Cary turns to us. “How did he get in?” Before either of us can answer, he strides forward and kicks Baxter, who is slowly waking up, in the legs.

“Cary—” Rhys reaches for him, but it’s too late.

Baxter moans. Cary nudges him with his foot again and I move farther away because I don’t want to be close to this. I want to be as far from it as I can.

“Sloane, get back here,” Rhys says.

The gun. Rhys has the gun. We have a gun. No, Baxter has a gun. It’s Baxter’s gun. This is Baxter’s classroom. Is this Baxter’s school? Does he have more right to it than we do because he works here? Worked here? I can’t get my brain to stop from wondering frantically because it doesn’t know what matters anymore, what is the most important thing. The most important thing: Baxter is alive. He’s in this school and he’s alive.

“Baxter,” Cary says, and then he corrects himself. “Mr. Baxter—”

Baxter is awake now, staring at us with empty eyes. Fleeting recognition passes through them. He opens his mouth to speak but Cary cuts him off.

“How did you get in here? You have to tell us how you got in—”

“You found me,” Baxter says. Just listening to the words scrape through his mouth makes me thirsty. “I wondered when you’d find me…”

“Mr. Baxter, how did you get in here?”

“My gun—where is my gun? Which one of you took it?”

Rhys hides the gun behind his back. Cary crouches down directly in front of Baxter and takes his face in his hands. “Listen to me: How. Did. You. Get. In. Here?”

Baxter stares at Cary for a long time.

“I don’t know,” he says, and then his body goes slack. Cary steps back, letting the man slump into nothing. The dull sound of his breathing fills the room.

Baxter is weak.

While we’ve been making ourselves comfortable in here, he’s been running and starving, seeking shelter in the least obvious places he can find. Surviving, he says, and the word is bitter out of his mouth. We give him food. He eats canned peaches and throws them up. He drinks a bottle of water and throws it up too. We find antacids in the nurse’s office and he’s able to keep a bit of food and water down after that. He tells us he was on his “last leg” before he got here. His eyes are dull, cloudy and he can’t hold on to a thought long enough to say anything useful. Every time he speaks, there’s something so sad about the way his voice sounds. I can’t believe there was a time he stood in front of a classroom and taught us.

This man is Mr. Baxter but he’s not Mr. Baxter anymore.