I was hollow.
Without my friends to love and fight for, I was empty—so, so empty.
Hands eventually descended on my back and shoulders. I didn’t care whose, because I already knew they wouldn’t be Griffin’s or Layla’s or Hunt’s or Brady’s.
This was why Griffin said he’d rather die time and time again than to have to watch the rest of us go. This cavernous hollowness so terrible it would consume me was why he’d been so haunted for being the sole survivor among us after the shooting at Ridgemore High.
As if I too had been speared through, smashed, and shattered, I shuddered at the very real possibility that I might never speak with any of them ever again. I pressed both hands to my chest, smearing my shirt and skin with blood most foul.
Ten thousand Magnums weren’t worth these four.
All I wanted was these four people. Just these four.
“Joss … honey.” It was my dad—or my not-dad, but what did any of that matter anymore?
His familiar hand soothed circles along my back. That was when I discovered I was shaking violently.
“Honey, come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you out of here.”
Numbly, I rose. My legs wobbled. My dad pulled me into him. Pressed a kiss to my head.
“I need their bodies together,” I said in a voice I heard as if from far, far away.
“What? Honey, no. Leave them. We’ll come back for them soon. We won’t abandon them here, I promise.”
I stepped free of his embrace. Crouched to grab an arm or leg of Layla’s that wouldn’t cause her further damage, decided there were no good options, and turned toward Brady instead.
I clutched his arm and tugged him toward her. His body caught on the wooden fragments of a chair, but I continued dragging him right over them.
“Joss, no…” my dad said.
“What’s she doing?” Orson asked. When my dad didn’t answer, he asked me the same question.
I didn’t so much as glance their way. I was already staring at Hunt, calculating how far away he was and how to get him over here.
“I’m gonna save them,” I said, my thoughts racing ahead. “Help me get Hunt over next to Brady and Layla.”
“Are you thinking of trying to revive them?” my dad asked.
I didn’t answer. Of course that’s what I was going to do.
“Magnum told you doing that would kill you,” he said, as if thedrashhadn’t been talking to me directly.
The mob of Magnums had concealed much if my dad had been here long enough to hear that.
“Magnum was a self-serving liar,” I said, straddling Hunt’s hips, examining the huge wound in his abdomen.
My dad crouched beside me. So did Orson. The hushed conversations of the other survivors in the room burbled like lapping waves.
“I don’t think he was lying about this,” my dad said. “From what we’ve gathered, he was telling the truth. If you try to revive them, you’ll fail. And you’ll die.”
When I tried to grip it, my palms slid along the chair leg impaling Hunt. Too much blood. I wiped my hands aggressively on the thighs of my jeans until the blood was tacky enough that I could grab the chair leg and hold on.
“Sweetheart … you can’t,” my dad said. His tone was still gentle but firm, an imploring edge starting to sneak into it.
I adjusted my grip. Now that I had purpose again, my shaking had subsided.
Sucking in an inhale, I yanked the chair leg from Hunt’s stomach. Its tip splintered and left fragments of wood inside his body, but I didn’t clean them out. Who knew what might happen if Magnum’s blood from my hands got inside Hunt, melded with his own blood? Maybe nothing would happen, but I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t.
