I couldn’t hold hands and walk around school with Allister like normal couples do, because everybody would judge us harder than they judge white gay boys. White gay boys can be gay because gay is all they are. Allister and I . . . we’re Black and gay, and being both would put targets on our heads. No kissing in public, or at home. His house or hidden in public would be the only options. There’s no way that Allister Burroughs, light as the wind, would want to hide his lover from the world.

If I take things any further with Allister, I’ll put him in Sawyer’s line of fire.

Sawyer will just stop the happiness. The happier I get, the further he’ll go to destroy it. That’s all he ever wants to do.

“You have a beautiful body, Jake.”

My eyes burn from the foaming chemicals of my shampoo. Through the rivulets of clear shower curtain, a pair of blue eyes is watching from the other side.

Sawyer wraps his hand around the curtain and yanks it back.

His jaw drops open; his eyes fill with black. A vortex forms between my face and his as he pulls a gritty indigo dust into the cavities of his face.

I break free and crumple into the wall, knee banging the shower knob. Climbing over the tub, I crank it down and crash through his body. The towel rack hits the palm of my hand as tufts of smoke—pale blond, gray-black—explode around me. The essence of Sawyer rips apart and pieces itself back together in the shape of a hand around my wrist. The hand yanks down.

SNAP! My wrist bones crack as the towel rack rips off the wall, plaster hanging on to its ends. I snatch the towel off the collapsing rod and throw it around my waist, stumbling toward the mirror. The sink vanity catches me, and I throw my head up and find myself alone. I know he’s behind me, but my reflection doesn’t. I can only feel him—a tickle at the back of my neck, a crinkle down my spine, like the tip of a finger tracing my body.

“I see you’ve made new friends.” It’s only his voice now, and his breath is like a blizzard on the back of my ear. “I wanted some once, but that dream died long before me.”

He knows I like Allister, I realize in a panic.

“People. Aren’t. Good.”

He could make him his next victim.

“People. Are. Bad.”

Does he know I took the journal?

It’s possible he doesn’t. More possible he does.

I have to escape the bathroom and hide the journal in a better place—he’ll only get more violent if he knows what we did.