“Says you in a speech you gave last week, the one about why we don’t need special fare cards to ride it,” I said. “Also, hi.”

Chubs was dressed in a sharp suit and dark overcoat, with a blue tie I’d picked out for him for his first day of work. It was almost the same exact shade as the blue pin he wore on his lapel. I pushed my hair off my shoulder, untangling it from the yellow one I’d stuck on my coat before heading out.

“Hi,” he said, carefully avoiding the umbrella to hug me. “But, seriously, how did you get here?”

“Mrs. Fletcher drove me. She waited until I saw you before driving off,” I explained into his shoulder. “Are you okay? This is a really long hug for you….” The horrible thought crashed into me a second later. “Is it Vi? Is she okay?”

He pulled back. “She’s fine. Do you want to sit for a minute?”

The rain was freezing into clumps of ice on my hat and shoulders. I couldn’t feel my lips to know if I was smiling or drooling. “Um…sure?”

Chubs was only this cagey when he was trying and failing to keep something big secret. He kept shifting uncomfortably, sliding his feet across the ground as if to look for more solid ground. Liam called it his antsy dancey. The rest of America had yet to figure out that they could trust what he was saying simply because he’d wear any lie like an anchor around his neck.

“I have something I want to talk to you about,” he began.

My pulse jumped. I nodded, drawing in a deep breath. Chubs reached over, unbuckling his briefcase. He glanced over at Frank once before sliding out a few damp sheets of paper.

“I want to talk to you about the importance of reading,” he finished.

I stared, taking the papers when he handed them over.

“Because I don’t already have enough schoolwork?” I asked.

“I found a few books that I thought you might enjoy and printed off reviews for you to help decide which ones you actually wanted. Reading can change your life,” he said. “And open your mind—”

“I already got one lecture on the importance of education today,” I cut in, tempted to hit him in the face with the paper. Why the cloak-and-dagger routine if he was just going to tell me I might like—I looked down at the paper—Watership Down. “Seriously?”

He leaned over, running a finger down the side of the review. “I thought we could compare notes, the way my parents and I used to.”

It took me a moment, but when the realization came together, I almost jumped off the bench.

“Do you—” I swallowed hard, clearing my throat. “Do you trust these reviewers?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve relied on them for years.”

It was them. Only Ruby and Liam knew how Chubs and his parents used to pass messages back and forth to one another while he was on the run. I looked at the review closer this time—it was an e-mail from the online store they used, with the subject line “A Recommendation from user EleanorRigbyyy.”

Little bursts of relief quaked through me as I finally released that dread I’d been carrying with me for almost six months. They’re okay. They’re alive.

But with that fear gone, there was room for something else in my heart. Something that was too hot and stinging to touch. In the second before he looked away, I saw that same feeling there on Chubs’s face. Neither of us put it into words, but I felt it taking shape between us like a double-edged blade.

They left.

“Why don’t you take them home and think about which one you want to read first?” Chubs took the pages from my hand and folded them small enough to fit into my purse. “Should we go in? I’m famished. I hope you don’t mind I ordered Italian again.”

There was only one restaurant that had been able to reopen in a twenty-block radius and that was Italia North.

“I aspire to one day have your passion for garlic bread,” I joked, looping my arm through his when he offered it. The two of us, with Frank trailing a little ways behind, headed toward Chubs’s apartment building.

This was our new normal, as much as the new government and their new laws were. Parks reopened. Meetings were held. School began. We stayed.

They left.

I couldn’t keep the words from circling back again and again, even as Chubs told me about work and asked me about school. Even as we lived lives that were mostly good and mostly normal and the best kind of boring.

They left.

I understood why. I understood the choice. But some part of me would never fully understand how four had become two.

It was a testament to Cate’s exhaustion that she didn’t hear me sneaking out of the apartment at three o’clock in the morning.

I bundled up with my knit hat, a striped fleece sweater, a coat, and pair of boots with fuzzy lining. The combination still wasn’t enough to stave off the blast of blisteringly cold air and rain that hit me when I pushed open the building’s back door and stepped out into the alleyway. I ran past the building’s dumpsters and a few parked cars, searching for the right one.

“Hey!”

My feet skidded across the wet pavement as I spun. The interior light of a nondescript dark blue sedan flashed on, revealing Chubs in the driver’s seat. He was wearing a black turtleneck pulled up over his mouth and a black beanie that came down so low it almost covered his eyes.

I started toward the back door, only to remember again. It’s just the two of us. I moved to the front passenger seat, quietly shutting the door behind me. The heat from the vent warmed my face as I buckled up and Chubs reversed back out onto the street. He searched the street once more before finally pulling his turtleneck down enough to speak.

“Vi wanted to come,” he explained, “but we thought it would be too suspicious if the three of us suddenly disappeared.”

“I think it’s still going to be pretty suspicious that we’re gone,” I said.

His fingers drummed against the steering wheel as he leaned forward, squint

ing ahead at the dark street. The windshield wipers began to work harder, faster, as he finally picked up speed.

“Vi let Cate know today that you and I were going to take a trip together,” he explained. “Between the two of them, they’ll come up with a good reason for why we ditched Frank. In theory, I am supposed to have weekends off….”

“It’s Wednesday,” I reminded him.

“Wednesday can be my weekend when I haven’t taken a weekend in…” He trailed off.

“Never.” I shook my head. “You have never taken a weekend off. I probably should have asked this first, but whose car is this?”

“Vida got it for us from…well, I didn’t ask, because I know better,” he said. “She checked it herself. It’s totally clean of any sort of GPS or tracking system.”

Did she even have to really search it? The car looked like it was older than the three of us combined. It probably didn’t have hubcaps, let alone a GPS system.

“So…” he began after a while. “What did you think of the messages?”

There had been three altogether. Two from Liam and Ruby, and one from Chubs with instructions on meeting him later that morning. We are alive and safe will explain everything if you come to us, was the first message. The second, Blackstone mural write name on wall leave rock buy tea shop across from it, was slightly less comprehensible.

“I guess we should be grateful we’re allowed to know that they’re still alive. Still, this is so typical of Liam,” Chubs muttered. “It can’t just be a simple Go to this random location and I will come pick you up.”

“It’s not like they’re making us do a scavenger hunt,” I said. The instructions weren’t totally clear, but they were enough to get us started. Blackstone was a city a few hours south in Virginia. All we had to do was look for a mural and a coffee shop. “They’re just being careful.”

“You always side with Lee,” he said.