And even if only one of them can escape through the air ducts, isn’t that better than none of them?

“Grace!” Miranda whispers, but the other girl doesn’t even twitch. “Grace!”

Cole nudges Grace with his foot, and that gets through.

With dull eyes, she looks up at Miranda. “What?”

“I’m not tall enough to see inside the vent. Can you trade places with me and look?”

“I guess.”

After Miranda gets down, she helps Grace take her place. Under her hands, Grace’s body feels stringy, just skin and bones and tendons.

Grace braces her hands flat inside the vent and then hops. She shakes her head. “It’s too dark in there. I can’t see.”

There’re flashlights on phones, but Grace is going to need to brace both hands to jump. Even if she sets the phone down inside, it probably won’t light all the way to the end of the duct.

Miranda gets an idea. “Put your phone in flashlight mode and then try using your headband to hold it on your forehead. You know, like a miner’s lamp.”

“Okay.” Grace digs in her jeans pocket for her phone. Is there the tiniest spark of life in her eyes?

Grace presses the phone against her forehead with one hand and, with the other, pulls the headband over it. It works. For the first time, she smiles. Then she braces her hands flat inside the duct and jumps. But when she tries to pull herself up and in, there’s a metallic bang.

Worse than that, the space is clearly too small. Grace’s head and one shoulder fit inside the vent, but the other shoulder gets stuck outside, leaving her at a slant. Her feet kick in midair. Miranda grabs one ankle and guides her foot back onto the chair.

“Even if you could fit in there, they would definitely hear you moving around,” Amina says. “Then they would just shoot the ceiling.”

The light has left Grace’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter. At the end, there’s just a big fan.” She climbs down off the desk.

“Hey, what’s that?” Javier touches his own shoulder while looking at Grace’s.

They all follow his gaze. Getting stuck in the vent pushed Grace’s blouse down over her right shoulder. A Band-Aid half dangles from her skin, exposing a round, flat reddish lump just under her collarbone. The lump is topped with a half-healed incision. It looks like someone has inserted something the size of a large button just under her pale skin. Miranda’s already touchy stomach does another flip. It doesn’t just look like that. It is that.

Flushing, Grace pulls her blouse back up. “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing.” Javier raises one eyebrow.

“It’s a chemo port,” Cole says with authority.

“Oh my God,” Miranda whispers, “Grace, do you have cancer?”