“Are you mad at me?”

“No, no, I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you. I just thought I aced the exam. Thanks for helping me study, by the way. I guess it could’ve been worse.” What had happened? Did my brain now lack the ability to even know when it didn’t know something? Was that the part that got damaged? Where was self-awareness on the brain scan?

“Listen,” she said. “Me and Carson are heading to Johnny’s for lunch. Why don’t you come? I haven’t seen you in a while. Okay?”

“I’ll see you there,” I said. I had to get out of this house. And I could really use a friend.

Barring an academic implosion by Janna, I now wouldn’t be valedictorian. I picked the phone up again to call Decker, to vent, to listen while he made a joke or told me it didn’t matter or said something to make me feel better—but I didn’t. That part of us was gone. The casualness, the ease, the simple friendship. Suddenly, I was keeping things from him. And I knew he was doing the same thing.

I borrowed Mom’s car with permission. I parked in the same lot I had run through the afternoon before and stared out my windshield at the pizzeria. I felt a very faint tugging toward the assisted living facility, as was expected. But over that, there was something stronger. Something much stronger coming from the strip of stores in front of me. Like death was waiting for me. Like it was still circling around me but couldn’t quite find me because, like Troy had said, I wasn’t really alive anymore.

In a small town, chances were I’d know who the dying person was. Not personally, probably, since I kept my distance from the elderly, but it’d be someone’s grandparent or someone’s neighbor or someone’s uncle’s cousin. Two degrees of separation at the most. And then I’d have to know that one of our teachers was terminally ill or Janna was going to lose a grandparent or Tara was going to lose her neighbor. And even though I didn’t like Tara, I didn’t want her to lose anyone either.

So I was paralyzed in my car. Couldn’t go home. Couldn’t go to Decker’s. Couldn’t go anywhere. Too much of a coward to go in the pizzeria. Grow a spine. Okay, I’d go in, I just wouldn’t look. I plodded through the snowy parking lot and pushed my way into the crowded restaurant. The smell of grease and pepperoni should’ve been able to distract me. I kept my head mostly down and listened instead. Carson was easy to pick out. He was loud and energetic and laughed spontaneously in the middle of his own sentences. I headed in that direction, to the booth along the right wall.

I felt like crap. Judging from the way Janna and Carson looked at me and then at each other, I looked like I felt. And then I froze in the middle of the store. People hurried around me, carrying pizzas to their tables, dumping plates into the garbage, pulling spare chairs over to already full tables. I couldn’t take another step. Because the pull was coming from them. From Janna and Carson Levine. From a seventeen-year-old girl and her eighteen-year-old brother. From the girl who held my hand in the hospital and the boy who gave me my first real kiss. My friends.

One of them was going to die.

Chapter 14

“Hey, Delaney,” Janna called, tilting her head to the side. “You all right?”

I couldn’t move. By now, other people were looking at me. Carson mumbled something to his sister. Janna stood and pulled at a few of her curls, straightening them and letting them recoil again. “Um . . .” She walked over to me and put her arm around my waist. “Earth to Delaney,” she whispered in my ear. “People are looking at you kinda funny.”

I sunk into her with relief, because it wasn’t her. It wasn’t the girl who declared her friendship to me. But then my stomach clenched and my knees buckled. Because if it wasn’t her, it was Carson. Carson who kissed me on the couch. Carson who broke a window and stole a rope to rescue me. Carson who was smiling at me like we shared a private joke. “You look like you can use some food,” Janna said. I walked with her to the table and slid onto the bench beside her.

I picked up a slice and bit, barely tasting, and chewed methodically. I registered the crunch and the heat and the grease sliding down my throat, which was not at all as delightful as usual but kind of nauseating instead. And all the while I looked at Carson, who didn’t look sick in the least. He inhaled three slices of garlic-drenched pizza.

“What do you think, Delaney. Too much garlic? Is it bad for my image?” He threw his head back and laughed.

“Always his image,” Janna said, pressing a folded napkin on top of her slice, soaking up the puddled grease.