This is Not a Test

“It wasn’t obvious,” Rhys says, like that should make it okay that we looked at those shelves and never considered the possibility of a window behind them. It actually makes it worse. We all knew Baxter was lying about forgetting, he wanted to use it as leverage so why wouldn’t he hide it from us? Why wouldn’t we look for something hidden?

“Where is he?” Rhys asks. “Where did you put his body?”

“He’s in the basement.” Cary stares at his hands and then he shakes his head. “I can’t believe he came back just to do that.”

“We sent him outside to die,” Rhys says. “Why can’t you?”

“Someone should check on him,” Harrison says. “Trace, I mean.”

“You do it,” Cary tells him. “You’re closer to him than we are.”

Harrison’s eyes widen. “I don’t want to—I don’t want to see her—”

“You wouldn’t.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Yeah, well, he can’t stay in that room forever. We have to go to Rayford.”

“Jesus,” Rhys says. “He just lost his sister, Cary. Give him a couple of days.”

“You think he’ll still go with us?” I ask.

Cary shrugs.

“I’ll check on him,” I say.

I leave the room without looking back. Each step forward is a slow and hateful thing. I am going upstairs to see Trace, who is sitting with Grace’s body. I bite my lip and tears come. I think the worst part is knowing it hasn’t really sunk in yet. This is just the surface of it, like when Lily left. First there was the shock, this total implosion, and then numbness and every so often it would hit me in waves, just to remind me it was still there. Each wave was worse than the last. A full-body ache, this heaviness, seeing the world in gray.

I’m standing outside of Yee’s classroom when I hear Grace’s voice.

She’s talking to Trace.

Relief surges through my veins, makes me weak. I knew it was a mistake, some unreality. I knew she was alive. I knew it. I push the door open and it slams into the wall. Trace sits on Yee’s desk and my eyes pass over him in search of Grace but they don’t see her how they expect to see her. They come to rest in the middle of the room, where all the desks are pushed together to display—her. She’s covered with a sheet, but her voice—

I still hear her.

I turn to Trace. He’s holding the camcorder.

My heart crashes.

“We made a video,” he tells me because he doesn’t know I know. “In case…” He pushes a button and Grace’s voice stops and the room gets colder as soon as it does. “The battery will run out soon and then I’ll never hear her again.”

The air tastes fu

“Can I see her?”

“You don’t want to see her.” He holds up the camcorder. “You can see her here. Alive.”

I walk over to him, never unaware of the other presence in the room. I don’t know how he stands it. I sit next to him, lean in close, and stare at the tiny LCD screen. It’s paused on the two of them.

The quality isn’t that great. It’s fuzzy. Trace didn’t adjust the settings for recording at night and the only thing illuminating them is the flashlight and it makes Grace look unreal on top of unreal. I have this urge to find my way into the video, to tell her what’s coming. Grace, did you ever imagine that you’d die. He turns it off and looks at me. His eyes are empty.

“Do you need anything?” I ask. “I can get you … anything.”

“No,” he says. “You can’t.”

It gets quiet again. And then—

“Do you think if we brought one of those things in … if we brought one of those things in and they bit her … she’d…” His voice cracks. “Do you think she’d come back?”

“No,” I say, my stomach turning. “No. She wouldn’t. It’s too late…”

“Were you going to stay with us?” he asks. “She told me she asked you. Were you going to?” My mouth goes dry. “Don’t lie to me. Just tell me if you were.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“She really wanted you to come. I wasn’t so sure but she liked you.”

“I know.”

“She said you didn’t know if you’d go because of Rhys.”

“It wasn’t because of Rhys.”

“But she really liked you.” It’s almost an accusation. I don’t say anything. He rubs his eyes. “If I step out for a second—will you stay with her? I hate when she’s alone…”

I nod. Even so, it takes him a long time to leave. His entire being resists it. I can see the fight happening in him. He finally steps out. Leaves me alone with her. I know he’ll be quick so I know I have to be too, which means there is no time to prepare. I hurry to the center of the room, the desks, her body.

I grip the edge of the sheet and pull it back.

This is what true death looks like. She’s not infected, so she will not turn. She’s so gone from us no bite will bring her back. I bring my hand close to her face, but I can’t bring myself to touch her. Everyone says death looks like sleeping, that it looks like that kind of peaceful, but this is nothing like that. The stillness. Her lips, her mouth, her hair. Everything is wrong. I can’t accept that she’s here in this room, in front of me, but she’s not here. She’s here but she’s not. I think of the dead outside, bodies. Bodies—but not people.

But they were people.

I cover her face. When Trace comes back, he finds me next to her and I just want to say something that will make him feel better, less alone. Remind him he still has family.

“Go to Rayford. Find your cousin.”

He looks at me. “Leave Grace, you mean.”

“I didn’t mean it like that—”

“How else could you have meant it?”

“Trace—”

“Get out. I want to be alone.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Get the fuck out, Sloane! Who told you I wanted you here in the first place?” He gets so close and for one second, I think he’ll hit me. I see my father. I will see my father in every anger. “Get out.”

I brush past him and as soon as I’m out of that room, I can breathe in a way I couldn’t before. My legs are shaky. Weak. When I go back to the auditorium, Cary and Rhys are waiting for me.

“How is he?” Rhys asks.

“Bad,” I say. “Where’s Harrison?”

They don’t answer.

“What?”

“Tell her, Cary,” Rhys says. He doesn’t sound happy.

Cary flushes and clears his throat. “He wouldn’t stop fucking crying and I kind of lost my temper. He’s wandering around. Did you mention leaving to Trace?”

Rhys looks at me. “Tell me you didn’t. It’s way too soon to throw that at him.” My face gives it away. He closes his eyes. “Shit, Sloane.”

“That’s Trace’s problem,” Cary says. “Not ours.”

Rhys gets up abruptly, throws Cary a disgusted look.

“I’m going to find Harrison.”

When Rhys is gone, I just stand there, staring at Cary.

“Grace is dead,” I tell him.

“I can’t bring her back.”

“She was ours and she’s dead.”

He stares at the table.

“She wasn’t mine.”

“But you were with her.”

“Sloane.” He looks at me and the bags under his eyes are pulling his face down. In the right light, I’d swear he was infected. He exhales slowly through his teeth. “Don’t.”

Thoughts of Grace prevent me from sleep.

I doze, thinking of her body in Yee’s room, decomposing. We probably can’t move it from there without something happening, her skin shifting. I don’t know where we’d move it. I just think we need to do something with her.

It doesn’t seem right that there can’t be a burial.

I think about how no one has said anything about her. We haven’t talked about how she was good, that she was nice, that she loved Trace more than anything in the world. These things still matter. She was a good person. She wanted me to stay with her when we got to Rayford. The memory of that fragile possibility of her and me, me being part of the kind of family I always wanted to be part of—I feel the weight of it like it’s still there, even though it’s gone.