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SARA: Good. Okay. Then we can try again.

ASHFORD: Are you certain? I don’t want to push too far too fast.

Sara frowns faintly.

SARA: No, I think we have to do this. I think we have to do it soon. I think ... I think we’re running out of time. I am. Running out. I ...

Her brow creases, smooths. Her next words are a whisper.

SARA: Do you understand?

28

THE OTHERS CATCHup to us not long after. I don’t know if I’ve already forgotten by then—the bridge, what I saw. Even now that I remember what I’d forgotten, I don’t remember when it was I forgot. Is that strange?

Mel and Kyle find us first, and I panic, because Becca and Anthony should have been before them—but they’re less than a minute behind, racing out of the mist and fetching up near us with identical stricken expressions.

“That was a trip,” Mel says, underselling it by a mile. She shows her teeth, but it isn’t a smile. I want to ask what they saw, and I can see the same question on their faces, but no one speaks it out loud. One confession will demand the rest, and I don’t think any of us can quite bear that.

“This is it, then,” Anthony says. “The last gate.”

“Not the last,” Lucy says. “There’s one more.” The gate to Ys itself. And from there, a way home.

We clamber over the broken gate, helping each other across. On the other side the road sticks out into the mist like a broken-off dock. No one moves.

“We’ve come this far,” I say. “We can do this.” I reach out and take Becca’s hand, then Mel’s. Mel grips Kyle’s hand tight, and Anthony takes the other, Becca and Anthony closing the ring—Lucy dropping back, away, giving us the moment. We held hands like this before we stepped onto the road. A ring of us, and so many gone now.

“You came for me,” Becca says. “All of you. I don’t know how to make that up to you. How to make it worth everything you’ve been through. Everyone we’ve lost.”

“We did this for you. Not because of you,” Anthony says. “Don’t feel guilty. Feel...”

“Loved,” I say softly. “We came, all of us, out of love. For you. For each other. Even Jeremy, even though I doubt he’d appreciate me saying it.”

“Way too much of a bro for that touchy-feely stuff,” Mel agrees with a tilting smile, and we chuckle. “Sara’s right. We’re here out of love. Because of what all of us were willing to give up for it. Especially Trina. She loved you more than anything in the world, Kyle, and she would do what she did a thousand times over again if she knew it would get you home. And so we’regoingto get you home.”

“I hope I’m worth it,” Kyle says.

“I hope I’m worth it, too,” Becca says. They share a look that settles from pain into a kind of peace.

“We all get home,” Anthony says. “That’s how this ends. Every one of us.”

“Every one of us,” we all echo.

The circle breaks. Anthony keeps hold of Becca’s hand, andMel lingers near me a moment. We don’t have the right habits yet—the small things to comfort each other, to connect not as friends, or not friends alone, but whatever we’re becoming. We have to settle for an out-of-place smile, a gaze that lingers a second longer than it might have yesterday, a brief touch of her hand against mine.

Then Lucy steps up, her smile sweet, and slips her hand into mine once more.

“It isn’t far now,” she tells us. “Soon this will all be over.”

“Should we go first?” I ask.

“We’ll go first,” Kyle says. “I mean, if that’s okay. I just want this over with.” His eyes shift away from mine.

We watch silently as Mel and Kyle walk into the mist, turning into shadows before they vanish.

“Ready?” Lucy asks me.

“Ready,” I lie, and we walk after them.