“Was anyone here sick?” Rhys asks. “That flu?” No one says anything. Rhys glances at me. “You were out for a while, weren’t you? The last couple of weeks before this started. Were you sick?”

“I’m not infected,” I say. “Do I look infected to you?”

“I didn’t mean that,” Rhys says quickly, but I don’t know what else he could have meant. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”

“I don’t think it’s the flu,” Cary says. “I think that was just weird timing.”

“Maybe it’s terrorists,” Harrison says.

The boys go back and forth for a while, trying to figure out how and why this started, like they have the brainpower to piece it together and if they do, it will change the fact it happened and that we’re here. Grace stares up at the skylight and says, “Maybe it’s God.”

“Don’t be so cliché,” Trace tells her.

But everyone stops talking about it after that.

* * *

“It was almost better when we were out there.” Rhys sighs.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Harrison says.

We’re still in the auditorium, lounging. There was lunch and there was napping, long stretches of silence and a bit of arguing. It’s barely past three. I understand what Rhys means. Waiting around to be saved is like waiting to die and I have done more of both than anyone else in this room. There’s a whole lot of nothing before there’s something and running was something.

Everyone clings to the idea of safety and because the auditorium seems safest, no one likes to venture too far from it without someone else in tow. Everyone except me, that is. I say I’m going to the bathroom but instead I wander the school and I pretend I’m walking Cortege when everything was normal, when it looked nice. Four years ago, all this money went into its beautification. Trees were planted along the main street, lights were strung on them, flowerbeds were put in every blank space and we got new street signs, the works.

Now it’s gone.

I wonder how much time I have before anyone looks for me. I’m far enough away from the auditorium that I don’t hear any voices and I’m far enough away from the entrance that the noises outside seem muted, or maybe they’re as loud as they ever are and I’m already used to them. I move past empty offices and classrooms. It’s an eerie route that takes me by no one. I reach the stairs to the second floor and pause, suddenly aware my life lacks structure now, that I never have to answer to anybody and I never have to suffer for it. As soon as the thought is in my head, there’s another one and it’s sharper, clearer, much more painful:

It doesn’t change anything.

And then a cheap, musky scent is in the air—a ghost, I know it’s a ghost—and my chest aches. I try to remember how to breathe around the loneliness, this being alone, but I can’t. I don’t know how. I have to climb the stairs to get away from it but there’s no getting away from it. I reach the landing and walk the hall, turn the corner. Sun lights this side of the building, save for a large blot of darkness—one of the big windows we covered with poster boards. I walk over and stand in its shade. Press my hand against it.