The aftermath of Lawrence Young’s confrontation with Zoey Brahm had left the former wading through a dense pit of emotional disarray. Bloodied pieces of his broken heart were spilling from his chest as he dragged his feet through the muck of his own despair and away from the room where the devil resided. The journey was arduous. It was a miracle that he had even found the strength to make it as far as he did before he rested against the wall at the top of the staircase. With how much it took for him to travel that far, he recognized that the battle to make it down the flight would be pushing it. But even with that much foresight, he still found himself making the futile attempt, and he eventually lost his balance about three steps away from the bottom.

  He fell to his knees and caught his upper body by planting both hands in front of him like flyswatters against a table. The urge to heave the contents of his stomach all over the floor was invading every inch of his body, but he somehow managed to resist it. He needed to be strong. He needed to calm himself down. But could he really? At this juncture? When, at the edge of his vision, he saw those familiar shoes pointing at him from half a dozen feet away?

  Why was he here? Lawrence asked himself. The sight of the boy was like a sick joke to him. As if Zoey had stuck another knife in his chest and was deriving some sadistic pleasure by wiggling it around inside the wound. Why had God decided that it would be an amusing jest to place Tristan Collins here? Before Lawrence could think of an answer, he’d already found a new burst of strength surging through him and had pinned the boy to the locker by his collar. The metallic roar of the slam would have been a call that enticed surprised gazes their way had the hallways not been empty. His face was red with rage, as if he could pulverize the boy into a million pieces right then and there. Despite the danger, however, Tristan’s body gave little resistance. His expression was clouded by the dirty-blonde bangs hanging over his face.

  “It’s you…” Lawrence muttered. “Ever since you got involved with us… ever since you started showing your ugly face…”

  “I’m sorry,” the boy murmured.

  The apology only infuriated Lawrence even more. “For what?”

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

  “I’m asking a question.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “FOR WHAT?!”

  It wasn’t just the apology that had irked Lawrence.

  It wasn’t the singular, translucent tear that ran down the boy’s cheek either.

  No, what frustrated him was his own anger.

  They were all victims of Zoey Brahm.

  Gwen, himself, Ben, and even this boy.

  He knew that telling Zoey about how much he cared for his sister was a bad idea.

  He knew it, and that’s why he never mentioned Laura to the girl while she still attended Deer Valley High.

  But out of desperation, and perhaps the na?ve belief that she was safe now that she wasn’t a student here anymore, he decided that it was better to involve Zoey than to let Enzo do as he pleased.

  How na?ve.

  If only he knew.

  If only he knew the evil that that girl was capable of.

  Lawrence Young, angry as he was, had realized that he was staring into a mirror.

  His anger at the boy was misguided.

  The look of defeat on his face and the lack of resistance that his body was putting up weakened the muscles in Lawrence’s body.

  Tristan Collins was shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “GRAHHH!!”

  The ring of the locker being struck echoed through both of their ears. A small dent had formed around Lawrence’s fist in the area where Tristan had been just seconds earlier, before he was shoved from Lawrence’s grasp. Neither boy looked the other’s way. The pain culminating in Lawrence’s hand was eclipsed by the anger and confusion he felt for Zoey and Tristan in that moment.

  “I’m sorry,” Tristan said again.

  Lawrence laughed. It was a laughter that seemed to dance to the mumbling of ‘I’m sorry’s being whispered under Tristan’s breath. But even that laughter eventually quelled itself, and Lawrence finally eyed the boy, who was staring down at the floor.

  “Do you know what Zoey has?” Lawrence gauged him intently, but there was no response. “The video with Laura?”

  His head perked up. “She… she has the video?”

  “So you know about it..?”

  “She… I…”

  Tristan’s eyes darted around anxiously.

  “She what? You what?”

  “I’m sorr-”

  “THE FUCK ARE YOU SORRY FOR?!”

  The splash of a wet mop being dropped onto the floor soaked Lawrence’s attention off the downtrodden Tristan. He turned his gaze toward the scrappy janitor whose dead eyes were centered on the two of them.

  “You two kids leavin’ anytime soon?”

  Lawrence, on the other hand, had the eyes of a hungry lion that wished for nothing but to rip into the stranger’s flesh, but he managed to bottle up the turbulence inside of him with a click of his teeth. There was no point in making a scene over someone trying to do their job, he decided.

  “If you’re really sorry then come with me.”

  With just those words, Lawrence made his way out of the building without bothering to look back at Tristan. Whether or not he came made no difference. His mind was already shattered by the events from the inside of the photography club. All Tristan could do was offer him an explanation for what exactly had happened. Whatever he had to say would probably only make things worse, but Lawrence couldn’t help but pick at the wound. How did things turn out this way? How did that video get made? And why did Zoey Brahm of all people have a copy?

  Once outside, Lawrence made his way to the parking lot where he unlocked the doors of his infamous CT4. Behind him, the boy followed without even an ounce of strength in his body. Just from looking at him, you’d think that he was in a rougher state than Lawrence was, a thought that frustrated him to even entertain.

  “We’re going to a coffee shop. Do you have a problem with that?” Tristan shook his head immediately without staring back at his opposition. “Do you have to call your parents or something?” Once again, Tristan shook his head. Whether he didn’t have to or had just been consumed by apathy was a mystery to Lawrence, but he decided not to think much more of it. “Get in.”

  Whatever was going through Tristan’s head when Lawrence hit the gas could not have been anything related to the word ‘safe’. After a minute inside the car, once they had gotten past all the speed bumps near the school, Lawrence had already been driving 35 mph over the speed limit. The engines roar in addition to the sound of the air resistance was overbearing to both their senses. Was it a scare tactic? The ride was so antithetical to the smooth, calm lift Tristan had gotten from Gwen two weeks ago, and yet he said nothing.

  Every time the car took a sharp turn, Lawrence noticed through the rear-view mirror that his back-seat passenger seemed to allow his body to move freely to the car’s swerves despite the seatbelt’s cling, as if accepting whatever was about to happen next. The anger that filled him over Tristan’s martyr-like behavior only fueled his desire to press down on the gas pedal. It was only fortunate for them both, however, that they had already arrived near downtown Deer Valley after only four minutes of driving. Once he secured parking, the two of them took to their destination.

  The interior of the homely coffee shop welcomed them with the sound of the bell hanging against the door. The heating washed over the cool air from the outside as they stepped into the establishment. Tristan, for a moment, couldn’t help but marvel at the contemporary look of the place. The black and white was such a classy look that, even despite how down he felt at the time, he found himself taken in by the tranquil atmosphere. Lawrence, however, had none of his childlike wonder. He had already seated himself at a table, his eyes trained like a hawk on the boy who still stood near the door. That piercing gaze eventually let Tristan catch himself and follow Lawrence’s footsteps to the table, where he sat facing his angry schoolmate.

  “Talk. Why do you know about the video?”

  While Lawrence’s temper had cooled off compared to the unbridled rage that had consumed him earlier, he was unwilling to have any small talk with Tristan. That he wanted answers badly enough to resort to violence had he the opportunity to was apparent enough just by looking at him.

  “Zoey…” Lawrence gritted his teeth when he heard the name. “Zoey mentioned it to me. She said something about… about how she found out that Laura’s boyfriend, that Jacob had something planned, and that she wanted my help to stop it.”

  “Your help? How were you going to help?” Lawrence asked.

  “We… we never got that far. She couldn’t stop it. She told me he took a video of her. I think Zoey’s plan was to try to get Jacob to delete it, but Laura seemed to have done it on her own.”

  The boy’s story was all over the place and made no sense to Lawrence. It smelled like a lie. “Is that all? Really? How did Zoey find out that her boyfriend had something planned?”

  “Uh, it’s…”

  “It’s? It’s what?”

  “Krista told her.”

  The name was like a bolt of lightning through his body. It was almost like he’d lost consciousness the second he heard the name. Krista Klein. The name brought back memories he’d rather forget. Shaking those aside, he realized that this meant that Enzo was involved. Does this mean that Zoey got the video from Enzo, who got it from Jacob? But she claimed to have the only copy. How, then? Did she get Enzo to send her the video, then have him delete it? Or was she lying about being the only one with a copy? Enzo having a copy would ruin her leverage over Lawrence, he realized, since he would probably end up spreading it around due to his nasty personality. And since she did blackmail Lawrence, then Enzo must not have a copy. So how, then?

  No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t get any closer to the truth. Nor would he, since he had no interest in getting involved with Krista or Enzo anymore. It’s not like he could anyway. Antagonizing Zoey any further would be like signing his sister’s death warrant. But still. Zoey Brahm, Krista Klein. It’s like every girl he had any major involvement with was fighting to grab hold of his weakness.

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  “Would you two like anything to get started?”

  Before he could think of another question, a waitress had apparently appeared next to their table before either of them had even realized it. The black pants that clung so tightly to her shapely figure immediately caught Lawrence’s attention. The suppleness of her body was advertised as clear as day to his preying eyes. As they glided up her body, the curvature of her breasts as they poked mounds into the fitted white button-up only instilled within him a deeper appreciation of her fascinating figure. Not even the plastic smile that attempted to mask the fatigue of her lengthy shift could strip her natural attractiveness that he found in her face.

  “I’ll have a medium mocha.”

  He looked away. Despite that attractiveness though, there was no urge within him to make a move. His desire to have her was being poisoned by the video he’d seen earlier. Just the thought of it made him sick to his stomach.

  “Okay, one medium mocha latte. What about you?”

  “The same.”

  “Sure, two medium mocha lattes. Will that be all?”

  “Yes. Thank you,” Lawrence said, still looking away.

  Once the girl left, he sighed.

  “I’m sorry,” Tristan said for the hundredth time.

  “You know, I don’t really care if you’re sorry or not.”

  Tristan went quiet. His eyes hadn’t left the smooth, white surface of the table ever since he’d sat down. The autumn orange was filtering in through the window beside them, dying their meeting in a hint of mysticism that only spurred on the internal wallowing they were both engaging in.

  “I’m not just sorry about Laura. I’m really sorry about Ben too. About… the sabotage.”

  “Jesus Christ, you know about that too?” Lawrence leaned back and chuckled to himself. “Let me guess, you know about the hole in the wall too?”

  Tristan’s silence all but confirmed it. The sorrowful boy before Lawrence placed his right hand on his right cheek and mouth and murmured something.

  “What? What’d you just say?” Lawrence asked.

  “I’m going to fix it.”

  “Fix it? Fix what? You should be happy. You get to date Zoey, and Ben and I are neutered completely. We can’t fuck with her anymore. Or you for that matter”

  “I don’t care about dating her. I want to fix all the bad things that have happened.”

  “Fix things.” Lawrence laughed. “You know Ben wants to kill you, right? You took both Zoey and Gwen away from him, never mind the fact that you’re dating one of them. Listen, the guy is a piece of work. I know that better than anyone. You don’t have to make things up for him. Even if he was drugged, that wasn’t an excuse to hit the ref. He dug his own grave.”

  “Someone digging their own grave doesn’t mean that you should just sit back and watch them fall into it.”

  He wasn’t just saying it because of the current circumstances, and Lawrence knew it. Just last week he had gone easy on Benjamin when he spoke to the principal about what happened at the mall. There was something strange about this boy. He felt it the previous week too, but now Lawrence was certain of it. His disposition was so similar to his sister’s that it caused the hair on his arms to stand at attention. From the cold expression to the words of inhuman understanding of someone who had wronged him so.

  “Do you feel guilty?” Lawrence asked.

  “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t.”

  He was so small and fragile. Why hadn’t Lawrence seen it before? This boy, Tristan Collins, was a gentle soul. Gentle, caring, worried about how others would see him. In a girl, such qualities might have seemed attractive, but the lack of masculine traits he’d displayed only made him appear insignificant to everyone at school. He wasn’t confident, he wasn’t strong, and his grades weren’t all that either. But Lawrence saw within him a compassion that reminded him of his incredible older sister. The comparison, like tracing two pieces of text over one another, helped him realize something important about both Tristan and himself.

  “Do you… do you think you help me with Ben then? Genuinely?” he asked.

  “W-what?” Tristan reeled back. Lawrence suddenly realized that he was leaning forward over the table.

  “Oh, sorry.” He pulled himself away. “You just, remind me of my... of Laura.”

  “Oh…” Tristan looked away while Lawrence sat awkwardly, scratching his head. “I mean… I can talk to him at least, if you’d like.”

  “After everything you’ve been through with him…?”

  Based on everything that’s happened so far, Lawrence had already come to realize just how much Zoey seemed to value Tristan. It wasn’t just that she had announced their relationship, but he thought it strange that Gwen was bullied into transferring just as she started getting close to him.

  Perhaps he was the secret to finding her weakness? What exactly does she see in him? Lawrence realized that the truth was something beyond his current scope of knowledge. But what he did know was that he saw some of Laura in Tristan. And to him, that was enough. Perhaps he couldn’t save Laura from Zoey, but maybe he could save Tristan. And if Tristan could help him to save Laura by revealing Zoey’s weakness, then that would be a huge bonus for the both of them.

  “If you don’t care about Zoey then I can make it worth your time. I’m still down to teach you how to get girls. You know, if you want.” He grinned while rubbing his nose. “It can be mutually beneficial. I just…” He paused, then chuckled to himself as if realizing something funny.

  “Are you okay?” Tristan asked.

  “Oh, nothing’s wrong really. It’s just, people call me ‘The Law’, but I’ve never really felt like I lived up to the name. It’s like, if there’s a fire going on, I’m the kind of person who puts a wall up so it doesn’t spread rather too far than putting it out. I don’t feel like I care all that much about stuff burning to the ground, I just don’t want it to affect my daily life.”

  Lawrence seemed to realize that this behavior of his must have been precisely why he handled the Ben and Gwen situation so poorly. The whole thing just rubbed him the wrong way. He needed to fix it, but because of how difficult things like this were for him, he decided to lean on the boy who seemed so much like the girl he looked up to.

  “Yeah, I’ll help you.”

  Tristan’s mouth didn’t smile. But his eyes, having finally left the surface of the table, said it all. He was willing to put in the work to make things right. Lawrence didn’t know how things would turn out with Ben, but he decided at the very least that he’d help Tristan become someone stronger. And perhaps in return, he could help Lawrence become more compassionate.

  “You want another girlfriend that badly huh?” Lawrence grinned.

  “I… I didn’t…”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well first things first, we’re getting you a haircut,” Lawrence said.

  “What? What’s wrong with my hair?”

  “Well, it’s just… I think you could do way better. You have naturally good-looking hair, you know. It’s a waste to use it on that silly bowl cut.” Having said that, he ran his fingers through Tristan’s bangs. His face brightened up. The reaction was so sheepish that Lawrence almost responded with a chuckle. He noticed some girls whispering while glancing their way at the table nearby, but he decided to pay them no mind. “Trust me. Chicks will fall in line just to have a chance at talking to you once we’re done.”

  “Right…”

  “Oh, and here,” Lawrence said, reaching into his bag before sliding the book he pulled out across the table. “I mentioned it last week, but here it is.”

  “This is...?”

  “’The Secret to being Admired’ by Jeremy Felix. The recipe for my successes are all printed in there.” He rubbed his nose proudly. “Don’t tell anyone else about it though.”

  “Thanks…” Tristan accepted it without a smile. “I don’t think I deserve your help, though.”

  The self-flagellating words of Tristan Collin’s wiped the smile off Lawrence’s face. He sat in silence, allowing himself to marinate in their weight.

  “I don’t think deserving has anything to do with it. It’s a trade, isn’t it? You help me with Ben, I help you with this. Or is something else wrong?”

  “Well…” Tristan couldn’t respond. There were so many things he could say. The reason things ended up as they had this past month was all due to his influence with Dream Paralysis. He had set everything in motion. He was the reason Benjamin’s basketball career was over, he was the reason Gwen had transferred schools, and through some intuition of his own, he understood that he was probably the reason for what happened to Laura Young. Why would someone like that deserve any help at all?

  “Whatever, you don’t need to tell me,” Lawrence said. “You’ve probably got your own stuff going on.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lawrence no longer had the energy to repudiate his apologies. He just looked up at the ceiling and heaved a heavy sigh. He had been collecting his anger over what had happened in the room and dumping it all on Tristan, but the past five minutes helped him to realize what a pointless endeavor that was.

  “Laura wasn’t always cold-looking as she is now, you know” he suddenly started. “Back when I was a kid, I thought of her, of Laura, as something like a superhero. She was smarter, kinder, and happier than anyone else I’d ever known. My parents loved her, and all my friends looked up to her. I was like a celebrity back in elementary school just because I was related to her.”

  Tristan seemed to ease into his seat as he took in the words that escaped Lawrence’s lips.

  “And as if all of that weren’t enough for me to respect her, she was also kind of like my best friend. She’d always find a way to include me in whatever she was doing. Video games, studying, singing, dancing, even fashion. My favorite part of the week was when we’d watch cartoons together every Saturday morning while sharing a large bowl of Fruity Pebbles and milk. When I think back to my childhood, those are some of the fondest memories I still hold to this day. But truthfully, I enjoyed every day with her. I felt lucky and blessed to have someone like that in my life.

  “But something happened when she went to middle school. She started acting differently at home. Colder, more indifferent. I couldn’t quite understand it at first, but when I finally graduated and made it to middle school, I couldn’t exactly not realize what had happened. The way she was treated compared to back then was different. The thing that stood out at first was the way guys spoke about her. It… really unnerved me. It was like, to them, she wasn’t even really a person. She was a conquest. Something to be owned, to be played with. They made comments about my big sister that still fuck with me to this day.

  “But what makes it even worse is that… I couldn’t say anything to them about it. I was still riding the high of my popularity in elementary school, and I couldn’t sabotage it by standing out from the group. I wanted to hang out with the popular kids, so I didn’t fight the wave they were all riding. I didn’t do anything to protect her. Even when guys took advantage of that kindness of hers. They’d ask her for pictures with them, and she’d go along with it as if there weren’t any ulterior motives. She let degrading comments against her slide because she didn’t have it in her to fight back against another human being. She’d spend time with boys she couldn’t care less about because the word ‘no’ wasn’t in her vocabulary. And they’d push and push and push. And I just sat there without doing anything. She was only thirteen, she had no idea what kind of things boys were thinking about at that age.

  “Girls weren’t that much different either, though. Her friends would always ask her for money, and she’d hand it over like it was nothing. Our older brother was already helping us out financially back then, but that doesn’t mean that her money should just go to them whenever they asked, right? It was like she was only there to act as a bank that was also attractive enough to pull guys their way. That’s around when I noticed that she had stopped smiling. I hadn’t seen her look like she was having fun even once during middle school.

  “And what hurts me the most was that incident. One day, I had my Nintendo 3DS stolen from my backpack while I wasn’t looking. She found me crying outside of class that day in this crowd of onlookers and… she sat right next to me on the dirty floor. She ignored the murmurs and laughs and stroked my head, then told me she’d find the person who stole it. And within a week, I was playing Pokemon again as if nothing had ever happened.

  “Later I’d learned that it was my own best friend when he came apologizing to me. As it turns out, my reputation didn’t mean much of anything after all. I was betrayed by my the person I thought was closest to me without reason, and I was saved by the person I abandoned for the reputation that had granted me that best friend in the first place. Do you… do you know how that made me feel?”

  Tristan, who hadn’t said a word up until that point, suddenly looked up. Their lattes arrived, and the waitress sat them down wordlessly before moving away, possibly sensing the tension at the table. Lawrence was unperturbed, however. He stared down at his drink after taking a whiff of its creamy surface.

  “I still don’t get why she helped me to this day. I hadn’t done anything for her back then, so why did she go out of her way to save me? I didn’t know, but I did know that I couldn’t stay this way forever. That’s why I decided to be there for her when I entered high school. I knew that Deer Valley High was known for its basketball team, so when she graduated and went over, I spent my next two years getting good at basketball. By the time I graduated, I was the lead scorer in our entire year. I had a knack for it apparently, and it helped that I loved it too.

  “Once in high school, I worked my ass off to network with people. I wanted to shield her using my reputation the way she shielded me in elementary school. I didn’t want her to get taken advantage of the way she did in middle school. And hey, it worked. I don’t know how her first two years went, but I was able to protect her during her junior and senior years by becoming ‘The Law’ that everyone talks about.”

  He dipped his lips into the whipped cream and finally took a sip of his coffee. Tristan looked on at him with a curious eye until he was done.

  “But despite being ‘The Law’, I can’t help but feel like a cheap imitation of her. I’m selfish, hedonistic, and thoughtless. The only reason I act the way I do is because it’s what I learned in that book.” He tapped the cover of the book that laid flat on the table. “But you’re compassionate Tristan, I can tell just from talking to you today. There’s a part of you that genuinely cares about other people the way Laura does. You care so much that your every day is wrought with guilt and self-loathing. I don’t think it’s healthy, but I feel like if I could learn from you even a fraction of what I never bothered to learn from her, then maybe…”

  The images he’d seen earlier were flashing through his mind. He had tried so hard to forget them, but telling the story had caused him to relive the video. Zoey Brahm’s wickedness knew no end. How did she get her hands on that video? Why was such a video allowed to exist? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to her at all. She had tried to hard to be good her entire life, and…

  “She’s my big sister, man…”

  Lawrence could no longer hold the waterways back. The tears ran down his face so suddenly that Tristan had no idea what to do in response at first. But eventually, he settled into holding his hand tightly. He wanted Lawrence to know that the two of them weren’t alone. That there was at least one person who cared about them and wanted things to be okay.

  “I’m sorry,” Tristan said.

  The response gave Lawrence a brief chuckle through his tears. It only took him about a dozen tries, but Tristan’s apology had finally hit its mark.