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Ben tried.
    “Just Bear, and I never want to see him again!” Sam yanked the covers over his head. “Now go away! Everybody. Just. Go. Away!”
    I took a step toward him. Ben
tsk
ed at me and jerked his head toward the door. I followed him out of the room. A large shadow hulked by the window down the hall: the big, silent kid named Poundcake, whose silence did not fall into the creepy category, more like the profound stillness of a mountain lake variety. Ben leaned against the wall, hugging Bear to his chest, mouth slightly open, sweating despite the freezing temperature. Exhausted after a tussle with a couple of kids, Ben was in trouble, which meant we all were.
    “He didn’t know your dad was dead,” he said.
    I shook my head. “He did and he didn’t. One of those things.”
    “Yeah.” Ben sighed. “Those things.”
    A lead ball of silence the size of Newark dropped between us. Ben was absently stroking Bear’s head like an old man strokes a cat while reading the newspaper.
    “I should go back to him,” I said.
    Ben sidestepped to the door, blocking my way. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
    “Maybe you shouldn’t poke your nose into—”
    “Not the first person in his life to die. He’ll deal.”
    “Wow. That was harsh.”
We’re talking about the guy who was my father, too, Zombie boy.
    “You know what I meant.”
    “Why do people always say that after they say something totally cruel?” Then I said it, because I may have certain issues with self-editing: “I happen to know what it’s like to ‘deal’ with death all by yourself. Just you and nothing else but the big empty of where everything used to be. It would have been nice, really, really nice, to have had someone there with me . . .”
    “Hey,” Ben said softly. “Hey, Cassie, I didn’t—”
    “No, you didn’t. You really didn’t.”
Zombie.
Because he didn’t have feelings, dead inside like a zombie? There were people at Ashpit like that.
Shufflers,
I called them, human-shaped sackfuls of dust. Something irreplaceable had crumbled inside. Too much loss. Too much pain. Shuffling, blank-eyed, slack-jawed mutterers. Was that Ben? Was he a shuffler? Then why did he risk everything to rescue Sam?
    “Wherever you were,” Ben said slowly, “we were there, too.”
    The words stung. Because they were true and because someone else said practically the same thing to me:
You’re not the only one who’s lost everything.
That someone else suffered the ultimate loss. All for my sake, the cretin who must be reminded, again, that she’s not the only one. Life is full of little ironies, but it’s also pockmarked with some the size of that big rock in Australia.
    Time to change the subject. “Did Ringer leave?”
    Ben nodded.
Stroke, stroke.
The bear was bugging me. I tugged it from his arms.
    “I tried to send Poundcake with her,” he said. He laughed softly. “Ringer.” I wondered if he was aware of how he said her name. Quietly, like a prayer.
    “You know we have no backup plan if she doesn’t come back.”
    “She’ll come back,” he said firmly.
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “Because we have no backup plan.” Now an all-out, full smile, and it’s disorienting, seeing the old smile that lit up classrooms and hallways and yellow school buses overlaid on his new face, reshaped by disease and bullets and hunger. Like turning a corner in a strange city and running into someone you know.
    “That’s a circular argument,” I pointed out.
    “You know, some guys might feel threatened being surrounded by people smarter than they are. But it just makes me more confident.”
    He squeezed my arm and limped across the hall to his room. Then it’s the bear and the big kid down the hall and the closed door and me in front of the closed door. I took a deep breath and stepped inside the room. Sat beside the lump of covers. I didn’t see him but knew he was there. He didn’t see me but knew I was there.
    “How did he die?” Muffled