“God, look at us,” I say. “It’s all over us—”

* * *

The locker rooms are on the other side of the school.

I have to pass Rhys at the back doors to get to them. He’s adding a storage cupboard from Mrs. Lafferty’s room to a mountain of other furniture and he doesn’t notice me slip by. I find a spare set of clothes in my locker. I hold them to my face and inhale, hoping for the scent of something familiar and comforting—like how I used to just stand in Lily’s room after she left and breathe her in—but they only smell like school.

I take my suicide note out of my pocket and set it carefully on the top shelf, fighting the urge to shove it in my mouth so I’ll feel less empty. I don’t know how I’m going to do this, move through the hours like someone who wants to still be breathing when I had so firmly made up my mind to stop. I’m not supposed to be here and the world has ended and it’s too stupid and sad for words and it’s changed time; a second is a minute, a minute is an hour, an hour is a day, a day is a month, a month is a year, and a year—

I can’t be here that long.

When I step into the locker rooms, I hear myself move twice, like I’m made of echoes. The light is better in here. The sun spills in from the transoms and makes everything seem peaceful. I walk over to them and get on my tiptoes but I can’t see anything except sky and then I start thinking about people in space, astronauts, and if they’re just stuck up there forever trying to reach everyone here on earth, getting no answer and not knowing why and I think that would be horrible, but good—the not knowing. I wouldn’t want to know. I stay like that for a long time when the door opens. Grace steps inside and I hear a bell somewhere, I swear. Post-PE, time to shower. But it’s not those days anymore, so the second thing my mind reaches for is something’s wrong.

“Trace told me about your idea.” She’s hugging a bundle of clothes to her chest. “I told everyone else. Cary said ten minutes tops with the water.”

Grace is all good words. Nice, generous, great listener. The kind of student government president the student body votes in for all the right reasons. She unfolds the clothes in her arms and holds up a dress. I recognize it from the school’s production of West Side Story.

“The drama department provides.” She eyes my clothes jealously. “I didn’t have anything of my own.”

For a second, neither of us says anything. Grace and me, I don’t know what we are. Almost friends? But then we stopped talking and looking at each other in the halls. It had to happen, I guess, but I always wondered why she was the one who started it when it should have been me. I always secretly wanted to ask her why.