When we got back to the gym, a lot of the kids were crammed on top of the bleachers at the windows. They parted as we climbed up and took our place at the sill.
Twining his fingers in the chain-link, Chet looked up at us, his face lit with terror.
I pressed my palm to the window. I would’ve done anything for him not to feel so alone. Next to me Alex wiped her cheeks and said, “Damn it. Damn it.”
Chet’s face suddenly went blank, as if something had washed through his features beneath the skin. His hands dropped to his sides.
Then he shuddered.
A current of emotion passed through the kids around us. Many turned from the window; some leaned closer.
Chet’s eyes blackened, and then the ash blew away. We ducked further beneath the sill, barely peering over.
He turned and began walking a straight line, his head lowered to the ground. Then he turned again, walking past JoJo’s Frisbee. As he continued his pattern, the kids drifted away from the casement windows, one by one, until only me, Patrick, and Alex remained.
Chet’s legs carried him across a front lawn and into an alley between houses. We watched until he disappeared from view.
Late that night I was awakened by a wet slurping on the side of my face. I turned my head into a gust of dog breath. Wrinkling my nose, I sat up as Cassius whined.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll take you out.”
I crept from the gym and down the dark corridor, nodding at the lookouts. Cassius hustled along with me. We veered toward the humanities wing, stepping out into the sheltered picnic area, which I’d designated as his bathroom spot. Since the wings of the building folded around the benches, it was the outside zone most hidden from the surrounding streets.
As Cassius did his business in the flower bed, I leaned against one of the trees, blinking sleepily.
That’s when I sensed movement beyond.
My hands clutched instinctively at my sides, but my baling hooks were back at the supply station. I was defenseless. And yet Cassius wasn’t growling.
I leaned around the trunk, Alex and Patrick coming slowly into view. She was sitting up on one of the picnic tables and he was standing, leaning into her, holding her face.
His voice carried to me. “-not sure exactly when, but Dr. Chatterjee said it was one A.M. Or a little after. He didn’t deliver me, but he was there with my dad.”
It took me a moment to understand that he was talking about when he’d been born.
Alex’s voice came sharp and angry. “So we only have one hour of the last day. It’s not a day at all.”
“Hey,” he said softly. He tried to tilt her chin up so she’d look at him, but she fought it, blinking back tears. “Hey,” he said again.
She shook her head. “There has to be something. There has to be some way to… to…”
“I could stop breathing,” he said, “but that probably wouldn’t help me much either.”
She didn’t laugh. “Forty-eight hours,” she said, still not meeting his eyes. “That’s what we have. That’s all we have.”
Finally she let him turn her face upward. He said, “Then let’s spend it the best we can.”
She nodded. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
They embraced.
I knew I was watching something I wasn’t supposed to see, and yet I couldn’t stop.
“You have to take care of Chance,” he said. “He’s tough, but he’s still just a kid.”
The words felt like a slap.
Alex nodded, rolling her lips over her teeth and biting down, trying to fight off tears. They hugged again, squeezing each other tight.
Cassius finished, and I pulled back quietly from the flower bed and headed inside, filled with more feelings than I could make sense of.
Lying on my cot in the darkness, I realized what the worst part was.
It was that Patrick was right.
I was just a kid.
Sometime later my brother crept between the cots and stood over me. His face looked hard, even angry. “When I start to change, you take me out right away. Understand? I want it to be you.”
“Patrick, I-”
“You don’t hesitate. You do it.”
“You won’t change.” I could hear the desperation in my voice, and I hated myself for it, hated him for being right about what he’d said out there. “You can’t turn into one of them.”
“Chance,” he said. “We gotta deal with reality. Now, promise me.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “I promise.”
Thirty-six hours till Patrick died.
The next two days passed like torture, the hours dragging like claws across my skin.
The food was going stale, the sheets getting dirty, and the lookouts reported regular Host activity beyond the fences. They’d mapped the surrounding streets already, sure, but they kept wandering around as if on patrol. Now and then we’d hear a scream carry to us on the wind, and we’d know they’d discovered another holdout somewhere in the neighborhood. Some poor kid dragged from a cupboard or an attic into the open and carried off in a cage.
Bits of the conversation I’d overheard by the flower beds played endlessly in my head.
You have to take care of Chance.
I could stop breathing, but that probably wouldn’t help me much either.
That’s all we have.
I tried to get some sleep but wound up tossing and turning. I looked at Patrick’s back facing me from his mattress and struggled not to think of the clock ticking down. Alex was crammed next to him in the tiny cot, his arm draped over her. They were determined to spend every final minute together.
Twenty hours till he died.
I don’t know if I slept at all, but I do know that when sunlight streamed through the windows, I didn’t feel the least bit rested. I ate breakfast with Alex and Patrick, all of us chewing our food silently, alone with our thoughts. Only Cassius didn’t know what was going on, slurping his food out of his bowl with relish.
We stayed together for Patrick’s afternoon lookout shift on the bleachers but found even less to say. Alex sat one bench down from Patrick and rested her head in his lap. As he gazed out the window, he stroked her long, long hair. Cassius had scaled the bleachers with me, and I was petting his neck until I noticed the parallel and felt stupid enough to stop.
Nine hours till he died.
I cleared my throat. “They were taking the kids to Lawrenceville,” I said. “Maybe we could go there. We could confront the Hosts, find some solution.”
“Chance,” Patrick said in that parental voice he barely ever used with me. “We won’t make it in time. You know that.”
“And there’s no confronting them,” Alex said. “They don’t exactly show reason.”
I said, “It’s better than staying here and just… giving up.”
“I’m not giving up,” Patrick said. “But the little time I have left I want to spend with Alex. And with you.”
JoJo came up and tugged at my sleeve. “You said you’d get my Frisbee.”
“There are too many Hosts out there right now.”
“But you promised.”
My nerves were so worn that even JoJo was bothering me. “Look, I’ll get it when it’s safe. I’m not gonna risk my life for your dumb Frisbee.”
The moment I saw her reaction, I regretted what I’d said, but she slinked off before I could apologize.
Patrick just looked at me. It was enough.
“Come on, Little Rain,” Alex said.
I wheeled on her. “Stop calling me that.”
She recoiled. I didn’t realize how cutting my tone was until I saw her expression.
Even from his post by the doors, Ben overheard, his gaze tilting up. I wanted to be alone, to hide where no one could see me. I stomped down the benches and headed to the bathroom. After splashing cold water on my face, I stared down my dripping reflection in the mirror.