“Diseases don’t just go away.” Emerson’s voice is so soft, I doubt Grace hears. I doubt anyone hears, except for maybe Leah and me. “You can’t promise we’ll survive.”

“We can only try,” Leah whispers.

And even when you think you’ll make it through, sometimes you don’t.

* * *

I dream about the fire, that night. We’d stayed in the warehouse often enough that we both knew how to get around without being seen. I’d never been the best at stealth or any sort of coordination, but here I only had to follow Leah.

She carried the gasoline.

I carried the matches.

We snuck inside through the same busted door we always used, past the aisles full of mostly empty storage racks. This building had fallen into disuse years ago. The owner obviously didn’t care for it. But with an open door and a roof that protected against rain and walls to hide from prying eyes, there was always someone who could make good use of the place.

Leah first heard of the warehouse through gossip on the streets of Hot Springs. A girl who was passing through told her about the location. She said it was a safe house when she stayed there a year or two ago.

It wasn’t a safe house when we were there. Just another location you had to pay to enter. But it was winter, and we had nowhere else to go, so we did. We paid with stolen food and stolen goods, with kisses and with touches, until the touches became something else and I couldn’t say anything.

Leah spread the gasoline across the floor and the racks. The smell of it cloyed at my nose and choked me. I stuffed part of my sleeve into my mouth to keep from coughing and betraying our presence. Some nights I choke on the sleeve and wake with tears in my eyes.

Other nights, I simply skip ahead to the next image seared into my mind.

Leah emptied the jerrican and quietly placed it in a corner. In my dream, it’s always the same thing. I want to scream at her and shout at her not to do that, because it won’t burn, and it can be traced back to us. But I never try.

Instead I feel the sensation of the matches between my fingers. It was one of those small matchboxes, crumbled and used. It held exactly three matches, and I fumbled the first when I took it out, letting it slip between my fingers.

Leah growled, low in her throat, and I winced.

“Are you sure we should do this?”

Her signs were never quite as supple and smooth as mine. I once told her she signed with an accent, and she’d laughed at that. She told me she couldn’t have an accent, because we were the ones who invented the language.

“We have to. For everyone who comes here and thinks it’s a safe place.”

I sucked my cheeks in. “Maybe it won’t be so bad for others.”