Foster finishes his cookie, eyeing them carefully before talking again. “Want me to stay?” he asks me.
“No, I’m good,” I reply. He waits to see if I’ll change my mind, but I really do want to be alone so I can think. Foster nods, and says he’ll see me later, before jogging over to where Nathan is holding court.
I watch them, the easy way Nathan smiles at Jana like nothing’s wrong. Jana’s dark-lined eyes following his every move. Foster chatting with Arturo, whom he’s dated on and off for the past few months. They all look so happy. I’d feel left out if I wasn’t already aching inside.
Another girl in the group catches my attention: Vanessa Ortiz—a returner. When Jana first arrived at our school, the two of them became best friends. Normally it would be odd, but Vanessa isn’t like the other former patients. She seems well-adjusted. Normal. No twitches or breakdowns. Nathan heard it was because she started a new sort of therapy—a counteractive to The Program.
We’re all wary of that sort of nonsense, though. A cure to a cure only equals more fucked-up-ness, so we didn’t bother asking for more details. But maybe the new therapy is working. It’s definitely something to consider now that Weston is back.
I take a sip of my orange juice and stash the chips in my backpack for later. I’m not hungry. Instead I notice a couple on the other side of the half wall, their backs against the building. Courtney Dane, another returner, sits with her new boyfriend. Her eyes are narrowed as she glares at him, and I guess that they’re in the middle of an argument.
Of course, when Courtney returned, she didn’t remember that she and Joshua used to hate each other. Nothing violent, but he was a judgmental know-it-all in class while she was popular and impatient with his bullshit. I couldn’t stand the way Joshua treated her, like she owed him her attention.
They’d had words more than once: He called her a shallow bitch, claiming she didn’t want a “nice guy” like him. Yeah. Courtney wasn’t swayed by that. She told him he was a loser and always would be.
But . . . what we didn’t realize at the time was that Courtney had been slowly unwinding—spiraling, just like the spirals people would draw on their notebooks. A symbol of how deep and dark they were burrowing inside themselves. We heard the handlers found a stash of notebooks in Courtney’s locker filled with those spirals. She’s lucky to be alive.
Courtney Dane had gone out one Friday night to an underground party where she had been friendlier than ever. She laughed with friends, and even made out with a guy she knew. And then she promptly went home and jumped in her family’s pool. She was unconscious when her mom found her—nearly drowned. The firefighters were able to resuscitate her, but she didn’t come back to school. Instead she went into The Program.
She returned two months later, her beautiful long dark hair cropped short and preppy at the chin. She smiled politely; she looked empty. I imagine it had a lot to do with the sedatives The Program doctors had given her.
In those hazy days, Courtney started talking with Joshua, and eventually they became a couple. I found the idea terrifically sad. Could Courtney truly choose a relationship with him if she didn’t remember their past?
We’re not friends, but I asked Courtney once after class if she knew how she and Joshua hated each other. She laughed it off, and said people change. Especially her. But Joshua was the only person who spoke to her when she returned; her friends abandoned her.
And now she and Joshua have been dating for months.
A cool breeze blows over me, rustling the leaves overhead. I pick up my juice to take another sip, and I hear a loud gasp. And then another. I look back over to Courtney and Joshua, and see Joshua jump to his feet. I’m momentarily confused until I see Courtney clutching her throat, trying to breathe.
I’m stunned, watching as she struggles for breath, her eyes rolling back in her head. She must be choking. Joshua screams for help, but as several lunch monitors rush in their direction, I hear Courtney whisper: “I’m drowning.”
My juice carton falls from my hand and hits the ground as I climb to my feet. Around the courtyard, everyone watches with trepidation. Courtney’s not really drowning, but what exactly is going on, I’m not sure. The science teacher, Mr. Winston, drops to his knees next to her, his hand on her back. After a quick assessment, he starts coaching her through her breathing, and I wonder if this is a panic attack. Another returner crashback. Behind Courtney, Joshua’s eyes fill with tears.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
A crowd gathers, and I look down to see the orange juice from my carton making a river toward the grass. Courtney is lying back, labored but breathing on her own. She begins to cry.
“Just let me die,” she rasps out. “Leave me in the pool.”
Her words make me sick to my stomach. Courtney seems trancelike, and it occurs to me that she’s not herself—she’s having a flashback. She’s trying to kill herself all over again.
The vice principal appears, jogging over with a black walkie-talkie clutched in his hand. I turn and look for Nathan, finding him already watching me. His eyes are wide and concerned, but not just for Courtney. He nods toward her, as if saying that could be me.
I pick up the empty carton of juice from the ground and grab my backpack to slip it over my shoulders. I make my way over to the trash and throw out the carton. I stop there and steady myself.
That won’t be me. I’ve never wanted to die—not like the others did. I was just sad, and what everyone ignored is that there’s a big fucking difference between the two. So many people were wrongfully taken.
I check back on Courtney and find her sitting up, sipping from a bottle of water another teacher has provided. Although she’s shaking, Courtney’s eyes are clear. The flashback has passed for now. But when Joshua reaches for her, I see her avoid his touch.
Maybe she remembered. I imagine that would shift her entire world.
And now I’m worried about Wes. The sight of a girl crashing back like that, drowning on air, even if it was only in her head, has unsettled me. I have to find Wes and make sure that The Program hasn’t left him half sorted and confused like Alecia. Or crashing back like Courtney.
I walk into the building a few minutes before the bell rings. The next-period lunch students are already making their way toward the cafeteria, but I don’t head toward my history class. Instead I begin searching the halls for Weston, trying to find his new locker location. I grow hyperaware of every whisper, every glance. I want a hint as to where Wes might be, and sympathetic expressions become breadcrumbs that will lead me to him.
And it’s the flash of a pitying smile in the science hallway that makes me turn that way. Sure enough, I find Wes. He’s standing in front of an open locker, his brows pulled together as he stares inside, like he forgot which book he was looking for. A few people glance at him as they pass, whispering. They know he went through The Program. They know he’s not the same. And because of that, they’ll avoid him—as if the contagion is still around us, hidden.
The epidemic may be over, but the fear is not. The fear may never be.
My heart is in my throat as I approach him. I self-consciously slide my hair behind my ears and then brush it forward again so that I don’t look nearly as distraught as I feel. I won’t get my hopes up. I won’t.
I pause a few lockers away and watch Wes, hoping to see a glimpse of the boy I love. A sly smile, the sort that’s full of mischief and desire. The smile that can melt away any argument.
Wes sighs and slams his locker shut without a book. I jump at the metallic sound, and consider disappearing into the sea of students walking down the hallway. A few people, unaware of the war going on inside my head, say hello to me. I smile politely but keep my attention on Wes, making sure he’s okay. I should walk away before he notices me staring, but I can’t bring myself to. I’ve waited so long to see his face. I’ve missed him so much.
He runs his palm over his shaved head, flustered
, annoyed. It used to be that returners would come back well behaved and sedated. Program doctors gave them actual sedatives—not medication—when they returned. It made them too weak to fight back. But Wes is clearly not under any influence, because his emotions play across his face.
I rest my shoulder against the cool metal locker, unable to move.
He exhales, seeming to prepare himself to reenter the classroom, and then he starts to walk away. Suddenly panic—bright and red—breaks across my chest.
“Wes, wait,” I call out to him without thinking. “Do you remember me?” I ask.
Wes stops, his uncharacteristic loafers scraping on the linoleum tiles. He turns slowly, and I recognize each feature as it comes into focus. The light-brown freckles dusting his nose and cheeks, the dimples that are obvious even when he’s not smiling. My entire soul moves toward him even though I stay in place.
“What?” he asks, his eyes sweeping over me in an unimpressed way.
He used to gaze at me, stare and ask if it bothered me. I’d say yes, and he would keep staring anyway, making me laugh. He’d even keep his eyes open sometimes when we kissed—said he liked that my eyelids fluttered when his tongue touched mine.
“Do you remember me?” I ask again, my voice hushed. Desperate.
Once again, his dark brows pull together, like he’s looking into his locker, not recognizing anything.
“No,” he says simply. I expect a follow-up question: “Should I?” But he doesn’t say anything else. He tightens his jaw and turns to feed into the hallway traffic.
I fall back against the locker, losing him in the crowd. I rest my head against the metal, a headache beginning to throb behind my eyes. At least he’s not having a crashback, I think. At least there’s that. We’ll be fine.
Denial coats its way through my veins, trying to protect me from reality. Wes could be pretending to forget me, I rationalize. Or . . . he might remember later. Right? It’s possible.
I hitch in a breath, choking back my emotions. Wishing for impossible things. Wishing I could go back to how we were. I close my eyes.
“What’s your favorite part?” Wes asked me once, holding my hand as we left a restaurant after dinner. He’d given me his jacket, and the smell of him surrounded me—seduced me.
The parking lot of the Montage was deserted, and when we got to his motorcycle, I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “All of you, I guess.” Wes handed me the scuffed black helmet, and then reached to buckle it under my chin.
“Not good enough,” he said, putting on his own helmet. “We all have favorite parts. For example,” he explained, helping me on the back of the bike, “I like your smile. It’s kind of wide and goofy, but in a sexy sort of way.”
I dropped my hands to my sides. “Did you just call my face goofy?”
He laughed. “Tell me your favorite,” he said, climbing in front of me on the bike. The night air was cold, and I liked the feel of his body close to mine. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of snuggling close now that he’d called me goofy.
“Uh, well, it’s definitely not your mouth,” I said.
“You sure?” he asked. Wes turned, putting his chin on his shoulder to look back at me—the way he always did. “I’m good with my mouth,” he offered.
I rolled my eyes, even if the mention stirred me a bit. “I still hate you.”
He hummed out that he could understand why, and then licked his lips like he was waiting for me to kiss him. I leaned in and did just that.
It was his dimples—my absolute favorite part was his dimples and how I could see them even when he wasn’t smiling.
“I love you, Tate,” he whispered against my lips, and kissed me again. My fingers threaded through his long hair, his hand gripped my thigh against his side. I loved him too. More than I could say. Around us, the world was cold and dreary. But we had each other.
That was before Wes was taken to The Program.
Overhead, the class bell sounds and I shake myself out of the memory. I can’t get lost in the past, in all that’s been taken—it’ll drive me mad. Nathan is right about that.
I push off the locker, and then notice a girl across the hall—Kyle Mahoney—watching me. She has long blond hair and sun-kissed skin. And from her pitying expression, I guess she overheard my desperate attempt to talk to Weston.
I don’t break eye contact, defiant in my shame. Not even when tears drip onto my cheeks; I brush them aside with the back of my hand. Finally Kyle lowers her eyes and turns toward her locker, leaving me to wallow in my loneliness.
CHAPTER THREE
I WALK TO THE FRONT office of the school and pause outside the frosted-glass door. I take out my phone and call my grandfather. The line rings and I look around the deserted hall, the weight in my chest heavy enough to pull me through the floor.
“Hello?” Pop says when he answers.
“Hey,” I say. “Any chance you can call the school and tell them I have a doctor’s appointment?” I ask. The sound of my grandfather’s voice protects me from myself, from the emotions bubbling up.
“Are you sick?” he asks, sounding more curious than anything.
“Heartsick,” I respond. “Weston came back to school today.”
The line is silent for a moment, and then I hear the creaky springs of the recliner chair. “Yep,” he says with a groan of an old man standing up. “I’ll call ’em now.”
“Thanks, Pop,” I say, and hang up. Once he calls in, I’ll be able to sign myself out. The regulations have loosened since The Program ended. Plus, I’m eighteen. If I didn’t want the excused absence from class, I could just leave.
I’ve lived with my grandparents since I was a baby. My mother had me when she was young, too young I guess, because she dropped me off with her parents. I see her on holidays; she remarried in her twenties and started a new family. We’re not hostile or anything, but Gram and Pop are my parents—both legally and emotionally. They’re the ones who raised me.
My dad is in the wind, somewhere in New York, I hear. I’m lucky, though. Some people grow up without any support, but I happen to have the best grandparents in the world. I’ve never felt left out of the family experience. And when The Program dominated our lives, my grandfather spoke against it. Said he thought it was adding to the epidemic. He’s a smart man.
We have a house in the suburbs of Portland, and Nathan lives next door to us. It’s just him and his mom; his parents divorced when he was in middle school, but his dad lives only a few blocks away. He sees him every other weekend or whenever he feels like it. So I guess we’re both lucky.
Unlike Wes. He has both a mother and a father, but the windows of his house were always dark, no one waiting up for him to come home. His bedroom was in the renovated basement with its own entrance, completely separate from his mom and dad. He had a sister once, but she died in a car accident a little over two years ago. She was the passenger in a suicide pact. It’s not something Wes talked about. Not even to me.
Wes used to tell me that his parents forgot he existed most days, and maybe he was right at the time. But then The Program got to them, sweeping them up in the hysteria. After that, his mother hovered, listened. Fretted.
I try to remind myself that she was right to be worried. We all knew something was wrong with Wes. Because one afternoon, he disappeared. Ran away. He was gone for almost a week, and when he came back, he was different. I couldn’t help him—I wasn’t enough. He needed therapy. Instead he got The Program.
Now he doesn’t remember a damn thing.
• • •
My grandfather is waiting when I get home, like always. He retired from the newspaper a couple of years ago, while my gram still works as the patient coordinator at the hospital. Gram told me she’ll work until she’s in the ground and she means it. But my grandparents are relatively young, so I don’t worry about them leaving me any time soon.
I close the front door and set my backpack on the bottom stair before walking into th
e living room. My grandfather is in his blue recliner, and he looks up at me, his glasses perched on the edge of his nose. He folds the newspaper in half.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“I’m not sure how,” I answer, and go to sit on the couch. I pull my legs underneath me, resting my elbows on my knees, and close my eyes. “Weston came back. I spoke to him.” I look over at my grandfather just as he removes his glasses.
“And?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “No, he doesn’t remember me.”
My grandfather purses his lips, thoughtful, waiting out my wave of emotion. I don’t cry—I shouldn’t have cried earlier, either. In fact, I wasn’t sure I still could. But I hurt just that much. When the wave passes, I lift one shoulder in a shrug.
“What do I do, Pop?” I ask. “What do I do to get him back?”
He seems to weigh out an answer, never quick to blurt out an opinion. “Does he look well?” he asks. “Because before he left . . . your grandmother and I were worried about both of you, really.”
“I didn’t talk to him long enough to psychoanalyze his condition,” I say, and then apologize if it sounded harsh.
“Before you make any decision about what to do with Weston,” he says, “I ask that you keep an eye on him first. Jumping headfirst into a shallow pool will break your neck, Tatum. So be careful.”
“That’s incredibly encouraging,” I say, and he laughs.
“I missed my calling as a relationship counselor. Now,” he says, “there is an entire basket of your laundry sitting on top of the dryer. If you wouldn’t mind? My knees are killing me today and I don’t feel like walking upstairs.”
“Sure thing,” I say, and stand up. My grandfather settles back in his chair with the paper. “There was something else that happened today,” I add, still bothered by what happened at lunchtime.
He tilts his head. “What was it?”
“A girl—a returner. She had a crashback. She . . . she seemed to be stuck in a memory. Reliving it, I guess.”