Read This Is Not a Test for Free Online Page B

give us the lead time to get in here and get this barricade out of our way. And then we escape into the night. Or the day. Whichever.
    Harrison whimpers at the idea of leaving, even though it’s purely hypothetical at this point, and we have to promise him repeatedly that we won’t leave him behind even though Trace threatens to. When Cary tries to figure out where we’ll go after we leave, Trace decides Cary’s acting too much like a leader and they get in a fight and we never figure it out. We have this teamwork thing down. And then Cary declares the library off limits.
    “We’ll check it once a night to see if there’s any activity,” he says. “But we should keep this part of the school as quiet as possible. I don’t know if they can hear us out there, but I really don’t want to risk it. I want to stay here until we absolutely have to leave.”
    Which is just another way of saying more waiting.
    On the way back to the auditorium, Rhys touches my arm, stopping me. I jerk away, which surprises him but neither of us says anything. Cary turns at the sound of two less people moving with him. Rhys waves like, just a second. The others trudge back to the auditorium.
    “So, what do you think?” Rhys asks.
    I think he’s clean. His brown hair isn’t spiked with its own grime. His bangs are sharp against his forehead, some strands longer than others, like he cut his hair himself and he did it in the dark. His face is smooth. The boys have been sharing a razor they found in Coach Hainsworth’s office. Rhys Moreno. He used to hang across the street with the other senior smokers until the first bell. Sometimes surrounded by girls, sometimes not.
    “What do I think about what?”
    “The plan.”
    I don’t tell him there isn’t one as far as I’m concerned. As soon as we leave here, I separate from them. Maybe I’ll even do something sacrificial so they have time to get away and then I can die a hero or whatever but I’ve realized something since I got here. I cared too much about how I was going to go before—Lily’s pills, the ones I couldn’t find—when it doesn’t really matter how I go, just that I do.
    “I mean,” he continues. “I don’t know. You barely talk.”
    “Maybe I’ve got nothing to say.”
    “Not with those eyes.”
    The way he looks at me right now—I don’t think he means it like a come-on or anything. His gaze is intent, searching my face so obviously, it makes me uncomfortable.
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Everyone else here is riding extremes. You’re distant but you always look like you’re thinking. You keep wandering off alone, which is actually kind of stupid … so I just wanted to know what’s going on.”
    “Nothing.”
    He hesitates. “Where’s your family, Sloane?”
    “Dead like yours?”
    I have no idea if Rhys’s family is dead or not until I see how the question cuts him. He winces, but maybe he shouldn’t have asked if he didn’t want me to rip his chest wide open. He brings his hand to it, palm against it, like he’s trying to keep his heart inside. It’s like I took something away from him but I don’t know what. There’s nothing left to take.
    “I’ve never said my family was dead,” he says. “What gives you the right?”
    He turns and makes his way down the hall before I can answer. I have no choice but to follow him and for some reason, that makes me angry.
    “I’ve always been quiet,” I say at his back. “It’s not like you knew me before.”
    He stops and turns. “You’re Sloane Price. Your locker is on the diagonal from mine. You and your sister were attached at the hip when she went here, like it was you two and no one else, and I always thought that was weird but I also thought it was kind of sweet. And what you just said to me about my family was really cold.”
    “So where are they, then? If they’re not dead?”
    He gives me the dirtiest look and stalks off.
    I want to ask him if he’s glad we made it but by