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friend knew I still thought about Carter sometimes. But Mel was different. For someone who didn’t talk a lot, she sure as hell knew a lot.
    Which didn’t exactly explain why she was worried about Carter now.
    Slowly, I put the pieces of her words together. Mel was mainstreamed in math and science. She’d had geometry with Carter in the ninth grade. Their teacher, Mr. Rockfield, had let her chew Dubble Bubble in class. But I knew there was a puzzle piece I was still missing.
    “Why are you worried about him?” We hadn’t seen him in years. Spring semester, he’d been arrested—in school, no less—for stealing his dad’s car. He’d been hauled off in handcuffs. Rumor had it he’d been sent to some military school in . . .
    My mind stuttered to a halt. Was that where Carter’s school was? In Fort Stockton? How could she know that?
    But how did Mel know anything? She listened more than I did. Paid attention. Noticed things. All the minutiae the rest of us filtered out, she panned through for nuggets of gold. So maybe she did know where his school was.
    Crap.
    I took an involuntary step closer to the TV screen and stared at the spot she’d pointed to. It was so close to that point of origin.
    If Mel was right and that was where Carter’s school was, then he must be in danger. Or already dead.
    The hurricane had just made landfall. A chill skittered down my arms.
    Mel’s Slinky went suddenly silent and she turned to look at me.
    “Jesus, it’s cold in here,” I muttered, turning on my heel. “I’m going to bump up the air conditioner.”
    The wall thermostat was right outside Mom’s bedroom door. I tapped the up button until the air conditioner clicked off, then stood there for a minute, back pressed to the hallway wall, as I stared blankly ahead.
    Until now, I’d been trying really hard not to think too much about the Ticks. About the actual monsters out there hunting humans. Hunting teenagers. It was easy not to think of them. The very idea of them, the idea that humans might mutate into these creatures, was so far-fetched it seemed like the plot of a bad Syfy movie. Like Sharknado or Dinocroc .
    It was all too easy to let myself pretend it wasn’t really happening. That no one I knew was actually in danger from anything other than the overreacting government. Okay, so the police didn’t seem to be able to fight the Ticks. Then the National Guard would. Or the army. Someone.
    Five minutes ago, there seemed to be about twenty layers of defense between us here, north of Dallas, and the Ticks.
    But now? Now, with the point of her finger and a few bars of Rachmaninoff, Mel had told me that someone we knew was probably already dead. Or worse.
    I thought of the footage I’d seen online yesterday morning when I’d crept out of bed early and borrowed Mom’s laptop. The stuff they couldn’t show on network or even cable TV and that Mom didn’t want Mel to see. The real footage of the Ticks.
    I thought of the wild look in the eyes of the infected. The swollen jaw, the bulging around their mouths, like their teeth no longer fit in their mouths. And worst of all, the way they just kept coming, even when the police officers unloaded countless rounds right into the things’ chests.
    Some tiny percentage of the people exposed to the virus turned into that. Had Carter? Or was he dead now?
    I thought of the Carter I’d known, with his electric blue eyes and his smirky half smile. I thought of the way he used to mutter smart-ass comments under his breath about Coach Ballard, our biology teacher. I’d sat beside him—breathless—for two whole weeks trying to work up the courage to actually speak to him. If Coach Ballard hadn’t been such an idiot, I might never have worked up the nerve. But Coach was easy to make fun of and Carter’s near-silent chuckles made my stomach quiver.
    Carter had been my first crush. And now . . .
    Jesus, how was this possible? How had this thing—this virus—affected so many people?