“I can see an archway door,” he says. “It looks open. There might be empty coffins inside.”
I’d forgotten about that archway, just at the edge of the hall’s dim light. O’Malley wants to put Yong in a coffin. I suppose that’s better than leaving him here.
“All right,” I say. “Do it quick and come right back.”
He glances at me, questioning at first, then understanding. I can’t touch Yong. I don’t even want to be near him.
“Sure, Em,” O’Malley says. “Aramovsky, will you help me?”
The taller boy nods.
“We should say a few words first,” Aramovsky says. “While everyone is here with him.”
Spingate huffs in disgust. “The dead don’t care what you say.”
She walks to me, stands by my side and waits.
Aramovsky presses his hands together, holds them near his chest. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back. There is something familiar about the gesture, another thing from our past that our memories won’t reveal.
Spingate crosses her arms. “We’re wasting time.”
Bello points at her. “You shut up, Spingate. You think you’re so smart, but you couldn’t save Yong, could you?”
Spingate turns away as if Bello had slapped her.
“I tried,” she says. “I tried.”
O’Malley, Aramovsky and Bello are looking at me, waiting for permission.
“Make it quick,” I say.
Aramovsky’s hands drop to his waist.
“We’re all afraid,” he says. “Yong didn’t choose to be here any more than the rest of us did. We will never know why he attacked us. No one meant for him to die. Today…today was his birthday.”
The words themselves are meaningless. The way Aramovsky says them, though, the smooth, calm tone of his voice…his words are comforting.
We still have no idea what’s going on, and this nightmare keeps getting worse, but like the rest of us, Yong was a twelve-year-old kid. It isn’t my fault he’s dead. Now that I think about it, it isn’t his, either—the fault lies with whoever put us in those coffins and abandoned us in this dungeon.
“Thank you, Aramovsky,” I say.
Bello can’t stop crying. Her eyes are puffy and red. She kneels next to Yong. Her body trembling, she touches her forehead to his. She stays there for a moment. It’s heartbreaking to watch. It almost brings me to tears.
But still, no tears come.
She stands. Head hung low, Bello moves past me.
Yong lays alone in a trampled, smeared ring of crimson slush. Now he’s just like the Grownups we left behind: a victim of violence, dead because a knife punched a hole in his body.
I wonder how long it will be before he crumbles to dust.
There is nothing else we can do here. I look at O’Malley, tilt my head toward the dark hall.
O’Malley grabs Yong’s wrists. Aramovsky takes his ankles. Together, they walk down the dim hall, the dead boy a shallow curve between them, his head hanging limply and jostling with every step.
They carry him away.
Bello, Spingate and I wait. It doesn’t take long. O’Malley and Aramovsky come back—without Yong. I don’t know if they left him in a coffin, but they left him, and I feel relieved.
The two boys join us. Aramovsky still doesn’t have any blood on him, but his expression is different. He’s seen something that frightened him, disturbed him.
I look to O’Malley. He won’t meet my eyes. I know what he and Aramovsky saw—more murdered children.
“All the coffins had been torn open,” Aramovsky says. His voice sounds different, like the last bit of breeze before a gust of wind fades away completely. “We found one where the lid still moved. We put Yong inside and pushed the lid closed. It clicked shut. He is at rest.”
I wonder if they put him on top of a skeleton, or moved the skeleton to the floor so Yong could lie alone. I decide I don’t want to know.
“Time to leave,” I say.
I turn and move down the hall. The others follow. This time, O’Malley stays with them.
I walk out in front, alone.
THIRTEEN
We walk uphill.
We are covered in blood.
Bello’s lower lip is swollen and split.
O’Malley’s nose has stopped bleeding, but a few drops still ooze from the cut over his eye.
The hallway goes on and on. The dust is endless.
There has to be a way out of this place. There has to be.
My mouth is dry and pasty. I’m so thirsty. I’m not hungry anymore, but I think that’s not a good thing. My head hurts.
The others are in the same shape. They shuffle more than walk. They look beyond tired, with dry lips and sunken eyes. Maybe we were all perfect when we woke up, but not anymore.
If we don’t find water soon, will we be able to keep walking?
And we need to sleep. If we find any coffin rooms farther up, maybe we’ll rest for a while.
Every few steps, I see Yong’s wide eyes, the look of disbelief on his face.