Pauses at the last digit. Feels the courtroom around him retreat from his awareness. The droning legalese of judge and attorneys, the shifting of papers and shuffling of feet, the hum of air-conditioning, all fading back. The courtroom’s brightness around him falls away, too, becoming merely a kind of bright shadow. There is only him and the phone in his palm.

Joey presses the last digit. Takes a deep breath. A last breath. A cleansing breath.

Hits send.

Ready to die. Ready to not exist.

And yet, he is still here. In the courtroom. At the defense table. Nothing happens.

Keeping it tucked in his lap, he looks at the phone and now sees texts to Steve, to Emily, to Zack’s parents. He looks at the number the text came from. Wait. It’s his own number.

Joey is shocked. Confused. But in the next second he understands utterly, completely and absorbs it in a moment.

Zack switched phones on me. He took my phone away.

Joey doesn’t know what will happen next. With Will, with Karloff. They don’t know he has the wrong phone.

But he realizes quickly that if he texts from Zack’s phone to Will and tells them Zack switched phones on him, they’ll know he was in contact with Zack. They’ll know he knows about the phone. They’ll kill him for sure.

He realizes in the next second that Zack, wherever he is with Joey’s phone, is going to receive the actual code from Karloff. What’s he going to do with it? Joey doesn’t know. But one thing he’s pretty sure about—Zack is never going to punch it in.

Joey’s not sure yet—it’s still so confusing—how or why he received this code to dial. If it’s coming from Zack, who got it from Karloff, why would Zack forward it to this phone? Why would he want Joey to enter it?

But for now, Joey is alive. The courtroom around him is focused on his case. They’re probably going to convict him.

Entering the code did nothing.

But Joey can’t help but smile.

Zack wouldn’t let me kill myself.

That crazy redheaded kid apparently cared enough about Joey to save him from himself.

76.

76.

777548.

Zack still doesn’t know what the number signifies or how it was chosen.

But he knows exactly what it is. What it will do.

Not just if he enters it.

He’s afraid that even if he merely clicks on it, the dumb disposable phone might cheerfully, cooperatively send the six digits for him. He still doesn’t know anything about signal range. Maybe he has to be inside the courtroom for the signal to be received. Maybe he doesn’t.

Carefully, so carefully, he navigates away from the text.