I whirl around. My side connects with the edge of a desk. I double over, briefly forgetting everything but the pain until I raise my head and I see a man. A bulky frame, familiar. His back is to me. This is real. No. How can I tell if this is real when I don’t even know what real is anymore? There is a man at the end of this hall. No, I’m asleep. I close my eyes. Open them. Still there. Close my eyes. Open. Still there.

“Dad?” I call. “Dad—”

The man squares his shoulders. He begins a slow turn, but I feel like if I see him the world is going to come down on me. I don’t want to see him. I can’t. I turn the flashlight off and run blindly back to the auditorium and then I’m at Grace’s side, shaking her awake again.

“Grace, wake up, wake up, please, please, please—there’s something—there’s someone in the school, someone got in—”

I sit on my mat with Grace’s arm around me, while Cary, Rhys, and Trace shuffle in after doing a sweep of the building. Cary is rumpled but awake, very hung over, and judging by the way he’s looking at me, so not impressed. I don’t care. I pick at my fingernails, trying to distract myself because if I don’t, I will lose it. Harrison is on Grace’s other side. He’s too terrified to talk, was too terrified to help the others look. But there’s nothing for him or me to worry about because there is no one else in this school. No one else is in this school.

No one.

“It’s just us.” Cary rubs his eyes. “Jesus, I could have used twelve more hours.”

I bury my head in my knees.

“It’s okay,” Grace says, rubbing my back. I melt at her warmth. It goes straight to the deadest parts of me. “It was probably a nightmare.”

“How’s your head feel?” Rhys asks.

“Go to hell,” I mutter. I feel Grace’s surprise and then I forget the only two people that know Rhys and I are not okay right now are me and Rhys.

“I’m just saying—”

“It’s not that.”

But maybe it is that.

“Has it happened before?” Grace asks.

This is the worst moment, walking myself into that question. My silence is as good as yes and then she starts in with this gentle line of questioning—when, where were you, how did you feel. I go as far back as the nurse’s office in my recounting but I don’t tell them about those first few days after we got here when I imagined his cologne. Except if I knew the cologne wasn’t real and I think this is, then maybe I did hear someone in the hall, I did.

Didn’t I?