Boys Like You

by Juliana Stone

  Copyright © 2014 by Juliana Stone

  Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Archie Ferguson

  Cover image © otisabi/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  This book is for my daughter, Kristen. A young woman with a mind of her own and a love of books that runs in the family. I hope you never change.

  Chapter One

  Monroe

  My gram told me once when I was eleven that I could do anything. She’d been very matter of fact as she poured us each an iced tea on a steamy afternoon.

  It was the kind of afternoon when the air sizzled and stuck to the insides of your clothes. The kind of afternoon that made your skin clammy and your muscles lazy. I remember that the birds were quiet but the locusts chimed like mini buzz saws.

  Funny, the things that you remember, and the things that you can’t forget no matter how hard you try.

  On that particular afternoon, we’d sat on her front porch in the rain, Gram’s hyacinths bent over from the weight of the water, her two cats Mimi and Roger curled at our feet. I’m sure I wore some trendy New York outfit that was totally inappropriate for Louisiana in August, and Gram Blackwell was dressed in what she liked to call “genteel southern attire,” which basically meant cotton instead of linen or silk.

  We settled back in our chairs and chatted about the soccer team. I told her how much I wanted to make first string, and she told me that anything was possible as long as I applied myself. Of course I believed her with all the enthusiasm an eleven-year-old who has never been hurt or disappointed feels.

  Why wouldn’t I? This was Gram, and she was never wrong.

  I tried my hardest and made the team.

  But that was before Malcolm. Before the awful year that had just passed. That was before I learned that my charmed life could bleed. That pain could become an everyday kind of thing, and that happiness was just a word that didn’t mean anything.

  And now, at the ripe old age of sixteen and a half, I don’t know what I believe in anymore, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be fixed.

  It’s not like I haven’t tried.

  I went to private therapy. I went to group counseling. I read the books that I was supposed to read, did the relaxation exercises that I thought were stupid, and took the meds that they gave me.

  In fact, I loved how those little blue pills made me feel nothing—which isn’t very different from the way I feel most of the time—but medicated nothing is so much better than the real, hard nothing I had been living with.

  I suppose it’s why they weaned me off them. “Addict” wasn’t exactly a label my mom wanted to add to the impressive list of everything else that was wrong with me.

  My point is…I did it all. I tried.

  It’s just hard to succeed at something when you don’t really care, and as much as I want to get better for my parents, I can’t make myself care. Not even for them. My therapist says I need to care for myself first.

  And therein lies the problem. The catch-22. I just don’t care anymore. Not really.

  Yet there are moments where, if I try real hard, I can close my eyes and smell the rain. Not just any rain, mind you, but that rain. From that long-ago afternoon.

  Gram’s rain.

  “Monroe, I’m heading to town in a few minutes. Do you want to come along?”

  I turned as Gram walked into the kitchen. It was nearly noon and I had been sitting at the table for about an hour, trying to decide if I was going to eat the bowl of pears she’d put out for me earlier or if I was going to put them back in the fridge.

  I liked pears. I liked them a lot. I just wasn’t all that hungry.

  “Uh, I think I’ll stick around here, if that’s okay with you.”

  Gram put her purse on the table, and I pretended not to notice how her eyes lingered on my hair. I’d pulled it back in a ponytail yesterday—or maybe it was the day before—because I couldn’t be bothered with it. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t brushed it since.

  She pointed to the bowl in front of me and raised her eyebrows, waiting half a second before grabbing it and setting it on the counter. She pulled plastic wrap from the drawer and covered the pears before putting them back in the fridge.

  Gram turned and leaned against the counter, and for a moment, we stared at each other in silence.

  I’d arrived a week earlier and we hadn’t had a real chat yet—the one that I sensed was coming—and my stomach churned at the thought.

  Gram’s long hair was swept up in a clip at the back of her head, the silver strands glistening in the sunlight that poured in from the window above the sink. She wore pink lipstick, a casual cream skirt—cut to an inch above her knee—a moss-green blouse, and low open-toe heels to finish off the outfit. Pearls were in her ears, and the matching pendant lay at her neck. A classy choice that was totally Gram.

  She was beautiful.

  My gram had turned sixty last year and still carried that simple elegance that set her apart from a lot of women. She’d been a real hottie in her day, and though my mother said I was her spitting image, I didn’t see it. But then I suppose beauty is more about your state of mind, and since mine was all dark and gloomy, that’s what I saw when I looked in the mirror.

  “All right,” she said after a while and glanced at the clock above the stove. “I have someone coming by the house anyway, and I’ll need you to show him where the job is.”

  Great. I thought of my bed a
nd the nap I’d planned.

  “Who is it?”

  I didn’t really care, but I could at least be polite and ask.

  “I’ve engaged the services of a local contractor for some repairs and maintenance around the plantation. Today the fence around the family crypt and burial plot will be painted.”

  Gram’s ancestors had lived in Louisiana for generations and this place—Oak Run Plantation—had been in the family for just as long. Years ago, Gram’s father had turned the family home into a successful bed and breakfast/museum, which Gram had inherited, because according to my father, Gram’s brother, Uncle Jack, was a no-good drunk who couldn’t find his own butt if he needed to.

  My grandmother even stayed on after her husband died, but instead of living in the big house, she moved into what used to be the carriage house. And that’s where I’m staying this summer.

  Everyone—which would be my parents and my best friend Kate—was hoping the hot Louisiana summer and laid-back atmosphere would somehow fix me. They think that the city and the memories are too much, and I don’t have the heart to tell them that the memories will never leave. That much I’ve learned.

  So location doesn’t really matter, but I was glad to be away from my mother and her large, expressive, puppy-dog eyes. She looks at me a lot when she thinks I won’t notice, and every time she does, I feel like the biggest failure on the planet.

  I don’t know how to react to her anymore—do I pretend I’m better to make her pain go away? Do I ignore her? Do I tell her to get out of my face?

  And my father, God, he’s the total opposite. He acts as if everything is normal. As if the last year and a half never happened—as if each one of us is whole—and that makes me angry. And kinda sad.

  Gram grabbed her purse, bent low, and gave me a hug. “I love you, Monroe.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  She grabbed her keys and paused. “Barbecue sound good for supper?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “All right then.” She moved toward the door but paused, her hand on the ivory handle. “He’ll be here in an hour. Why don’t you brush your hair?”

  “Okay,” I answered, though I’m pretty sure we both knew it wasn’t likely to happen.

  Chapter Two

  Nathan

  The crap thing about not being able to drive is that I do a lot of waiting around for rides, and I hate waiting. Doing nothing makes me crazy, and crazy Nathan isn’t exactly the kind of thing I’m going for these days.

  But mostly I hate waiting because it gives me too much time to think about the reasons I’m waiting in the first place. About how one stupid mistake changed everything. About how I screwed up so badly that now, the summer before my senior year—the one that I should have spent hanging with Rachel and Trevor and the rest of the guys—is going to suck.

  Though it won’t suck as much as Trevor’s.

  I wiped sweat from my brow and scooped up my bag from the porch. I hate waiting. I hate thinking.

  In the fourth grade, Alex Kingsley tripped Trevor in the hallway, just outside our classroom. We had been in line waiting to head into the gymnasium, and Trevor tumbled into me. Long story short, we both wiped out, and the entire row of girls laughed their butts off. So did Alex—until we cornered him in the schoolyard at lunch.

  Trevor and I taught the little turd exactly what happened to dickheads. After that, Alex pretty much left everyone alone, and though Trevor and I were punished—we had to stay after school every day for an entire week—it solidified our friendship.

  We bonded over our mutual dislike of Alex Kingsley and our love of music and sports. Eventually, I forgave Trevor his thirst for all things country—he couldn’t help it, his parents were true hicks—and he learned to like my progressive ear. He was into country music, bluegrass twang, and he also had a soft spot for the New York Jets. I was all about the old classics my dad loved, hard rock, and loud guitars. I also preferred the Dallas Cowboys, but he was cool with that.

  Somehow we gelled, and our band is, or rather was, the hottest act in the area.

  One mistake. One stupid-ass mistake and I ruined his life.

  I would switch places with him in an instant if I could. Maybe then the guilt would go away. Maybe then I could look in the mirror and that empty hole in my gut would fill up with something other than loathing.

  It should have been my future in the gutter. But I was Jack and Linda Everets’s son, and around these parts, that meant something. Around these parts, it meant special treatment or a second chance, even when you didn’t deserve it.

  I’d gotten off easy and I knew it. Everybody knew it, except they used all kinds of excuses to cover up the fact that Trevor was lying in a hospital bed and I should be locked up.

  Nathan is a good boy.

  He’s never done anything like that before.

  They can’t be perfect all the time.

  They all make mistakes, even the good ones.

  Blah. Blah. Blah.

  None of it changed the fact that I’d screwed up huge, and I wasn’t sure what made me more bitter—the fact that I should be riding a bench in juvie and wasn’t, or the fact that I should be the one lying unconscious in a hospital bed with broken bones that would never play a guitar and a brain that might be scrambled for life.

  My cell buzzed and I grabbed it from my pocket, frowning when I saw my uncle’s name pop up.

  Shit. I knew what this meant.

  I started walking.

  “Nathan, I’m going to be late.”

  The Oak Run Plantation was about thirty minutes down the road, and though the air was thick with humidity, anything was better than sitting on my front porch, staring at a car I couldn’t drive and thinking about stuff that made me more depressed than I already was.

  “I’ll head over,” I answered.

  “It’s hot as hell out there, boy. I don’t want you to have heatstroke. Your mother will tan my hide if that happens.”

  My parents had gone north for the week in a bid to escape the heat, so at the moment, I was stuck home with no wheels and no one to take me anywhere. I could die of heatstroke and they wouldn’t know until Sunday night when they returned, because they never called when they were away—and I knew not to call them unless the house was on fire.

  I could say it was because cell reception was bad, but the simple truth was, my parents really dug each other—still—and they kinda forgot about the world when they went away.

  I used to think it was gross—the way my dad would paw my mom—but now I realize they have something special, and that’s a hell of a lot more than I could say for a lot of my friends’ folks.

  “I’m good.” I grabbed a bottle of water from my bag and emptied it over my head. It soaked through my hair, which hung down to just above my shoulders, and splattered drops of water across my white T-shirt. My dad hated my hair, but Mom and my girlfriend, Rachel, loved it.

  Rachel had told me once that if I ever cut it off, she’d dump me—she was joking, of course, but for a while there I wasn’t so sure.

  It was hair; I didn’t see what the big deal was, but Rachel thought it made me look like some guy on TV, and Rachel was, if anything, all about looks. I guess when you are a hot little blonde, it’s not surprising.

  “Thanks, Nate. You’re a good kid.”

  Tell that to Trevor, I thought.

  “The paint and brushes are already there, so you just need to get started and knock off around five, or earlier if need be. It’s Friday, you got plans?”

  Rachel had left for the lake about an hour ago with a group of friends we hung out with, including one of the guys in my band, Link.

  I could still taste her cherry gloss in my mouth. She’d come by, wearing the skimpiest bikini top you can imagine, along with the shortest jean shorts she owned. If I cared enough, I would hav
e given her crap about it, but since I didn’t anymore, I said nothing.

  She’d jumped from the car and into my arms, wrapped her legs around my waist, begging me to reconsider and come with them. She seemed almost desperate—as if she knew something that I didn’t.

  What does it matter if you blow off Mrs. Blackwell?

  Your job will still be waiting for you on Monday.

  It’s not like your uncle will fire you.

  “Nate,” she’d breathed against my mouth. “Come on, baby, it will be a good time.”

  A good time for Rachel was code for getting wasted and having sex, which were two things I wasn’t all that interested in anymore. At least not with her. Not since that night.

  “Nathan?” My uncle’s voice cracked through the cell.

  “Nah, I’m taking it easy tonight. I’ll work ’til five,” I answered and then pocketed my cell. Or later. There was nothing for me to come home to, and without the band or Rachel around, what was there for me to do?

  The walk to Oak Run Plantation was brutal. It was hot and muggy, and by the time I got there, my T-shirt was long gone. My feet were just as sweaty as the rest of me, and I was irritated that I’d decided to wear work boots instead of something more sensible like my Chucks or sandals.

  The driveway was impressive if you were interested in that sort of thing, lined on each side by huge oak trees that were generations old. Their branches spread over the top, reaching for the other side like a canopy, and I enjoyed the shade as I walked toward the main house.

  Several cars were parked beside a small outbuilding to the right, and at the last minute, I paused, because I was pretty sure Mrs. Blackwell didn’t live in the main house anymore. I spied a smaller place on the other side, set back a good twenty feet. There were flowers planted in the front, beneath the veranda. Purple and white petunias just like at my grandparents. Old lady flowers.

  I decided to start there first.

  I dropped my bag on the bottom step, took the stairs two at a time, and rang the doorbell. A few minutes passed and I rang it again, this time pressing hard for several seconds. I could hear it echoing inside and took a step back.