This is Not a Test

I open my eyes. Trace is next to show signs of life. His eyes flicker back and forth beneath his eyelids and he moans, curling his fingers into fists. His whole body tenses until he shouts himself awake, bolting upright before collapsing back on his mat, sweaty and shaking. Grace is next to him in a heartbeat. He grabs her hand, eyes still shut, chest heaving. But he doesn’t—can’t—speak.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “I’m here.”

The way she says it, the way she’s beside him—I want to be between them. I want to be in the direct path of their togetherness so I can steal some of the feeling for myself. Grace’s eyes drift from Trace to me and I look away, self-conscious. Grace is beautiful. Dirty and covered in blood, she is so beautiful. Prettier than me. But that shouldn’t matter, I guess.

Harrison is last awake. He sits up and rubs his eyes, digging his fists into them. He does this for so long I wonder if he might need someone to tell him to stop until I realize he’s trying to cover up the fact he’s crying. Wasted effort. When he finally lowers his hands and notices the two empty gym mats, he freaks.

“Where are they?” He twists around. “Where did they—”

The kitchen door swings open. Cary and Rhys march into the room, each carrying trays loaded with food. I sit up and watch as they set them in front of our mats and I see bagels and apples and bananas and rice cakes and globs of peanut butter and jam packets on plates surrounded by plastic cutlery. Juice and water. I’m hungry. I crawl over to the tray and Grace and Harrison follow suit. The bananas are browning so I reach for an apple instead.

“Eat slowly or you might make yourself sick,” Rhys says.

Cary takes a bagel, tears a piece off and dips it in jam. He pops it in his mouth, closes his eyes and relishes that first bite.

“We’re set up for a while, food-wise,” he says, swallowing.

“How long is a while?” I ask.

“I’m sure help will come before we eat it all.”

I stare at my apple, pressing my fingers against it just to make sure it’s real. It’s solid, cold. I sink my teeth into its waxy skin and it’s sweet enough to make my eyelids flutter. Next to me, Rhys drinks an entire bottle of orange juice in one go, crunching the plastic in his fist when he’s finished.

“Water’s still going,” he says. “So that’s good.”

No one else seems surprised about the water except Harrison, so I guess they all knew about this incredible thing but none of them thought to tell me. And I think I’d be mostly okay with that if I was in anyone’s company but Harrison’s.

“But the power’s off,” Harrison says.

“Water tank on top of the school,” Cary says. “I think we should have enough until this whole thing blows over, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t conserve—like, no obsessive-compulsive hand-washing, that kind of thing…”

Harrison’s eyes bug. “You think it’ll blow over?”

Grace reaches for an apple and holds it out to Trace.

“You should eat,” she says.

“You really think it will blow over?”

“I’m not hungry,” Trace mutters.

“Do you think it will blow over?” Harrison demands, but we’re all watching Trace and Grace now and they know we’re watching them and that makes it worse.

“Please.”

“No.”

“For me.”

“I said no.”

“Trace, you need to—”

“I said I’m not fucking hungry!”

I twitch. Trace is so close, he might as well be yelling at me and I hate it when people yell at me. I hate the silence after. This silence, after. I raise the apple to my lips to distract myself from it, but its sickly sweet smell suddenly turns my stomach. I set it down.

“Cary,” Harrison says. “Do you think it’ll—”

“Yes, Harrison.”

It’s quiet until Rhys clears his throat.

“Doors are secure. What else do we need to do today?”

“Well.” Cary. “I was thinking—”

“Wait.” Trace.

“What?”

“If Rhys asked us what we need to do today, then why are you answering?”

Cary stares at Trace.

“Forget it. Never mind.”

Harrison’s eyes dart between them. “I want to know what Cary was going to say.”

“I do too,” Rhys says.

“I don’t think Trace wants to hear it.”

“No, I just wanted to know why you get to be our voice. You just jumped right in there and spoke for all of us. So what are you, like—leader, now?”

“Holy shit.” Cary raises his hands. “Nobody said anything about leading—”

“I mean, I’m not going to stand in your way or anything, since we know what happens to people who you seem to think are disposable—”

“Christ, Trace,” Rhys says.

“Oh, sorry, Moreno. I forgot you were president of the Cary Chen Fan Club since he got most of us here and everything.”

The whole time Trace is talking, my eyes are on Cary. I don’t have to look at Trace to know the vein in his forehead is pulsing, that he’s talking through his teeth. Cary’s face is deceptively calm but his eyes are all sadness. Maybe guilt.

“Say what you want to say, Trace,” he says.

“Okay, fine. There was no way in hell that alley went from empty to swarmed in ten seconds. You said it was clear—”

“They move fast—it was clear—”

“You said it was clear and you knew it wasn’t and you let them walk right into it—”

“It was clear!”

I flinch again. Cary gets to his feet and Trace does the same. I have this vision of Trace killing Cary, straddling him on the auditorium floor, bashing his head against it until Cary’s brains are everywhere. Cary sees it too. He walks away like that’s the end of it, but then he doubles back, red-faced, and points at Trace. His fingers are in the shape of a gun.

“I would have never, never—”

“But you did. You know you did—”

“Trace, what could Cary have possibly gained by doing that?” Rhys asks.

Trace turns on him. “I know what I saw—”

“Did anyone else see it? Hey, Sloane, did you see it? Did you see Cary tell the Caspers to walk into a swarmed alley? What did you see?” I shake my head, trying to keep myself from being pulled into this but he won’t stop. “Come on, tell us what you saw, Sloane—” The more he says it the more I feel myself start to cave—I’ll tell Rhys what I saw, no, I’ll say what Trace wants to hear—when two things happen: Grace screams, “Stop!” At the same time a loud bang sounds against the doors, startling us all, sending us scrambling back.

We stare at the doors for the longest time after that but nothing else happens.

Harrison whispers, “Oh no,” over and over even though nothing else happens.

“Look,” Cary finally says, and he sounds tired, like it’s the end of a long day and not the start of new one. “We should check the barricades. Maybe add more to them and make sure nothing’s moved. That’s all I was going to say before.”

“I am not helping you,” Trace says.

He storms across the room, his footsteps loud against the floor, somehow louder than everything that’s going on outside. He steps into the hall like he has somewhere to go but there’s nowhere to go.

I think of reality TV shows.

Contestants on an island, whatever. This feels like it could be bad reality television. I imagine an audience, comfortable at home, some other world watching this right now, judging me for everything I’ve done and will do. This is television. We’re actors pretending to be people and when this is all over, one of us will be a million dollars richer. I just forgot.

I look around and try to spot the hidden cameras.

Nothing.

We’ve split up to check the barricades. Cary takes the front doors, Rhys takes the back. Harrison is looking after the exit in the library and Grace volunteers for the gym. That leaves me with the auditorium (“Just check for weaknesses,” Rhys told me), staring at all the tables and desks. I don’t touch them. The doors will stay shut or they won’t.

I’m not alone long. Trace comes back.

“What did you see?” he asks.

He heads straight for the stage, for the tray of leftover food. He picks through it before settling on what Grace first offered him—an apple. He tears into it and I watch the ecstasy of that first bite on his face, taste it with my lips as his mouth makes its way around the fruit.

When he’s finished, he sets the core back on the tray.

“What did you see?” he asks again. I press my lips together. “What, you’re not gonna speak to me?”

“It doesn’t matter what I saw.”

“It does to me.”

Trace is Grace’s twin, but there’s nothing of his sister in him, not really. She’s curvy and soft—kind of vintage pretty—and he’s solid in a way that comes from playing one sport too many. His brown eyes are hard, but they can be warm and teasing, like that time I slept over. They’re not like that now. He looks away from me.

“Think they’re dead?”

“I don’t know.”

I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about Mr. and Mrs. Casper disappearing into a horde of infected. Even as they were being pulled away from us, they were reaching for their children and Trace and Grace reached back because they didn’t want to be left. And then they were gone. It’s wrong. The Caspers are the only real family I’ve ever known and they were torn apart through no choice of their own. They wanted to be together.

I think that’s enough reason for them to still be together.

It’s stupid, how it works out sometimes.