“Under here,” Adam says when we can no longer hear the sirens. The five of us duck under the awning of a store that’s been closed down, that once sold candles or bath lotions or something. It provides shelter from the rain but not much else.

I lean against the front window, trying to catch my breath. My face still aches, and I’d give just about anything for dry clothes right now. But worst of all, everything Jasmine and Shawnda said replays in my head.

“We’re all dead,” Zoe whispers, tugging on the strings of her hood. “Dead, dead, dead.”

“We don’t know that,” Trent says. He pulls out a cigarette but then shoves it back in his jacket, probably remembering what happened the last time he got caught smoking.

I take a breath and try to clear my head. “Okay, Chris and Zoe are going to be shot by some girl after we get back to the present. We need to find out more about their deaths, and also…” I pause and look at Trent, my throat dry.

“Find out if we’re really dead too,” he whispers, finishing the sentence for me.

I turn to Chris. “Do you know of any girl who would want to kill you?”

“Nah. Just you.”

I roll my eyes. “There has to be some connection between the four of us. Maybe some previous foster home or someone we all knew.”

For a few minutes, we go through all the group homes and foster families we’ve lived with, and list anyone who might hold a grudge against us. The only overlap is that Trent and I both lived at the Bright Haven group home, but he moved there a few months after I got kicked out, and that doesn’t link Chris or Zoe to us.

“We could go to the places we were shot,” Chris suggests. “Look for evidence.”

Adam shakes his head. “That was thirty years ago. There won’t be anything there now.”

Chris grunts but lets it go. Frustration churns inside me, and I want to slam my fist into the store window. How are we going to find out more about our deaths? I gaze out at the street, watching the egg-shaped cars scroll by. The rain has started to thin out, and I can see the faint outline of the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles towering above us. And then I have an idea.

“We should go to the library,” I say.

“Huh?” Chris asks.

“The library,” I repeat. “They should have records or old news articles or something, right?

“Good idea,” Trent says. “We’re only a few blocks from the Central Library.” I blink at him, surprised he knows that, but he shrugs. “It’s a good place to go when you have nowhere else. I used to hang out there a lot.”