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silence.
    “I’ll do it.”
    His arms are crossed again, his head is tilted slightly to the right. He is a walking challenge, daring anyone to contradict him. Something about his presence promises pain.
    “I’ll run things,” he says. “You all do what I say and we’ll be fine.”
    I don’t think he should be in charge. Or Aramovsky, for that matter—something about the tall boy makes me nervous. But who am I to say Yong shouldn’t lead? Someone has to get us out of here, someone has to make decisions.
    Yong stares at Bello, who looks down instantly. He stares at Spingate; she clears her throat, blushes again, then shrugs. Yong tries to stare at Aramovsky, but Aramovsky won’t even meet his eyes. I’m the next target for Yong’s burning glare. I try to match it, try to wordlessly stand up to him, but I can’t—I look away. Those fists of his…would he hit me?
    I don’t even know if I’ve ever been in a fight.
    Finally, Yong stares at O’Malley.
    O’Malley stares right back; calm, not threatening, but not reacting to Yong’s intimidation, either.
    “Em got out of her coffin on her own,” O’Malley says. “No one else did that. Then she freed Spingate. The two of them got the rest of us out. Without Em, we all might still be asleep. Or, worse, awake and trapped in the coffins.”
    Yong frowns. He seems confused, as if he expected any disagreement to involve shouting and pushing, not simple reasoning. O’Malley isn’t even arguing with Yong, he’s simply presenting facts.
    “So she got us out,” Yong says. “So what? She has no idea what’s going on. Getting us out of the coffins doesn’t mean she’s a good leader.”
    O’Malley thinks on this for a moment, really considering it, then nods.
    “That’s true, it doesn’t mean she’s a good leader,” he says. “But she didn’t panic. When Spingate called for help, Em helped her. Em told all of us what was happening and didn’t pretend that she knew more than she did. Don’t you think those are qualities we’d want in a leader?”
    Yong says nothing.
    I wouldn’t have thought those things made me a leader, but the way O’Malley pointed them out makes it sound so obvious.
    Maybe Yong wants to argue, but there’s nothing to argue against.
    “Whatever,” he says, and leans on a coffin. He looks away, taking in the aisle of dust as if it bores him only slightly less than we do.
    Spingate walks to me, offers me the tool. She doesn’t need to say why—the leader should carry it.
    “You can be in charge, Em,” she says. She looks at Bello and Aramovsky. “Don’t you think Em should be in charge?”
    A tooth-girl wants me to lead? My blurry memories tell me that’s an impossibility, and yet I see it with my own eyes.
    Bello and Aramovsky glance at each other. Her hand-over-hand fussing starts up again.
    “Until we find the grownups,” she says quietly. “Em can be in charge until we find the grownups.”
    Aramovsky clearly doesn’t agree, but he stays quiet.
    I take the tool from Spingate. I smile at her. She smiles back.
    O’Malley is staring at me. Those blue eyes lock me in, make me feel jittery. When he looks at me, does his stomach tingle the way mine does when I look at him? He defended me. Why? Does he really think I could be a good leader?
    He gives me a small smile, then he shrugs.
    “I guess it’s up to you, Em. What do we do now?”
    What do we do? How should I know? I’m in charge, but I realize that in the whole exchange I never
asked
to be in charge. That doesn’t seem to matter—everyone is waiting for me to make a decision.
    So I make one.
    “First, we get out of this room.”
    I walk to the archway. The others follow close behind. Yong waits until we stand before it, then he joins us.
    The archway is made of rust-caked metal, covered in dusty symbols just like the walls and coffins. What I thought might be doors are two slabs of stone, pressed together so tightly the vertical line separating them could be