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tired to stay awake.
    Stay awake . Jesse. He told me to stay awake. He was holding me, carrying me out of the wrecked bus, trying to save my life. But now I’m sprawled on cold sand.
    Dread jolts my heart like an electric shock and my eyes flicker open. The bus. The accident. What if Jesse didn’t make it out, what if—
    “Dani?” His face appears above mine, blue eyes as bright as the clear winter sky behind him, triggering a grateful squeeze in my chest.
    He’s alive! It feels like I’ve been given some priceless gift. Crazy, since I hardly know him, but maybe not that crazy. He saved my life. I was dead weight, but he picked me up and carried me with him when he could have jumped out of the bus and saved himself. “Are you okay? I just woke up. I don’t know how long we’ve been out. Can you hear me?”
    “Mm … hrrss … ” In my head the words are clear, but they come out muffled and strange. I try again to tell him I’m okay, but my lips won’t cooperate. “Nee … mmmm.”
    “Don’t try to talk.” He winces as he slides one arm beneath my shoulder and helps me sit. Before I can get accustomed to the feel of his arms around me, of my elbow crooked around his neck, the world spins. I catch a dizzy glimpse of smoke and fire as Jesse’s other arm slips beneath my knees, and then he’s lifting me off the ground. Over his shoulder, ribbons of red and orange snake through the frigid air.
    The bus. It’s on fire. It really did explode. Mina and Nate and all the other kids and Mrs. Martin and the bus driver—the same old man who drove the bus for every field trip for as long as I can remember—are burning. Maybe while they’re still alive, trapped and unable to escape.
    The realization sends another jolt through my body, chasing some of the lethargy away.
    “We have to … get help.” I twist in Jesse’s arms as he turns and stumbles away from the wreckage.
    “I told them to get out. We can’t do anything else. We have to keep running. I don’t know when it’s going to come back.” His voice is strong and sure, even though what he’s saying verges on nonsense. “I don’t know why it didn’t get me while I was passed out, but it’ll be back. I know it will. It’s not going to stop this time.”
    Paranoid nonsense.
    He’s probably in shock, a fact that would consume more of my attention if my arm didn’t choose that moment to snap into my chest and stay there, twitching, for several seconds. Even my muddled brain knows what this means. Involuntary muscles spasms, the cold sweat, the light feeling in my head, the lethargy, the inability to think straight—I’ve felt all of these things before. When I was younger and my diabetes was totally out of control, I suffered insulin reactions all the time.
    But back then, I always had a doctor or a nurse or at least a grown-up close by who knew about my condition. And I kept a roll of lifesavers in my pocket, prepared to give my sugar a boost when I needed it. I still keep a roll in my backpack, along with my shots and blood sugar monitor.
    But my backpack’s not here. It’s burning on that bus, right along with my best friend.
    “Mina! We have to go back. We have to help—”
    “We can’t help. Anyone who was alive after the crash is dead now. We have to go!”
    His words make my throat burn. I taste the orange juice I had first thing this morning. Orange juice. I’ll think about orange juice instead of Mina, instead of all the other scary things I need to think about. For once, concentrating on the math of carbs-versus-insulin is a blessing.
    I close my eyes, visualizing the cool glass of juice. I only had a few sips. That’s all. Then the shot in the bathroom before Mina and I got in line for the field trip. The bus crashed before I had the chance to unwrap the muffin I’d intended to eat. Now, I’ll get progressively sicker unless I get something in my system. It’s actually amazing I’m not worse than I am already. But I definitely