After a lookout shift and something resembling dinner, I found JoJo and Rocky on the bleachers, and we played twenty questions.
“Is it bigger than a hippo?” JoJo asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is it bigger than a lizard?” she asked.
Rocky groaned. “If it’s bigger than a hippo, it’s bigger than a lizard.”
“Not if it’s Godzilla,” she said.
“Godzilla is a fictional lizard.”
“Who said we weren’t including fictional animals?”
“Because you just don’t.” Rocky shook his head, his dark, curly bangs swaying. “Right, Chance?”
“Is that one of your questions?” I asked.
“No,” he said at the same time JoJo said, “Yes.”
“No,” I said.
Rocky said, “‘No’ you don’t include fictional animals or ‘No’ you do include them?”
“Is that another of your questions?”
Rocky smacked his forehead in mock despair. JoJo giggled.
“No!” Rocky said just as JoJo said, “Yes!”
“I do include fictional animals,” I said. “And you’re down to your last question.”
“But that’s stupid,” Rocky said. “If fictional animals count, then you could include anything. It could be a flying elephant.”
“Dumbo!” JoJo said.
“That’s correct,” I said. “I was thinking of Dumbo.”
“No way,” Rocky said.
“Yes way. I swear.”
JoJo said to Rocky, “I told you I know what I’m doing. There’s a technique.”
“It’s not technique.” Rocky glared at his younger sister. “It’s the luckiest guess in the history of the known universe.”
“You’re just mad that I’m indrewitive.”
“You are indrewitive, Junebug,” I said, mussing her already mussed hair. My palm came away sticky. “When’s the last time you showered?”
Before she could answer, I heard a throat clear behind me. When I turned, Leonora was standing there. I stood up quickly.
Everyone was watching her.
That’s what happens when you get close to your time.
She plucked at her fingers with her other hand. “Look, Chance. I only have a couple of hours.” A nervous laugh escaped her, a high-pitched twitter that held no humor. “And I … I want it to be you.”
We had the attention of everyone in the gym. Patrick’s cot creaked as he stood up. Ben sidled over from the doors.
“Um, why do you want…? Are you sure you…?” I realized I was stammering, so I closed my mouth.
Ben rested his hand on the butt of the stun gun he’d used many a time at his dad’s slaughterhouse and many a time since then. “I can handle it,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. It’ll be the easiest. The most humane.”
“No,” Leonora said. “I want it to be Chance.” She took a step forward. That one crazy pigtail still stuck out at the side. “You were like a little cousin to me growing up. You know me better than anyone … left.” A tear clung to her bottom eyelid. “So I guess that makes me closest to you.”
I couldn’t talk, so I just nodded. She gave me a businesslike nod in return and walked away.
Dread gathered in my gut, building itself up over the next few hours. I paced around the gym with my head lowered, counting the floorboards. Eve asked me if I wanted to talk, but I just shook my head. As the time drew near, I walked over to Patrick on his cot.
“You know where Leonora is?” I asked.
“She wanted it to happen in the art studio. Alex is with her.”
“Okay.” I nodded several times too many. “Okay.”
Patrick stood up. “Want me to go with you?”
“Yes,” I said quickly.
We walked over to Ben, who was sitting in his chair by the gym doors.
“Can I borrow your stun gun?” I asked.
For once Ben didn’t make a crack. “Of course,” he said, handing it over. He touched my arm as I walked past. “Good luck.”
Patrick and I headed through the dark halls toward the art studio. I was breathing too fast, my chest jerking. My hand was sweating on the stun gun.
Patrick glanced over at me. “You got this?”
“What if I can’t do it?” I said.
“You can,” Patrick said.
“I don’t want to mess this up for her,” I said. “I don’t want her to feel not taken care of in her last minutes.”
“She won’t,” Patrick said. “I promise you that.”
We turned the corner into the art room. Leonora was sitting in a chair, and Alex was behind her with a brush, working out the tangles in her hair.
Leonora managed to produce a smile. “Hi, guys. Thanks for coming.”
Like it was a birthday party.
I guess in one sense it was.
My eyes jerked to the clock, which showed 9:59. Four more minutes.
A sloppily made cupcake impaled by a too-big pillar candle sat on the floor at Leonora’s feet. I’d heard that Eve had scraped together some ingredients for it and given it to her at dinner. The cupcake had only a single bite missing. Couldn’t blame her for not having much of an appetite just now.
Alex popped out the hair tie and brushed through the pigtail. Leonora’s hair looked really pretty now, falling about her shoulders. Alex had done a great job. It must have taken forever.
“You look beautiful,” Alex told her.
Leonora crossed to the mirror over the paint sink, and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. “I can’t remember the last time I looked this normal.”
“Not just normal,” Alex said. “Beautiful.”
“But beautiful is normal for you,” Patrick said.
Even here, now, under these circumstances, Leonora blushed a bit. She dabbed at her eyes, took a deep breath, held it. Then she said, “I think I want to lie down.”
Her legs got weak, so Alex and I helped her onto a canvas tarp that Ms. Dumone used to use as a drop cloth beneath her easel. The color had left Leonora’s face except for circles of red on her cheeks. She looked much younger than her seventeen years and 364 days.
“Let’s wait and make sure, yeah?” she said. “In case I have some miracle immunity like Patrick.”
We all knew that wouldn’t be the case.
“Of course,” I said.
The stun gun was wobbling in my grip. Leonora reached out and placed a cool hand on my wrist. “Okay, Chance. Maybe get it in position?” She tapped her left temple. “Let’s do it here.” Another nervous laugh, like an escaping bird. “Don’t want to mess up my good side.”
I lifted the stun gun, but now it was shaking even worse, my whole arm trembling. I could feel a lump rising in my throat, and I thought, Don’t you dare cry. Don’t you dare make this about you.
“C’mon now, Chance,” she said. “It’s almost time.”
I stared at the smooth, pale skin of her temple.
—four-year-old Leonora shoving me in the stroller up the uneven sidewalk—
Sweat stung my eyes.
—and I’m giggling as I bounce over the tree-root bumps in the pavement—
Behind me the second hand ticked on the art room’s wall.
—I hear her clip-clopping behind me in her mom’s high heels—
Leonora’s shiny hair pooled around her head. Blinking through tears, she looked up at me. “It’s okay, Chance. Really it is.”
—and she’s singing to me: “‘He went to bed and bumped his head and he couldn’t get up in the morning.’”
I felt like I was stuck inside my own body, peering out through a concrete mask. I couldn’t stop my arm from shaking, but I couldn’t move the stun gun either. I thought I might throw up or run out of the room or start crying. It was an awful, awesome responsibility. And I wasn’t up to it.
“I have a suggestion,” Patrick said, crouching next to me and sliding the gun from my grip. “Why don’t I do this part and Chance can hold your hand. I mean, that’s the part that matters, right?”
Leonora nodded, her head rustling on the tarp.
The relief was so intense that my vision spotted for a second. I blinked it clear and focused on Leonora.
Tears slid sideways off her face. She reached for me with her hand, and I took it.
Patrick moved himself to the side, holding the stun gun to Leonora’s temple. Alex rested a hand on her leg. They kept their bodies cleared out of the way so it felt like it was just me and Leonora. I fought off my shame at needing my big brother to cover for me and concentrated on her. I petted the back of her hand.
The clock ticked and ticked, practically echoing off the walls and the tile floor. It sounded like a bomb counting down.
“I’m glad I got to know you,” I told her.
She squeezed my hand hard enough to crush my fingers, and I let her.
Then she shuddered. Darkness crept across her eyes until they looked like giant pupils—like the eyes of Hatchlings. Then came a quiet crackling sound, like termites chewing. Her eyeballs turned to dried bits of ash and fell away, leaving two tunnels through her head.
I looked away.
Patrick’s arm firmed, and then there came a hiss of compressed air and the wet smack of the steel rod firing.
Patrick rolled her gently in the tarp. Still I kept turned away.
He stood up, and Alex did, too. I found my feet but kept my gaze lowered to the floor. Inside me, emotion surged like hot lava—grief and guilt and bone-deep horror.
“Chance,” Alex said. “It’s okay.”
Patrick stepped in front of me. I still didn’t look up, but I saw his shadow. Then he held out his arms a little. The hot lava boiled, ready to explode right out of my chest.
I stepped forward, hugged my brother tight, and wept like a damn baby.