Keeping quiet became harder as the weekend progressed. His dad hadn't been joking; he knew all sorts of tricks to make people talk, and even though he obviously couldn't use some of them, he used enough to make Nathan doubt his decision. What was the point of keeping quiet? All it took was for one of the other kids who'd bought off Duke to spill the beans, and the secret would be out anyway. It would be just as well to save himself trouble and further time grounded by telling the truth.

But he couldn't. He just couldn't, not after he revealed his feelings in the most embarrassing way possible and Duke... well, Duke didn't speak of love, as such, but what he did say was pretty special in its own right, and he'd acted like he cared. In fact, he'd even acted like he cared in front of his friends, which was a complete game-changer. Maybe they'd never get to act like a couple in public, but they didn't have to act like strangers, either. All Nathan had to do was keep his mouth shut, and Monday would be a whole new world.

For the first few hours he didn't even reply when spoken to, but that wasn't something you wanted to try for long with his dad. Even with just brief, necessary phrases, it was hard to keep it up. The Cold War was supposed to be over.

Mom would have sorted it out, he thought, and maybe it was that conversation at Duke's house a while ago that made him even go down that road. But when the whole thing got too much to bear and he escaped up to his room, that was what came to mind. She would have understood if he told her the truth – and not the truth about the alcohol. The truth about Duke. Maybe he couldn't tell his peers, but he could have told his mother.

Or was that just wishful thinking? If he was honest with himself, he didn't know Mom's opinion on the gay stuff any more than Dad's, although the whole Crocker thing had never been a sticking point for her the way it was with Dad.

Since it couldn't happen either way, he chose the happy version and concocted fantasies where she was was endlessly supportive. Since he was already in an area of the completely impossible, he even introduced Duke as his boyfriend, open and unafraid. His imagination didn't stretch far enough to include his dad in those fantasies.

By Monday morning, things had simmered down a bit, and the greeting Dad gave him at breakfast was gruff, but not unfriendly. They only had a few minutes while Dad got ready for work, but Nathan didn't really need more than that. There was only one person whose support he craved, anyway.

Back in school, heading from his locker to the first class, Nathan spotted Duke lounging about at the end of the hallway with Jeff and some guys from senior year. He did his best not to look besotted, but as he passed by, he did dare a shy "hi".

Duke raised his eyebrows, and Nathan registered his miscalculation a split second before Duke slammed a hand down on his pile of books, sending them haphazardly across the hallway floor.

"Nice going telling your dad," Jeff said in a disinterested tone. "Paul's in pretty deep shit now."

"That's what you get for letting a cop's kid in," one of the guys from senior year filled in.

"Can't imagine that's something anyone's gonna try again," Duke said, his eyes cold. Leaning in closer, he sneered, "Even your girlfriend kept her trap shut better."

Helpless rage filled up Nathan's body. Nothing was going to change. Nothing had been improved by Friday's confession, and he'd just made a massive fool of himself, not to mention had a thoroughly shitty weekend for no reason at all. Instead of picking up his books, he clenched his fists and shouted, "Fuck you, Crocker!"

"What's that you say?" Duke challenged, a cruel smirk at the corner of his mouth.

"I never told Dad a damned thing! He found the party himself, that's what cops do, investigate things. The whole weekend, he's been interrogating me about where I got the booze. And you... just... fuck you!"

With that, he stalked off, not even bothering about class – at least cutting school was something he'd become more expert at. Instead, he sat down on a bench by the tennis court, hating the damned place with all his heart for the memories it brought back of the first time he dared approach Duke for a make-out session. What a mistake that had been.

"Hey." Duke came running up to him and stopped by the edge of the court, spreading his hands in an apologetic gesture. "I'm sorry. Thanks, you know, for not ratting on me. And that thing, over there, it was just..."

"It was you showing off to your friends," Nathan said bitterly, and every grievance he'd had for the past few months that through in his voice when he continued: "Like you always do."

"How was I supposed to know?" Duke defended himself.

"You're supposed to trust me," Nathan said, though that was horrible irony, because he couldn't trust Duke, not in the slightest.

"I do."

"Yeah? Do you care to tell them that? Go back and say, hey, Nathan Wuornos is cool, I trust him."

Duke's gaze flicked aside, uncertain. "That's... you know that's..."

"That's too much," Nathan said. "You treating me like a human being where people can see is too much to ask. Well, I'm sick of it. I'm done with this shit. I'm done with you."

"Aw, come on, Nate..."

Even as Duke pleaded with him, the shadow of a smile still lurked at the edges, like he suspected Nathan's decision to be a bluff and had to force himself to be serious. Because nothing about this was ever serious to Duke, was it?

Nathan closed his eyes, breathed deeply and forced away the rage, the confusion, all those tangled feelings that kept popping up around Duke. "I guess now I know how people could break up with you," he said, opening his eyes again. "We're over."

For a moment, it seemed like Duke was about to say something, apologize again, maybe, and Nathan steeled himself, but then that glint in Duke's eyes died and when he did speak, all he said was a flat, "Fine. If that's the way you want it."

He walked away, and Nathan forced himself not to follow. This was better – better than muttered orders to sneak away and drop to his knees in secluded places, better than sitting in Duke's bedroom relying on his grandmother's indifference to keep them safe, better than never knowing if there was anything real beyond layers of deception and haste forced by secrecy. That was the worst of it, not what Duke said in public, but what he didn't say in private.

The only thing worth a damn...

Nathan kept telling himself that this was better for the whole schoolday, trying to ignore Duke's empty chair in the classroom, only to give up after the last class and go to find him, even though he wasn't sure what to say. He knew he couldn't continue as things had been, and it didn't matter anyway, since Duke was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he hadn't even stayed the whole day.

The next morning, Nathan did see Duke, sitting on the top of the stairs entangled with a girl. Nothing new, but Nathan's stomach churned, reminding him of why he'd given all this up in the first place. Coming closer, he saw Duke give him a sly look, and a moment later he realized the girl was Katie Hughes. At the sight, Nathan turned on his heel and went to class, doing his best to ignore Duke when he showed up five minutes later. It became easier after the first hour, when Duke stopped trying to make eye contact and started acting as if Nathan wasn't there.

That night, Nathan took the wrinkled sonnets from under the mattress and stared at them. Had they been written with Katie in mind all along, like Jeff had believed? Duke had neither confirmed nor denied the existence of his muse, and certainly never suggested that they were about Nathan. Nathan had been the one to make the assumption, and Duke had let him believe it. Maybe it really had been Katie, or most likely, no one at all, just a way to upset the teachers.

But even if Katie wasn't the muse, then why her? Why now? Was it just coincidence that she was the latest in line? Or had Duke heard Jeff's theories, laughed at them, chosen Katie as a way to deliberately yank Nathan's chain? That was just Duke all over, drawing out Nathan's emotions while refusing to cop to any of his own.

Nathan made a move to tear the sonnets to pieces, but couldn't bring himself to do it. In the end, he just shoved them back under the mattress.

Sticking to his decision to let go of Duke might have been harder if Duke had spent more time in the classroom, but as summer came closer, his behaviour worsened, with truancy interrupted by suspensions that forced him to stay away from school premises altogether. There was a rumour about a snake in a locker that made the students take bets on whether it would be expulsion rather than suspension, this time, but in the end the whole thing died down from a lack of evidence.

Mlle Devereaux took to saying Duke's name in roll call with a sigh that meant "no, of course not." Mrs. Mannings didn't even pause before proceeding to the next student. Only Mr. Cavanaugh said it as if he expected something else to follow than a shrug or mumbled "suspended" from the others..

And one day Jeff McShaw spoke up: "He's moved to his mom in Portland."

Nathan's head whipped around before he could stop it, and he stared at Jeff, who looked like he'd just said that Duke was home with a cold, rather than that he would never be back, ever.

"Oh," Mr. Cavanaugh said, making a note on his list. "Well, then. Cuthbert, Charles?"

The next day, the janitor moved Duke's desk to wherever. Occasionally someone would speak of him, and Nathan's shoulders would tense, but it got rarer as time moved on. They had tests to finish, and junior year ended with Nathan fourth in his class and with some hope to do even better in senior.

This whole Duke Crocker thing might be something he could get over.

"Hey, Hannah," he said on graduation day. "Do you want to go see a movie this weekend? To celebrate our freedom?"

She smiled at him, but made a small grimace. "I have to ask at home first. My dad's been really restrictive since that party."

"Yeah, mine too. But a movie should be safe, shouldn't it? Popcorn, soda, no alcohol whatsoever."

"I'll ask," she said with a happy nod. "I'd really like to, so if Dad says no, it's no reflection on you, okay?"

"Okay," he said, feeling lighter at heart than he had in months. Love or not, there were things to be said for friends you could trust.

On the Fourth of July, Nathan went to the police station to see if his dad would be free for celebration or at least give him some money. The answer to both was an order to wait on the bench by the hallway until they could talk about it, but Nathan didn't mind so much. At least the station had ceiling fans, which spared him some of the suffocating heat.

People kept coming in and out of the office, or passing by outside, and he paid very little attention to them and their conversations until he heard a woman say:

"Sorry I'm late, I had to take old Mrs. Crocker to the hospital."

The name Crocker still served like electricity on Nathan's nerves, and he looked up at Officer Hollis, one of the youngest officers on the station. She seemed to consider his father's noncommital grunt an encouragement to continue:

"I got a call for shopliftning, turned out she'd just walked straight out of the store with the groceries, in her nightgown. She didn't even know where she was. At first I tried taking her home, it was only a block away, but that place..." She shook her head. "I don't think anyone had even taken out the trash in weeks. Months, maybe. Does she have any next of kin, do you know?"

"Well, that's for the hospital to find out," Dad said, "but no, no one comes to mind. Not since the kid disappeared."

"Disappeared?" Nathan asked, finding his voice. Both the adults turned to face him with the expressions of people who had forgotten there was someone else in the room. "I thought Duke went to live with his mother."

Dad glared at him in a way that warned him off the Crockers clearer than words, but Officer Hollis, who hadn't been around long enough to be aware of this particular hangup, answered his question.

"The school called her up, and she hadn't heard from him. Not the mother of the older kids, either. Hey, that's a thought," she said to his dad, back to police business. "Both of those daughters-in-law would count as next of kin, wouldn't they?"

"No love lost there," Dad said, "but sure, give their names to the hospital."

Nathan stuck to the topic of conversation that really mattered, dread filling the pit of his stomach: "But where is he, then? If he's not with his family?"

There was that look again, like anything he had to say was just an interruption, which he guessed it was. At least Officer Hollis was a little softer this time, clearly seeing that the answer was important to him.

"He was last seen getting on a bus to Boston. It's out of our jurisdiction now."

"Hollis, the kid doesn't need to know that," his dad said sharply.

"How can you say that?" Nathan asked. "He was in my class!"

Someone must have known, he realized. The McShaws – maybe not that first day, but the police would have asked them questions, or the school would. Jack too, maybe. But if Jack knew, wouldn't Hannah have told him? Maybe she avoided talking to him about anything that had to do with that crowd, considering the cold shoulders they'd been giving him after that party, and the way he'd kept to himself lately. Still, was he really so far away from Duke's life that finding out what had happened to him was just none of his business anymore?

"Isn't anyone looking for him?" he asked.

"Boston police, I guess," Officer Hollis said. There was pent-up frustration in her voice as she continued, "But they'll have lots of cases like this one, and he's nearly old enough to look after himself. Unless the media gets involved, they won't look too hard, and the media only gets involved when it's much younger, blonde little girls with crying parents begging them to come home."

"Hollis, that's enough." Dad broke off her rant and fixed Nathan in a steely gaze. "I thought I told you to stay away from the Crockers."

"What Crockers?" he asked bitterly, face heating up. "There's no one left to stay away from, except for that batty old... woman."

"Son, if I ever hear you refer to a senile old person as 'batty' again..."

"He could be hurt!" Nathan knew he was giving too much away by getting so upset, but he was beyond the point of giving a damn. "He could be dead."

"He's almost grown up, he'll be fine."

"You don't know that," Nathan accused, having heard far too many horror tales of what happened to runaways to put any trust in reassuring words. "You just don't care."

The chill of the police station no longer held any comfort, and he'd lost all interest in his father's money or company, so he stormed out of there and went home, rushing up the stairs to his bedroom.

Once again, he took out the sonnets, smoothing the wrinkles, reading through those stupid filthy words that had caused so much trouble, and started something so painful and wonderful.

"Please," he whispered. "Be okay out there, wherever you are."