Two hours and twenty minutes.
“She brought herself there.”
“If she hadn’t met me,” I said, my voice hard, “she’d still be alive.”
“And if I hadn’t let my little brother play in a friend’s backyard, he wouldn’t be brain-dead.” Bethany’s voice was matter-of-fact, but I knew the words cost her. “Hell, Kali, if Tyler were alive and well, my father never would have gone off the deep end, I wouldn’t have been infected in the first place, and none of us would have ever even heard of Chimera.”
If Bethany hadn’t been bitten by the chupacabra …
If I hadn’t saved her …
If I’d never met Zev …
If, if, if—and at the end of the day, none of it mattered.
“How long until sunrise?” Beth’s abrupt change of subject did not go unnoticed. I didn’t question it, or her, or the fact that the two of us were in this car together.
I just answered the question. “Two hours and fourteen minutes.”
Two hours and fourteen minutes, as human as the next girl.
Bethany smiled. “Good,” she said. “That might actually be enough time to do something about that hair.”
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
The sky was dark and gray overhead, but as I watched them lower Skylar’s coffin into the ground, a tiny stream of light broke through the clouds. To my left, Bethany stood as immobile as I was.
Maybe we didn’t have a right to be here. Maybe the Haydens didn’t want us here.
Maybe, maybe, maybe—and none of it mattered.
Across the lawn, Elliot didn’t look at Bethany, didn’t look at me. I found myself trying to match Skylar’s many brothers to their descriptions and realized that I’d never hear her talk about them again.
They’d never see her again.
Handprints on the concrete, pictures on the walls—that’s what she was now.
There were words spoken and hymns sung and none of it made her any less dead. I stood there, thinking of those last moments, the expression of pure and unadulterated bliss on her face.
I could have saved her.
I should have.
And nothing Bethany said could change that. Nothing I said or did or didn’t do for as long as I lived would bring her back.
Beside me, my father reached out and put one hand on my shoulder, pulled me closer. On instinct, I stiffened at the physical contact, but after the moment of first contact passed, I leaned into his shoulder and watched them bury her.
I said goodbye.
And then I went home, cut the cast off my arm with a handsaw, and cried.
A week after we buried Skylar, I went back to school and found myself at the very center of the rumor radar. The investigation of Chimera’s facility had been all over the news. Arrests were still being made. And though the Feds had kept my name out of it, everyone knew.
They knew that Skylar had died.
They knew that I was there.
And they knew that Elliot couldn’t stand to look at me. That he wasn’t talking to Bethany. That she’d started eating her food at the “freak table” at lunch.
Suffice it to say, I was as surprised as anyone when Elliot approached me before school one morning and stiffly handed me an envelope bearing my name.
He didn’t say a word. He just stood there and waited. After a moment, I forced myself to open it. Hot-pink letters danced across the page.
She’d dotted the i in my name with a little pink heart.
Dear Kali,
I don’t know you yet, but I will. I’m going to say hi, and you’re going to say hi, and we’re going to be friends. At some point, I’m probably going to tell you that I’m a little bit psychic, and you probably won’t believe me.
And the truth, Kali, is that you shouldn’t believe me. Because, honest to God, I’m psychic a lot.
I don’t even remember when it started, but there it is. So when I tell you that everything that’s going to happen—that it’s worth it—I need you to believe me, because it is. Maybe it doesn’t seem that way right now—but five years from now or ten or twenty, it all works out.
This is how it’s supposed to go.
That’s why I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and that’s why you’re reading this, and why I’m not there to say anything myself. Don’t be mad at yourself, and please don’t be mad at me.
We’re going to be friends.
So do me a favor, Kali, and watch out for Genevieve—once I’m gone, the other girls (but not Beth, of course!) are going to give her a really hard time. And make Darryl ask that cute freshman to the prom. And give yourself a break every now and then, because you deserve one.
XOXO,
Skylar Hayden