But I don’t have an answer.

Eight

Grace

The Hope Juvenile Treatment Center looks no different when it appears before us again. It’s the same ugly building we left some three hours ago. A concrete box with a concrete yard. A slate-gray outcropping on a moonlit night, surrounded by darkness and a barbed wire fence encircling the grounds. The lackluster communal garden. The ramshackle shed. A sports field and a gym that we all avoid as much as we can.

It hasn’t changed, but we have.

“God, what a desolate place,” Emerson mutters at my side. Hunter has drifted back to help one of the other boys, and Emerson tries their best to support me alone, but the closer we get to the building, the more they stumble. Exhaustion. Fear. I don’t know. I disentangle myself and bite my lip while trying to stay upright.

“I believe the word you’re looking for is hell,” Maverick snaps.

I wince. Hell, what a place to call home.

And my head pounds. I press a hand against my eye, and the world tilts around me as pain flares through me. I refuse to fall, but it takes everything I have to stay upright. I lean with my hands on my knees and breathe in hard.

Fuck.

“Are you okay?” Emerson asks.

I don’t dignify that with a response. No, I’m not.

At least I don’t have to worry anymore about what it would look like if they give up on us completely. It looks like this. The ten—no, the nine of us. Beat up and terrified. The others have ground to a halt too. Leah sways on her feet. Hunter has ripped off part of his shirt and used it to patch up someone’s arm. He has a smear of blood across his face, but I don’t think it’s his.

I knew we were wrong to leave here, but I didn’t expect the world around us to be on fire. Why wouldn’t they tell us? We have a right to know. We have a right to try to survive.

No one cares about us.

You’d think I would have grown used to that, but I haven’t. Despite the armor of anger I’ve drawn up around myself, there’s still a small part of me that looks at Hope like I looked at all the homes I’ve stayed at. As a chance. An opportunity. A “this time it will be better.” This time I’ll find a way to be the person I was meant to be.

These are the consequences of our actions, Warden Davis said. The bastard. He knew, and he didn’t do anything.

That spark of anger that’s always lurking beneath my skin burns brighter. It’s hot and hungry, all the more so against the chilly night sky, and it helps me straighten despite the pain. It helps me take the next step. And the next. “Come on, let’s keep going.”

“Yes, please.” Surprisingly, Leah is the first to catch up with me, Logan immediately in her wake.