Page 90 of Five Survive

Maddy leaned across the table, placing her vote in next. She didn’t retake her seat, standing instead, pacing to the front of the RV, where she brushed past Simon.

Simon sidestepped over, just as Arthur pushed up from the sofa with a fake-leather creak. They dropped their votes in together, at the same time, the small puff of the paper landing.

Reyna was last, walking across from the door, eyes straight ahead. She reached over and let go. It fell, not featherlight this time, into the bowl.

She stepped away, the sofa catching her in the back of her legs, pulling her down.

Simon and Arthur were in that middle space between the kitchen and the front door, Red still behind the counter, separate from everyone else. Maddy up front.

Oliver stood up, a bone cracking somewhere beneath his skin. He sidled out of the booth, coming to stand in front of the table. He reached back to slide the bowl over, dragging it against the wood and against Red’s ears. Too loud, every sound was too loud and every breath was too hard, her ribs folding in, one by one.

This was it.

Did she live or did she die?

They couldn’t have voted for her to die, could they? These were her friends. Simon, who could always make her laugh, even on this awful, endless night. Maddy, her Maddy. Arthur, not hers, but maybe he could have been. Reyna, and that understanding they had between them, the knowing glances.

Oliver picked up the bowl and gave it a shake, the pieces of paper sliding over each other, whispering and shushing. What did they know that Red didn’t? Oliver placed the bowl back down and nodded. At least he was kind enough to not be smiling.

His hand moved into the bowl, shuffling through the papers. He pulled out the first vote, plucked between his finger and thumb.

He unraveled the double fold, eyes skipping across the word written there.

“No,” he read aloud.

No. Red’s heart leaped to her throat. No. One vote for her to live. Her hands were shaking, but she needed them, sticking out the thumb of her right hand to keep the tally. One vote to live.

Oliver was digging through for the next vote, pulling it out. His lips tensed.

“Yes,” he read.

Red’s heart sank again, dropping into the acid of her stomach, where it fizzed and fizzed, like a two-way radio. Yes. One vote for her to die. But she’d known that was coming. She knew Oliver was voting yes, she didn’t need to be scared. But her heart didn’t listen, drowning down there. Red stuck out the thumb on her left hand to match. One vote each.

Oliver picked up the next folded bit of paper, pulling it apart.

“No,” he said, dropping the opened vote on the table, beside the others.

No. Thank you, thank you. Red stuck out the index finger on herright hand. Another vote for her to live. Two against one. They’d already had Oliver’s vote, wouldn’t the rest beNOs, filling up her right hand?

Red’s eyes dried out, scratchy and raw, staring too hard at Oliver’s hands, fingers dipping into the bowl for the fourth vote. He pulled it out and unfolded it.

He breathed in, held on to it just too long.

“Yes,” he said.

No, no, no.

Red’s throat constricted, cutting her breath in half. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Another vote for her to die. This wasn’t just fear anymore, was it? This was what terror felt like, her body reshaping around it. But who? Who else voted yes? Her eyes snapped wider, panicked, skipping from Maddy to Arthur to Reyna to Simon. Which one of them was it? Which one wanted to force her out of the RV, out into the wide-open nothing? Which one of them was okay with her dying out there? They all looked shocked, afraid, wretched. Red couldn’t tell. But someone wasn’t shocked, that vote belonged to someone.

She raised another finger on her left hand. Two votes each. To live or to die.

“Last vote,” Oliver said, scraping the final piece of paper out of the bowl.

The deciding vote. Live or die.

He twisted it between his fingers, taking too long. Unpicking the first fold, then the second.

Oliver spun the piece of paper around.