Contents ( 46)
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Epilogue
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
I hate you.
Fuck.
I’ll miss you.
Twenty-seven
Logan
Today is the first day Isabella leaves the infirmary. She sits on a chair, and Casey and Josie carry her into the garden. She’s growing stronger. She can speak a few words. She can’t manage more than a few steps on her own. But she’s sitting up, wrapped in blankets, and everyone shows up to watch her breathe in fresh air again for the first time since she fell ill. We keep our distance. I lean out of a window. Some of us peek out of doors. Khalil and Riley stick to the garden shed to give Isabella her distance. Everyone wants to be present.
The sight of it is magical. One girl, on a chair, in a garden. We stare at her like someone uncovered a treasure chest or a magic sword. Isabella is paler than she’s ever been, and she’s fragile. She’s lost her hearing, and no one is quite sure if it’s permanent. She wasted away during her illness, and Casey told us it would take a long time for her to recover.
Leah is wasting away too. I want to see her sitting here in the chilly winter air. I want to see her up close. See her breath form clouds. Casey says she wakes up regularly now, though she’s fragile, and she’s struggling with her memory and her speech. She doesn’t even have to speak at all. We’ve always found ways to communicate without words before. I just want her here. Or be with her.
But Isabella’s presence means there’s hope for her and Xavier.
No one has died since Saoirse. It’s been four weeks since Josie and Saoirse first came here, and no one else has fallen ill.
Despite the cold, fresh, green plants are popping up amid the straw-covered vegetable beds. The feathery, bright leaves of tiny carrots. Fluffy clouds of kale. It’s not much. It’ll be months before we’ll be able to feed ourselves. It’s barely enough now for a scarce meal, but it lives. My stomach growls at the sight of it.
I turn away from the window and grab my backpack to meet Grace outside the gates. At first, she and Sofia did the hunting and scavenging, but at the turn of the year, Mackenzi suggested we change the work schedule. Unexpectedly, Isaiah was the first person to back her up. With no internet or working phones, he asked for Mackenzi’s job of “fixing and cleaning things,” while he kept building his collection of files and thoughts. Mackenzi joined Sofia hunting. It’s the only attention anyone’s paid to New Year’s. Food is our main priority right now. Keeping the plague out matters only if we don’t succumb to hunger.
Both Riley and I asked to help Grace with her scavenger runs to Sam’s Throne, and so we’re alternating. Today, it’s on me. I need it.
I’m happy for Isabella, but it’s hard to see her sit up and smile. It’s far easier to follow Grace along the now-familiar path through the woods, where the trees look stark and cold. It’s easier to walk the mountain path with a comfortable silence between us and the quiet where I know myself.