“It wasn’t obvious,” Rhys says, like that should make it okay that we looked at those shelves and never considered the possibility of a window behind them. It actually makes it worse. We all knew Baxter was lying about forgetting, he wanted to use it as leverage so why wouldn’t he hide it from us? Why wouldn’t we look for something hidden?

“Where is he?” Rhys asks. “Where did you put his body?”

“He’s in the basement.” Cary stares at his hands and then he shakes his head. “I can’t believe he came back just to do that.”

“We sent him outside to die,” Rhys says. “Why can’t you?”

“Someone should check on him,” Harrison says. “Trace, I mean.”

“You do it,” Cary tells him. “You’re closer to him than we are.”

Harrison’s eyes widen. “I don’t want to—I don’t want to see her—”

“You wouldn’t.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Yeah, well, he can’t stay in that room forever. We have to go to Rayford.”

“Jesus,” Rhys says. “He just lost his sister, Cary. Give him a couple of days.”

“You think he’ll still go with us?” I ask.

Cary shrugs.

“I’ll check on him,” I say.

I leave the room without looking back. Each step forward is a slow and hateful thing. I am going upstairs to see Trace, who is sitting with Grace’s body. I bite my lip and tears come. I think the worst part is knowing it hasn’t really sunk in yet. This is just the surface of it, like when Lily left. First there was the shock, this total implosion, and then numbness and every so often it would hit me in waves, just to remind me it was still there. Each wave was worse than the last. A full-body ache, this heaviness, seeing the world in gray.

I’m standing outside of Yee’s classroom when I hear Grace’s voice.

She’s talking to Trace.

Relief surges through my veins, makes me weak. I knew it was a mistake, some unreality. I knew she was alive. I knew it. I push the door open and it slams into the wall. Trace sits on Yee’s desk and my eyes pass over him in search of Grace but they don’t see her how they expect to see her. They come to rest in the middle of the room, where all the desks are pushed together to display—her. She’s covered with a sheet, but her voice—

I still hear her.

I turn to Trace. He’s holding the camcorder.

My heart crashes.

“We made a video,” he tells me because he doesn’t know I know. “In case…” He pushes a button and Grace’s voice stops and the room gets colder as soon as it does. “The battery will run out soon and then I’ll never hear her again.”

The air tastes funny. Strange. Everything is different now. The school is so alien. You’d think this place only ever belonged to us, that it was always ours and it is something so much less with one less of us in it.