“Rhys said you might not want to see anyone.” I’m trying to figure out what else Rhys might have said when she continues. “But I wanted to see you.”

I try to guess what’s coming next. He said you went out there to die. He said you’re crazy. He said you’re a risk to the rest of us. He said you’re a murderer.

“He said the man was hurt. Dying.” She pauses. “He said it wasn’t my dad.”

So he didn’t out me.

“It wasn’t your dad,” I say.

She exhales like now she can believe it. She crosses the room and sits on the edge of my cot. She picks at her fingernails for a while before saying, “I don’t understand you.”

“What’s there to understand?”

“You didn’t … you didn’t do it because of what I said to you, did you? Because you wanted to make it up to me?”

“Does it matter?”

“I didn’t want it on me if you’d died.”

“I made the choice. It wouldn’t have been on you,” I say. “Like your parents.”

“Shut up.”

“They offered to go first.”

“Shut up, Sloane.”

“We both saw it happen.”

“Oh, so you think because you went out there you can say this shit to me,” she says, collecting herself. “It doesn’t work that way.”

I shrug and close my eyes again. I want to sleep. I want her to leave so I can do it. I let myself doze, feel my breathing even out.

After a while, she moves from the cot.

“You know what I hate?” she asks, and I surface enough to ask her. “The way everyone talks about it. How my parents chose to go into that alley, like they were aware of the fact they might die. But they wouldn’t have done it if they thought there was the remotest chance. No one thinks about that.”

“But they did do it,” I say.

“Because they thought it was clear,” she says, and then she pushes my hair away from my face and it’s such a tender gesture, it confuses me. It’s so at odds with the harshness of the words coming out of her mouth. “There was no way they would have gone into that alley first if they thought it was too dangerous because they had us. Why do you think they let Cary lead the way that whole time when they were the adults? They did it so if anything happened, he died. Not them. They went in that alley because he told them it was clear and he was wrong.”

“He’s sorry.”

“If he was sorry, he would’ve gone out there tonight. Oh, and Trace wants to thank you.” Her voice breaks. She exhales. “I think you made him finally understand that they’re dead.”

I curl up onto my side and stay as still as possible until she finally leaves and then I breathe so quietly, I can’t hear myself. I pretend I’m dead. Eventually everything disappears.

But when it comes back, it comes back as strange, uneven footsteps.