“We’ll check it once a night to see if there’s any activity,” he says. “But we should keep this part of the school as quiet as possible. I don’t know if they can hear us out there, but I really don’t want to risk it. I want to stay here until we absolutely have to leave.”
Which is just another way of saying more waiting.
On the way back to the auditorium, Rhys touches my arm, stopping me. I jerk away, which surprises him but neither of us says anything. Cary turns at the sound of two less people moving with him. Rhys waves like, just a second. The others trudge back to the auditorium.
“So, what do you think?” Rhys asks.
I think he’s clean. His brown hair isn’t spiked with its own grime. His bangs are sharp against his forehead, some strands longer than others, like he cut his hair himself and he did it in the dark. His face is smooth. The boys have been sharing a razor they found in Coach Hainsworth’s office. Rhys Moreno. He used to hang across the street with the other senior smokers until the first bell. Sometimes surrounded by girls, sometimes not.
“What do I think about what?”
“The plan.”
I don’t tell him there isn’t one as far as I’m concerned. As soon as we leave here, I separate from them. Maybe I’ll even do something sacrificial so they have time to get away and then I can die a hero or whatever but I’ve realized something since I got here. I cared too much about how I was going to go before—Lily’s pills, the ones I couldn’t find—when it doesn’t really matter how I go, just that I do.
“I mean,” he continues. “I don’t know. You barely talk.”
“Maybe I’ve got nothing to say.”
“Not with those eyes.”
The way he looks at me right now—I don’t think he means it like a come-on or anything. His gaze is intent, searching my face so obviously, it makes me uncomfortable.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Everyone else here is riding extremes. You’re distant but you always look like you’re thinking. You keep wandering off alone, which is actually kind of stupid … so I just wanted to know what’s going on.”
“Nothing.”
He hesitates. “Where’s your family, Sloane?”
“Dead like yours?”
I have no idea if Rhys’s family is dead or not until I see how the question cuts him. He winces, but maybe he shouldn’t have asked if he didn’t want me to rip his chest wide open. He brings his hand to it, palm against it, like he’s trying to keep his heart inside. It’s like I took something away from him but I don’t know what. There’s nothing left to take.
“I’ve never said my family was dead,” he says. “What gives you the right?”
He turns and makes his way down the hall before I can answer. I have no choice but to follow him and for some reason, that makes me angry.
“I’ve always been quiet,” I say at his back. “It’s not like you knew me before.”
He stops and turns. “You’re Sloane Price. Your locker is on the diagonal from mine. You and your sister were attached at the hip when she went here, like it was you two and no one else, and I always thought that was weird but I also thought it was kind of sweet. And what you just said to me about my family was really cold.”
“So where are they, then? If they’re not dead?”
He gives me the dirtiest look and stalks off.
I want to ask him if he’s glad we made it but by then he’s already gone.
* * *
Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.
It hasn’t stopped. It drives Cary and Rhys into the halls, or maybe they’re checking the other doors, I don’t know. Harrison has pieces of wet toilet paper jammed in his ears and he took a bunch of Benadryl we found in the nurse’s office, so he’s out. We also found blankets and pillows in there so now our mats look like sorry imitations of beds and they feel like them too. I lay on mine and watch the door. I pick a scab clean off my elbow. A blot of blood appears.
I swear the thudding picks up.
Thudthudthudthud.
I pull the blanket up to my chin and I close my eyes. Rhys and Trace settle in on either side of me. Rhys says prayers under his breath and it’s the sound I fall asleep to.
Sloane.
I open my eyes and it’s minutes later. No, hours. I can’t think around the sharp edge of my father’s voice in my ears.
A shadow floats across the room and I panic—he got in, no he didn’t, he couldn’t have—when I realize it’s Grace and Trace, sneaking out of the auditorium. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force my dad out of my head but once he’s there, he’s there.
I decide to follow them.
I leave the auditorium quietly, listening for their voices as I step into the hall. I circle the first floor twice because the building is confusing in the dark, but I don’t find them. I move on to the second floor, pausing outside of classroom doors, listening.
A beam of light down the hall catches my eye. The AV room. I hide behind a row of lockers and watch Trace pick through Principal LaVallee’s keys while Grace holds the flashlight over his hands.
“Does Cary know you took those?” she asks.
“They’re not his keys.” Pause. “No.”
He finds the right key and opens the door. They hesitate on the threshold. When we were out there stepping into any room, through any doorway, it was like having fear injected right in your heart. It was dangerous. After a long moment, they go in. I move as close to the door as I can and I hear them shuffling around for a while, silent, and then—
“Ready?” Trace.
“They won’t be able to see our faces.”
“They might. We’ll say our names.”
Silence.
“I don’t want to do this.”
“Grace, come on. They knew we were coming to the school.”
“But—”
“And I didn’t see them die and you didn’t see them die, so what if they’re trying to get to us? What if we have to leave or what if—what if we die before they get here? If we die before they get here, they’ll find this. And if we don’t die we can watch it and laugh about it later.”
I peer around the door. They’re sitting on Ms. Yee’s desk, facing a digital camcorder mounted on a tripod in front of them. Grace holds the flashlight under their faces. It makes them look awful. The open LCD screen is glowing, flickering as they move. I sit on the floor and listen. I have no right to this moment but I’m going to take it anyway.
“What am I supposed to say?”
“Whatever’s in your heart.”
“Trace, come on.”
“Do it for me.”
“I don’t like you talking like we’re going to die. You think I’d let anything happen to you? You really think I’d let you die?” It’s quiet for a moment and then the sound of Grace’s muffled crying drifts into the hall and I risk another look. Trace is holding her now but even so, she’s still the one comforting him. “I would never let anything happen to you.”
The worst kind of emptiness fills me. Imagine loving someone that much, but imagine them loving you back. I thought I knew what that was like but I didn’t. I never did. She lets him go and wipes her eyes. Trace moves from the desk to the camcorder and hits the record button. I stop watching but I stay against the wall and listen.
“My name is Trace Casper and this is my sister, Grace. We’re seventeen…”
Seventeen and live in Cortege, have lived here all their lives, and attend Cortege High. They’re twins. Birth date: March eleventh … I fade out until it gets more personal.
“Our parents are Troy and Leanne Casper and if they’re still alive, this is for them.” Trace clears his throat. “Grace, say something before the battery dies…”
“We tried to get to you,” she says, and then Trace chimes in, yes, yes, we tried to get to you, and suddenly they’re both talking over each other. It all comes pouring out.
They talk about how we got to the school and how Trace hates Cary and how the dead are outside the doors and it’s the same thudding over and over and how it makes hours feel like days and if the barricades are breached, we have an escape plan but no one knows where we’re going next but as soon as they do, they’ll put it on the tape so the Caspers know too.
There is this awful moment as they try to describe their state of mind. How do you say that physically, you’re okay, when everything is not. They’re determined to make it clear that they’re scared and sad and lonely and missing their parents while trying to pretend they aren’t suffering for it when it’s so obvious they are. The closing message is all I love yous and just before Trace turns the camcorder off, Grace blurts out, “We’re sorry we left you,” and then she starts to cry again and I think it isn’t enough to survive for the sake of surviving. There has to be more to it than just that. Trace and Grace have each other. This is what they’re here for. Why they’re still here. Surviving should mean something like it means something to them. And if it doesn’t—
If it doesn’t.
“Do you think I killed them?”
It’s dusk. Cary and I walk down the dimly lit hallway together. Soon it will be dark. When we reach the fork, I’ll go to the gym and he’ll head to the library to make sure everything’s the same as it was yesterday and the day before that. The constant thudding is wearing on me, like a permanent headache behind my eyes. Talking about the Caspers feels the same way.
Because, of course, Cary wants to talk about the Caspers.
“The Caspers?” I ask. He nods, slowing his pace. “What does it matter?”
“Rhys is on my side. Harrison will say whatever he thinks whoever he’s talking to wants to hear. I know how Grace and Trace feel. I want to know if you think I killed them.”
“They were swarmed. That’s what killed them.”