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“The way you look at things is so uncomplicated. ”
“Oh, I’m so sorry I’ve pegged you all wrong. ” He raises a hand. “I take it back. You’re not thrilled we could wake up one day and be totally surrounded. ”
“I’m not thrilled. I’m not anything. ”
Rhys drops the cigarette on the floor and grinds it out.
“Wasn’t your dad though, was it. ”
“No. ”
“You know, if I thought it was mine, like even for a second—even if I knew, rationally, it couldn’t be him—” He stops and shrugs. “Fuck it. Never mind. ”
He takes out the pack of cigarettes again, but this time he holds it out. I shake my head. He shrugs but he doesn’t look away, just keeps his eyes on me until I’m so uncomfortable I feel I have to be the first of us to leave to win this moment between us, so I do.
* * *
Baxter sits in the chair at the head of the table and starts nodding off and then Trace and Rhys help him to his own mat so he can sleep for a bit. We move quietly around him. We don’t even talk. He’s already leveled our dynamic and Harrison is the only one who seems happy about it. He should be devastated about this new unknown way into the school but instead, he’s happy. It’s easy to understand why because Harrison is really simple. This is what Harrison thinks: Baxter will remember soon and then he’ll recover and he’ll take care of us.
I watch Baxter sleep. He moans and jerks awake.
“The radio,” he says groggily.
“You’ve heard it?” Trace asks.
“Once. Has it changed? I doubt it has…”
Trace crosses the room and switches the radio on. It’s static for a few minutes and then that woman’s voice comes through, loud and clear.
“—Not a test—”
Baxter holds up a hand and closes his eyes. Trace turns the radio off.
Around dinner, we rouse Baxter again. He sits at the head of the table—Cary’s spot—and watches as Harrison and Grace bring in two trays of food.
“So you banded together. Got here all by yourselves,” Baxter says as we settle around him. I hate the way it feels. This is our place but he’s at the head of our table. In the best chair—the one we snagged from LaVallee’s office. “You survived. ”
“Not all of us,” Trace says. “Our parents. We lost them. ”
“I’m so sorry to hear that. How?”
“Excuse me?”
“How did they die?”
Cary is reaching for a bag of chips when Mr. Baxter asks this. His hand freezes over it, totally suspended for the briefest second, and then he grabs it and rips it open. This does not escape Baxter’s notice.
“It was—” Trace starts, and I can tell he’s ready to lay into Cary something fierce, which is the worst thing he could do. I brace myself but he never finishes and when I look, Grace’s hand is on his arm. She’s silenced him.
“We were overwhelmed,” she says. “That’s all. ”
“Yes. That happens. ” Baxter reaches for some rice cakes and gazes at them, like he can’t believe they’re real. “Did you try to get to the community center?”
“Yeah,” Harrison says. “We almost didn’t make it. ”
“We thought it would be safe,” Trace says. “I guess everyone did. It was the first place we headed, right? First one gone. If we had known, we wouldn’t have even tried. ”
“We made the same mistake,” Baxter says.
“We?” I ask.
He closes his eyes and then he opens them.
“You know, we could stay here for so long if we wanted to. Even if the water tank goes, there’s bottled. We could stay here as long as it takes for help to come. That’s what we could do. What we should do. Until … help comes. ”
“Or the infected figure out the way you got in,” Cary says.
“They won’t. ”
“Then you remember where?”
Baxter shakes his head and then he says, “I just know that where we are and what we have is better than what’s out there. We should hold on to it as long as possible. ”
Everyone murmurs in agreement, but I can’t. My appetite is gone. I can’t shake the feeling something is very wrong.
I get to my feet. “I’m just going to go to the bathroom…”
“You know what?” Grace stands. “Me too. ”
In the bathroom, she hovers while I splash water on my face and my neck. I try to get her to go back to the auditorium but she won’t. She asks if I’m okay.
“I’m fine. Headache. Short-circuiting. I don’t know. ”
She doesn’t say anything, which is awkward. It looks like she wants to. I press my head against the mirrors. Cold. I like that.
“Can I get you anything?”
“No. I just don’t want to go back out there yet. Baxter’s freaking me out. ”
“When Cary and Rhys walked him in, Trace thought it was our dad. ”
“Did you?”
“No. I don’t like this, though, Sloane. ” At first, I think she’s talking about Baxter being here, but she’s not. “What if they get in the school? I mean, what if—what if it’s my dad or my mom the next time? What if they come in?”
“Grace, the odds of that happening—”
“Must be as good as the odds of Baxter getting in here after all this time, right?” There’s nothing I can say to that. Tears fill her eyes. “God, when will this stop feeling so bad?”
“I don’t think it does. ” I stare at my reflection. “I think it’s just going to be like this. ”
She rips a swath of paper towels from the dispenser and wipes at her eyes.
“I just want to be less of a mess. I sneak in here, like, ten times a day to cry. ” She laughs weakly. “I wish I was like you. Strong. ”
I look away from my reflection. “What?”
“You just handle this. Every time I look at you, you’re just taking it. And then you went outside like it was nothing. And everyone tiptoes around me. No one else made me think about laying off Cary the way you did … no one else made me feel bad for him. It’s like you see things how they need to be and you’re not afraid to call it. ”
“You’re giving me way too much credit. ”
“I want to be more like that. ”
“You have more,” I say. Her forehead crinkles. I can’t believe she thinks I’m strong, that this is strength. “I always wanted to be like you. I still do. ”
“I thought you hated me,” she says.
“What?”
“Sophomore year. ” She tosses the crumpled paper towels into the garbage. “You slept over. I thought it was great and then you stopped talking to me. I called and your sister said you didn’t want to speak to me anymore. I could never figure out what I did. ”
The room does a slow rotation. I want to reach out for something, steady myself, but I’m frozen.
“I didn’t know she did that. ”
“How could you not?”
“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t know Lily did that, Grace. ”
Grace studies me. “Where is she now, anyway?”
“She ran away. Six months ago,” I say. When Grace’s expression morphs into something pitying, I shrug and look away. “I’m sure she’s fine. ”
“I’m so sorry, Sloane. I can’t even imagine being here without Trace,” she says. “And you two were as close we were…”
“Right. Were. ” I pull at a strand of my hair. I want to rip it out. I want to climb onto the roof and throw myself off it. I want to bash my head against the mirror until it breaks. “That’s past tense. ”
She seems awed, like I’m more than what I am, like I’m not imagining a thousand different ways I could end it all right now and trying to remember why I can’t.
“See? You just accept. ”
And then it’s just me and my former English teacher.
The dinner trays
are cleared from the table, the garbage is thrown away. The others decide to search for how Baxter got in. Cary’s going to give them the rundown on everything we’ve managed to piece together about what happened before Baxter got in and the possibility that he’s lying and then we’ll all be suspicious. I stayed behind because I feel sick and tired and Cary said it’s good if one of us stays because it will prevent Baxter from getting suspicious of our suspicion of him. Rhys said it might make him more suspicious and then suspicious stopped seeming like a real word. I can’t tell if Cary is enjoying this or not, but I feel like he might be. I know he’s worried about how Baxter got in but it’s like the rest of it, the paranoia, is just something to do so he can feel like he’s doing something.
“Do you think you could get me some water?” Baxter is still sitting at the table and I’m on my mat and I don’t know why he can’t do that for himself but I get him a bottle of water and bring it to him. He sets it on the table and then he grabs me and his fingers are as rough against my wrist as they were against my face. I swallow.
“You’re hurt,” he says. “The others aren’t. Did they do this to you?”
“They?” My stomach turns when I realize what he’s suggesting. “No. ”
He holds my gaze and then he lets my wrist go. I exhale and resist the urge to rub it. I walk back to my mat and sit down on it instead.
“It’s good, then, that you’ve found people you can trust. ”
“I guess,” I say.
“That’s a rare thing at a time like this. ”
“Is it?”
“I think so,” he says, and then he starts to ramble. “Panic reduces people to ruin. Cortege is gone and so are most of its residents. And the people who are left … won’t be … they won’t be good. That’s not how you survive, by being good … but—you all must be good and yet you made it this far. ” I want to ask him about the man outside, if he was good. “But you must be the exception. ”