“The plan.”

I don’t tell him there isn’t one as far as I’m concerned. As soon as we leave here, I separate from them. Maybe I’ll even do something sacrificial so they have time to get away and then I can die a hero or whatever but I’ve realized something since I got here. I cared too much about how I was going to go before—Lily’s pills, the ones I couldn’t find—when it doesn’t really matter how I go, just that I do.

“I mean,” he continues. “I don’t know. You barely talk.”

“Maybe I’ve got nothing to say.”

“Not with those eyes.”

The way he looks at me right now—I don’t think he means it like a come-on or anything. His gaze is intent, searching my face so obviously, it makes me uncomfortable.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Everyone else here is riding extremes. You’re distant but you always look like you’re thinking. You keep wandering off alone, which is actually kind of stupid … so I just wanted to know what’s going on.”

“Nothing.”

He hesitates. “Where’s your family, Sloane?”

“Dead like yours?”

I have no idea if Rhys’s family is dead or not until I see how the question cuts him. He winces, but maybe he shouldn’t have asked if he didn’t want me to rip his chest wide open. He brings his hand to it, palm against it, like he’s trying to keep his heart inside. It’s like I took something away from him but I don’t know what. There’s nothing left to take.

“I’ve never said my family was dead,” he says. “What gives you the right?”

He turns and makes his way down the hall before I can answer. I have no choice but to follow him and for some reason, that makes me angry.

“I’ve always been quiet,” I say at his back. “It’s not like you knew me before.”

He stops and turns. “You’re Sloane Price. Your locker is on the diagonal from mine. You and your sister were attached at the hip when she went here, like it was you two and no one else, and I always thought that was weird but I also thought it was kind of sweet. And what you just said to me about my family was really cold.”

“So where are they, then? If they’re not dead?”

He gives me the dirtiest look and stalks off.

I want to ask him if he’s glad we made it but by then he’s already gone.

* * *

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

It hasn’t stopped. It drives Cary and Rhys into the halls, or maybe they’re checking the other doors, I don’t know. Harrison has pieces of wet toilet paper jammed in his ears and he took a bunch of Benadryl we found in the nurse’s office, so he’s out. We also found blankets and pillows in there so now our mats look like sorry imitations of beds and they feel like them too. I lay on mine and watch the door. I pick a scab clean off my elbow. A blot of blood appears.