“You know Ms. Johnson would probably give you an extension on that exam if you asked.” He’s not going to press the issue. He’s not going to rush me, I realize, and relax.
“Um, let me stop you right there. No.” I peer up at him, curling my thumbs under the padded strap of my book bag. “I absolutely can’t fall any farther behind than I am now. Not if I want to graduate with you guys.” I’d decided before any of this that—if I lived—I wasn’t going to finish my high school career with the lowly juniors below us. No way. “Plus, anytime my parents take a break from pill patrol, they switch right over to hyperscientific grade analysis. I’m not joking. There’s a chart where my mom has calculated how many more points I’ll need on my SAT to offset the fact I’ll no longer be recruited for swim team so that I can still get into Stanford. It’s frightening.”
“What about the Replacement Child? I thought she was occupying most of the free space on their mental hard drives.”
“Elsie? She already has Stanford onesies, socks, and matching hair bows. Trust me, she’s a shoo-in.”
“Well, don’t count yourself out of the running just yet. You may have a better shot than you think. I”—he scoots back, knocking at my locker door—“have a present for you. Open up.”
I glance sideways at Henry. “Okay, weirdo.” I spin my combination lock. “You didn’t have to get all mushy on me.” What if he’s planned some grand romantic gesture for my return? I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
He shrugs.
Inside my locker is a new binder tied with wrinkly pink ribbon. I pull it out, cradling it with one arm. “Gee, thanks, school supplies. Can never have too many of these.” I drum my fingers on the white plastic. Okay, definitely not romantic.
He rolls his eyes. “Look inside, Stel.” God, I hate when he calls me that.
I tug at one end of the messy bow and stash the ribbon in my locker. Unfolding the binder, I peek. Scratchy handwriting is scrawled on pages of leaf paper. I immediately snap it shut. “It’s the homework I missed, isn’t it?” I squint up at him. I’ve always found Henry’s height comforting.
He sighs. “Oh God. Please don’t make a big deal out of this. My new number’s in there, too. See?” He flips to the inside cover. “Had to get a new phone. So don’t”—he points at me in mock seriousness—“throw this away.”
I stare at the cover. A binder full of all the work I need to make up. Of course it’s tempting. A fast track to senior-year fun. I shake my head, ignoring the devil on my left shoulder. I’ve come this far.
“Henry…” I say, drawing out the word a little too long. “Thank you. Really.” I stretch up onto my tippy-toes and wrap my arms around his neck. My nose squishes into the rough fabric of his uniform and I’m caught up in the familiar fresh scent of Dove soap and Ralph Lauren cologne.
He pushes away and holds me out at arm’s length. “Okay, what’s wrong?”
“Not to be that girl”—I curl my fingers into air quotes—“but I feel a little, I don’t know, icky, taking this. Like I’d be cheating.” My shoulders pinch up toward my ears.
“Oh, come on, Stella.” He wraps his palms over the bill of his baseball cap, tugging it down over his eyes. “I knew you were going to do this. Weren’t you the one complaining that your incessant rule-following hadn’t gotten you anywhere? That was you before surgery, right?”
“Yeah, but…” I bite my lip. He’s right. If I made it—and that was a big if—I’d promised myself I’d try not to be so uptight.
“And besides, it’s not like anyone thinks you can’t do it on your own. You’re, like, number one in the class.”
“Correction: was number one in our class.” I feel my lips curl into a scowl. Missing a couple hundred days of school doesn’t exactly work wonders for your academic record.
“Whatever. You know what I mean. Everybody missed you. It’d be nice to actually get to see your face now that you’re back for real.”
“Henry. Nobody missed me. I’ve been practically invisible in this school since, like, my diagnosis.”
“I wouldn’t say nobody.”
I stare up at him, trying to give him my best puppy-dog eyes. For good measure, I thrust out my lower lip, too. “Look, I’m sorry. I know I’m lame and I swear I’m going to change that, but…I just have to do this my way, okay?”
Henry tilts his head back and stares up at the locker pod ceiling for a good five seconds. “You, Stella Cross, are too good for your own good.”
“True,” I say, this time giving him a playful punch in the gut. “But that’s why I keep you around.”
Just then, two clammy hands reeking of cocoa butter and chlorine cover my eyeballs. “Guess who-oo?”
“Oh my God, Brynn!” I squeal, spinning to wrap her in a big hug, too. Brynn’s auburn hair is swept into a messy bun and she’s wearing a blue zip-up hoodie over her uniform. When Brynn and I were little, we’d once tried to count the freckles on her cheeks but kept losing track, so we decided she must have infinity freckles, which at the time didn’t make sense, but ended up being sort of true, since she seemed to keep getting more every summer. I haven’t seen her since post-op at the hospital. Once home, my parents had adopted the title of “Germ Nazis” and hadn’t allowed visitors.
“You look ah-mazing!” She twirls me around. “Here I was thinking you’d be all like zombified with stringy hair and fingers falling off. But nope. Good as new.”
As hard as I try to keep up—which until now hasn’t been very—Brynn continues to outpace me on everything, whether it’s rounding third base with the captain of the cross-country team or getting caught with a cigarette after last period. I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore when I come back from a long absence to find she’s not the same freckle-faced kid I knew growing up. For instance, she seems to have a new piercing every time I see her, and this time it’s her eyebrow, a neon-green barb that looks like it hurts, threaded through the skin above her right eye.
“I think to be a zombie, I’d have to have been bitten by a zombie. You don’t just spontaneously become a zombie by dying and coming back to life.”
“Not necessarily,” says Henry. “You could be Patient Zero. Like, you could have been the first person infected and the zombie disease was just lurking inside of you so that when you died and reanimated, you’d be total walking dead. Don’t you guys ever watch TV?”
I stick my tongue out at him.
“See?” Brynn crosses her arms. “For all we know, you could be about to start the apocalypse.”
“Noted,” I say. “Then I guess you two better stay on my good side.”