That night I slept like I’d never slept. No dreams, no nightmares, just a twelve-hour block of dense darkness. When I came to on my cot, the gym was lit up with full daylight and the others were busy with their tasks. I couldn’t believe that all that light and noise hadn’t woken me.
Patrick’s and Alex’s cots were empty. Alex’s sheets were strewn and rumpled, but Patrick’s bed was made as tight as a marine’s.
I stretched, inventorying my aches and pains. The good thing about getting up late was that there wouldn’t be a line for the bathroom. I stumbled to the boys’ locker room and peeled off the oatmeal bandage. It had done the trick—the swelling was pretty much gone. Only the faintest outline of the Hatchling’s hand remained. I tossed the sticky strips of fabric into the trash and took a two-minute ice-cold shower. The water pipes still worked fine for now, but we often kept the generator off, saving the power for emergencies. Which meant no hot water.
I dried off, dressed, and headed to the cafeteria, passing a few lookouts in various classroom windows. Others on cleaning duty mopped the floors. It was comforting to see the kids working in shifts, minding a schedule. The Hatchlings might be beserking through Stark Peak right now, but at least we still had our little survival routines here at Creek’s Cause High. Despite the perimeter fence, we kept lookouts posted 24/7. So far the Hosts had made no effort to penetrate the school, but after seeing a few of them map the interiors of houses yesterday, I was nervous that they’d change whatever passed for their minds.
The cafeteria offered slim pickings. I had a brown apple, an energy bar, a scoop of crunchy spaghetti, and a glass of water. While I chewed a mushy bite of apple, Leonora Rose smiled at me sympathetically from the next table.
Even though she was closer to Patrick in age, she and I had always been better friends. One of my first memories was of her at four years old pushing me in a stroller, wearing her mom’s shoes, the high heels clopping up the sidewalk. How eager we’d been to grow up. Now the kids counted every new morning with dread; each day brought them twenty-four hours closer to their eighteenth birthday. In the meantime we did our best to ignore the trickling hourglass and get by.
Leonora said, “We’re running low on food. Ben says we’re gonna have to do a supply run to the Piggly Wiggly soon.”
“What does Chatterjee say?” I asked.
She shrugged. One side of her straw-colored hair had been braided into a neat pigtail, but the other was loose and wild. I wondered if she’d been unable to find another hair tie or if she’d just given up. One of her front teeth was now inexplicably gray.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t ask him.”
The implications of that were troubling.
She picked mold from a piece of bread. “Not that it matters anyway,” she said. “At least to me.”
And I remembered: Her eighteenth birthday was the next one up. A familiar sinking feeling took hold inside me, the sensation of falling and falling.
“When?”
She gave a wan smile. “Tonight. At 10:03.”
I felt my cheeks get hot, emotion rushing into my face. No matter how often we confronted it, it was impossible to get used to.
“It’s okay, Chance,” she said, getting up abruptly to clear her tray. “Really. It’s just how it is now.”
Though I’d lost my appetite, I forced myself to chew the rest of the apple. Then I went back to the gym. Alex was there now, her hair taken up in the back. She was practicing swings with her hockey stick. She didn’t use a puck—that would make too much noise. She wound up and sliced the blade of her stick an inch above the polished floorboards again and again. Her jaw was set in a firm line, her eyes focused—the don’t-bother-me-I’m-practicing face.
Except now she wasn’t practicing for hockey.
Patrick was on the bleachers. I walked over and sat down next to him.
He knocked my knee with his.
I knocked his with mine.
We watched Alex swing and swing.
“I’d hate to make her mad,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t recommend it.”
I smiled.
“Leonora’s up next.” I nodded toward the dry-erase board that Dr. Chatterjee had positioned at the edge of the basketball court. It had all of our birthdays and times of birth listed in order.
“I’d noticed that,” Patrick said.
My eyes found Alex’s birthday there, a couple up from the bottom. Less than two months away. She’d been a New Year’s baby. That had once been something cool about her, something to celebrate. It was as if fate had reserved the start of the New Year for her to make her even more special.
Now it was something to dread.
I glanced over at Patrick and saw him looking at the board also, and I knew he was focused on Alex’s name up there, too. His eyes were shadowed beneath the brim of his cowboy hat, his mouth a firm line. He was someone who liked solving problems, but right now there was nothing that could be solved.
I changed the subject. “You got my notebook?”
“I slid it under your mattress this morning,” he said. “You were out cold. So I drew a flower on your cheek with Magic Marker.”
My hand flew to my face. “Really?”
He tapped my spread hand so my palm smacked into my cheek. “No.”
I punched his arm. It was like punching a steel pipe. I didn’t shake my throbbing knuckles, though, no matter how bad I wanted to.
“Dr. Chatterjee and I hid the Rebel helmet in my backpack and locked it in his classroom,” Patrick said, all business again. “The last thing we need is anyone else finding that thing.”
“I think I can figure out the controls. I’ll try it again tonight after everyone goes to sleep.”
“We’ll see,” Patrick said.
“I’m not asking permission,” I said.
He looked out at me from beneath the Stetson. The brim gave the faintest dip. I took it as a nod.
Down below, Alex had finally set aside her hockey stick and headed for the TV she kept on the lowest bleacher. Ben was in his usual spot on a folding chair over by the double doors. He was watching Alex, too, with this flat, expressionless stare that made me think of what he’d look like with twin tunnels through his head instead of eyes.
Alex noticed him as well. “Did you check the TV when we were gone?” she asked.
“No one checks the TV,” Ben said. “Except you.”
If his grin could talk, it would’ve said, Silly girl.
Early on, Alex had scrounged up the crappy little TV with rabbit ears from the teachers’ lounge and plugged it into a twelve-volt battery with an outlet. Even after all the channels had gone dark, she still checked them religiously.
She turned it on now and flipped the dials. Her usual ritual.
She did it often enough that everyone pretty much ignored it.
The screen buzzed with nothingness.
“It breaks my heart when she does that,” Patrick said quietly. “But then I think it would break my heart if she stopped doing it.”
I hopped down the bleachers to my cot and pulled out the notebook. Leaning back onto the balled-up sweatshirt I used for a pillow, I contemplated where to start. I like to go in order, to write the stuff that I’ve seen firsthand, but sometimes I get information after the fact and circle back and write it in the margins. It’s a pretty messy notebook, but it’s all we have.
As far as I know, it’s the only active historical record left on Earth.
If you think about it, that’s pretty cool. But if you think about it longer, it’s terrifying.
I read to where I left off. Closed my eyes. Put myself back there.
And then I wrote.
I wake up in the perfect darkness of Uncle Jim and Aunt Sue-Anne’s ranch house, and there’s a split second where everything is fine. I’m six years old, and life is good. And then I remember.
My parents are dead.