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THE WORLD IS so green and bright. Its beauty hurts her eyes.

Emma feels like she’s floating down the path.

Every cell in her body feels like it’s charged with electricity, with new and ferocious life.

They kept her overnight at the hospital.

Her father was by her side the whole time, eerily silent without his phone, which he’d left in his car.

Instead, he held her hand, only letting it go when he brought her back to campus this morning.

She’s only dimly aware of where she’s walking. She has no plan for what happens next. She feels like she’s woken up from a dream.

Yesterday was supposed to be the end. Instead it was a beginning.

Of what she isn’t sure yet. A life without Claire.

But a life that will mean something. A life where Rhaina is okay, and she knows that the little ripples she causes by doing good things for one person will spread, eventually affecting the entire world.

She sees Ridgemont students walking to breakfast, laughing with each other like nothing has ever been wrong. For the first time in months, Emma doesn’t want to tell them that they’re doomed.

Because what if, somehow, they aren’t? What if, every time someone told her things were going to be okay, and she just sneered—what if she was the one who was wrong?

A robin hops along the path beside her for a moment, then flutters up into a tree.

She stops and looks up, wanting to find her nest. She’s peering dazedly into the branches when Rachel Daley appears by her side, talking a mile a minute, questions shooting out of her mouth like bullets, her phone held out to capture an audio clip.

Emma flinches away. But she catches a strange look in the reporter’s eye. And Emma suddenly realizes that Rachel Daley is disappointed.

Emma speaks softly, her voice full of wonder. “You secretly wanted me to die, didn’t you?”

Rachel stops the recording app, shakes her head. “No, Emma, listen—”

“Not to you,” Emma says, spinning away. “You just want a headline. You don’t actually care about me. The real story is that I didn’t die, that I chose life and kindness, and caring for others. I know it’s not the front page. I know it’s not above the fold. But that’s the story. Print that. ”

And Emma walks away beneath the magnolia trees. Free.

Hopeful.

Alive.