.

“Justin is really that important to you, isn’t he?”

Bryce nodded. That had always been true… he just hadn’t always had the sense to realize it. Now, he didn’t really know how to phrase it. This new person who he was – this new person he had become, was so filled out with feelings and most of them had to do with Justin.

With protecting Justin at any expense.

Was this what everyone else had felt all along? That wasn’t something he could ask, though – he didn’t want to tip his hand to that other person he had been (the other person he feared he might still be, in there hidden away somewhere).

Instead, he could speak about what was real; what he knew was real.

“I couldn’t live without Justin.”

It felt truer than anything he had ever said in his life.

Nora looked at him with something akin to worry, and Bryce didn’t really know what to do with that.

She didn’t ask him anything else.

***

That night, he dreamt that he was on the pier again, that Zach’s blows were raining down upon him all over again, except the pier was giving way just the same, crumbling underneath him and falling into the river.

Bryce tried to scream but water had filled his mouth, his lungs.

He woke up screaming, to Justin grabbing his hand and holding him tight, staring at him in shock.

“Bryce?” Justin asked, eyes wide and concerned, leaning in to hold Bryce even tighter in his arms, the same way Bryce had done for him.

When Bryce had finally stopped shaking, Justin ran a hand over his neck and asked, “What were you dreaming about? Do you want to talk about it?”

Bryce didn’t. Or he did. He wasn’t really sure.

“I had a dream that I was drowning,” he told him.

“Are you afraid of the water?” Justin asked. “Is that why you didn’t know how to swim?” He paused. “You know, thinking back I can’t remember you ever even trying to swim, all those places you used to take me, I would be the one in the pool…”

Bryce dragged a hand over his face.

“Well, yeah,” he admitted, “I don’t know how to swim. I don’t like the feeling of being out of control.” He hadn’t ever really thought about that before, but now that he had, it was starting to make some sense. Just how much of Bryce’s life had been about remaining in control?

Justin reached over and began to trace his fingers over Bryce’s shoulders.

“You should learn. I don’t like the idea of you falling off a yacht someday.” He leaned in and this time, it was Justin who pressed the kiss to Bryce’s lips.

***

“Hey, Hannah, random question,” Bryce said as the two sat on the bleachers outside of Liberty. “Did you send me a picture of boobs last night?”

“Adorable that you call them ‘boobs’. Also, yeah, delete those, I was trying to send that to Ani. Hand it over.” Hannah put her hand out to receive Bryce’s phone.

“And why were you trying to send a picture of… your? Boobs to Ani?” Bryce prompted, fishing out his phone and handing it over.

“Because I was trying to figure out if I had poison ivy or not, and I figured she could ask her mom,” Hannah explained, deleting the picture and then scrolling through. “Is this a picture of Justin sleeping? That’s adorably gross.”

“Hey, give that back,” Bryce said, “Some of these are only relevant to my interests.”

“Have you and Justin had an actual talk about, you know, what all of that stuff means for you? What are you planning to do once you both graduate?”

Bryce scratched his neck.

“I’m just trying to live each day as it is, Hannah. I don’t even know if I’ll make it to graduation. I mean… Tony… somebody… said…” He paused, as the whole thing was becoming more confusing the more he tried to talk about it. “I don’t know if this is just a different place to the same result. If I end up in the river anyway, it’s no use getting Justin’s hopes up, is it?”

Hannah smirked.

“Yeah, because his life ambition is to marry you? You’re pretty vain, you know.”

“Says the person sexting Ani. How does Clay feel about that, anyway?”

“You think I’m planning to tell him?” Hannah handed Bryce back his phone. “Hey, did you see Liberty is doing a summer stage this year? Beauty and the Beast, apparently.”

“Bonjour, bonjour,” Bryce replied.

“Bonjour, bonjour, bonjour.”

***

The last class of the year let out, and Liberty High School burst forward into the summer.

“Are you going to be on the French Riviera or something?” Clay asked Bryce as the two walked out, waiting by the entrance for Hannah and Justin. “I’m just getting a bunch of hours at the Crestmont. Probably watching some old movies. They said they’re going to play The Philadelphia Story.”

“What’s that about?” Bryce asked.

“I have no idea, but my parents said it was good, so it could really go either way off of that. Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Fiji? The Caymans? Jamaica?”

“Nah, just staying here and going out for Beauty and the Beast,” Bryce explained.

Hannah took that moment to strut up between them, singing, “There goes the dealer with his drugs like always, the same old crack and pot to sell…”

Clay dragged a hand down his face as Justin walked up beside them.

“What did I miss?” Justin asked.

Chapter Text

“He sounds like he’s having an orgasm after he learns how to read,” Justin mused, walking into Bryce’s room as Bryce played the Beauty and the Beast Broadway soundtrack on his sound system.

Bryce snickered.

“He got the sword – yes – OH YES!” he exclaimed, laughing and rolling on his back as Justin climbed on to the bed beside him. It fascinated him how easy things had become with Justin over time.

He gripped Justin around the middle and held him close, tickling him playfully.

“Are you going to have fur?” Justin teased. “Are they going to have to check you for fleas?”

Bryce snorted.

“I’m not trying out for a hairy old beast. I’m going to be Gaston!”

That sent Justin into a fit of hysterics.

“What’s so funny?” Bryce asked, but Justin continued laughing so hard that he actually slapped himself on the knee, which Bryce had previously assumed to only be an expression.

When Justin finally caught his breath, he finally said, “I’m just imaginary everyone singing about how every last bit of you is covered with hair!”

Bryce looked mildly offended.

“Well,” he said, “It probably is. But it’s very light hair, so I don’t think that anyone would notice.”

That just made Justin laugh even harder.

Bryce realized, watching him, that this was the first time he could remember hearing Justin Foley’s laugh.

It was a beautiful thing.

***

“So guess what,” Hannah greeted as she and Bryce walked out the school doors, having just come from the cast list which had given him the role of Gaston, Hannah that of Belle, and surprisingly, Ani that of Mrs. Potts. (Alex was apparently Lumiere.)

“What?” Bryce inquired.

“What?” Ani echoed.

“I heard some senior girl saying that I shouldn’t have been chosen as Belle because I’m ‘not pretty enough’. Can you believe that?”

“Ugh,” Ani said. “Who was it? I’ll go throw her out a window! Then we’ll see who’s pretty!”

Hannah cocked her head to the side.

“I always thought British people were super proper until I met you.”

Ani flashed a grin.

“And,” Hannah continued, “I don’t know who it was. Some friend of Courtney’s, I think.”

“Ugh,” Ani said. “Courtney. You know I saw her at the mall and she walked by me like I wasn’t even there and then turned around, walked back and said ‘nice shoes?’ Have you ever heard of that?”

At that point, Justin walked up, his cleats in hand.

“What am I missing?” he asked Bryce. “By the way, the coach is pissed at you for not showing up to football camp.”

“Eh, I’ll be there in the fall. And you were missing girls being catty,” Bryce replied. “What if we were like that?”

Hannah and Ani both crossed their arms. Hannah then pointed to the other side of the street, where Zach was walking with his own cleats in hand.

“Social experiment?” Hannah inquired.

“Definitely,” Ani agreed. “Bryce, you know what you have to do.”

Bryce sighed.

“This is not part of my redemption arc, guys,” he complained.

“That was more meta than I was prepared for on a Thursday evening,” Hannah said, “But it doesn’t get you out of doing things for our amusement. Go.”

Bryce walked across the street and then pointedly walked past Zach without saying anything. It was made a little less pointed by the fact that Zach didn’t appear to be paying attention and instead seemed to be transfixed by playing Angry Birds on his phone.

Bryce then turned back around, marched back over, and tapped Zach on the shoulder.

“Oh, hey Bryce,” Zach said.

“Nice shoes,” Bryce replied, “Dickhead.”

And then he walked back across the street as Ani and Hannah howled.

“That wasn’t even that funny,” Justin complained.

“C’mon,” Hannah said, “We’re going to be late to meet Clay at Rosie’s.”

***

“That red is very fetching on you,” Hannah teased as the two of them sat on stage in the middle of picking out costumes. “You should try incorporating this into your daily wardrobe. Just strut down the halls of Liberty and all the girls would flock to you.”

“What about Justin, though?” Bryce asked.

“Well, I mean, Gaston had LeFou. You’re telling me there wasn’t anything going on there?”

“Good point,” Bryce replied. “How’s Clay, anyway?”

“Good, but kind of moody. I don’t know if I need to crank up my Manic Pixie Dream Girl or crank it down. Also, I think he and Ani have been sneaking off to talk about robots together. Any chatter on that from her?” Hannah leaned in, as they could both see Ani off to the side chatting with Alex.

“I think they’re just friends,” Bryce said. “Her mom has a strict no-date policy anyway. I think she said until Ani is eighty-five.”

“Where is she wrong, though?” Hannah said. She picked up a few book props and flipped through them. “Belle was probably reading a bunch of erotic thrillers, and that’s why she was always at the bookshop.”

“Gaston was missing out,” Bryce said, “Maybe the bookshop did have some with pictures.”

“Or maybe there were some at the castle,” Hannah quipped, “Playclock.”

“All right, all right,” said the director as he walked in, “I see you all waiting around when you should be working on the opening scene, because yesterday it was a mess! We can’t present it if it keeps looking like that!” The director looked over at Hannah and then yelled, “Belle! Get up here and start off this song!”

Hannah stood up and rolled her eyes.

“Bonjour, good day,” she said to Bryce. “Let’s go, Gaston. And bring your five dozen eggs with you.”

Bryce stood up and skipped after her.

***

“Here in town there’s only she, who is beautiful as me, so I’m making plans to woo and marry Belle…”

Bryce tried to stop from looking at his feet as he made his way over into the hubbub of the faux town center.

He still wasn’t sure exactly how he had found himself at this point, but he was happy that he was here. As soon as he walked offstage, he found himself in the hallway, knotting his hands together and considering it all. He was soon, however, tapped on the shoulder and whirled around, finding himself facing Ani, who was dressed in her teapot costume for Mrs. Potts.

“Good,” she said, “We’re alone. I need to tell you something and you need to promise not to tell anybody. It’s a secret.” She poked Bryce in the chest.

“Well why are you telling me then?” Bryce asked.

“Bryce!”

“Okay, okay. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick an… anthropomorphic candle in my eye.”

“I’ll take it. Anyway, I need you to get Hannah to come to the house tomorrow at seven. Not a second earlier. You got it?” Ani leaned in.

“I got it,” Bryce said, then paused, “Is someone going to tip you over and pour you out, or?”

“I know where you sleep, Bryce Walker. Remember that.”

***

Bryce, true to his word even though he didn’t know exactly what was going on, did successfully lure Hannah to the house.

“I need help with my lines,” he told her.

Hannah cocked her head to the side.

“Did they tie that ponytail too tight? You had them down yesterday. Not to mention, we open tomorrow, so if you don’t know them now…”

They arrived at the door, and Bryce used his key to get in.

In the living room, in front of the couch, was a life-size robot with plungers for hands.

Hannah looked at it and blinked.

The robot said, “Hannah. Will you go to Homecoming with me?”

Clay stepped out from behind it, and Hannah ran and hugged him.

Bryce felt his phone vibrate, and he picked it up. There was a text from Ani: Well done Gaston. Good luck tomorrow.

Chapter Text

It was the morning of Bryce’s eighteenth birthday, and he and Justin awoke to the sound of a crash and then the ranting of one Harrison Chatham, otherwise known as Bryce’s grandfather.

“I’m tired of all of this homosexuality running rampant in my house! This is a plot by the Soviets!”

Bryce and Justin exchanged looks, and then Bryce dressed and made his way downstairs, reluctantly followed by Justin.

“What’s all this about?” Bryce inquired, as he found Harrison in the living room, surrounded by Nora and Amara Josephine, with Ani spotted peeping in from the kitchen.

“The problem is you!” Harrison yelled at Bryce. “I thought you were raised by Barry to be a proper red-blooded male! Instead, you moved in this… this…” He looked at Justin, as if grappling for the perfect insult. Bryce didn’t let him get the chance.

“Listen, old man,” he cut in, “Justin is a member of the family. For all your red-blooded male stuff, you don’t seem to let me be the man of the house and make my own damn decisions. And as both I and my mother stated, Justin stays.”

“Where did you go so wrong with him, Nora?” Harrison snapped.

“The only way I would have gone wrong is in ending up like Barry and like you,” Bryce said, and the color drained from his face. He wondered how many women were out there who were his grandfather’s age who had been the Jessica or Chloe he targeted back in the 50’s or 60’s, who were probably still haunted – or dead – while Harrison Chatham sat here and tried to take advantage of a few more. “The way that the two of you treat women is… It took me longer than it should have to realize that’s never how I want to be.”

Bryce turned on his heels and grabbed his backpack from the hook on the kitchen.

“Justin? Ani? You coming?”

***

“I’m finally a senior,” Bryce said, nibbling on a fry in the lunchroom.

“And I’m finally a junior,” Hannah said.

“Me too,” agreed Clay.

“And I’m a junior. Again,” Justin grumbled. “I can’t believe they held me back just because I vanished for a few months.”

“You should apply to get credit from the School of Hard Knocks,” Hannah suggested.

“Very funny,” Justin said. “I’m about to be eighteen next month and I’ll be celebrating it by reading The Pigman again.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I read all of these books before when I lived in London,” Ani said, gesturing to Fahrenheit 451 on her stack of books, “Except we read them all with a British accent, so… I don’t know if that made it better or worse.”

“Did you drink tea all the time?” Justin asked.

“More than one would expect, actually.”

“Bryce, aren’t you turning eighteen soon, too?” Hannah asked. “What are we doing to celebrate your entrance into legality?”

“I’m not sure if it’s as significant, considering Bryce has been buying alcohol at Blue Spot since he was like, thirteen,” Justin said.

“You can’t drink legally until you’re twenty-one, anyway,” Clay said.

“Only in this backwards country,” Ani chimed. “In the UK, you can drink at 16 if your parents are there with you.”

“That sounds like my worst nightmare,” Clay said.

“That sounds like my twelfth birthday,” Bryce said.

“That sounds like my sixth birthday,” Justin said.

They all exchanged looks.

“Why are we all so messed up?” Bryce asked.

“Speak for yourself,” Clay said, “I’m not.” Hannah flicked him on the forehead.

“You just don’t get how good you have it. Sometimes, I don’t either,” she said. “But more importantly, what are we doing for Bryce and Justin, as they become… adults or something like it?”

“A party?” Clay suggested. “I mean, that’s what we’ve been consistently doing the last few years.”

“Yeah, let’s try not to have Coach Rick try and kill everyone this year, though,” Justin said. “Whatever happened to him anyway?”

“My mom said he got fired and they sent him away for therapy or something,” Clay explained, “What I want to know is how he got therapy after he tried to kill all of us?”

“He has money,” Bryce replied, “And it makes the world go round.”

“So are we having a party or not?” Ani asked. “It’s going to presumably be harder this time to get Mrs. Walker, my mom, and Bryce’s grandfather out of the house all at the same time.”

“Unless you want to see him give his enlightened thoughts on Jess and Alex dating, that’s a good point,” Bryce replied. “Maybe we can get him booked on a cruise or something. Isn’t that what old people usually do all the time? Go on cruises?’

“And watch Game Show Network,” Hannah agreed. “Maybe it’s worth a shot.”

***

“I’m not going on any cruise! You can’t kick me out of my own house just so that you can turn this place into Sodom and Gomorrah!”

Bryce watched as his mother let out a huff and paced back and forth in front of her father before finally walking out of the room and into the sunroom where Bryce and Ani were sitting.

“Well, then, Bryce and Justin will have their party and I will park you off in your room and tell them to crank up AC/DC or whatever the kids are listening to these days,” Nora replied. “Bryce, this party had better not get out of hand. No drinking, no drugs. And for God’s sake, no sex. I found a pair of underwear on the coach yesterday.” She held them up.

“Yeah, sorry, those are mine,” Ani got up and took them and walked away.

“I’m not even going to ask,” Nora said.

“I’m sure there’s a rational explanation,” Bryce offered.

Nora shook her head.

“Kids.”

***

On the night before Bryce and Justin’s party, Justin settled in next to Bryce on the bed.

A moment later, he asked, “Bryce?”

“Yeah?”

“Do… you ever… um, I mean, want to…?”

In the dark, Bryce considered the question. When Mr. Porter had told Bryce to avoid sex – well, he’d also told him to avoid dating – had that meant that it was some kind of poison pill that would turn Bryce back into the person he had been before?

Or was it simply a symptom of who Bryce had been? Had it been a tool to use – if Bryce had stepped to the left once, would he have used his power over people to fleece them of money in pyramid schemes? Kidnap people and have them fight each other in cage matches? Get people addicted to heroin?

Maybe that had just been the match that had set up the kindling because, unlike, say The Most Dangerous Game, sexual assault had been openly allowed at Liberty. Mark Perry had handed the other Bryce the lever, and all he’d needed to do was pull it.

And so Bryce replied to Justin, “I don’t know.”

“Because… I want to. If you want. I feel bad that… I, um, that with you… I want to but I just…”

Bryce turned and blinked his eyes so he could see Justin’s outline.

“Justin, you don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“But Bryce, I… When I was on the street, to get money, I did… a lot of stuff, with a lot of people, and some of it… I didn’t really agree to. And I felt like I was back with that guy’s fingers in my mouth, just… helpless, and…”

Bryce didn’t know what made him think to do it, and it was a gamble. But he reached out and took Justin’s wrist in his hand and directed Justin’s hand towards his mouth.

And then he slowly took each of Justin’s fingers into his mouth and sucked on them – the index first, then the middle, and then over to the thumb. Back to the pinkie, then finishing with the pointer.

“I don’t know if this should be comforting,” Justin mumbled, “But for some reason it is.” He let out a sigh and wrapped his free hand around Bryce’s middle. “Happy birthday.”

***

Jessica Davis walked out the back door and sat by the pool, a plate of pizza in her hand.

“So who was that old guy?” she inquired.

“My grandfather,” Bryce replied.

“He said I look like a strumpet,” Jess told him. “I didn’t even know anyone used that word anymore.”

“I’m so sorry,” Bryce said.

“Nah, I told him about pitching for the Tigers and he told me about some time that he met Jackie Robinson. It was interesting, although kind of casually racist.”

“That’s his baseline,” Ani told her, “His personality doesn’t get that much better from there.”

“One time when I was in school, this guy came and did an assembly and at the end of it, he was like ‘I’m Jackie Robinson’. And I was really disappointed a few years later when I realized Jackie Robinson had been dead for years,” Clay said.

“How old were you when this happened?” Bryce asked.

“Fifteen,” Justin quipped.

“I was like nine. Give me a break.”

Nora took that moment to wheel out two cakes – one for Bryce and one for Justin.

“So is Justin like… your brother now?” Clay asked.

“No, he’s your brother,” Bryce replied, “He’s my boyfriend.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Clay said.

“It might,” Bryce said, “One of these days.”

He could hear everybody singing, but his mind was miles away. He was sure that somewhere, he could hear the river beating down against the pier.

Chapter Text

As the night of November 1st crept into the morning of November 2nd, for the last time before (maybe, maybe) the last time Bryce would see the date, Bryce sat on the side of his bed and looked out his window, watching as the sun rose over Evergreen.

He hadn’t slept a lick that entire night, as he had lapsed into some sort of dazed stare when Justin came over and poked him on the shoulder, jolting him out of whatever he had been thinking (and he couldn’t say, wasn’t sure exactly what that had even been).

“Oh,” Bryce said, turning his head, “Hey.”

“Have you been up all night?” Justin asked.

“Yeah,” Bryce replied.

“I know what that’s like,” Justin said, shifting to sit next to Bryce. “Sometimes… Before I was here, for good, I remember having to leave my house in the middle of the night and just… walking around. And it’d be so cold out but I was scared to sleep out there. I’d come into school the next day and fall asleep during class instead. And when I was on the street…” He paused and looked over at Bryce, who gave him the nod to continue. “I started to just sleep anywhere. On the street, in shelters sometimes, and… if somebody would let me stay… I’d stay there. But it wasn’t ever for free.”

Bryce turned around and cupped Justin’s face.

“It’s for free now,” he said, “Well not… for free. I get you. I get to be near you all the time. Before… I realized how I felt for you, I didn’t feel a lot of anything at all. Like… I was a tree hollowed out, and I don’t know why I was like that. Nothing… hit me all the way through. But now…”

Justin let out a soft chuckle.

“I felt like everything hit me all the way through, all the time. Like it should have stopped hurting after a while, but it never did.” Justin reached forward and tentatively put his hands on Bryce’s shoulders. “Except when I was with you. And then… for a while, I was afraid that I lost you. Like… you were different. When we started at Liberty, it was like you were… I don’t know. Colder. I thought maybe it was just to me. Like, maybe I kinda wore out my welcome.”

“Never,” Bryce said. “And I did… get that way. I stopped caring. Big head, I guess. No rules. King of the castle. And then…” Bryce tried to think of how to phrase it. “I met Hannah, and after that little stunt I pulled with your photo, well, she kind of took me to task. She said some things that… Well, got me thinking. I wanted to be better for everybody. But especially, I wanted to be better for you.”

Justin leaned in and pressed his forehead against Bryce’s, letting out a little sigh.

“Bryce,” he whispered, “What is it that we’re doing, exactly?”

“When I figure it out… I’ll let you know.”

***

“So, can someone explain to me what’s even happening right now?” Hannah asked, leaning forward on the bleachers.

“Well, Hillcrest needs two touchdowns to win the game, which I don’t think is going to happen,” Jess replied. “Or, like four field goals. Or six safeties.” She turned her head. “Bryce, whatever even happened to your football career? Weren’t you all ‘rawr, I’m going to be football captain for the Liberty Tigers?’”

“I’m not sure I said it exactly like that,” he replied, “But yeah, I was into it. And then… I don’t know, after the whole Coach Rick debacle, sports kind of lost their luster for me.”

“The football coach seems better, though,” Jess said, “He seems like a good guy. They haven’t announced who the hell is going to be the new coach for baseball, though, and it’s got me worried.”

“Anyone has to be better than Coach Rick, right?” Hannah asked, before standing up and clapping. “Whoo! Yeah! Go Tigers.”

“But we didn’t score,” Jessica said.

“I don’t know, it just seemed like a good time to cheer,” Hannah replied.

About twenty minutes later, Justin rushed off the field.

“Hey,” Bryce told him. “So… uh… Homecoming next week, huh?”

“Yeah,” Justin agreed.

“You going to come with me?” Bryce asked. Justin paused.

“Yeah,” he said finally, “Okay.”

***

Bryce stood at the bottom of the steps, brushing at his tuxedo with one hand and trying to keep it from shaking.

Nora Walker was at the door, letting out a tiny clap, a flush of happiness that Bryce hadn’t seen her have in recent memory.

“Move in a little bit, Justin. I need to make sure you’re in the photo. Ani, you too,” Nora said.

“But my date isn’t even here yet,” Ani protested.

“Get in the photo, Amorowat. When I was growing up, we had only one photo of my grandmother, and now you say ‘I don’t want to get in this photo without my date’,” Amara Josephine said, holding up her own camera. Ani sighed and stepped in beside Justin.

“Who are you taking, anyway?” Bryce inquired, before flashing another smile as Nora snapped the photo.

“Tyler asked me,” Ani said. “Clay said he and Hannah are coming over with him. They should be here in a few minutes.”

The doorbell rang, and Nora turned around to open the door.

Clay, Hannah and Tyler walked in.

“Everyone, get in the picture,” Nora said.

“Right now,” Amara Josephine echoed.

“How do I look?” Hannah asked as she and Clay walked into the picture.

“You look like Hannah,” Bryce said.

“I’m going to kick you on the dance floor,” Hannah told him.

“Before you kick him, say cheese,” Nora said.

***

Bryce and Justin stood off to the side, scooping tiny hot dogs in tiny buns off of the snack table.

“Are you two planning to dance at any point?” Hannah inquired.

“That’s her way of asking if you’re saving enough for the rest of us,” Clay told them. Bryce smirked.

“Well, I actually had a question for you, Jensen. I was looking for you,” he said.

“Me?” Clay echoed. “Sure. I’ll be right back, Hannah.”

“And I’ll be right back, Justin.”

Justin tossed another tiny hot dog in his mouth and nodded.

Bryce walked over with Clay, into a quieter hallway.

“So what’s up?” Clay inquired.

“Clay,” Bryce started, “I know that we haven’t ever been all that close. But I… I need to ask you something, something really important.”

“Do you need a lawyer or something? What’d you do?”

“Clay.” Bryce looked at him dead in the eye. “If anything happens to me, I need you to make sure your family takes Justin in and takes care of him.”

“What? What’s going to happen to you? You’re a kid! And why me? I barely know Justin.”

“Just say you’ll do it, okay? And mean it. If anything happens to me, Justin can’t go back on the streets or back to his mom, and I don’t know about my mom either. He needs to be with you.”

Clay hesitated.

“Okay. I don’t understand but… I’ll do it. Anything happens to you, I’ll make sure Justin stays with us.”

Bryce clapped him on the back, then walked straight over to Tony, who was working as the DJ.

“How’s life?” Tony inquired. “Or, you know, lives.”

“I don’t even know, man. But… can you play a song for me and Justin?”

“Sure. I think I know just the one.”

When Bryce had walked back over to Justin, Tony said on the microphone, “This song is for Bryce Walker and Justin Foley, everybody. This is called ‘Song #3’ by Stone Sour.”

The song started to play, and Bryce pulled Justin out on the dance floor.

“If you cried out for more
If you reached out for me
I would run into the storm
Just to keep you here with me
I have gone beyond my years
I've wasted half my life
But I found it all in you
Did I save you?
'Cause I know you saved me too…”

“You wasted half your life, Bryce?” Justin asked, chuckling against his neck.

“Well, met you when I was nine, so… yeah, that factors out.”

Justin hesitated.

“Why does this kind of feel like a goodbye?”

“It isn’t,” Bryce promised. “Not yet, at least.”

Chapter Text

As Bryce sat at the desk in his room, tapping up the present he’d bought for Justin – a basketball game for the PS5 that sat in the side of their shared room – he was struck by another odd memory, one that he hadn’t thought about in years.

If he was honest, probably one that he hadn’t thought about since the day that it happened.

***

Bryce was fed up. His parents hadn’t bothered to come to his school play – The Secret Lives of Trees, featuring the informative but kind of dark song “Bugs in My Bark”, which Bryce had been selected to sing all by himself, thank you very much. They hadn’t even bothered to send Marissa this time, which just means they weren’t even trying at all.

So at the ripe old age of nine and a half, Bryce was going to run away and make a new life for himself.

The problem with this was, after he tossed all of his favorite games in his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, left a note – “Leaving. Bye. Love Bryce” and marched out the door, he didn’t know where to go.

After all, he was always being driven somewhere, so the street signs and directions quickly became meaningless. He decided, instead, to just walk in one direction and then keep going, and eventually he would get somewhere that he needed to be.

And it would serve them right.

He plucked his phone out of his pocket and, upon crossing another street that looked the same as the streets before it, typed in Justin’s number.
It rang, and a moment later a woman answered.

“Hi, can I talk to Justin?”

“Yeah. Hold on.”

A moment later: “Hello?”

“Justin. It’s Bryce. I’m running away. What’s your address?”

Justin told him, and Bryce tapped it into his phone as well, having tired of the logic of walking in a random direction and also starting to be tired in general.

When he arrived in front of Justin’s home, he was surprised. He wasn’t exactly sure what he had expected, but this rundown apartment complex wasn’t it. It didn’t look a thing like Bryce’s house, and it didn’t look very inviting, either.

Bryce began to question the wisdom of his running away.

A moment later, though, Justin popped his head out of the door and his face lit up.

“Bryce! You came.”

“Uh huh,” Bryce replied. “So, uh, you live here?”

“Yeah,” Justin said, his face dimming, “With my mom and her boyfriend.”

Bryce looked around and, having committed to coming here through thick or thin, shrugged.

“Let’s go play up in your room,” he suggested.

Justin’s room was sparse. There was, within, only a flea-bitten mattress on a broken bed frame and one box of Legos. Bryce blinked at it, not being able to put words into speech.

“We could play Legos,” Justin suggested, and Bryce nodded.

They were halfway through a tower when there was a deafening crash.

“Hide under the bed,” Justin implored, and Bryce slid under, somehow knowing not to question.

What happened next… what happened next…

***

Bryce shook his head to clear it. There wasn’t any point in thinking about that now, but he could hear Amber Foley’s screams in his head, could hear Justin panting in the darkness. Could feel his own eyes widen, but not react.

Not react.

He slid a piece of tape over the corner of the present and sucked in a breath. There was something else he remembered, too. And he was going to do something about it.

***

“You can’t keep running away, Bryce,” Nora counseled, sighing as he son slumped in one of the big sitting room chairs and pouted. “You went to a very dangerous neighborhood, you know.”

“You know what, let him. He’ll learn. He’ll get kicked in the head by one of those trailer park assholes and then he’ll know to stay where he’s told.”

“Barry…”

Bryce opened his mouth and whispered, “I went to Justin’s. It’s bad there.”

“Damn right it’s bad there,” Barry announced. “No one worth a damn cent lives in that complex. Nora, I don’t even know why you allow him to hang around that Foley kid. I can’t believe they even have Edgewood Run in the same district as us.”

“They’re good friends, Barry. Bryce should have friends.”

“He should have respectable friends.”

Bryce opened his mouth again and emphasized, “It’s. Bad. There. There’s a guy who hurts Justin.” He threaded his fingers together and said, “We should tell the police.”

Barry Walker snorted.

“Tell the police?” he asked. “You know what happens to your little friend then? He goes into foster care. Then you don’t ever see him again. Maybe we should, and he’ll stop eating our food.”

“Barry.”

Bryce looked down.

“Just hang out with him while you can. In a few years… Well, it’ll be different. People like him don’t spend time with people like us. It’s just the way that the world works. In a few years, you’ll start meeting girls, and that’s when life really takes off.”

Bryce curled his nose.

“Girls are stupid.”

“They’re not stupid. But they’re not direct. Just remember this, Bryce. If a girl says ‘no’, that means they’re, let’s say, open to persuasion.”

Nora slammed the table.

“Barry! Don’t tell him something like that.”

“That’s how I got you to marry me, Nora. Remember, Bryce. Girls like to play games…”

***

Bryce knocked on the front door of Barry Walker’s fancy new – and unvandalized – house.

The woman who came to the door – Katya, he guessed – gave Bryce an uneasy look and then called for Barry to come to the front.

As soon as Barry arrived at the door, Bryce blurted, “You set me up.”

“What? Bryce, go home,” Barry snapped.

“You set me up,” Bryce repeated. “You wanted me to be a… you wanted me to be like you. All that shit about ‘girls play games’, ‘no means yes’, I… You told me that shit when I was nine.”

Barry snorted.

“What, you’re a feminist now? You’re looking for me to be ‘woke’? Grow up, son. Go live your own life.” Barry moved to close the door, and Bryce stuck his foot out to stop it. He looked Barry square in the eye.

“How many times has Katya said ‘no’?” Bryce’s voice started to break. “How many times did Mom? You gonna tell Caitlin she was asking for it when some guy comes by when she’s passed out at a party…”

“What are you even talking about?” Barry asked. “Did Nora send you here?”

Bryce threw up his hands.

“You’re dead to me,” he said, pulled out his foot, and ran as far as he could go.

***

“Hickman’s Bridge. How did I know I might find you here?” Hannah inquired, “Oh yeah. Didn’t you tell the court this was our secret makeout spot, or something?” She plopped down beside Bryce on the grass. “Justin was worried about you. So was Ani. Clay, too, which is weird because I don’t think Clay likes you very much.”

“I just came here to think,” Bryce replied, looking out at the cool, clear blue river. “One wrong turn on the bridge and then down, down, splat.”

“Do you think you’re going to make a wrong move?” Hannah asked. “Maybe you could give yourself a little credit. You’ve done some good things this time around. Not just didn’t do the bad things, but did good things. You helped people.”

“Is that enough?” Bryce asked.

“It kinda has to be. At some point, you just have to let yourself live. So what happened that led you out here, anyway?”

“I remembered a bunch of stuff my dad said. About Justin, about girls, about… just… everything.”

“Stuff that set you on that other path?” Hannah inquired.

“And I confronted him.”

“What’d he say?”

“Nothing useful.”

“Did you think he was going to say something useful?”

Bryce paused.

“No, not really.”

Hannah patted him on the leg.

“That’s the spirit. Lower those expectations. Now, c’mon, before they send out some kind of search party and you end up on a milk carton.”

Bryce smiled.

“Do they even do that anymore?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t gone missing.” Hannah rose to her feet and offered her hand. “Let’s not find out.”

Chapter Text

“Another Walker family Christmas party,” Hannah said as Bryce let her and Clay in through the door. “You always outdo yourself, Bryce.”

“Well, it helps having staff,” Bryce replied with a shrug. “Come in and get some food and grab a spot in the living room. I think Tyler’s on his way and then Jess and Alex said they might stop by. Tony said he wasn’t sure if he has to work but he might come too.” Bryce wondered if Tony’s work spanned several universes.

“Ooh, fancy,” Hannah said, “The great Jessica Davis honors us with her presence.”

Bryce raised an eyebrow.

“They’re in a fight,” Clay explained.

“What happened?” Bryce inquired.

“Hannah! Hey!” Ani called, walking over from the living room. Hannah glided over to her and Clay shrugged apologetically at Bryce.

“Jess posted on one of Hannah’s pictures that she posts too many pictures of herself. Or something like that. I heard the long version,” Clay explained. “How’s Justin?”

“He’s doing good,” Bryce told him, “He’s upstairs, getting ready. I think I’ll go check on him. If Jess comes in and she and Hannah start slugging it out, make sure they aim for my grandfather’s stuff and not my mom’s.”

“How will I know the difference?”

“My mom’s stuff has flowers and that kinda shit on it,” Bryce replied, “Oh, and grab everybody some hor d’oeuvres.”

“What am I, your butler?”

Bryce sighed.

“Jensen…”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll grab ‘em.”

Bryce scaled the stairs up to the room he shared with Justin and walked through the door, finding Justin sitting on the bed and staring into the mirror.

“Hey, you going to be ready soon?” Bryce asked.

Justin shook his head and tilted his neck, revealing a big black mark just below his chin.

“Ouch, what’s that?”

“Lesion,” Justin said, “Apparently it’s a thing. I can’t go down there. I tried on a turtleneck – you have a ton – but none of them really hide it.”

“So go down without it,” Bryce said.

“And have them all staring and whispering at me?” Justin asked.

Bryce plopped down beside him.

“You know who’s downstairs, right? It’s just the normal people. Hannah and Clay, Tyler, Ani… And then Jess and Alex. Tony. None of them will say a word, excellent maybe to make sure you’re okay.” Bryce reached out and gently brushed his finger against it. “They’ll probably think it’s a hickey anyway.”

“Your grandfather?” Justin prompted.

“You think that old bastard even knows what HIV is?” he grinned. “Tell ‘em you got the small pox.”

Justin chuckled.

“You promise no one will say anything?”

“What are they going to say? It’s your house.”

***

When Bryce and Justin made it downstairs, Ani rushed over to them.

“Oh good, you’re both here. Tony and Caleb are trying to get everybody to play charades, and Jess and Hannah are making a big deal out of not talking to each other, but it’s only a matter of time before one of them breaks,” she explained. “Oh, and Alex might be gay.”

“Who isn’t?” Bryce asked.

“I mean, Kinsey said that everyone is on a spectrum,” Ani replied. “Anyway, get down here and pull them away from Marissa teaching everyone to curse in Spanish. It’s your party.”

“It’s your house, too,” Bryce reminded her. “Let’s all go in together.”

And they did.

***

After the party, in which Jess successfully got Hannah to start talking to her again by choosing her for her team for Trivial Pursuit, Ani got Tyler to start using Bryce’s hair gel, and Bryce’s grandfather inquired more than once whether Tony had anything to do with the Bay of Pigs, Bryce, Justin and Ani were left to clean up, having let all the staff go home.

“Thanks for not saying anything,” Justin said to Ani.

“About what?” she asked. When he gestured to his neck, she shrugged. “I’m nosy, but I’m not a bitch.” She gently poked him with her elbow. “I’m not going to loudly announce your karposi sarcoma to everybody.”

“What?” both Bryce and Justin asked.

“Karposi sarcoma. Your skin thing,” Ani said. “Did no one else pay attention in Health class? Check with your doctor, they can probably get you something for it. I mean, and apparently Freddie Mercury had it so… Speaking of, apparently Hannah and Clay are doing a big premiere at the Crestmont for Bohemian Rhapsody in February, so I think we’re all expected to attend.”

“You know,” Bryce said, “I did get an e-card that I clicked on and it was a groundhog doing the ‘daaaaaaayo’ and I wondered what that was all about.”

“Does this mean you’re going to both expect me to be able to sing?” Justin inquired.

“Yes,” Bryce said. “You’re not getting out of the next karaoke night. And Ani, I don’t know what kind of quality education you might have had in jolly old England, but we haven’t learned a damn thing about HIV at Liberty outside from like, a telemovie in the eighth grade.”

“Liberty is a damn shame of a school,” Ani said, “You know what Jess told me tonight? She and Stephanie have been trying to start an anti-sexual assault organization and Bolan has been giving them the runaround.” She snapped her fingers. “We should all get together and come up with some ideas.”

“You mean me?” Bryce asked.

“There’s only three people in the room, Bryce. Yes. You, me, Justin. Jess. Hannah. Tyler.”

Bryce picked up a cup off the floor and threw it out.

“I thought that would be just for, y’know, victims,” he said, trying not to peek over at Justin.

“I mean, the way Jess and Stephanie made it sound, it’ll be for everyone. Also, a lot of people use ‘survivor’ now, not to get into the victim versus survivor debate and all…” Ani replied. “You guys are welcome, I’m sure.” She pulled on the tablecloth and smoothed out a wrinkle. “We’re going to need all the help we can get if we want to change Liberty, right?”

***

“Hey, Bryce?” Justin called that night as he and Bryce laid down next to each other.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for not, you know, telling Ani about what I told you.”

Bryce slid over and put his hand on Justin’s face.

“I wouldn’t.” He paused. “I have something to tell you, too.” He had been waiting for when to say this, worried it would be perceived as a nudge or a command. “So I went to the doctor and got on that PrEP stuff… Just so you know if, like, the urge overtakes you.”

Justin let out a little chuckle.

“That’s real sexy, Bryce,” he said. He breathed out. “You know what… I mean, yeah. Yeah. Let’s do it.”

The way that Justin was knotting his fingers together and looking everywhere except at Bryce, though, made Bryce reach out to clap both his hands on Justin’s shoulders.

“It doesn’t have to be tonight. Or any night. I just want to be with you. Any way that you want.” He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Justin’s lips, soft and careful. If the other Bryce could see him now – yeah, well, the other Bryce had been an asshole.

“I want to,” Justin said, “I really do. I just get scared.” Bryce tucked his chin on Justin’s shoulder and held him tightly. “I feel like… closed in. trapped. If you’re…”

Always on top of me, Jessica Davis’ voice rang out in Bryce’s head.

And then Bryce’s own voice, talking to Mr. Porter. There’s this girl, she wants to be on top but sometimes I want to…

And then Bryce blinked his eyes and looked at Justin. It wasn’t as if it could be this easy.

None of it would ever be this easy.

He laid back down on the bed and extended his arms, placed them behind his head.

“Then let’s change the game,” Bryce said. “Come and get me, Foley. Whenever you want. However you want. I’m all yours.”

And Justin slipped up to straddle Bryce comfortably, leaning down and pressing their lips together.

“Merry Christmas,” Justin whispered.

“Merry Christmas,” Bryce said.

And it was.

Chapter Text

“You two are really excited about this,” Bryce said, looking back and forth between Hannah and Clay. They had both been allowed to eschew their Crestmont uniforms for this, the premiere of Bohemian Rhapsody, and Hannah was dressed in a sleeveless pink turtleneck, black miniskirt, black high heels and a pasted on black moustache. “Lookin’ good Jensen.”

Clay stared back at him, self-consciously patting the blonde wig atop his head. He was wearing a British schoolgirl uniform.

“I feel like I need more context for this,” Justin stated.

“If you two don’t get your asses into the bathroom and dress up like Brian May and John Deacon, I’m kicking you both out,” Hannah announced.

“But we paid for our tickets,” Justin protested.

“Did not. I let you both in for free. This is the cost.” She handed over a number of outfits and curlers, along with other props.

“How did you get this in my size?” Bryce asked.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to, Walker. Bathroom. Now.”

Bryce reached out and took the clothes from Hannah, sighing and then turning towards the bathroom. Justin followed after him.

When they emerged, Hannah and Clay were standing at the concession stand, and Hannah let out a squeal of glee.

“Bryce, you are looking like a fantastic Brian May. And, Justin, that’s great.” She grinned. “I think this might make us even for that damned photo in freshman year.”

“You’re going to send this around to everyone?” Justin exclaimed.

“Nah,” Hannah said, “I’m not that mean.” She took out her phone. “But we need a picture to commemorate this for the four of us.” She propped it up, set the camera timer, and then ran over to the others. “Say Queen!” After the photo was taken, she asked, “Where’s Ani, anyway?”

“At a Comic-Con with Tyler,” Justin explained.

“Well, that’s pretty nerdy,” Bryce said.

“Nice curlers, Bryce,” Hannah said, flicking them.

***

The four of them hung their feet over the edge of the “catwalk” at the back of the theater, looking at the huge projected image.

“This is so sad,” Hannah said.

“Yeah, I can’t believe it. One day he was perfectly fine, and the next…” Clay began, then stammered, “Uh, sorry Justin.”

“’91 is ancient history,” Bryce declared, “It’s completely different now. Back then, there weren’t really treatments…”

“I take more pills than Bryce’s grandad,” Justin chimed in.

“And there was way more stigma,” Bryce continued.

“Marcus refused to let me sit next to him in Biology,” Justin pointed out.

“Well, Marcus is an idiot.”

“So did Taylor and Kenneth,” Justin replied.

“Trust me, you’re not missing out,” Bryce replied, “I’ll just leave it at that.”

“I heard this is kind of historically inaccurate,” Clay chimed in, “I mean, I heard Freddie Mercury didn’t even know he was sick before Live Aid.”

“Artistic license,” Hannah told him, “Did that guy really yell ‘FREEDOOMMM’ when he got cut open? I mean, probably not.”

“He probably yelled, ‘AHHHH!’” Bryce chimed.

“That’s dark,” the other three said.

“But probably true.”

The credits had begun to roll, and people were leaving the theater as “The Show Must Go On” began to play.

“Shall we dance?” Hannah asked Clay.

“Sure.”

“May I?” Bryce asked Justin.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Justin agreed.

They made their way down the aisle in a line, striking out their hands in ridiculous Queen poses.

***

“So, how was your date with Tyler?” Bryce inquired the next day. “Faster than a speeding bullet?”

“It was fun. I somehow ended up dressed as Captain America, and I’m still trying to chart the steps that led up to it,” Ani replied, spiking a waffle with her fork. “How was Bohemian Rhapsody?”

“Magnificio,” Bryce replied in falsetto.

“Loser,” Ani teased, “Hey, are you going out for the musical? I might actually go out for this. They’re doing Aida.”

“Not more musical talk,” Justin complained. “I feel like I’m living in Fame.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Bryce said.

“The Glee of the 80s, I think,” Ani explained. “Why am I the one who knows this and I spent my childhood watching Upstairs, Downstairs?”

“Now neither of us know what you’re talking about,” said Justin as he took a bite out of a piece of toast.

“That’s unimportant,” Ani said, “Are you going out for Radames or not? Because if we get Hannah to go for Amneris, I think we can all really take this whole thing by storm. And then the obnoxious mean girls will hopefully drop out.”

“They were mean to you too?” Bryce asked.

“Listen. It’s bad enough that your mom still calls me ‘Annie’, but when six blondes follow you around singing ‘It’s a Hard Knock Life’ because they think it’s funny, legal murder suddenly becomes more and more appealing.”

“I keep telling my mom that it’s not your name,” Bryce said.

“If you can tell your grandfather my name isn’t Joseph, that would be nice too,” Justin said.

Ani and Bryce exchanged looks.

“Joseph’s mother, she was quite my favorite wife, I never really loved another all my life…” Bryce began to sing.

“And Joseph was my joy because he reminded me of her!” Ani chimed in.

Justin stood up in disgust and brought his toast with him.

“It was red and yellow and green and brown…” Bryce began as he left.

When the door slammed, Ani stood up and announced, “And blue!”

***

It took half the day, but Justin did forgive Bryce and Ani for their rendition of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, on the promise that they never do it again and that they not mention it to Hannah because she would then start singing it too.

The group was sitting in the lunch room, chatting away about the upcoming Spring Fling, when their table was approached by one Marcus Cole, followed by a few girls from student counsel, including Courtney Crimsen.

“Excuse me,” Marcus announced. “I think we need to have a discussion, as there have been concerns raised by the student body of Liberty.”

“What concerns are those?” Bryce inquired.

“Um, the fact that Justin has been playing sports and eating in the lunchroom and just being… around while having a known deadly disease,” one of the girls said.

Courtney, for her part, looked mortified but didn’t move from her spot, gazing over at Marcus.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad, Justin,” Marcus said, “But I think that this was something that we all should have known about.”

Bryce leaned back and tilted his head slightly to the side.

“You see, that’s the thing. Ever since Justin told me you and the Bobbsey twins refused to sit near him, I’ve been wondering how exactly you know.”

“What?” Marcus asked.

“Who are the Bobbsey twins?” one of the girls asked.

“That is an excellent point, Bryce,” Skye declared, “I too am curious as to where you all got Justin’s personal health information. And you know, Marcus, that’s not a good look for that Senate campaign you’re trying to run in what, twenty years?”

“Twenty-two,” Marcus corrected, “Senators have to be thirty. And how do you know that one of Justin’s friends didn’t blab it around?”

“Because I know they didn’t,” Justin spoke up. “And I know exactly who did. But Marcus and friends – go tell everyone that you want. The people sitting here are the only ones who I care what they think of me.” Bryce looked over to see that Justin’s hand was shaking, but his voice was steady.

“Get out of here, Marcus,” Hannah chimed.

“And what a group you’ve chosen,” Marcus retorted, “I’m pretty sure I still have a picture of my phone of you, Hannah.”

“Enjoy it, dickwad,” Hannah shot back.

“That’s enough,” Courtney spoke up. “Let’s go.”

Marcus followed after her with the others.

“Marcus is such a dick,” Hannah said with a sigh. “I don’t think he’s the issue, though.”

“It’s got to be Coach Rick and Mark Perry revving him up, right?” Clay inquired.

“Wherever they are,” Bryce agreed. “So what do we do?” He looked over at Justin.

“Nothing. Yet, at least. Let’s just wait,” Justin said. “I have all the time in the world.”

Chapter Text

Bryce, Ani and Hannah did try out for Aida, and to the displeasure of the group of girls who kept calling her “Annie”, Ani was indeed cast as Aida, with Bryce as Radames and Hannah as Amneris. Alex Standall, meanwhile, was chosen to be Zoser, Radames’ father.

They again threw themselves into rehearsals, and found out that they would only be released out of Saturday practice an hour before Spring Fling, in order to get themselves ready.

“You shouldn’t need that much,” the director had said after a girl started wailing about needing five hours to get her make-up done. “We start two hours before a show, after all.”

Bryce took a moment after rehearsal to stand in front of Liberty, musing on how this Spring Fling would be quite different than it had been, and that different still than the way it might have turned out. It had been him who had set in motion that potential version of events, after all, he who had set the course for Monty to attempt to destroy Tyler and Tyler, in turn, to wish to destroy everyone.

Now, he would walk in and he would look around at everyone and he would, well, he would remember but also not remember. These moments seemed to be hitting him more and more as these landmark moments shifted, because he could remember the day Hannah Baker had died and he could remember the day that Tyler nearly killed everyone at Spring Fling – April 20th, made sense after all – but try as he might, Bryce could not recall the day in his old life when he had stopped trying to be a person.

Or when, in his new life, he had become one again.

“Hey,” said a voice behind him, and when he turned, Hannah was standing behind him in a dark blue dress and a royal blue corsage on her wrist. “Where’s your date?”

“Where’s yours?” Bryce inquired, and Hannah chuckled.

“Clay’s on his way. Probably with Justin, I guess. We’ve got a few minutes of nostalgia before we have to go ahead and be social.” She reached out and adjusted Bryce’s tie. “We can’t hand the big man of Liberty High School walking in there looking disheveled, can we?”

Bryce blushed.

“I don’t know that I’m the big man of Liberty anymore,” he said.

“You’re bigger than you ever were before,” she told him, “And don’t forget that. Look at yourself how Justin looks at you, and you’ll know where to turn every time.” She looked behind herself and pointed out Justin and Clay walking out of Clay’s car. “Ready to head in?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Bryce replied.

***

It wasn’t until they stepped inside that Bryce really looked over Justin in his tux, his hair slicked back and his famous smile lighting up his eyes.

“We’re getting to be a habit here,” Justin teased.

“We are,” Bryce agreed. They took a seat off to the side and were talking about Justin’s next upcoming football game – against Hillcrest – and Bryce’s upcoming dress rehearsals – in three weeks – when Bryce caught Hannah out of the corner of his eye. She was walking back and forth, pacing almost, looking a little worried and not quite talking to Clay. Could they be in some kind of a fight, or was something else going on, Bryce wondered. And was it anything that he could help with? Wasn’t that what he was here for now? “One second, Justin, sorry,” he said, then rose from his spot and walked over to where Hannah was. “Hey. Everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hannah said. She peeked over at Clay and then said, “One second, Clay.” She took Bryce’s arm and led him over to a spot in front of a hallway door. “So, I was thinking about our conversation the other day. About… well, redemption. And how much is enough. And I realized… well, maybe it was time to do a little bit of a redemption arc of my own.” She knotted her hands together and then brushed something out of her eye.

Bryce chuckled.

“You?” he asked. “What have you ever done that you would need redemption for?”

Hannah seemed to be searching for pockets on her dress that didn’t exist as her hands moved down to her waist.

“At my old school, my friend Lindsey picked on this girl and I joined in. We all called her Suck-Me Sarah and I found out later she dropped out of school. Well, I… I mean I didn’t want to leave it like that. So I asked Jeff to take her to this dance and, well, I’m going to apologize to her.”

Bryce blinked.

“Did you tell him about the Suck-Me Sarah thing? Because you may be setting him up for A) disappointment or B) the idea that she’s some kind of enormous snake that travels the Earth and just sucks men up into her enormous snake mouth.”

“You’ve seen Tremors too many times,” Hannah replied, “Also, shut up, she’s right over there. Can I hide behind you?”

“No, no,” Bryce replied. “You helped me, now I’m going to help you. We’re going to 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd this thing.”

He walked over to where Jeff Atkins had just entered, next to a girl with brown curly hair in a black dress who was looking around nervously.

Bryce walked up and said, “Hey, Jeff,” and then slid his gaze over to Sarah as if it was casual and inquired, smooth as silk, “And hello there. I’m Bryce and you are…?”

“Ignore him,” Hannah said as she burst out from behind him. “He’s Frat Boy Darth Vader.” She bit her lip and then looked down. “And I’m, uh, Sorority Girl Darth Maul for how I treated you at Ridgeview. Sarah, can we go somewhere and talk?”

Sarah’s gaze hovered from Jeff to Bryce and then back to Hannah before she replied, “Okay. Sure.”

As they walked away, Jeff inquired, “Did you just try and steal my date?”

“Nah,” Bryce replied, pointing over at Justin, “I got all I need right over there.”

“You better,” Jeff said, “Because I really like her. So, ya know, hands off. Oh, hey Jess.”

“That’s got a nice ring to it,” said Jess as she walked up, “That’s what me and Steph should call our organization.” She raised a plastic cup. “Jeff, if I get too drunk, I need you to write my idea on Bryce’s forehead.”

“Did you just say I had a big forehead?” Bryce inquired.

“Maybe,” Jess replied, “But it doesn’t appear to have hurt you any. I also like that you’re more offended that your forehead is big than the idea of us writing Hands Off across it.”

“People might think Justin did it,” Bryce mused. “Speaking of, I had better go find my date.” He tapped his forehead. “But I’ll remember it. Hands Off.”

“I think if you keep your hands off of Justin, he might get annoyed,” Jess mused. “You two are some kind of power couple now.”

“A couple of what, I don’t know,” Jeff chimed. He and Jess fist-bumped.

Bryce made his way back over to where Justin was standing by the drink table.

“Lonely?” he inquired.

“Not now,” Justin replied. “What was up with Hannah and Jeff’s date?”

“Apologies all around, apparently,” Bryce said.

“Does that mean I’m getting an apology for you dropping water on my head this morning?” Justin asked.

“I’ll think about it,” Bryce responded, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

Chapter Text

When Ani sang the role of Aida, she really did look like a princess. Watching her up on stage, Bryce could remember exactly why he had fallen in love with her in that other life – Ani always looked like someone who knew exactly what was going on and was going to go to any lengths to get what she needed.

But of course, Aida was not the only princess in that musical. Amneris was, too, and the two were as similar as they were different. Hannah was able to show the nervousness behind the façade to Ani’s quiet resolution, and Bryce felt more often than not that he left their big song together as a trio – “A Step Too Far” – feeling exhausted trying to keep up with the two of them.

On this particular day, three weeks before dress rehearsals were set to begin, Bryce found himself pouring most of a bottle of water down his throat and trying to catch his breath.

“Is it exhausting trying to Make Egypt Great Again?” Hannah inquired, sitting next to him.

“Nah, that’s more Zoser’s aim, I think,” Bryce said with a grin. “I’m just trying to get out of Egypt for most of the show.”

“Forever the angsty rich kid. Wanting to travel and your dad says no,” Ani teased.

Bryce stuck his tongue out, and Hannah playfully nudged him.

“I can’t believe this is our last show together,” she said, “It feels like it all went so fast… Sometimes I forget which one we’re even doing and I want to go start singing ‘Master of the House’ again.”

“Ready with a handshake and an open palm!” Bryce declared.

“Oh, don’t do that, or I’m going to open my mouth and that’s what’s going to come out. I’m going to tell all of Egypt that Radames ‘thinks he’s quite a lover but there’s not much there’.”

“Well,” Ani said, “That would explain why he’s ‘almost formal, too respectful’.”

Bryce laughed. Life was good, after all.

***

“So,” Stephanie said, pulling up a picture on her phone, “What do you think? How does it look?”

Bryce gazed upon the Hands-Off logo and wondered at it. He could remember (not quite remember, as if in a dream) Jess and the others running out on the field in nothing but bras and red paint.

“I think it looks great. What do you guys think?” Bryce inquired.

“I love it. We should meet here and do a huge sign for it,” Hannah said, “I mean, if we do it at school I think we’re running the risk of the people we’re talking about pulling some kind of a sabotage.”

“It’s frustrating to think that getting rid of Mark and Coach Rick won’t end it,” Stephanie admitted.

“I don’t know what will end it,” Jess agreed, “But we’ve got to try something, right?”

At that, there was a gentle knock on the door of the pool-house, and Ani got up and opened in.

Marissa-the-maid walked in, looking around at the group for a moment.

“Hi, Marissa,” Justin said.

“We’re going to be in here a little while longer,” Bryce said, assuming that someone had asked her to clean the pool-house.

But instead, Marissa looked around at the group and said quietly, “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard what you were doing, for, uh, your organization. And I wanted to know if it would be okay if I helped? I’m on my lunch break so you don’t need to…”

“Marissa,” Bryce cut in, “Go eat lunch. We’ll get started when you’re done. And of course you can help, if you want.”

When she walked out, Bryce saw Justin’s face turn as pale as he had ever seen him.

***

“Can you pass me another red marker?” Jess called across, and Bryce tossed her one before looking back over at Marissa, who had been coloring in an “O” intently without saying anything for several minutes.

“So, um, Marissa,” Bryce said, “What made you interested in helping with Hands Off?”

“I still don’t know that I’m sold on the name,” Hannah said, “But we’ve already made half the sign. I mean, ‘HO’.”

“We’re reclaiming it,” Jess said.

Bryce didn’t watch their discussion, though. He was looking at Marissa, whose face had gone pale and whose eyes looked at if she had drifted very far away.

“Marissa?” Bryce prompted.

She looked up at the group, who each stopped their frantic coloring in turn and looked up at her – a haze of faces, Hannah’s, Clay’s, Justin’s, Ani’s, Jess’, and Stephanie’s.

“I grew up in Guatemala,” Marissa said, “And… There are a lot of dead girls there. Girls who get snatched up by rich men or killed by their boyfriends or their husbands or, well, any man, and then they just don’t exist anymore. Or they come close.” She looked down at her finger and Bryce noticed her examining a speck of red across it. “I was fifteen when I left. There was a man. A rich man. He did what he wanted and when I came home, the only choice was to go back again or leave. And so I left. Mr. Walker hired me, and… Bryce, you were little then. And then this was my home.”

Bryce’s brain lit on fire with memories, memories of Marissa singing him to sleep, of her wrapping her arms around him in a way his mother had never done, of his spoiled tantrums and heated insults about how Marissa was not his mother and she couldn’t tell him what to do, of him walking by her and ignoring her.

He had cleared the space between them before she looked back down again at the poster, and he hugged her.

Her face turned to an awkward smile as she hugged him back.

“Te quiero, Bryce,” she whispered, and he felt Justin reach in to join the hug too.

“Te quiero,” Bryce echoed.

***

“Hey,” Hannah said when Bryce knocked on her door a few days later, “What’s going on?”

“Can I come hang out?” he asked, “I kind of have to get out of my own head a bit, and… you’re the only one who knows about….”

“Yeah, no problem. My parents are out on some kind of a ‘date night’. Gross, right?”

Hannah opened the door and gestured upstairs, leading him up to her room.

“I was just reliving some sounds of my childhood,” she explained, “So don’t mind the teenybopper haven.” She gestured to a number of tapes that she had stacked on the nightstand.

“Backstreet Boys?” Bryce inquired, picking one up.

“Oh yeah. This was my jam. My mom got it for me when I was like… three,” Hannah said and laughed, “You know, there’s actually a song on here I think you might appreciate.” She gently took the tape from his hand and then popped it in a little stand-up tape player, then began fast-forwarding and rewinding, letting little snippets of songs come out before nodding. “This is it. Don’t judge, don’t try to be macho. Just listen. And sit.” She patted the spot on the bed next to him. “This is called ‘Shape of My Heart’.”

Bryce leaned forward a little as he heard:
“Baby, please try to forgive me
Stay here don't put out the glow
Hold me now don't bother
If every minute it makes me weaker
You can save me from the man that I've become…”

Hannah looked over at him and smiled.

“Yeah?” she asked.

Bryce paused a moment.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

Chapter Text

The Aida performance went off without a hitch. Bryce found that the hardest scene to do was also the one that was closest to his heart – Radames’ face-off against his father in “Like Father, Like Son” in which he broke away from his father’s evil plans entirely in order to try for a new life with Aida.

One that ended with the two of them closed in a tomb and sentenced to death, albeit, but a new life nonetheless.

It felt like a heavy weight had laid upon him at the cast party, however. He had spent so much time at rehearsals and performances, and listening to the director announce that “I can’t pull hats out of rabbits anymore” and “if you can’t get up to here, we are going to cancel the whole show, because we can’t go out like this!” that life without it felt like a void.

He sat in a chair, eating cheese curls next to Hannah while Jess, who had helped out with tech crew, sang “Satisfied” on karaoke.

“Two weeks until graduation,” Bryce said.

“Excited?” Hannah asked. “I can’t wait to get out of here. The second I graduate, I’m getting on a plane and going to New York. Goodbye, Evergreen, and good riddance. Am I right?”

Bryce laughed.

“I wish I had it all planned out as much as you seem to,” he said.

“Well, where are you going to go? College, I mean. They must be all fighting over you.”

“I actually haven’t decided. I didn’t really apply anywhere. I just wasn’t sure what to… do, you know.”

“Well, you’ve got to come up with something, right?” Hannah asked. “Or are you just going to stay in Evergreen?”

“Well, until next November 2nd at least. I guess I need to…”

“Tempt fate?” Hannah asked. “You shouldn’t. I mean, that night that I would have… I didn’t go in and take a bath. Too Final Destination for me.”

“But if it’s Final Destination, won’t fate just come get you anyway?”

“It didn’t come get me,” Hannah replied, and tapped him on the shoulder. “So I think you may need to buckle up and figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life.”

***

The day had come. Bryce Walker would graduate from Liberty High School.

So would Marcus Cole, Sheri Holland, Ryan Shaver, Courtney Crimsen, and Nina Jones.

Bryce buttoned his shirt and looked into the mirror, placing his blue-and-white gown around him and sucking in a breath. Was this a new and different Bryce? Or was he the old one, under a new coat of paint? And Hannah was right – maybe he couldn’t just sit around for five months and wait to see what would happen on the new November 2nd. He had to come up with some kind of plan.

That would wait until tomorrow, however. Today, he was going to graduate.

***

Courtney was the valedictorian, which was a surprise to no one at all, and Marcus was the salutatorian, which wasn’t that surprising either. They both came up and gave boring, cliché speeches about how this was the first day of the rest of their lives.

Bryce figured that, barring his own death, he’d next see Marcus on a political poster somewhere. He certainly did a good job in his speech of saying absolutely nothing at all. It was hard to dig up the old anger at him, however, since he hadn’t said anything to Justin since that one day in the cafeteria.

He guessed that Marcus had decided to pick his battles, just like Bryce did.

“And we’d like to have our selected student speaker come up to the front and give a speech, too,” Courtney said.

Bryce began to scratch at his ear. What if it was him who they had chosen? Would they have told him about it ahead of time, or just put him on the spot and let him flop up there?

“And our selected student speaker is Scott Reed!”

Bryce guessed he would never know.

Scott did do a good job, though.

“We all have a responsibility to make the world a better place,” he said as the last line of his speech, “Now let’s go out and do it.”

And then they began to read the names.

Bryce was near the end. By the time they intoned, “Bryce Barry Walker” (he hated that middle name), he had almost stopped paying attention.

He stepped forward, however, and walked over, taking the scroll from Principal Nolan. He was a high school graduate at last.

***

“Your graduation party doesn’t have any other graduates at it,” Clay mused, sitting beside Bryce on a chair, overlooking his pool.

“Well, I mean,” Bryce replies, “I chose who I wanted around, you know?”

He couldn’t have had a graduation party without the people he had chosen, even if they were all juniors. The only senior he had invited was Scott Reed, but he had said something about taking a trip up to Disney with Skye, and who was Bryce to stand in the way of the most unlikely high school couple since Danny and Sandy got together?

“Sounds like a good pick,” Clay said, then got up and walked off somewhere. Bryce wondered if Clay could catch, somehow, wisps of the other versions of themselves where they had always been at odds. Or maybe Clay just wasn’t convinced.

Bryce didn’t have much time to ruminate on it, however, because Hannah plopped down right next to him.

“You don’t seem to be partying much at your own party,” she mused.

“I just don’t know what I do now,” Bryce admitted. Try as he might, he couldn’t make any plans for the future, as if his body and mind had just given up after his time at Liberty had come to an end.

Hannah put an arm over his shoulder and smiled at him.

“Love, Bryce. Just love everyone who you love and keep going on until it hurts,” she said. “But as for the next five minutes, come sing this song with us that’s from when we were born.”

Bryce stepped up and laughed as Hannah walked over and selected a song on the sound system.

To his surprise, he did recognize it:
“As we go on,
We remember,
All the times we had together,
And as our lives change,
Come whatever…
We will still be, friends forever.”

And Bryce hoped that they always would.

Chapter Text

Bryce considered that quote about how Alexander wept because he looked around and there were no more worlds to conquer.

And then he enrolled himself in Evergreen Community College, despite his mother telling him that she had “a whole trust made up for you, Bryce, why didn’t you apply anywhere? You could have gotten into an Ivy League, maybe, I mean you didn’t always have the grades for it but they would know your father’s name” and Bryce smiled politely because he knew that at Evergreen Community College no one gave a shit who Barry Walker was or how much money he made.

He decided to study Liberal Arts, which was basically a bunch of classes that he would end up needing anyway somewhere along the line. In that first semester, he took World Religions, English Composition I, American Literature, and Algebra and Trigonometry.

And, for the first time in Bryce’s life, he really studied. He’d brought himself, Hannah (and presumably Jeff) out of the last year alive and kicking, so now he could sit down and consider what the themes of The Great Gatsby were.

He found himself writing papers, sitting in the tiny student union, chased away a random guy who was trying to tickle a female student’s feet while she slept in said student union, and went to the Campus Bible Fellowship because every week they had pizza from the best place in town.

College was the best.

***

As November crept ever closer, Bryce considered a hundred and one reasons he could choose for never going back to Liberty High School.

He saw Hannah regularly anyway, for one, and Justin and Ani still lived in his house, a detail that on some days was a comfort and on some days (particularly the one in with Ani decided to quote Clueless for twenty hours straight) an annoyance.

But when Bryce went to bed every night, he felt outside of his body, slightly, as if he shouldn’t be there. His spirit felt restless, and as if he had to get up suddenly and run somewhere.

And he knew where he needed to run to. There was only one place it could be.

And so on November 2nd, when Liberty High School prepared to play against Hillcrest Prep in their Homecoming game, Bryce dressed and showered and headed down to the game.

***

“Bryce!” Hannah said, tapping the seat beside her. “You just got here? You didn’t come down with Justin?”

“Well,” he replied, “He was going out with Zach and them… I’m not trying to be one of those clingy and possessive boyfriends.”

“Oh, you’re not going to tell him that you’re ’50 shades of fucked up’?” Hannah teased.

Bryce rolled his eyes.

“I still don’t get what the big deal about that movie is. Where’s Clay, anyway?”

“In his Red Room of Pain,” Hannah quipped. “Actually, he’s boycotting sports or something. He said that they make non-athletically inclined men feel inferior and promotes steroid use.”

“Is he wrong though?” Ani asked, who was coming up the stairs carrying a hot dog, “Move over, Bryce, let me get in here.”

She nudged him and plopped down right next to him.

“What did I miss?” she asked.

“Uh, that guy just tackled that other guy,” Hannah said, “But I’m not entirely sure if that’s good or bad.”

Everyone stood up and started cheering on the Liberty side.

“I guess it was good,” Ani said.

***

“You heading back?” Ani asked at the end of the game. “Can you give me a lift? I walked here.”

“I’m actually going to go take a walk down to the pier. Did you guys want to come?” Bryce asked. Ani shrugged.

“Yeah, sure. I mean, it’s a little cold out… But why not?”

Hannah gave Bryce a look but shrugged as well.

“Yeah, I’ll come too,” she said, pulling her jacket a little tighter. “Let’s go.”

***

Ani had been right – the pier was cold. Just as cold as it had been the first time, and just as dark and wet. Bryce shivered as he stepped along the pier, giving the water a hesitant gaze.

He looked around, wondering how he had even felt that he could see so clearly that first fateful time that he had come here.

“Why’d you want to come to the pier?” Ani asked, and Hannah said nothing at all.

Bryce looked over into the water, watching the rippling below.

“We should probably all head back,” Hannah spoke up at his side. “We should go watch something on Netflix. I’ll even try and cook something.”

“I’ll get us a Lyft,” Ani agreed, pulling out her phone. “I can’t get any service around here.” Ani stepped away for a moment, and Bryce watched as she kept peeking up to see if she had gotten any additional bars.

That was when the shadows appeared on the pier, or at least that was how Bryce remembered them. It was too late at night for them to be shadows, and yet…

“It’s funny running into you again, Mr. Walker.”

Bryce looked up to see Mark Perry and Coach Rick standing so close to them that Bryce could smell them, could feel their own hearts beating at the same frantic pace as his own.

“How about you get out of here? Isn’t there a restraining order?” Hannah snapped. Her voice was shaking.

Bryce stepped forward, bumping right up against Coach Rick’s chest.

“Get out of here,” he hissed. “You don’t want to go up against me again. Trust me on this.”

“Mark could have had an amazing baseball career,” Rick snarled, “And I was going to help him get there.”

“The only place you were getting him was prison,” Hannah snapped, sounding a little braver now. “Why aren’t you both there now?”

Rick chuckled, and Bryce didn’t like the sound of it one bit.

“We did our time. Money talks in Evergreen. We just have to stay out of trouble and check in with the hot piece of ass they assigned as our parole officer,” Rick said.

“You’re disgusting. Bryce, let’s go,” Hannah said.

“Mark,” Rick called. “Get the girl.”

Mark’s arm shot out and gripped Hannah’s arm. She froze to the spot and widened her eyes.

“She’s a problem,” Rick continued, “So are you, Bryce, but as you’ve implied, you’re untouchable because you’re a Walker. But she’s not. Mark, shoot her.”

Mark let go of Hannah’s arm just long enough to reach in his pocket.

And Bryce had that split second to decide on what he had to do.

He remembered that song that Justin had loved so much.

“You can only swim if you try,” he sang under his breath, and then he ran as fast and as hard as he could, toppling over the edge of the pier with Mark Perry right below him.

Chapter Text

“Oh where have you been, charming Ani?”

“I have been to seek a Bryce, he’s the joy of my… lice… but he’s a young thing but cannot leave his mother… Did he set for you a chair… Hannah girl, Hannah girl, did he set for you a chair, darling Hannah?”

Bryce blinked and slowly opened his eyes to find that Hannah and Ani were standing next to his bed, playing some sort of a hand game.

Wait, how had he ended up in his bed? He looked around, slowly, and found that he was lying in a hospital bed.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice rasping.

“Well,” Hannah replied, “You knocked Mark off the peer before he could killed me, and went into the water, and, well, Ani came over and we both jumped in and got you.”

Bryce rubbed his eyes.

“What about Coach Rick? And Mark?”

“Cops picked up Rick. Mark unfortunately floated to shore. Alive. But he’s going away for real time this time,” Ani explained.

“And you guys pulled me out? How? Why?” Bryce asked. Hannah, who he now realized was dressed in a long robe and had wet hair clinging to her face, looked at him.

“Good swimmer,” Hannah reminded him. “And Ani’s even better.”

“I was on the swim team back in Manchester,” Ani explained, “And I was a lifeguard for three years, which came in handy as you fought us both.” She gestured to a huge bruise on her arm.

Bryce winced.

“Sorry,” he said.

Ani shrugged.

“Some people just don’t wanna be saved. But that was why I had to wrestle Rudy Shobert in order to qualify as a lifeguard.”

“Who?” Bryce and Hannah asked.

“This guy, they would announce him as ‘RUUUUUUDY Shobert’ whenever he came down to the pull and… well, he was really strong and you had to wrestle him to get qualified. Because people fight. So Bryce, you’re tough, but you’re no Rudy.”

“I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult,” Bryce admitted, rubbing his head. He blinked and then asked, “Where’s Justin? How’s he?”

“He’s back at the house,” Ani said, “But he’s fine. Or at least, he’s going to be, once he sees that you’re fine.”

When Ani stepped out a moment to grab Bryce a water from the vending machine – “yes, a water, though you might never want to see it again” – Hannah pulled up a chair and looked at him with a smile.

“See, Bryce. It all worked out. And you know why it did?”

He rubbed his eyes again.

“Why?”

“Because you took a leap of faith.”

***

Bryce was able to go home the next day, on the condition that he stay out of bodies of water of any size larger than his bathtub.

And he went back to his life.

***

About a week later, Bryce walked to his room to find Justin lying in bed.

“Hey,” he called, “Justin?”

Justin didn’t stir, though his eyes were open – just barely, and Bryce pulled back the covers and slipped in beside him.

“Justin?” he called again, nudging Justin’s shoulder gently.

“Bryce,” Justin mumbled sleepily. “Everything’s fine. I’m just… Just sleepy, you know?”

Bryce laid his head on Justin’s shoulder.

“You relapsed, huh?” he whispered.

Justin looked around slowly, then nodded.

“We’ll get you help,” Bryce said quietly. “We can get you the best rehab in the whole state of California.” He ran his fingers through Justin’s hair.

“But right now…” Justin began, softly, “Can you just lay here with me? So I know that… you’re not going anywhere?”

“Of course,” Bryce replied. He held Justin tightly. “Rest. I’ll be here.”

***

Justin’s ninety days in rehab were over before prom, which allowed Bryce to tag along as his date. They were both dressed in tuxedos and rented a limo.

Ani, dressed in a long blue dress, stated that she was meeting Tyler there and that they had another stop to make, but that she would ride the limo back.

“So don’t eat all of the mints,” she said, then leaned in to smell Justin’s breath. “Or, in your case, do.”

“Fuck off, Ani,” Justin retorted.

***

Bryce and Justin arrived at the prom, and no one turned their heads.

In the last year, hundreds of things must have happened that in no way involved Bryce Walker, and so no one seemed to care anymore.

It was a relief.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked Justin.

Justin nodded, putting his hands on Bryce’s hips and swaying to the music, slowly and carefully. Bryce noticed that his eyes no longer darted around to see who might be looking at them and judging them. Justin had truly grown into himself.

Bryce hoped that he had done the same.

When the song came to an end, Bryce felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around to see Ani and Tyler.

“So,” Ani said, “We came separate because we both brought our own… well, official dates. Come on out, boys.”
Tyler waved to someone in the crowd, and a moment later, Montgomery de La Cruz and Winston Williams stepped forward, arm in arm.
Bryce almost didn’t recognize Monty at first. The lanky, scowling boy he had known had grown, instead, to a somewhat pudgier and smiling boy who was even sporting a pair of black glasses.

“Monty?” Bryce managed, blinking.

“Brycey!” Monty declared, running at him and wrapping him in a hug. “Have you met Winston?” He gestured, and Hannah and Clay appeared next to Bryce and Justin, looking at the two as well.

“I haven’t seen you in ages, Monty,” Justin said, “You’re looking good.”

“Oh, these?” Monty asked, rubbing a finger over his glasses, “I know I look like I joined the chess club but… the baseball team at my new school honestly sucks, so they needed me to actually be able to see the words on the page and nonsense like that.”
Hannah laughed.

“You found an insult in a compliment. Same old Monty,” she teased. “Hey, I just requested a song. Bryce, can I have this dance?”

When the song began, Bryce had an even better idea.

“Monty,” he said, “Join us for this one.” Then, he went over and found Jeff, and ushered in Justin as well, just as Kesha began to sing:
“I hear your heart beat to the beat of the drums
Oh, what a shame that you came here with someone
So while you're here in my arms
Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young…”

They all formed a circle, danced, and clapped.

None of them went home until two in the morning.

***

“I’d like to announce our student speaker for the class of 2019,” Principal Nolan said, “You all voted, and here she is. Hannah Baker!”

Bryce sat in the bleachers, peaking forward at Justin – who they had let graduate this time – and then over at Hannah.

She stood behind the podium and gazed over at the crowd.

“Hello, everyone. So, I’m Hannah, or as you all know me, ‘that girl who fished Bryce Walker out of the river that time.’”

Everyone laughed.

“Learn to swim, guys. It could save your life. And take over the world.”

Hannah threw her hat in the air.

Chapter Text

Bryce reached up and adjusted his bow-tie, taking a deep breath and trying to keep himself calm. If he could only peek around and catch a glimpse of Justin, that would make things so much easier.

But that wasn’t how this worked, after all.

“Hey,” came Hannah’s voice, then the sound of her knocking on the door. “Are you ready?”

Bryce sucked in a breath. It had been a whirlwind five years, five years that he never thought that he would have. Five years in which he had graduated from college and Justin had too.

They’d moved in together and had watched everyone around them move away from Evergreen – Hannah, first, to New York City. Ani, back to London. Tyler to Los Angeles to make movies. Zach to San Diego to play football.

Until Bryce and Justin were the only ones left.

But that was all they had really needed.

“I’ve been ready for a long time,” Bryce replied, beaming. He stepped out, looking around the hall. Everything seemed shinier, now, and brighter now.

This world was a brighter world, and he tried to think that it might be because of the little things that he had done.

But he knew that it was brighter because Justin and Hannah were there.

And Justin’s cheeks were bright and radiant, full of life. He stepped up across from Bryce.

Alex, who had gotten ordained at some point along the way, stepped forward.

“We are gathered here to join together two souls – Bryce Walker and Justin Foley. I have been told that you two have written your own vows?”

They both nodded.

“Justin, would you like to go first?” Alex asked.

Justin swallowed, looked around at the crowd, and then nodded.

“Bryce,” he began, slowly raising his head to look into Bryce’s eyes, “We met one day when we were nine years old. I don’t know if I ever could have expected for us to have ended up here all these years later, but I’m really relieved that we did. I don’t know what I would ever do without you.”

Bryce moved his head a little bit, because he was sure that if he looked Justin directly in the eye, then he would begin bawling, and he didn’t want to do that.

It would be better if as few people as possible knew that Bryce was a big old crybaby.

And a lot of people were there, indeed. Nora was there, and little Caitlin (though her father Barry was not), Ani, Clay, and Monty and Winston, attached at the hip. Jess, Tyler, and Zach.

“And now,” Justin continued, “I can’t imagine my life without you, and I don’t want to… and hopefully, I won’t have to.”

“You don’t,” Bryce whispered.

“And so I vow to walk beside you for the rest of our lives, Bryce. I love you.”

Bryce caught Alex rubbing tears away from his eyes. When he came back into view, he said, “Bryce? Your turn.”

Bryce took a breath.

“A few years ago, I was jotting down what I would say to Justin if… if it was the last thing he would ever hear from me. And I’ve had a lot of thoughts about that. Sometimes I feel like I’m a person in pieces, and it’s like I’m picking them up and making a mirror. Examining myself. And I always see myself, if I see my best self… I see myself with you.”

Bryce sucked in a breath again.

“I remember, back when we were in high school, some of my friends here introduced me to a song. And that song really spoke to me, and I… wanted to end my vows by co-opting it a bit.” He took a deep breath and then said, “I know Justin like I know my own mind… I will never find anyone as trusting or as kind.”

They probably would have laughed – it was pretty cheesy – if Bryce hadn’t said it so earnestly.

And then they exchanged rings.

“I now pronounce you married. You may kiss the… I don’t know, just kiss somebody!” Alex declared.

And Bryce pulled Justin in and kissed him.

And life was good.

***

The reception was filled with people catching up, eating food, and comparing stories of the last five years.

Hannah sat at the same table as Bryce and Justin.

“So what have you been up to?” Bryce asked, “I never heard the whole story. You said that you were writing? What are you writing about?”

Hannah beamed.

“Actually,” she said, “I got published.”

“Really? Congratulations!” Justin exclaimed, “What’s it about?”

“Well,” Hannah said, opening her purse and taking out a small, black book, “This is what it’s about.”

Justin looked at it first, before handing it to Bryce.

“Why didn’t you publish it under your name?” Justin inquired.

“Eh, people don’t think women can write about women,” Hannah replied, “So I used a guy’s name. Plus, I didn’t really want everyone to know it was me since this is all kind of based on Liberty.”

Bryce didn’t say anything, just ran his fingers over the cover.

Justin scratched his chin.

“….But why ‘Jay Asher’ though?”

The End