“And now I just feel dumb for thinking that my mom leaving was so bad. Like it was some huge earth-changing thing. Big deal, right? Compared to this. I mean, pretty much all the grown-ups we know are changed into robots. And so many of our friends are captured. God knows what’s being done to them right now.”

I rubbed my eyes hard, remembering Sam Miller being carried into the church by his grandparents, his little body swinging between them.

When Alex spoke again, her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Nothing’ll ever be the same.”

Someone coughed across the gym, and another kid turned in his sleep, murmuring from a nightmare. I looked over at Patrick, faintly backlit up there against the pane, steady as a gargoyle.

“When my parents died,” I said, “I thought nothing would ever be the same. And it wasn’t.” I sensed her head turning toward me. “But that just meant I had to figure out a new way.”

“To what?”

“To live, I guess.”

The sheets rustled as she nodded. “I suppose we all do now.”

We lay like that for a time in the darkness, breathing.

“Patrick never talks about stuff like this,” she said. “And there’s a kind of strength in that. But there’s also a kind of strength in not being afraid to talk about it.”

My first instinct was to defend Patrick, to point out that he wasn’t afraid of anything. But I kept my mouth shut. Maybe it’s because I enjoyed how it felt, this secret compliment.

A wet slurp landed on the side of my face. Cassius, licking off the trails of my tears. He whimpered at me insistently. I knew that whimper.

It meant he had to go to the bathroom.

And I’d trained him from the instant he was born only to go outside. Which meant that now I had to risk my life so my dog could pee.

That really sucked.

He hadn’t gone all day. I hadn’t even thought about it. I wondered how many other things I had yet to consider.

I sat up with a groan, like an old person. “I gotta go,” I said. “Take him out.”

“Out out?” Alex asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

Cassius and I threaded quietly through the cots and across the court. Ben guarded the double doors, sitting on a metal folding chair like some kind of security guard. The set of his jaw showed just how much he dug the position of authority.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Front lawn.”

“Front lawn? Now? What for?”

I gestured at Cassius. “He’s gotta go.”

“He can use the bathroom.”

“I don’t know how to break this to you, Ben, but dogs don’t generally use toilets.”