I take it out and unfold it.

Lily,

“Hey.”

The voice is quiet, close. I shove the note back in my pocket. Rhys hovers at the edge of the stage. His brown hair sticks up everywhere and his brown eyes are bloodshot. Things I know about Rhys: he’s a senior. Our lockers are across from each other.

He put his hands on me and told me I was okay.

He has a case of water in his arms. He sets it on the stage and holds a bottle out to me. I don’t even ask him where he got it, just rip it from his hands. I remember us huddled around this old birdbath yesterday, yesterday morning. We cupped our palms together and lapped up all the dirty, stagnant water and it tasted so awful but so, so wonderful because we were so desperate and isn’t everything better when you’re desperate? We managed to forget our parched mouths and cracked lips while we secured the school and settled into the last two hours, but now I don’t even know how that’s possible because I am so fucking thirsty. I down the water quickly and then I want more. Rhys hands me another and watches me drink it too. I drink until I feel like the ocean is in my stomach and when I’m done, I’m spent. I curl my knees up to my chin and wrap my arms around them. Rhys gives me a crooked smile.

“Still here,” he says. “We made it.”

“Is that water?” Trace calls from his side of the room. “Is that really water?”

I turn my face to the doors.

Sloane.

I jolt awake, forget where I am for a second. Everyone is laid out around me, asleep on the dusty blue gym mats we dragged in from the storage room. The last thing we had energy for, the last thing we could do for ourselves before we totally crashed.

I raise my head and listen.

It’s just deep breathing, the noises outside, and nothing else.

I listen hard, but there’s nothing else.

I pull at the collar of my shirt and rest my head against the mat. My clothes feel scratchy and awful against my skin, which is covered in a layer of sweat. I force my eyes shut and drift or maybe it’s sleep and then I think I hear him again—Sloane—and I jerk awake again and this time, when I close my eyes I see the living room floor covered in little pieces of red glass.

After a while, I give up on sleep. I check my watch. It’s almost six a.m. I have to pee. My muscles protest as I edge off the mat. The floor is cold and my toes curl in on themselves. I cross the room and step into the hall. It’s an open mouth that forks off in different directions. The tiled floors shine weirdly under the emergency lights lining the ceiling. They wash out the uninterrupted stretch of beige and purple walls and make them almost seem to glow. I feel like a ghost underneath them. The robot beep that happens just before an announcement comes over the loudspeakers drifts through my head. It’s that woman on the phone and on the radio and she wants us all to listen closely. I imagine this place crowded with students, all our faces tilted up. Everything about this is wrong. This school was never built to be empty.