“I don’t think I knew anything that beautiful existed. Most of the time I feel like I’m this jumble. You know? But when I’m up on that stage, saying those words, it’s like I come into focus.”
“I guess we missed it when we tested you,” I said. “You weren’t just a nerd, you were a theater nerd.”
She shook her head. “That’s what I thought at first too,” she said. “But there’s nothing familiar about it at all. I think maybe that’s the reason I like it. It feels new.”
The high school appeared at the end of the street. Its windows were all lit up, casting a warm glow on the brick walls and the lawn that surrounded it. I could see shadows moving around inside. Every room seemed to be filled.
“We’ve still got a few parts we haven’t cast yet,” Hannah said as she crossed into the schoolyard. “I bet you’d make a pretty good Horatio. Oh! Or you could be King Claudius. I think we’ve even got a crown that’ll fit you. We’ll check it out tomorrow after breakfast, and then we’ll—”
“I think I should be alone.”
She turned around and saw me standing at the edge of the sidewalk. The wind whipped her hair over her cheeks.
“When it happens,” I said. “I think I should be alone.”
“Why?”
I thought about the bonfire, how the flames had burned the leaves and the branches off that tree and made the bark into a crust of ash. I imagined the core of it deep inside, pale and untouched. When Lassiter’s was done with me, I wondered what would be consumed and what would be left behind. Would I come out the other side like Greer? Like Dad?
“Because I don’t know who I’m going to be yet.”
I thought Hannah was going to fight me, but instead she came and took both my hands.
“You want to come inside and get your things first? We’ve got your pack and—”
I shook my head. There was nothing I needed. Nothing I wanted.
“There’s a stand of dogwoods on the other side of the park,” I said. “Near the fence. I’ll be there. Come find me in a few hours.”
Hannah’s lips touched my cheek, and then she whispered in my ear.
“Who do you want to be when it’s done?”
Everything that had happened in the last year ran through my mind all at once. The outbreak. Mom and Dad. You. Greer. I felt like a handful of barbed wire had been tied in a knot and buried in my stomach.
“No one.”
She kissed me again, then squeezed my hand and crossed the lawn to the school’s front steps. The door squeaked on its hinges as she opened it. Hannah looked back one last time, and then she went inside. The door shut behind her with a click.
Black River was hushed and still. I left the school and moved along the empty streets until I came to the dogwoods on the other side of the park. I found a place beneath one of them. Wind rustled the leaves, filling the night air with the scent of it. I thought of you and Mom and Dad and Greer and Hannah, and then I turned toward Lucy’s Promise and watched as the first traces of dawn stretched over the summit, turning the black sky a deep ocean blue.
25
THE SUN ROSE over the town and fell again. I stepped onto the bridge that spanned Black River Falls.
The Marvin barricade was a mile and a half up the road, shadowed in the blue-gray twilight. I didn’t see anyone manning it, just a line of sandbags and razor-topped fence. I walked out to the middle of the bridge and knelt in the roadway. The roar of the falls was like a radio caught in between stations. I laid my hand against the concrete and closed my eyes, praying there’d be nothing there, just darkness.