“Take me home,” Chubs begged. “Ruby, make him take me home.”

“You’re going—you’ll be fine,” I told him, leaning over so he could see my eyes.

“My dad…”

“No—Lee, hospital!” I wasn’t speaking in sentences, and Chubs wasn’t either, not anymore. He made a sound like he was choking on his own tongue.

When the glimpses came, they were washed in the same bright red as his blood. A man sitting in a large armchair, reading. A beautiful woman leaning across a kitchen table. A cross-stitch pattern, an emergency room sign. The black at the edge of my vision was curling up. Someone had taken a knife and driven it straight down into my brain.

“Alexandria is a half hour away,” Liam shouted, turning back over his shoulder. “I’m not taking you there!”

“Fairfax Hospital,” Chubs wheezed out. “My dad…tell them to page Dad.…”

“Where is it?” Liam demanded. He looked at me, but I had no idea, either. It occurred to me then that there was a chance we would be driving around so long that Chubs would die. He would bleed out right here, right now, in my lap. After everything.

Liam whipped the car around so hard I had to brace Chubs and me from flying off the seat. I bit my tongue in an effort to keep from screaming again.

“Keep talking to him!” Liam said. “Chubs—Charles!”

I don’t know when and where he had lost his glasses. His eyes were red at the edges, staring up at my face. I tried to hold his gaze for as long as I could, but he was trying to hand me something. Chubs lifted his hand from where it had fallen across his stomach.

Jack’s letter. Its edges soaked in wet, sticky blood, but open. Waiting to be read.

The handwriting was small and cramped. Each letter had a ghostly halo around it from the time it had spent submerged with the two of us in the lake, and some were gone completely.

Dear Dad,

When you sent me to school that morning, I thought you loved me. But now I see you for what you are. You called me a monster and a freak. But you’re the one that raised me.

“Tell him to read…” Chubs licked his lips. I had to lean down to hear his voice over the wind outside. “Tell Lee to read my letter. I wrote it…it was for him.”

“Charles,” I said.

“Promise—”

Whatever lodged itself in my throat made it impossible to speak. I nodded. A rush of blood bubbled up under our hands, coming faster than before.

“Where is it?” Liam was shouting. “Chubs, where is the hospital? You have to—you have to tell me where it is!”

The car began to quiver, then howl, sounding more beast than machine. Liam hit a pothole in the road that sent the front hood flying up, along with a cloud of gray-blue smoke. We got another ten, maybe twenty feet, before the car jerked to a dead stop.

I looked up, meeting his gaze.

“I can fix it,” Liam swore, his voice breaking, “I can fix it—just—just—keep him talking, okay? I can fix this. I can.”

I waited until I heard the door slam behind him before I closed my eyes. Chubs had gone so still, so pale, and no amount of shaking or yelling would bring him back out of it. I felt his blood leak past my hands, scarlet under the overcast sky, and I thought about what he had said the night Zu left us. It’s over. It’s all over.

And it was. The unnatural calm that settled over me told me as much. All along, I’d been fighting. I’d been fighting the moment I left Thurmond, struggling against the restraints everyone wanted to wrap around me, kicking and clawing against the inevitable. But I was tired now. So tired. I couldn’t deny what a part of me had known from the moment the PSFs had burned my world down. What a part of me had known all along.

What had Miss Finch said, all those years ago? That there were no do-overs, no comebacks? That once someone was gone, they were gone forever. Dead flowers didn’t bloom, and they didn’t grow. A dead Chubs wouldn’t smile, spout off rambling sentences, wouldn’t pout, wouldn’t laugh—a dead Chubs was unimaginable.

I reached into the pocket of Liam’s jacket and pushed the panic button. Twenty seconds clicked by, each one feeling longer than the last. It gave a little vibration, a little acknowledgment, and I released it.

Outside, Liam was banging metal against metal—growing more helpless and angry by the second. I wanted to call him back to us, to have him next to Chubs, because I was sure this was it. I was sure he was going to die right there in my arms, less than twenty-four hours after he had saved me. And I couldn’t do anything for him other than hold him.

“Do not die,” I whispered. “You cannot die. You have to take calculus and go to football games and go to prom and apply to colleges and you absolutely cannot die. You can’t—you can’t—”

I detached completely. A familiar numbness took hold of my entire body. I was vaguely aware of Liam shouting something outside. My arms tightened around Chubs’s chest. I heard feet shuffling against the loose asphalt outside; all I could smell was smoke and blood. All I could hear was my own heartbeat.

That’s when the door across from me opened, and Cate’s face appeared.

And that’s when I began to cry, really cry.

“Oh, Ruby,” she said, anguished. “Ruby.”

“Please help him,” I sobbed. “Please!”

Two pairs of hands reached in to lift me out. My arms were still wrapped around Chubs. I couldn’t move my hands. There was so much blood. I kicked and butted against whoever was trying to pull us apart.