37

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

The sky was dark and gray overhead, but as I watched them lower Skylar’s coffin into the ground, a tiny stream of light broke through the clouds. To my left, Bethany stood as immobile as I was.

Maybe we didn’t have a right to be here. Maybe the Haydens didn’t want us here.

Maybe, maybe, maybe—and none of it mattered.

Across the lawn, Elliot didn’t look at Bethany, didn’t look at me. I found myself trying to match Skylar’s many brothers to their descriptions and realized that I’d never hear her talk about them again.

They’d never see her again.

Handprints on the concrete, pictures on the walls—that’s what she was now.

There were words spoken and hymns sung and none of it made her any less dead. I stood there, thinking of those last moments, the expression of pure and unadulterated bliss on her face.

I could have saved her.

I should have.

And nothing Bethany said could change that. Nothing I said or did or didn’t do for as long as I lived would bring her back.

Beside me, my father reached out and put one hand on my shoulder, pulled me closer. On instinct, I stiffened at the physical contact, but after the moment of first contact passed, I leaned into his shoulder and watched them bury her.

I said goodbye.

And then I went home, cut the cast off my arm with a handsaw, and cried.

A week after we buried Skylar, I went back to school and found myself at the very center of the rumor radar. The investigation of Chimera’s facility had been all over the news. Arrests were still being made. And though the Feds had kept my name out of it, everyone knew.

They knew that Skylar had died.

They knew that I was there.

And they knew that Elliot couldn’t stand to look at me. That he wasn’t talking to Bethany. That she’d started eating her food at the “freak table” at lunch.

Suffice it to say, I was as surprised as anyone when Elliot approached me before school one morning and stiffly handed me an envelope bearing my name.

He didn’t say a word. He just stood there and waited. After a moment, I forced myself to open it. Hot-pink letters danced across the page.

She’d dotted the i in my name with a little pink heart.

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, so I just handed the letter to Elliot and let him read.

“She wasn’t psychic,” he said. “She was just a kid.”

She was both, I thought, but I didn’t argue the point out loud. Instead, I thought of Bethany, whose father had been arrested. Bethany, who knew what it was like to carry someone else’s death on your shoulders for the rest of your life.

Bethany, who’d lost almost everything in the past few days.

“Elliot,” I said, surprised at how clear and steady my voice felt. “Quit being a tool.”