Текст книги "This is Not a Test"

Автор книги: Courtney Summers

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PART TWO

Sometimes I’m brave. Like the sleepover at Grace’s. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I went without permission but I was willing to face my father’s wrath after just so I could have something nice, a memory that belonged only to me. And it was nice. I told Grace I liked her family and she said she noticed me watching her parents a lot and I said I wasn’t used to seeing parents together, up close. I guess I could if I watched more TV but that wouldn’t be real and when it’s real and it’s in front of you, two happy people who love each other, a family—that’s better than TV. I got to be part of that for a day. Lily was so mad about having to pick up the pieces afterward, but I still did it. I was brave. I tried leaving. Weeks before everything ended, I was one half of Lily’s old plan and my bags were next to my door and I don’t know how my father found out but he did and he was so angry I had to stay home from school until it didn’t show on me anymore. It was the first time he lost control enough to hit me in the face. I tried leaving again, but Lily took the pills with her. Tried again …

After Rhys pulls me through the door, I go outside of myself somehow. I don’t know how. I wish I knew how. They drag me to the locker room, the showers. Even the shock of freezing cold water against my body can’t bring me back. I watch them scramble to get me clean. They keep asking Rhys if I’ve been bitten, if I’m turning. He says no but he also says wait—be careful—wait until most of the blood’s off …

They keep me under the showerhead forever. They keep me under until my lips turn blue and the water runs clear and then Cary sets my shoulder. I come back to myself for this, for how dizzyingly awful it feels, how familiar. My shoulder has been dislocated before. My father. He watched videos on YouTube about how to put everything back in place so we wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. So I know what’s coming. More pain. I bite down so hard I think my teeth will shatter. Cary tells me it’s okay, it’s okay, but it’s not and then it’s done, it’s over. I close my eyes and the next time I force them open, it’s like looking at the world through distorted glass. I don’t know where I am at first and then—I remember. The school.

But I don’t know where in the school.

My heart beats fast. I touch my forehead. It’s been bandaged sloppily. I blink until my vision clears and I process all these things at once: the nurse’s office. I am in the nurse’s office on a cot with a thin sheet covering me, my forehead is bandaged and I am wearing a scratchy long sweater that isn’t mine, that I don’t remember changing into. I don’t know what is more distressing to me; someone changing my clothes or the hurt. My bones are screaming, my skin feels raw. I try to take some kind of weird comfort in the fact these feelings aren’t ones I’m not used to. I’ve been variations of hurt my whole life. My heart calms. I look around. The door is wide open and the hall is empty. I try to gauge the time. The room is light enough. Day.

I sit up slowly, carefully.

“Still here.”

Rhys sits in a chair against the wall, in front of a poster about the dangers of crystal meth. It’s a series of photos, the progression of one woman’s face over the course of a year on the drug—from haggard to cracked-out. She reminds me of the girl outside and then I get so dizzy with those memories, I feel like I’m going to fall into the sky. I lay back on the cot and take steadying breaths in and out. Rhys walks over and rests his hand against my forehead but there’s nothing comforting in his touch and he does it so quickly, I wonder if I imagined it.

“How am I?”

My voice is gravel. He presses a bottle of water into my shaking hands. I drink it and miss my mouth. The water trails down my chin and onto this sweater that’s not mine.

Rhys takes the water back from me.

“You’re sick.” The way he says it, I can’t tell if it’s an insult or a diagnosis. “Maybe you’re concussed. Maybe you have brain damage. But then I think you must have been totally brain damaged before we went out there, so—”

“Rhys—”

“Or maybe,” he continues, “you’re infected. Maybe you’ll be dead in hours and then you’ll come back—”

“Stop it.”

“But you went out there to die, didn’t you? So who cares.”

I turn my face away from him. He’s right. Who cares. Maybe I’m infected. I try to listen to what’s happening inside me. If there’s any part of me that’s dying and becoming something rotten but more purposeful than what I am now.

“You went out there to die, didn’t you.”

I close my eyes.

“Sloane.”

I open them.

“Yes.”

He moves away from me like I am infected, and then he kicks his chair. Hard. It rattles into the wall and I flinch and he whirls around so fast, my hands automatically fly up to my face. Don’t hit me. It’s such a bad thing to do. He knows I think he’d hurt me and his eyes widen and he steps back.

“You let me go out there with you,” he says. “You risked my life—”

“I wasn’t going to let you die—”

“Oh, fuck you, Sloane—”

“I wasn’t! I didn’t—”

“Well, it came just a little too close for my comfort—”

“You wouldn’t let me go! I wanted to go and you wouldn’t let me—”

“If you want to die, do it like a normal person—slit your wrists or something! Jesus!” Too much. I press my fingers into my temples and fight the urge to puke. He grabs pills from the table beside me and holds them out to me. I eye him warily. “It’s Tylenol. Just take it.”

I take the pills, swallow them dry.

“That man out there,” he says. I pick at my blanket. Maybe if I act disinterested enough he’ll stop talking. “He’s dead because of you. Think he wanted to live?”

“It could’ve been me,” I say. “But you wouldn’t go back inside without me.”

“Because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—”

“Why? Why couldn’t you? Have you seen it out there, Rhys? There’s nothing out there anymore, there’s nothing—”

“That’s such bullshit, Sloane! And even if it wasn’t, you don’t get to decide that for me—”

“And you don’t get to decide that for me!”

Stalemate. He knows I’m right. He digs his hands into his pockets and tosses a crumpled piece of paper at me and then he leaves. I open it up. It’s water-stained, the handwriting mostly melted, save for a few words here and there. My suicide note to Lily.

I’m struggling to stay awake when Grace comes in. I don’t want to close my eyes because every time I do I see the man, I see the dead girl, I see Rhys kicking the chair against the wall. But mostly it’s the man, staggering around the parking lot calling out for his friend? Lover? Brother? Father? It cuts through me. Did he want to live? Was he fit to live? Was that my call to make? I have to push what I’ve done all the way to my toes, as far from my head as it can get, otherwise, I’ll never be able to let it go. Murderer. That’s what Grace and Trace call Cary, but it’s not Cary, is it. It’s me. That’s what I’m thinking when I hear Grace’s footsteps and then she’s standing in the door. She makes a concentrated effort not to look directly at me.

“Rhys said you might not want to see anyone.” I’m trying to figure out what else Rhys might have said when she continues. “But I wanted to see you.”

I try to guess what’s coming next. He said you went out there to die. He said you’re crazy. He said you’re a risk to the rest of us. He said you’re a murderer.

“He said the man was hurt. Dying.” She pauses. “He said it wasn’t my dad.”

So he didn’t out me.

“It wasn’t your dad,” I say.

She exhales like now she can believe it. She crosses the room and sits on the edge of my cot. She picks at her fingernails for a while before saying, “I don’t understand you.”

“What’s there to understand?”

“You didn’t … you didn’t do it because of what I said to you, did you? Because you wanted to make it up to me?”

“Does it matter?”

“I didn’t want it on me if you’d died.”

“I made the choice. It wouldn’t have been on you,” I say. “Like your parents.”

“Shut up.”

“They offered to go first.”

“Shut up, Sloane.”

“We both saw it happen.”

“Oh, so you think because you went out there you can say this shit to me,” she says, collecting herself. “It doesn’t work that way.”

I shrug and close my eyes again. I want to sleep. I want her to leave so I can do it. I let myself doze, feel my breathing even out.

After a while, she moves from the cot.

“You know what I hate?” she asks, and I surface enough to ask her. “The way everyone talks about it. How my parents chose to go into that alley, like they were aware of the fact they might die. But they wouldn’t have done it if they thought there was the remotest chance. No one thinks about that.”

“But they did do it,” I say.

“Because they thought it was clear,” she says, and then she pushes my hair away from my face and it’s such a tender gesture, it confuses me. It’s so at odds with the harshness of the words coming out of her mouth. “There was no way they would have gone into that alley first if they thought it was too dangerous because they had us. Why do you think they let Cary lead the way that whole time when they were the adults? They did it so if anything happened, he died. Not them. They went in that alley because he told them it was clear and he was wrong.”

“He’s sorry.”

“If he was sorry, he would’ve gone out there tonight. Oh, and Trace wants to thank you.” Her voice breaks. She exhales. “I think you made him finally understand that they’re dead.”

I curl up onto my side and stay as still as possible until she finally leaves and then I breathe so quietly, I can’t hear myself. I pretend I’m dead. Eventually everything disappears.

But when it comes back, it comes back as strange, uneven footsteps.

Someone entering the room. A rough, calloused hand against my cheek. It doesn’t belong to anyone in this building I can think of. Fingertips trace my face and I think I must still be asleep and dreaming, but I don’t want this dream, whatever it is, so I turn my face away from the touch and then the footsteps retreat and I realize I am awake. I sit up fast, bleary-eyed, and stare at the open door to the nurse’s office. From here, the hall seems empty, seems cold. Was I awake? I get up slowly, my body groaning, and pad out of the office. I stand in the hall, unsure of my next steps. It’s dark and I feel exposed and I want to know who touched me because the more awake I get the more awake I’m sure I was when it happened and I can’t deny the familiarity of the touch but I need to deny its reality.

I walk past the administration office, guiding myself by shadows. I stand at the barricades against the front entrance and try to remember what it felt like to come through the doors every day when this was just a school. I can’t.

And then my whole body goes rigid.

The charged feeling of another presence in the air. I step forward, my eyes traveling over nothing. I bring my hand to my face and move back down the hall, the way I came, when I get another weird feeling, like I’m being watched. And then a musky scent coats the inside of my throat. My chest tightens. It feels like I’m being wrapped in plastic. I wonder if I’ll remember him forever, if nothing will disappear the feel of his hands, his scent.

“Dad,” I say.

The hall crackles with my voice, breaking the spell. I fumble back to the nurse’s office and sit on the edge of my cot, waiting for the invisible hand that’s squeezing my heart to let it go. I grab the flashlight and turn it on its lowest setting and it catches my note to Lily on the table. I unfold it and smooth it out over and over until I calm down.

I wonder if she hears him where she is now, if she hears his voice and his footsteps in her dreams. I wonder if she hears him when she’s awake or if she stopped hearing him as soon as she left, if everything got more okay the more distance she put between us. Or maybe the voice and the footsteps she hears are mine. I hope they are. I hope I’m the ghost that belongs to her.

“Ready to join the land of the living?”

I wince. Even Cary cringes as soon as it’s out of his mouth.

“I guess,” I say.

He brought me clothes from the drama department. A plaid men’s shirt and a pair of jeans that don’t fit. I look rural. The buttons of the jeans dig uncomfortably into my abdomen. I changed into them in the little bathroom across the room and when I came out, he was still there, waiting to ask me that. Am I ready.

“What’s it like out there?” I ask. “I mean … outside.”

“There are a few stragglers, but they’re mostly in the streets. They haven’t gone back to the doors, which is good,” he tells me. “We covered the windows again, just in case. Do you feel okay? You were pretty out of it when we brought you in here.”

The bandage on my head itches. It also looks stupid, but it would be ungrateful to say so. The side of my face is scratched, red. My cheek is bruised. Lots of bruises have exploded all over my body in the last twenty-four hours. I feel like I was in a minor car accident but I tell him I’m fine and he says, “I’ll bet,” and then we both stand there uncertainly. He stares at me for so long, it makes me prickly and hot.

“What?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I was just surprised you were the one who went out there.”

“Everyone was.”

“Yeah, but it probably should’ve been me.”

“Why would you even say that?”

“Because that’s what Grace and Trace keep telling me. I don’t know. Now Trace is saying I almost had your blood on my hands too.”

“You wouldn’t have.”

He exhales slowly. “You mean that?”

“It wasn’t about you, Cary.”

“What was it about?” I look away from him. And then he says, “Rhys told me.”

“Rhys told you what?”

“About the man out there. What you did. Rhys said he was half crazy and that he would’ve jeopardized us if you brought him in. Now he’s—he’s one of the stragglers…”

So the man turned. My eyes burn. I don’t want to talk about it with Cary, though, so I twist the topic back around to Grace and Trace.

“They’re in mourning. They just need to get through it…”

“Everyone’s in mourning,” he says. “There’s a whole world out there to mourn. The only difference between them and us is they got their parents a little longer and the only reason they survived as long as they did was because of me and—” He struggles to force the next words out. “I apologized to them and they never once thanked me for getting them this far.”

“They’re probably not going to.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath.”

It’s quiet for a minute and then I kind of lie. It’s not a bad lie, though. Maybe it will make him feel better. I look him in the eyes and I say, “Thank you.”

It doesn’t have the desired result. It doesn’t make him feel better. Instead, Cary seems to get sadder. He forces a half smile at me, but I see through it.

“Let’s go back,” he says.

When I get to the auditorium, everyone looks at me and that makes it feel more like high school than anything. Before anyone can speak, Trace crosses the room and hugs me. It hurts. He doesn’t speak, just holds me until Rhys finally says, “I went out there too.”

“And you got your pat on the back.” Trace releases me and when he looks at me, his eyes are all warmth. “Thank you for what you did for us, Sloane.”

“Forget it.” I want everyone to forget it.

“I want you to know it means something to me that you tried.” He looks past me and the warmth disappears from his eyes. “Unlike some people.”

“Fuck you,” Cary says tiredly.

“Who’s got breakfast?” Rhys asks. “I did it yesterday. Not doing it today.”

“I do,” Trace says.

Surprising. I don’t think Trace has gotten breakfast once since we got here, and it’s not like there’s anything to prepare. Grab packaged food, an assortment of drinks, toss on tray. He jogs over to the stage and hoists himself up, disappearing behind the curtain.

“Kitchen’s the other way,” Rhys calls. No sooner is it out of his mouth than Trace reappears with—the whiskey. “That’s not exactly what I had in mind when I said breakfast.”

“Why didn’t we get drunk on this the day we found it?” Trace hops offstage. “What exactly are we waiting for again? I don’t think we have time to wait on this.”

“All we have is time,” Grace says.

“Yeah, but who knows how long that is? Fuck tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.” He opens the bottle, moves to take a swig, and stops. He holds it out to Rhys and me. “It should be you two first. For what you did.”

“You’re a douchebag,” Cary says.

Trace ignores him and pushes the bottle at us. Rhys takes the whiskey first, brings it to his mouth, and drinks it easily. He hands the bottle to me. I mimic Rhys but unlike him, I nearly choke. It burns all the way down. I hand the bottle back to Trace. He drinks and hands it to Grace, who grudgingly passes it to Cary after she takes her swig. We go in a circle. Harrison has such a hard time with it, he grabs a bottle of juice from the kitchen to cleanse his palate. In that moment, he looks too young to be alive.

“Pussy,” Trace says.

Grace elbows him. “Better than wasting it.”

And then we realize this is it as far as booze goes, at least. A bottle of whiskey. This is all we have. It’s unlikely there will be any more hidden around the school, waiting to be found.

Trace sets the bottle on the floor and we all have this convoluted discussion about how much we should drink, if we should just go for it or if, you know, moderation is the key.

“It should be fair,” Cary says.

“Hey, if life was fair, you wouldn’t be here,” Trace says. Cary doesn’t rise to it. I feel so bad for him today. “Also, fun isn’t always fair.”

“Well, we’re not staying sober while you get wasted,” Rhys says.

“Now that’s a good idea,” Trace says, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t rouse the rest of us into agreeing with him. I don’t know who says drinking games first but someone does, and that is how we all end up on the floor playing I Never. Trace seems really satisfied about this turn of events, so maybe he’ll have some kind of edge on the rest of us. Maybe he’s done everything or maybe he’ll just lie and say he has. He starts us off, anyway.

“I have never skinny-dipped in Pearson Lake.” An awkward silence follows and Rhys and Cary drink. A ghost of a smile crosses Trace’s face. “At the same time?”

“Fuck off.” Rhys grabs the bottle from Cary. “I’ve never cheated on a test.”

“Bullshit,” Cary says.

“I’m so brilliant, I’ve never had to.”

Everyone drinks except Harrison.

“I have never engaged in sexting,” Cary says.

Trace. Rhys. Trace freaks when he sees Grace reach for the bottle.

“With who?” he asks. Grace smiles and before she can answer, he says, “Wait. Forget it. I don’t want to know. Wait—one of my friends? Oh, Jesus, was it Robbie?” Grace’s smile gets wider and wider until he can’t look at her anymore. “I hope he’s fucking dead.”

“Sexting is really pedestrian anyway,” Rhys declares. “What happened to love letters? E-mails. Love e-mails, sorry.”

“Love letters now,” I say absently. “E-mail is over.”

“I just got a chill when you said that.”

Lily showed me a dirty text message she got once. It said something like I want to be inside you but it was text-speak: I want 2b inside u. It made me blush and she acted like it was nothing, like it was just her life that someone would say something like that to her.

“What’s it like out there?” Harrison asks.

I don’t realize what he’s asking and who he’s asking until I look up and find everyone’s gazes divided between me and Rhys. I look back down at the floor quickly because I want him to handle it. But he knows that. He knows that and he is still angry at me because he says, “I don’t know. What do you think, Sloane?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know either.”

“Yes you do,” Trace says. “Tell us what it’s like out there now.”

There’s a beat and then—

“Quiet.”

Rhys and I say it at the same time. It’s such a strange thing that it would be the first word out of our mouths. I look at him and he looks at me and I feel what happened out there will connect us for as long as we’re alive.

“It’s quiet,” Rhys says. “I can’t even describe it.”

They turn to me again, for confirmation, and I can only nod.

“What about when they came?” Grace asks. “I mean, I don’t understand how either of you made it back. Rhys said you were outnumbered but you made it and—” She stops and I know what she’s thinking. My parents were outnumbered. They didn’t make it. “You didn’t even get bitten.”

“I came close,” I say.

“Too close,” Cary mutters.

“They’re … they don’t think like we do, you guys know that,” Rhys says. “It was … it’s not like they work together. They’re dumb animals. They were fighting each other for Sloane and holding each other back. I just went at them while they were distracted. We got lucky.”

“The girl was persistent,” I say. As soon as I say it, I see her in my head, I see her eyes staring into mine and she’s hungry, I remember that hunger, but now I remember something else: a longing like … no—I’m imagining that. I make myself picture her again and this time it’s just hunger. That’s all there is, nothing more complicated than that. It’s so uncomplicated, I’d almost call it beautiful and that sounds wrong, but it’s true.

“Were you scared?” Grace asks me.

I can’t lie to her.

“No. I mean … I think when you know it’s really going to happen … that you’re really going to die, just … a part of you accepts it because there’s nothing else you can do.”

“Well, it probably helped that you were semi-conscious,” Rhys says. “I bet you’d have felt differently if you were really awake.”

“You think so? I don’t think so.”

Trace lets out an impressed whistle.

Grace says, “Well I couldn’t … I wouldn’t feel that way.”

“Do you—” Harrison stops. “Do you think they have souls?”

“Oh fuck,” Cary says. “Remember when we were playing I Never? That was a lot of fun and this is turning out not to be.”

Nobody says anything for a long time and then Grace reaches for the bottle.

“I’ve never stolen from my parents.”

“Really?” Trace asks.

He takes a drink. I take a drink. Cary takes a drink. Rhys takes a drink. Even Harrison takes a drink. It’s so nothing, stealing from your parents. Money went missing from my dad’s wallet all the time and he never knew about it. It was the only way I could contribute because he wouldn’t let me work before I turned eighteen. Lily was allowed, just not me. Arbitrary rules. Lily was at the supermarket setting aside what she could for us. But I couldn’t let her do it all by herself. I touch the bandage on my head, let my finger dig into it until I feel the sting. If I’d been caught in his wallet, if he noticed the missing bills, it would’ve been so bad for me. Lily told me that every time I handed them to her but she still took the money because it was for our escape plan. Our escape plan. Our. Escape. Together.

“Okay?” Rhys asks me. I lower my hand and nod. He contemplates the bottle next and then, after a long moment says, “I have never fallen in love.”

Depressing. Worse: Trace and Grace are the only ones who drink. Cary avoids my eyes and it takes me a minute to figure out why; he had sex with Lily, but didn’t love her. I don’t know if that kind of thing makes more or less sense to me now.

Cary grabs the bottle from Grace after she has her drink.

“Are we even deciding turns right?” I ask, confused.

Cary takes a swig out of turn. “If we’re doing it wrong, we won’t call it I Never. It’s just sharing, Sloane. That’s all it is.”

“In that case.” Harrison clears his throat. “I’ve never had sex.”

I know if I don’t drink, it’ll just be me and Harrison, so I take the bottle after Rhys has his go and I take a longer pull off it than I should, like I am so totally not a virgin.

I pass it to Grace. Trace makes retching noises as she sips.

“Sloane, you haven’t gone yet,” Rhys points out. “You’ve never I nevered.”

And then the bottle is back in my hands. I don’t know what to say, share. It’s funny how little I’ve actually done of the things that are supposed to matter—kiss, sex, drugs—but I’ve killed a man. I’ve done that. I close my eyes but when I do, my brain feels a bit liquid. I sort of hate that. But it seems a fair trade-off because the whiskey has dulled my aches. I like that.

“I’ve never…” I stare at the label. “I never…”

“You’re thinking about it too long,” Trace says.

“I’ve never run away from home.”

Cary drinks. When he was five, he explains. He didn’t want to clean his room.

So we go round and round, the questions getting more perverted and inane as we do. The bottle seems endless and I feel sleepy and hot and I’ve lied to them all a lot because I guess I care what they think and I don’t even know why I care what they think.

When Harrison passes on drink number who knows, Trace zeroes in on him.

“Man, what have you done?” he asks. “You take drinks when you shouldn’t and you don’t drink when you should. You need to do something about your…” Oops. It’s not a sentence Trace should finish, but he does it anyway. “Life.”

“How world-weary were you at fourteen?” Rhys asks.

“I’m not saying he should’ve fucked someone already,” Trace says generously. He’s smashed. “But I mean, Harrison, do you like—do you even know what a kiss is? Like … do you need someone here to explain it to you just in case it happened and you didn’t know?”

“Jesus, Trace,” Cary mutters. Out of all of us, he’s the most gone. Or experienced, I guess. His shoulders are slumped and every so often he tilts forward like he’s lost his balance, even though he’s sitting. “Shut the fuck up.”

“I know what a kiss is,” Harrison whispers.

“He’s fourteen,” Grace says, while Harrison sits there looking devastated. “Don’t be so hard on him, Trace.”

“I’m fifteen,” Harrison says miserably.

“Just forget it, Harrison. Please.” Cary grabs the bottle. “It’s not a big deal.”

“But it is. I’ve never—I’ve never done anything. I’ve never had anything done to me—”

“Game over please,” Cary says loudly. He takes a gulp of whiskey and swishes it around his mouth before swallowing. “Let’s move on, to straight drinking.”

Harrison presses his lips together, pushes his palms against the floor. He looks away from us and for once I get the impression that he is really, truly trying not to cry and it’s not half-hearted or anything, his body shakes with the effort. Even Trace is quieted by it. He tries to take it all back when it’s too late.

“Harrison, I was just fucking with you…”

“No, you weren’t. It’s nothing. I thought it could be something, I mean, eventually.” He finally looks at us. “My life. I thought—but I mean … it’s nothing.”

Cary groans. “Please shut up.”

“But I still want it to be something,” Harrison says. A single tear trails down his cheek. “That’s stupid, isn’t it? And now it’s too late to do anything about it.”

Cary buries his head in his hands. No one does or says anything for a long time and then Grace scoots over to Harrison. Her nose and cheeks are a warm red from the whiskey. She wraps an arm around him and he starts to cry in earnest.

“Don’t cry,” she says. “You have a lot of time.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“No—”

“Yeah! Yeah, you do. It’s okay. Look—”

She does something that is amazingly selfless and also gross. She tilts Harrison’s face up and gives him a sweet kiss on the lips and it lasts long enough for him to taste her back, to move his mouth against hers. Trace regards her proudly and when it’s over, Harrison stares at her dumbfounded but he’s stopped crying.

She is so nice.

Cary makes a disgusted noise and struggles to his feet. “Well, this was fun until Harrison started crying, but hey. That’s what he does, right? Thanks, Harrison.”

This brings Harrison back. “I didn’t—”

“Yeah, you did.”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Trace asks. “Let the kid cry if he needs to.”

“That’s all we let Harrison do! I don’t want to dwell.” Cary rubs his eyes. “I’m tired of dwelling. I just wanted to get totally wasted and—”

“You’re there,” Rhys tells him.

“It was just sharing,” I say. “That’s all he did.”

“Yeah, but not—” Cary gestures to Harrison. It throws him off balance. He sways precariously for a second before steadying himself. “Not that. We didn’t need to hear it. I didn’t want to hear it. It’s fucking pathetic…”

“I’m sorry,” Harrison says. “I didn’t mean to—”

“He can fucking dwell if he wants to,” Trace says. “I never see you dwell.”

“Oh, let me guess,” Cary replies. “The next words out of your mouth are going to be something about your dead parents that I killed because I’m a murderer.”

“Yeah, something like that. Exactly like that actually.”

They stare at each other. I watch Trace. He holds Cary’s gaze, unblinking. Cary caves first and he does it in a way I don’t expect, that I don’t think any of us expect. He curls his hand into a fist and presses it against his forehead.

“You think I wanted this,” he says.

“Cary,” Grace starts. “Don’t do this—”

“But you must. You think I wanted it,” he says. “You actually think I wanted to be left with you guys, without them.” He laughs. “You think I wanted that? Really?” He takes a step back. “I didn’t. I loved the idea of—I loved the idea of them.” He lowers his hand. “It shouldn’t have been them. It should have been—”

He stares at us, lost, and I keep waiting for him to finish even though I know he’s never going to finish. It should’ve been me. Cary changes for me in that instant. From the boy who is crazy good at survival stuff to the boy who thinks he should be dead.

He’s finally become someone I understand.

He shakes his head and weaves out of the auditorium. He’s through with us, with everything. I want to follow after him, tell him he’s not alone.

I want to ask him how we can help each other.

Grace catches my eye. She opens her mouth and closes it and then she looks away. She doesn’t look happy anymore. I feel like someone should do something. I guess it should be me. I get to my feet and the world tilts a little.

“I’ll find him.”

“Don’t,” Trace says. “Let him rot.”

Rhys stands. “I’ll go with you.”

I don’t want his company but I guess I’m stuck with it. Rhys is steadier on his feet than I am and when we leave the auditorium, I end up following him. He seems to know where Cary is: the library. He’s slumped over at one of the tables, his head resting in his arms.

“Just leave me alone,” he slurs. “Please.”