“Shit!” Trace is shaking. “You said he said he wasn’t—you said he wasn’t infected!” He says this to me like this is my fault. Like I brought Baxter back into this school. He stares at the gun for a minute. “I killed him,” he says stupidly. He laughs. “Holy shit, I killed—I—fuck! That was close—Grace—” He turns to her. “Grace?”

We all turn to her.

She’s still on the floor, dazed.

Trace hurries to her. “You didn’t get bitten, did you? Did you—”

“No…” She tries to get to her feet but it’s like invisible hands keep her pinned to the ground. Her eyes widen in faint surprise. “Oh…”

Trace sets the gun down and a dull whine fills my head, my heart breaks in half. His hands hover over her like he’s afraid to touch her and Cary shines the light on her slowly and I see red, her stomach is red.

“Oh Grace,” I say. “Grace—”

“I’m okay,” she assures us, and she tries to get up again but she can’t and her eyes settle into a kind of understanding that makes me want to run so far away.

“No,” Trace says. “I didn’t—I didn’t—” He pulls her upright into his arms and she cries out and he moans like her pain is his. She buries her face in his chest. “Talk to me.” He shakes her a little. “Grace, talk to me. Please.”

This didn’t happen. This is not happening.

“I don’t want to die,” she says.

I step back. Rhys wraps his fingers around mine, stopping me.

I can’t feel it.

“Okay, don’t talk if you’re going to say things like that.” Trace squeezes his eyes shut. “I’m sorry—I am so, so sorry, Grace—”

“Don’t be mad,” she whispers. “Please don’t be mad at me.”

“I could never be mad at you,” he says, and she starts to cry because it’s all she can do, the last thing she’ll ever do. “Grace, come on.”

“Please don’t be mad.” Her voice is getting smaller and smaller. “I don’t want to do this to you…”

“Then don’t—come on, don’t do this to me—you don’t have to do this to me…”

But she does. Grace dies in the hall, in her brother’s arms, in our school in this stupid, unforgiving world where there are no phones or ambulances or hospitals or doctors. She closes her eyes and she tries so hard to stay, but in the end she lets us go.

Trace asks to be left alone with her body.

We wait for him in the auditorium. No one speaks. We try, but our voices sound funny when we do, our words awkward and stiff as they fall from our tongues, like we are just learning to talk. It is hard to hear anything over the ringing in my ears, the beating of my heart, the air entering and leaving my own lungs.

Harrison is curled up on his mat, crying.

I want to hurt him until he stops.