Don't Let the Forest In

by C.G. Drews

It hadn’t hurt, the day he had cut out his own heart. Andrew had written about it later in spidery lines from a sharp pen—a story about a boy who took a knife to his chest and carved himself open, showing ribs like mossy tree roots, his heart a bruised and wretched thing beneath. No one would want a heart like his. But he’d still cut it out and given it away.

Being left aching and hollow was a familiar feeling. A comfortable pain.

Andrew had always been an...

The thrill of the confession had been terrible and beautiful—and retractable. Just in case.

There were words for people like Andrew Perrault. Desperate, maybe. Awkward fit, too. Coward stung, but it wasn’t a lie.

They’re just meant to hurt. Like a paper cut—a tiny sting that meant nothing more than I’m alive I’m alive I’m alive.

But Dove was a statue of glittering ice, beautiful and dangerous and impossible to reshape, while Andrew was more like a collection of skeleton leaves, fragile and crumbling.

Andrew suspected this year would beat him up in a back alley and leave him for dead.

Thomas would be waiting with his freckled cheekbones and troublesome scowl, forever angry at everyone except the Perrault twins.

the long weeks where worse things could happen to a boy with a sour mouth who never knew when to stop. Thomas had that in common with Dove—you’d have better luck softening stone.

Invisible was best. It was easier to speak less and hide his softest parts so he could fit between the shadows of the rich private school kids with their bored expressions and catlike claws.

Thomas’s whole body tilted toward the sound, as if even amid the crush, his name from Andrew’s lips would always be heard.

After all, friendship lasted forever until it didn’t.

It could be paint. Thomas was nothing if not a chronic mess of untucked corners and spills and mussed hair and artwork staining his cuffs.

But this stain was the red of spilled wine. Splotchy, as if it had been scrubbed with a paper towel.

Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him.

Thomas always looked over his shoulder before turning a corner, always reached back to tug Andrew after him. It seemed as natural to him as breathing, that need to check that Andrew hadn’t been left behind.

Other people existed only in Thomas’s periphery, but the Perrault twins eclipsed his entire galaxy. There was something intoxicating about meaning that much to one person. Addictive.

“I’ll tell you everything tonight, but you have to swear to believe me.”

“You won’t even steal a pencil. You know what we need? You, me, stargazing, and vodka. I’m deeply interested in what you’d say with no filter.”

He couldn’t risk allowing his mouth to say the things he only dared scream in his head.

Except one look at Thomas and anyone could see his mouth was crammed full of thorns and lies.

If they stood any closer together, they could fit into each other’s skin.

Sometimes he’d lie awake at night and unpack all his feelings about this boy-shaped hurricane named Thomas Rye. He didn’t know if he wanted to be Thomas—reckless and uncontainable—or if he wanted to kiss him.

Lana and Thomas should’ve been friends, what with the way they were all teeth and knives out. Except Lana was a cold scalpel, and Thomas was a wild machete with blazing emotions he’d never learned how to moderate properly.

He drew like this because Andrew wrote like this. They fed off each other relentlessly, their fever dreams bleeding through their eyes long after they woke.

Andrew hated the way his brain did this. Destroyed beautiful things. It was like he couldn’t just hold a flower; he had to crush the petals in his fist until his hand was stained with murdered color.

Their story had begun in the forest, a collision both violent and beautiful.

Dove could be tossed into anything and she’d bounce. Andrew was a glass figurine. Drop him and he shattered.

This boy did what he wanted on impulse and regretted nothing. Andrew wanted that—to be so full of fierce life it spilled over his edges.

He could taste pain in the air and for once it wasn’t his, and he loved that.

“You’ll be in trouble.” The light in Thomas’s eyes was bold and ferocious. “But he won’t touch you again.”

The way she clung to rules and Thomas mocked them fueled most of their wars, but Andrew suspected they fought because they liked it. Or because Dove needed the relief of an excuse to be less than perfect for a second. Or because Thomas only knew how to bite people for attention.

Andrew was the worst about it, the one who clammed up or outright lied so people would stop trying to pry apart his bones and see why he was riddled with peculiar agonies.

He couldn’t explain himself, which meant he couldn’t ask Dove why she fell into manic study spirals, or Thomas why he had a wine-colored scar on his shoulder blade.

“I-I can’t explain it. I don’t want you to worry, all right? I knew the house was—things were messed up before I left. I left anyway.”

“I think someday you’ll hate me.”

“You’ll cut me open and find a garden of rot where my heart should be.”

“When I cut you open,” Andrew finally said, “all I’ll find is that we match.”

It was strange, Andrew thought, how when something moved in the dark, everyone’s first instinct was to go inside and hide under the covers. As if monsters couldn’t open doors and crawl into bed with you.

You could get extra credit if you wrote for class. Or—hear me out—you could write something nice.” To write something nice, he’d need something nice to say. But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones.

What were twins, if not one to shout and one to whisper?

The forest was immense and unmappable and monstrous—and it had always belonged to him.

He was acutely aware of how alone he was, how if he cried out, no one from the school would hear.

Andrew knelt, careful, and touched the corner of a rotting leaf. His fingers came away tipped with blood.

“My parents are officially starring in a missing persons case.”

“And I,” Thomas said as the twilight painted his eyes black, “am a person of interest.”

Andrew, who was tipping toward a steep cliff overlooking an endless chasm. He had no wings. He’d fall and die and he’d do so in silence.

But no one who was innocent needed to be so violently defensive.

It lived between them, this knowledge that Andrew couldn’t cope and so Thomas took care of it. Right up until he didn’t want to anymore.