(This chapter sucks and everything before it is unpolished but I'm so impatient to get to the good parts.)
She went to school rattled by last night's dream, the dream where she saw the fresh grave for a 14-year-old boy, herself the cause, and in Patch's classroom Topper waited in the doorway.
"I'm assigned to this room today."
"Okay," Ren said.
The room was dark and empty, all the kids outside running around before they had to sit and listen. Ren dumped her supplies on an empty desk. "Did you consider?" asked Topper from behind her.
She employed her usual tactic of pretending he had never existed in this realm, or any of the others she had been in.
"You didn't answer me on Saturday."
"I have considered the...whatever. The notion. I consider it every single time you ask me. And I say no."
"But why?"
He was honestly unreal. "Because I don't want to. A girl doesn't want to go somewhere with you. Can you believe that?"
He didn't budge. His eyes didn't even blink behind his glasses. "No girl has ever gone anywhere with me. Except Kit."
"So I'm your pity choice?"
"Ren." He raked both hands through his hair and held his head a moment, then let go, his hair falling in five directions. "No...how do I say this."
Don't say it at all, Ren thought, because she didn't want to hear him, didn't want to hear anything from anyone. Hollis had treated her with silence all Sunday. The news was all bad, and Ren couldn't sleep. And soon she would have seven loud kids in here, most of them boys, and they were supposed to have another lockdown drill, safety cards and all.
Some drills were more serious than others. Most covered classroom protocol and nothing else, but occasionally the whole school went on a realistic lockdown, with no warning about what time it would occur. Ren tried to keep the day going as normal. She read the lesson about ancient runes--typed on a piece of paper in a binder, because there were not enough textbooks for each room---and the kids carved the symbols of their name into blocks of brown clay. Topper swept the floor afterwards. The kids broke into groups and read aloud to each other--Patch and Calum together, Lucas paired with the youngest boy named Gray, Laurel and Evie together as the only girls. "I guess you're with me," said Ren to Avery, the light-haired boy often left behind, and did not worry about how Topper was supposed to occupy himself for the next half hour.
She and Avery sat in a drafty corner on carpet scraps, their feet facing each other's, and in the middle of reading Avery nudged the toe of his shoe into hers. He still dragged his finger to keep his spot but he was improving, and corrected Ren when she skipped a line. She couldn't think. Her body was tense, waiting for the bell, the second she would have to jump up and act and pretend this was all real, and she forgot Topper was in the room, and when she looked up and saw him watching her, everything felt worse.
They got through the reading. They were supposed to review math. Ren didn't understand the math, but Topper took over, covering both side of the chalkboard easel with symbols while the kids followed in their notebooks. Lucas chewed his pencil as his eyes slid to the window.
"Just a little longer. Keep your eyes on Topper," Ren said, pretending to redirect everyone instead of just Lucas.
"Ren, when does the drill happen?" Patch asked.
