Will hoped Gonzalo would find Sasha out there. The world would be too cruel if he didn’t. Will looked to McKinley. Dark gray, muscular clouds crashed together in slow motion above the school. He needed to find David. They had to get on the road before that storm caught up with them.
He moved his blistered hands across the short bristle of his freshly shorn head. He liked the springy touch to it, but he missed his white hair. He’d gotten so used to it, it had become a part of who he was. Still, he understood David’s point, that on the road it would cause more trouble than it was worth. He looked to the plump veins spiderwebbing across his forearm and the clear separation between the different cords of muscles. This past month of manual labor and regular meals had packed meat onto his bones. He was stronger, quicker. More of a man.
Lucy would dig it.
Will and David had a long journey ahead of them, and even when they got to Minnesota, he recognized that there was no guarantee that there would be a cure waiting for them, nicely packaged in a single glossy pill. He knew things never went that perfectly. Yet, that didn’t stop him from dreaming that it could go exactly that way, and that when they returned to McKinley in a week or so, Lucy could be in his arms again, uninfected, and they could finish that kiss. The one they’d been so close to having before the crane had pulled him up out of the quad.
It felt wrong to be apart from her, wrong at a core level. This couldn’t be how other people felt when they were separated from someone they loved. There was no way. How could the world go on? He didn’t feel like he was missing his high school sweetheart, he felt like he was missing his pancreas. The only way to feel better was to do something about it. It was why he’d pushed David so hard to go on the hunt for the cure.
“David?” Will called out.
Will walked around the section of fenced-in trailers, where graduates were stashed after being pulled out of the school. There were five trailers, including the one where Will had phased out of infection, each surrounded by a separate chain-link fence. Inside the second trailer’s fence stood David. Will slowed. What was he doing there? He had said he was just going for a piss and then they would head out.
Will studied David’s face. He wore a toothy smile. Wide and expectant, like a kid at a window waiting for his grandparents to pull into the driveway with a trunkful of toys.
Will’s heart began to thump just like it did every time he saw the crane cable retract from dangling over the quad. There was always the hope that a new graduate would be hanging from its end. Someone with news about Lucy, or best of all—Lucy herself. But in the time since he’d been on the farm, no one else had graduated.
Will ran to the fence, his fingers wrapped through the chain links.
“Did they pull somebody out?” Will called out.
David didn’t break his stare at the trailer door. “Last night. We were asleep. I just found out.”
Will looked to the door. He could feel his face stretching into the same hopeful shape as David’s.
“Who’s in there?” Will said.
The possibility that Lucy could be in that trailer threatened to cleave Will’s skull in two.
The door opened, and Belinda walked out. The basket of curly fries she called hair was still black, like a Nerd’s, but soon her natural hair color, whatever that was, would overtake it. McKinley would get foggy in her mind just like it was in Will’s. He had to talk to her.
He waved to her, but her eyes focused on David first. She stumbled back in shock, and the parent behind her, who’d tested her for the last traces of the virus, steadied her. David hurried to help, but Will was stuck on the other side of the fence. He watched as they guided Belinda to the gate. Belinda stared at David, her mouth agape and speechless as she walked.
It was odd for Will to watch someone else go through the same brain-flattening realization that he’d had that night in the rain. He knew how much Belinda had looked up to David. He knew how much she loved him. She’d been one of the original group of Scraps who had approached David about starting a gang. She had helped carry David to safety after he had been hanged. She had mourned his loss. Will had a clear memory of Belinda sobbing by the fire the night the remaining Loners had found out that David had died. He’d always felt closer to Belinda after that, but he’d never told her, and for some reason he knew he never would.
When Will reached the gate, the man who’d tested Belinda walked on and left David to lock up. By now, Belinda seemed to be able to stand on her own two feet.
“No—but—but David, how …?” she managed to say as she neared him. She was crying, tears traveling down her round face like longitude lines on a globe.
“Long story,” David said.
She nearly toppled David with the force of her hug. She squeezed him with all her might, and pancaked her cheek into his chest. She smiled with her eyes clamped shut. You would have thought she’d just found out Santa was real.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.”
When she let go, David guided her toward the newly built bunkhouse.
“Come with us,” he said, and for the first time, Belinda glanced over at Will.
“Hi,” Will said.
She didn’t reply, she simply walked with David. Will assumed that maybe she was still too caught up in the magic of David’s existence. He walked in silence as Belinda and David talked. Belinda never acknowledged him once, and he began to wonder if she had a reason to snub him. What did she know?
There were too many information bombs that Will had yet to disarm before his brother could find them out, and now he was afraid of them all exploding at once. The history of McKinley that David knew had been abridged by Will. David knew that Will had fallen in with the Saints because the Loners had fallen apart, something that had been beyond Will’s control. He knew Lucy had gone Sluts, but Will told him that he had lost contact with her at that point. He didn’t tell him that they had fallen in love or that they had slept together. He and his brother were getting along for once, and it was too nice to mess up. Will didn’t know what David still felt for Lucy, and he didn’t want to know. And David seemed just as happy to avoid the subject entirely.
But as David and Will approached the bunkhouse, Belinda’s presence made the topic of Lucy feel unavoidable. Will started to sweat. He couldn’t take it anymore.
“How is she?” Will asked. “Lucy.”