“Okay. Enough.” Rhys stands behind Cary and pulls him to his feet. Cary pushes away from him and says, “I am not going back to the auditorium—”

“The nurse’s office, then,” Rhys says.

So we take him there. Cary needs an arm around each of us to stay upright. Taking on his weight slows us down. His legs are uncooperative, jelly, and as we pass a classroom, he detours inside and pukes in a garbage can and then he spits.

“Better,” he mumbles. After that, he is a little better. He just wants to pass out, he tells us. When we hit the nurse’s office, he flops back on the cot and Rhys unties his shoes.

“I’m a murderer,” Cary says. “I. Am. A. Murderer.”

“No, you’re drunk. Sleep it off.”

I don’t want Cary to stop talking. I want him to finish what he was going to say in the auditorium. I want to hear someone else say they’ve given up. I need to hear it.

“It should’ve been you, right?”

Rhys gives me a look. “Sloane.”

“What? No…” Cary blinks. “No. It should’ve been—Harrison.”

“That kid just can’t get a break,” Rhys says.

“We didn’t even know him—” Cary sits up with difficulty. “Rhys, remember we found him and we didn’t know him and it turns out he went to this fucking school? Just by looking at him, you could tell he’s nothing. Everyone else—everyone else, we knew—” He leans forward and puts his head between his knees. “It should have been Harrison.”

“You’d feel just as bad as you do now if it had been.”

“No one would have held it against me if it had been Harrison.”

Cary’s breathing gets so heavy and for a second I think he’s passed out sitting up, but then his shoulders start to shake. He’s crying.

I turn to Rhys, who stares at Cary, horrified. Rhys turns to me and his eyes are begging me to do something, like I’m the girl here and I should know what to do. I take a tentative step toward Cary but I don’t know what to do. I think I’d need to be drunker than I am to have any idea of what to do or say to help him. Cary raises his head and he looks so sad.

“The alley was swarmed,” he whispers. My heart hears this, processes it, understands it before my brain does. I take two steps back. “I knew it was swarmed…”

“Cary, shut up,” Rhys says.

“It was the only way to the school and none of us knew Harrison. Bait.”

“Cary.”