“There aren’t many places she can be.”

“We couldn’t even find the fucking way Baxter got in.”

“Let’s just keep looking. Harrison, check the back of the school.”

They leave the room again but I stay where I am. I turn my phone on. It turns on. The last phone in here that works and it’s useless. There’s no signal.

But I have a text message.

I have a text message.

It’s the end of the world and I have a text message.

We’ve been in the school a little over a month but the message is dated three days after the morning it all started. I don’t know what I was doing then. Where exactly we were. We were a group. The Caspers were alive. Grace was alive. Text messages were still going out.

It’s from my father.

I tremble so badly the phone shakes in my hands. Beads of sweat blossom on my forehead and the back of my neck. I can’t get air into my lungs. I lean forward, hyperventilating, praying somehow to regain myself. It’s old. It’s old. It’s an old message. It’s old, it’s old, it’s old … and then I laugh stupidly, dizzily, because his timing is so—it’s so good. It is so good. It’s old, I think firmly, but another thought is louder and it makes me want to break myself, it makes me want to end it all here, now: he’s alive.

I open the message.

Lily’s here. It’s safe. Come home.

Part Four

PART FOUR

I need to go.

I get to my feet and jump down from the stage. I need to go to her. I need to get home now. No—I need to make sure I’m seeing this. I walk out of the auditorium, trying to figure out which way Cary and Rhys went. My hands are numb, still shaking so badly that I drop my phone. It clatters to the ground. I crouch down and pick it up, make sure it’s okay.

The message is still there.

And then my legs decide to stop supporting me. I sink to the floor and press my hand against my forehead and I start to laugh and then I start to cry.

“Sloane?”

I lower my hand and look up. Rhys and Cary are at the end of the hall. They rush to me, asking questions, what is it, what happened, what’s wrong. They try to guess. Are you hurt? Is it the barricades? They’ll never guess. I wipe my eyes and hold my phone out to them.

“Do you see it?” I can barely get the words out. “Do you see the message—”