It’s so quiet that I feel like my heartbeats are so loud, like I’m anticipating something.

Orion ends the silence when he whispers, “I have a question.”

“You don’t have to whisper.”

“I didn’t know if you were sleeping.”

“You’ll know. I’m the loudest snorer ever.”

“You can’t be the loudest snorer ever and have a roommate in a studio.”

“My snoring is white noise to Scarlett at this point.” I turn over so I can see him, but he keeps staring at the ceiling. “Please don’t smother me in my sleep.”

“Only because you have something I want,” Orion says, glancing at me before turning away again. “That’s what I wanted to ask about, actually. Does Scarlett know about all the heart stuff?”

“Not yet. The End Day was enough to chew on for starters. As a fellow registered organ donor, she’s going to be supportive. My heart not being in my corpse isn’t the thing that’s going to make her feel like her life is incomplete.”

I groan as a horrible image comes to mind.

“What’s wrong?” Orion asks.

“Thinking about all this organ stuff . . . I just pictured Scarlett dying in a plane crash and knowing her organs can’t be donated like she wanted.”

I can’t shake it out of my head. The screams, the chaos, the fire, the smoke.

Orion sits up, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about that. The plane doesn’t take off for another few minutes, so unless Death-Cast is about to call all those passengers, Scarlett is going to be okay.”

Scarlett Prince

12:59 a.m. (Mountain Standard Time)

Death-Cast has not called Scarlett Prince to tell her whether she is going to die today, but as she’s entering this last possible hour for them to do so, Scarlett is white-knuckling her phone, unsure if she wants to share an End Day with her brother or face life without him.

Scarlett is no stranger to this anxiety, having almost died in May.

While she miraculously hasn’t been traumatized by cars, even when driving down the very freeway where that careless man crashed into her, there is an undeniable pain that has remained with her since the accident. It wasn’t the blood rushing to her head while upside down in her overturned MINI Cooper, or the tightness of the seat belt against her chest, or even the shards of glass that pierced her skin from the shattered passenger’s window, leaving some light scarring across her cheek and neck and arm. What hurt the most was the misery of how she was about to die alone, even though that’s not how she started her life.