So, Sam must have joined that frat. You think you know a guy. How funny. Is that funny? I’m not sure. I know everyone went on without me over the past year. Kept running, kepttrying new things, kept going. The team took State without me. They didn’t need me after all.
I pull the Howell sweatshirt on over my head and tuck my hands up inside the sleeves, which are too long.
This is stealing, but is it? It’s a survival thing. It’s like if you’re on a polar expedition and everyone else dies, it’s okay to take their food and clothes and supplies and whatever. Definitely don’t eat their bodies, I mean, but you can for sure take their stuff.
I walk to the window and look out at all the glittering lights of my empty town. I canseethe places I can’t go, including the other side of Route 13. I can just about pinpoint where my car stopped when I tried to drive out of town that first night after everyone disappeared.
I hear Yolo moving around in his backpack. Something in the air in the room seems to shift.
I peel my eyes away from the window. Yolo starts yowling. “What is it, buddy?”
He’s going crazy in the backpack, squirming in the direction of the door.
Down the hall, the elevator dings.
81.
once
“May,” my mom would say, laughing. “You could never be named May.”
It’s pretty enough, she would say. But you are July. You are fireworks and summer thunderstorms. A scatter of stars in the sky. The smoke from a bonfire.
Mayis the word you use when you’re asking permission, she said. You have never waited to ask permission.
82.
now
I dart down the hallway, backpack bouncing, Yolo yowling. I take the turn to the elevator lobby too fast and almost fall, but catch myself before I do. I skid to a stop in front of the elevator.
The display shows that it’s going down.
Of course. Nowhere to go but.
I dart a glance in the direction of the stairwell. Would that be faster?
I don’t know what to do. Yolo writhes on my back, I wasthis closeto seeing them—
I sprint for the stairs.
I’m gonna get you.
83.
once
Before everything, there was a day when the three of us ran together. When I kept up without even having to try.
It was raining, that misty, heavy, relentless summer rain that I loved in spite of myself, that felt like it was turning the world green again. You could feel it in your skin. We were beyond drenched, so wet that water ran off our elbows in streams. Our shoes were heavy, our legs slick.
Running that day, we were perfectly in sync.
Syd.
Ella.
Me.
