Page 73 of The Bright Lands

Joel had yet to tell the girl that KT had been found, safe and dubiously sound. He didn’t want her getting second thoughts.

Clark texted Joel:I’m 10 min away.

Joel glanced at the brambles that overgrew the gully. There was nothing but danger down there.

He typed,Hurry.

He touched his brother’s knife, strapped to his ankle above his jeans. Just to be safe.

I’m a fucking horny Texas Teen who loves to FUCK and SERVICE mature men, the ad read. Could his brother have really written that? Could it explain the Oxy in his room? Had Dylan popped those pills to forget all the things he had let these mature men do to him? Or, instead, had he done all of those things to afford all of those pills?

Had Dylan worn this knife for his safety on his weekend trips to the coast?

Joel hadn’t been able to look at the ad for long. Here was a photo of Dylan in football pads that Joel recognized from Instagram. Here were half a dozen nudes: dimly lit backside, hard penis, ridged stomach. How brazen had Dylan become with his local fame to think he could get away with posting his face on something so salacious? How naive did you have to be to think that nobody in your hometown would find you out, eventually?

I put in two thousand of my own money.

i fucking hate football

dumb dreams. bad dreams.

What dreams, Dylan? What did you need so badly you would sell your body when a brother with a limitless credit card was a phone call away?

it’s like i hear this town talking when i sleep.

Imagine if Dylan had called and told Joel everything. Imagine all that Joel could have shown him in the city, all the pleasures that would have been open to his handsome, masculine brother with his deep voice and easy charm. Dylan now would never walk into a bar and watch the sea of men around him ripple with attention at the sight of his smile. Would never walk down the street and feel a pair of eyes rove his body from his hair to his brilliant new white shoes. Dylan, dying here, had never been allowed to be himself.

God have mercy on whoever denied him that.

Joel wouldn’t.

Hey, Kimbra Lott texted. Joel heard tires approaching through the quiet night. The girl wrote, I just remembered something. Ask Luke about the White Lands. KT said once he was gonna hang out with his White Lands boys but idk what that means and he never would tell.

Headlights washed over the trees of the park. They threw the same shadows Joel had seen ten years before. His body shuddered as a memory—the bad memory, the worst memory—tried to climb his spine. His screen was replaced with the notice of an incoming call. It was Clark.

“Call it off,” she said. Joel heard sirens blaring. “Christ in the shitter, I got a fire. A bad one.”

“Send somebody else to deal with it.”

“Thereain’tnobody else. Browder’s got a man over in Rockdale who’s gone crazy waving his gun in the street. Jones’s posted up at the bank all night making sure nobody walks into the goddamn vault because nobody knows where to take the goddamn money and Mayfield just dropped off KT Staler because of course the goddamn kid’s in the clear facing no goddamn charges—this goddamn fire, it’s an officer’s house, Joel, it’s—”

“Luke’s here,” Joel said. “I’ll call you later.”

“Joel—”

He slipped the phone back into his pocket. A heavy truck lumbered to a stop on the road above him. It was, indeed, Luke Evers. He was bigger than Joel remembered from the game (did boys his age use steroids?) with a pillar of a neck and bulbous biceps and legs that looked ready to burst from their jeans. His face was even uglier than Joel had recalled.

“Where’s Kimbra?” Luke asked. “She said she had something for me.”

“Down here. She’s waiting.” Joel gestured to the stairs.

“Where’s her car?” Luke squinted at him. “Where’syourcar?”

He wasn’t an idiot, then. Joel smiled. “Where were you on Friday night, Luke?”

The boy froze. “What are you talking about?”

“You weren’t at home—I know that much. Your mother lied to the police—I know that too—but it’s not surprising, is it? Big shots like your family, of course their son’s going to get out of trouble.”