“Look at me!” He grabbed her arms and banged her back against the door. “If you tell anybody about this, I’ll fucking kill you!”
Emily was too shaken to respond. She had not let herself understand it in the moment, but now she felt the knowledge settle deep into her mind. The two boys had been having sex. Clay and Jack. How long had they been doing it? Were they in love? Surely you had to love someone if you let them do that to you. Why did Clay treat Jack so badly if they were in love?
“Clay.” Jack put his hand on Clay’s shoulder.
“Get the fuck off of me!” Clay violently jerked away. “Jesus Christ, you queer piece of shit. Don’t ever touch me again!”
Jack stood paralyzed, his hand still reaching into the air. He looked so hurt that Clay could have stabbed him and caused less pain.
“Clay,” Emily said. She couldn’t stand his cruelty. “You can’t—”
“Shut the fuck up, Emily.” Clay’s finger was in her face. “I meant what I said! Don’t you fucking tell anybody!”
“She won’t—” Jack’s voice was raspy. He had started to cry. “She won’t tell.”
“She better fucking not!” Clay wrenched away from Emily. He started pacing across the shed floor, hammering his fist into his open palm. His feet were heavy on the stone. “I’ll tell everybody she came onto me. I’ll say that she tried to blackmail me into marrying her. That she was going to lie to everybody about me being the father.”
Emily watched him pacing back and forth the same way her father paced when he was deciding her future.
“Clay,” she tried.
“I told you to shut your fucking mouth.” Clay glared at her, jamming his finger in her direction again. “I’ll destroy you, Emily. Don’t think I won’t.”
“Go ahead.” Emily’s words were strong, but her voice was weak. She had done nothing to this person but care for him and love him for almost her entire life. “Tell them I tried to blackmail you. Tell them I’m a whore. Tell them I gave you a blowjob behind the gym. What possible damage could you do to my reputation? I’m already utterly destroyed.”
“Emily,” Jack whispered.
“What, Jack? They’re already saying all of those things,” Emily said. “Thanks to Blake and Ricky. Thanks to Nardo. Thanks to you, Clay.”
Clay had the audacity to look offended. “I never repeated those rumors.”
“You never stopped them.” Emily was so tired of these cowards hiding behind their own twisted sense of morality. “You could’ve stopped everything, Clay. You could’ve made this okay.”
“This?” He threw out his arms in an open shrug. “What the hell are you going on about?”
“This!” She held her stomach. “This baby. You could’ve set the tone with the clique. You could’ve made it clear to the school that I shouldn’t be cast out.”
“Cast out?” he repeated. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” She hated herself for using her mother’s words, but they were so damn fitting. “Clay, you’re the one who gets to decide who the right people are. Everyone looks up to you! One gesture, one word, can mean that someone is in or out. You could’ve protected me.”
He looked away instead of trying to contradict her.
“You could do it now.” For the first time in weeks, Emily saw a real way out of this. She had begged her mother for legitimacy, but Clay was far more powerful in Emily’s small world than Esther. “The only reason people at school think it’s wrong is because people think it’s wrong. You could change everything for me. You could make it okay.”
“How are you so stupid?” he demanded. “The only thing it would change is that people would think I’m the father. Why else would I be taking up for you?”
Desperation constricted her chest. “Because you’re my friend!”
The word friend lingered, a distant echo in the small shed. They had been friends for more years than they could both remember. All of them, in some way, had always been in each other’s lives.
Clay shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t be your friend anymore, Emily. Surely you see that. Everything has changed.”
She wanted to scream until her throat bled. Nothing had changed for him. He was still popular. He still had the clique. He was still going out West to college. He still had a future.
“Emily, you have to understand,” Clay said. “My parents thought it was me. I had to swear on a Bible. They were going to force me to marry you.”
“Force?” Emily said, as if she had no say in the matter. “I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone.”
“Bullshit,” Clay said. “If you get married, all of this will go away.”
She pressed together her lips so that she didn’t laugh in his face. Nothing was going to go away for Emily. The baby would still be growing inside of her. Instead of interning for a senator and learning about macroeconomics and tort reform, she would be cleaning vomit out of her hair and changing diapers.
Clay said, “I can’t risk my parents thinking that I lied. They’ll disown me. You know how religious they are. They’ll put up with a lot of my shit, but not that. They made it damn clear to me. I’ll have nothing.”
She finally laughed. “Well God forbid you lose your beloved parents.”
“Go fuck yourself, you stupid, conniving bitch.” Clay’s anger sparked like a warning flare. “I will not get stuck in this pissant town. I will not live the rest of my life surrounded by fucking bourgeois cocksuckers who don’t read books or talk about art or understand the fucking world that we live in. And I sure as shit will never see either of your fucking faces ever again.”
Emily heard a sob from Jack. He was staring at Clay, a mournful expression on his face. His devastation spread like a miasma straight into Emily’s heart. Every day, over and over, they both lost the same things again and again.
“Clay,” Jack said. “You said I could go with you. You said—”
Emily would have missed Clay’s transformation had she not been watching him so closely. His handsome features contorted into a monstrous hideousness. Rage darkened his eyes. His elbow was cocked back as he ran across the room. And then he smashed his fist squarely into Jack’s face.
“Fucking freak!” Clay punched Jack so hard that his head splintered the wall. Then he hit him again. And again. “You’re not my fucking girlfriend!”
Jack held up his arms in vain, trying to block the punches, not hitting back though he was so much bigger and stronger than Clay. Even when a tooth chipped, a finger snapped back on his hand, he kept taking it.
“No—” Emily’s hands went to her mouth. She was horrified by the violence, incapable of stopping it. Clay kept pummeling Jack until they were both on the ground. His fist was like a pile driver. Even when it became clear that Jack would do nothing to stop him, Clay kept hitting him. It was only when Clay’s energy was spent that he reluctantly stopped.
His face was slashed with blood. He was sweating profusely. He pushed himself to standing. Instead of leaving, he swung back his foot to kick Jack in the head.