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Back At the End of Everything Save as PDF
Contents ( 46)
  3. Contents
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  33. Twenty-eight
  34. Twenty-nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-one
  37. Thirty-two
  38. Thirty-three
  39. Thirty-four
  40. Epilogue
  41. Author’s Note
  42. Acknowledgments
  43. About the Author

With that, Josie drops to her knees, hides her face in her hands, and she sobs.

Hope for Better Futures

A Timeline

Day 33: Every time someone coughs, we all jump. Not literally, but it sometimes feels that way. It’s been two days since Saoirse died. We’re all keeping count.

Day 37: Khalil cut himself with a garden saw today. No one knows quite how it happened, but he was trimming the trees, and he must have slipped. It’s a bad wound, but it’s not life-threatening. Casey tried to patch him up as best as he could, but we don’t have a lot of medical equipment here, so it didn’t look very neat. Khalil jokes he’s going to have a cool scar along his arm, but until it heals, it’s going to keep hurting.

Casey keeps us all together with the handful of Band-Aids and painkillers he has left. I don’t know how he does it. He shouldn’t be responsible for us. He’s not a doctor. He’s sixteen. But we trust him.

Day 46: We’re hungry. Logan brings me the inventory lists to keep with all these files. I know we have beans left for days. And small portions of rice. We have whatever the hunters find us, including raccoon and possum. Oyster mushrooms we think are safe. We can eat three meager meals, but never enough.

I worry that we’ll become careless and make mistakes because we’re all tired and hungry, and I worry it will only get worse. We try to take care of ourselves, but it’s hard to think straight. It’s harder every day. Without any perspective, what are we holding on for?

Burial Rites for Saoirse Sullivan

Hey.

Emerson offered to help, but I need to do this on my own. I need to say goodbye to you by myself. We’ve spent all that time alone together, and I want to tell you—

I hate you. I’m so angry at you. I nearly died for you, I stole for you, I hurt for you, and now you leave me? You promised to stick with me, and I want to hold you to that promise, but I can’t do that now. I don’t know how to go on without you, because you took a piece of my heart, and my chest feels emptier.

I don’t know how to keep surviving when I keep losing, and you’re not here to tell me.

So I hate you. I hate the freckles on your nose. The sparkle in your eyes. All the trouble that found you and all the trouble you found.

I hate how you were the only one to make me feel like I mattered. Like I could be something and make something from my life. I hate that you promised me the world and then left me. I hate that I can’t hold your hand anymore or braid your hair or tell you ridiculous stories. I hate that you’ll never get to show me your grandparents’ farm or the treasures you hid there. I hate that I’ll never be able to bring you home.