“I asked if you’d like some food,” he says, looking at me with concern.

“Oh.”

My thoughts snag on something I don’t remember five seconds after I think it, and when I look back at Mason, he’s not there. I’m not sure whether or not I answered his question. Maybe he’s gone to get food; maybe he’s just gone.

I stand in one spot until I start to feel paralyzed, then I move to make sure I still can. That’s when I realize that Matt and I are never more than a few steps away from each other. After we arrived, we split up, but we never really split apart. Bound by an invisible chain, I move into the kitchen, thirsty, and he’s already there, his nose in the refrigerator. He sits on the sofa and I check out the photos on the living room walls. I lean against the piano, desperate for this day to be done, and he lightly brushes my shoulder as he passes. I realize that we’re giving each other strength using all we’ve got left: our presence.

Matt is sitting on the hearth across the room when Mason walks up and tells me that it’s time to go. I’m beyond exhausted, and it could be eight or midnight: Either would make sense in my new, strange world.

Fifteen feet between us, Matt and I stare at each other, neither of us moving but both of us knowing it’s going to get more difficult before it gets better.

“Okay,” I say, still watching Matt. I’ll see him at school when he comes back. But it will be different. Leaving now feels like saying goodbye to our old selves, to anything light and carefree.

Goodbye, halcyon.

My eyes well up with tears, and they stay locked on Matt’s until I reach the doorway of the room and am forced to turn a corner. Even when I look away, I can feel his stare. I’m not sure how my feet are capable of walking away, but they do, and when I reach the back of the SUV, I collapse on the seat and fall asleep in an instant. Mason zombie-walks me into the house when we arrive, and I sleep in my funeral clothes, even my shoes.

thirty-two

Four days later, I shoot upright in bed at four in the morning. Heart thundering in my chest, I listen for signs of what startled me awake. There is movement downstairs: I hear two pairs of footsteps rushing around the house.

I jump out of bed and run down to the lab to see what’s going on.

“Go back to bed,” Mason says when he sees me. “Everything’s okay.”

“What are you doing?” I ask. My heart sinks when I see him standing beside the black case.

“God wants us to try something,” he says. He looks incredibly uneasy. Cassie shakes her head as she leafs through a file.

“Where are those forms?” she asks.

“I’m not sure we’ll need them,” Mason says quietly. “How many vials do you think we should bring?”

“The most we’ll use is three, but bring five to be safe.”

“What are you going to try?” I ask.

“There’s been a car crash,” he says. “A man coming home from a night shift,” he explains in broken sentences like he’s preoccupied. “A janitor. Car’s totaled. God wants us to try to Revive him.”

“But it hasn’t worked on adults,” I say, shocked.

“I know,” he says. “Not yet, but they’ve made improvements.”

Not enough, I think.

“And it’s the middle of the night,” I continue.

“I know.”

“And the test group is only the bus kids, and—”

“I know!” Mason shouts. He flips around and stares at me. He looks angry, but somehow I know it’s not really directed at me. “Don’t you think I know all of this? The program is supposed to be controlled. It’s not supposed to be like this. Now he expects us to…” He stops talking midsentence and takes a deep breath. “It’s going to be fine, Daisy,” he says. “We heard on the scanner that the locals are on the way. If we don’t make it before they do, we won’t be able to try it.”

I watch as Mason goes through the process that opens the Revive case, as his hand moves to choose five vials from the fifty. Wildly, my eyes flit over the vials. Forty-nine of them might save this man; the one filled with water most definitely will not. My temperature rises. I don’t remember which one it was. I think it was somewhere in the—

“Don’t take that one,” I blurt out without thinking. Mason’s hand freezes in midair. Cassie and Mason both turn to face me, their expressions shifting from confusion to shock to anger.

“Why not?” Mason asks.

I don’t speak.

“Why shouldn’t we take that one?” he asks again.

I’m frozen solid.

“What did you do?” Mason snaps. I recoil. He’s never talked to me like this before.

Strangely, Cassie is the one who rushes to my side. “Daisy, as you know, time is of the essence here,” she says calmly. “We can talk about this later,” she continues, shooting Mason a look. “But if we need three vials right now, which part of the storage box should we take them from?”

I point to the leftmost row, and the row on the bottom.

“You’re sure there’s nothing wrong with those?” Cassie says as Mason starts grabbing vials.

I nod, not wanting to betray myself by speaking. In truth, I’m only pretty sure. Not a hundred percent sure. Not bet-my-life-on-it sure.

Bet someone else’s?

“Go upstairs,” Mason says flatly as he closes the travel container. He doesn’t meet my eyes when he moves past. I listen to him storm out to the car. Silently, Cassie goes, too.

thirty-three

A few hours later, I walk through the doors to Victory High a completely different person than I was just a few weeks ago. I haven’t showered, and I’m wearing the T-shirt I slept in. My untamed dishwater curls are wrapped into a knot. I don’t have on any makeup, not because I might cry and wash it away, but because it takes too much energy to put it on in the first place. I had three bites of a banana and a Coke for breakfast. I can’t remember whether I brushed my teeth.

Inside school, it’s too loud. Too bright. People are staring at me, whispering behind my back. They look like the unfocused background in a photograph: They’re there to show contrast, but for nothing more.

I walk up the flight of stairs to the second level and work my way to my locker. Some girls are chatting at the locker next to mine. They stop talking when I approach and step aside so I can get through.

“Hi, Daisy,” one of them says quietly.

“Hi,” I say. I don’t know her name.

I swap out my books and try very hard not to look at Audrey’s locker as I walk away, but it doesn’t work. I see it, and I imagine her standing there, smiling at me on the first day of school. Complimenting my shoes. Asking me to lunch.

Breathing.

Living.

As if I have emotional food poisoning, all of my tears and snot and even a shrill scream come out of me at once. Everyone in the hallway stops and stares. I run to the nurse’s office and get excused from school.

The hall pass reads, “Distressed.”

I block out the world for two days, or at least I think I do. When Mason’s had enough, he picks the lock on my bedroom door.

“You have a visitor,” he says. I have a pillow over my face so I can’t see him or anyone else.