The Program (7 page)

“He loved you,” I say, curling up against him. “No matter what he did, you were the best thing in his life.”

James looks down at me, wiping his tears. “You were.” He stares at me in a way that reminds me that he’s only human. That he’s as fragile as I am.

“I was just his sister. You were more than a brother. You were his other half.”

“Then I sucked at it,” James says. “Because Brady’s dead. And I’m still here.”

I sit up then, turning James’s face to mine. “You’re here for
me
. I wouldn’t have survived without you, and I couldn’t now. We’re in this together, James. Don’t forget that.”

He exhales heavily and shakes his head, as if trying to clear it. I know that telling him I need him, that I can’t live without him, snaps him out of the depression. It always has.

And when he’s more himself, I kiss him again, before taking his hand and bringing him into the tent to sleep.

•  •  •

“We should really camp more often,” James says as we’re driving down the freeway. I smile and look sideways at him.

“It was fun.”

“And I think your memory is fully restored now.” He grins.

“Yes, James. It is soundly intact and filled only with images of your naked torso.”

He raises one eyebrow. “Just my torso?”

“Oh my God, shut up.”

“Don’t be shy. I’m an amazing specimen.” James is still grinning ear to ear when my phone vibrates in the pocket of my jeans. I take it out, glancing at the number.

“It’s Miller,” I say, and then click it on. “Hey.”

“Sloane?” Miller sounds like he’s been crying and sickness washes over me. I reach out and grab James’s arm.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” I say into the phone. My heart is racing in my chest.

“They’re coming for me,” he whimpers. “The Program is coming for me.”

No
. “Miller, where are you?” I shoot a look at James, and he’s alternating between facing me and facing the road. His speed creeps up past eighty as we race toward town.

“I’m home,” he whispers, sounding desperate. “But it’s too late. I had to see her again.”

“Put it on speaker,” James says, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. I hit the button, and Miller’s sobbing immediately fills the space in the car. I nearly crumble, but I hold up the phone, keeping back my own tears.

In life, I don’t really get to see people cry—not anymore. James does every so often, but it’s rare. And other than that, it’s only when someone has cracked that they’ll let someone see. I never once saw my brother cry, and I was with him when he died.

“Miller,” James calls out. “Don’t do anything stupid, man. We’re on our way.”

“I just can’t . . . ,” Miller mumbles. “I can’t do it anymore. I followed Lacey to the Wellness Center and I tried to kiss her, to remind her. But she slapped me and reported me before I took off. My mom let it slip tonight that The Program is coming. They’re coming right now. But I won’t wait for them. I won’t let them take me.”

“Miller!” James shouts so loud I flinch. “What do you have?” Tears start streaming down James’s cheeks and he presses down on the accelerator, sending us over a hundred miles an hour.

“QuikDeath,” Miller mumbles. “I wish Lacey would have told me and we could have gone together. She wouldn’t have gotten hollowed out. We’d be together.”

“You can’t be together if you’re dead,” James says. He punches his fist hard on the steering wheel, and I’m crying, looking for James to fix this. To stop it. “Miller,” he says. “Don’t do this, man. Please?”

Miller sniffles. “It’s too late,” he says, sounding far away. “I took it ten minutes ago. But I couldn’t leave without saying good-bye.” He pauses. “I love you, guys.” Then the phone goes dead.

I gag, the emotion too strong for me to contain, and James slams on the brakes, guiding us to the shoulder. He grabs the phone from where it fell on the seat, immediately dialing 911.

He’s covering his face, his body racking in sobs. “My friend,” he yells into the phone. “He took QuikDeath. . . .”

I think I pass out then, because I don’t hear anything else.

THE AMBULANCE IS GONE BY THE TIME WE GET TO
Miller’s house. There’s no flurry of activity or sirens, so we know it’s too late. We sit for a long time, staring at his white house with its black shutters. James doesn’t hold my hand, and I don’t reach for his. We’re just quiet.

The sun sets behind the house and the living room light switches on. We can see Miller’s mother in the picture window, curled up on the couch. There’s another woman with her, talking and wandering around. James and I have been in houses after a death before, and it’s not a good place to be—not when we’re already so compromised.

“Miller was going to be eighteen in three months,” James says, his voice strangled, but he doesn’t bother to clear his
throat. “He wouldn’t have been scared of The Program anymore. He wouldn’t have done this.”

It’s a question we often ask ourselves: Would we commit suicide without The Program, or does it help drive us there?

“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” I say, chills running over me as I continue to stare at Miller’s house. My Miller—my friend. The first day I met him he was playing with the Bunsen burner and my homework caught on fire. Instead of yelling and dropping it, he grabbed my Diet Coke and doused it. Then he looked over and asked if he could buy me another one.

He came camping with us, he cut school with us, he loved us. He was such a good guy and he was such a good friend, and I just can’t . . . I just can’t . . .

“Sloane,” James says, pulling my arm. But I’m rocking, banging my forehead against the window, trying to make the memories, the regret, the pain go away. I want to stop moaning because I don’t even know what I’m saying. But I can’t control myself. I can’t control anything.

And just then James slaps me, hard. I gasp in a breath, snapped out of my hysteria as my cheek stings. Normally James would have talked me down, held me to him. But instead his eyes are swollen and red from crying. His skin is blotchy and wet. I’ve never seen him look like this, and I touch my face, still stunned.

James hitches in labored breaths, his body nearly convulsing with them. I’ve stopped crying, but my head throbs from where I was banging it on the glass. James still says nothing and then looks past me to Miller’s house, just as the porch light clicks off.
He whimpers, and I reach for him but he backs against the car door.

Slowly, he pulls the driver’s side handle and opens it, falling out onto the street. “What are you doing?” I manage to say. But he doesn’t look at me as he scrambles up, staring at the house with horror on his face. And then James turns and starts running, his sandals clapping on the pavement. I push open my door and scream after him. “James!” I yell, but he’s around the corner and out of my sight.

I can’t move at first. I’m hyperaware of everything around me, the orange haze low in the sky from the sunset. The trees swaying in the wind. I think about going up to Miller’s house and asking if I can lie in his bed for a while, feel close to him one last time. But that’s the kind of thing that gets you flagged.

Miller
. I’ll never go with him to the river again. We’ll never have lunch again. He’ll never turn eighteen. Oh, God. Miller.

I blink, but no tears fall because my eyes are dried out and scratchy. I touch my cheek again where it still stings. It occurs to me that James didn’t say anything—he didn’t tell me I was being hysterical. He didn’t hold me and tell me to cry it out. He didn’t tell me it would be okay.

He didn’t say anything.

Suddenly my heart explodes with worry. I clamor all the way out of the passenger seat and race around the car, getting in the other side and slamming it into drive. I need to find James. I grab my phone from the center console and call him, my fingers trembling over the numbers.

There’s no answer until his voice mail picks up. “It’s James. Talk to me, baby.” I hang up and dial again, turning down the same street where I saw him running. It’s empty, and then the streetlights turn on. Where is he? He needs to be okay. He needs to tell me I’m okay.

I press down on the accelerator, looking frantically around the streets. James’s house is only a few blocks away, so he might be there. I hope he’s there. I’m going to find him and I’m going to hold him.

The car tires bump the curb hard as I pull up to his house. I run, not even shutting the door, and race to his front porch. I rush inside and yell for him, but no one answers. His dad isn’t home and I wonder what day it is, if he’s on a date tonight.

“James?” I’m screaming. “James?”

Silence. I trip as I run up the stairs, banging my shin hard on the wood. I curse under my breath but scramble ahead. I have to find him.

I burst into his room, and the minute I do, I freeze.

My James is sitting on the floor near the window, shirtless, in jeans. He pauses and looks up at me, his eyes red and swollen, his mouth slack. I barely recognize him. I hitch in a breath as he lowers the pocketknife, blood running down his arm, pooling in his lap.

“I needed to add his name,” he says, his voice thick. “I couldn’t wait for ink.”

I drop to my knees and begin crawling toward him, shocked, horrified, desperate. Miller’s name is carved jaggedly into his flesh. Blood is everywhere.

James lets the knife fall to the carpet.

He blinks likes he’s just noticing me. “Sloane,” he says softly. “What are you doing here, baby?”

I reach for him and bring his head against my chest. His blood is warm as it runs over my hand. James lies there listlessly as if he’s empty. As if he’s dead, too. And I won’t cry anymore today.

Because I know that James is now infected.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say, brushing back his sweaty blond hair. No emotion in my voice. Just the impossibility of it. “Everything is going to be okay, James.”

•  •  •

Luckily the cuts aren’t too deep, and I help James clean and cover them with a bandage and a long-sleeved shirt. I go through his dad’s medications until I think I find something that will calm him down. I clean his room, trying to scrub the blood out of his carpet but then opting to cover it with a chair when I can’t. I take the knife and throw it in the trash, considering hiding all the knives in the house, but I don’t want his dad to be suspicious.

James stares up at the ceiling, shaking even under the covers. I get into bed next to him, glancing at the clock and knowing his dad will be home soon. I wrap myself around James and hold on tight. I wait until the pills take effect, and when he’s asleep, I slip out. I hope that his father hasn’t heard about Miller yet. I hope that he’ll get home from his date and go to sleep, and then leave before James wakes up in the morning.

Then I’ll come over and get James ready for school. He’ll need time, need me to keep him normal, but then he’ll be fine. James will be eighteen in five months, and then after that they can’t take him away.

I’ll keep him safe, just like he kept me safe after Brady died. Because that day at the river when my brother killed himself, I almost went with him.

MY BROTHER AND I WERE ONLY ELEVEN MONTHS
apart, yet oddly enough, we never fought. Brady was my best friend, one of my only friends other than Lacey. And even though he had James, he never shut me out.

In the weeks before my brother died, James and I had been meeting secretly. When he’d stay over, he’d show up in my room at three in the morning, kissing me quietly while everyone slept. He’d leave notes under my pillow when I wasn’t home. We’d become completely infatuated with one another.

We didn’t tell Brady, not because we wanted to keep it secret, but because we didn’t want it to be awkward. And if everyone knew about James and me, they wouldn’t allow us constant access to each other—sleepovers, camping trips.

Brady had been seeing that girl Dana, but they broke up.
She told James that Brady was acting strange, that he was cold. James waved her off, but when he confronted my brother, Brady just said it wasn’t a big deal. That she had bad breath anyway.

My brother had made it his personal mission to teach me how to swim, always going to our same place by the river. There isn’t much of a current there, just a deep pool of water. But this one afternoon, he took me and James to a new spot.

“It’s really beautiful there,” he said as he drove. “It’s perfect.”

James snorted in the backseat. “Just so long as I get to see your sister in a bikini.”

Brady smiled, his shadowed eyes glancing in the mirror, but he didn’t tell him to shut up. Instead he kept driving, like he had all the time in the world. I looked back at James, but he just shrugged. I remember thinking that maybe we’d tell my brother that day, that maybe it was time for him to know about me and James. I even thought that maybe he knew about us, but James didn’t think so. He said Brady was just stressed about finals.

We never got the chance to tell him.

I was in my bathing suit as Brady stood at the edge of the drop, looking down at the rushing water. A soft smile was on his lips.

“You can’t swim in that!” James yelled to him as he laid out his towel far back in the grass. “We should have gone to our usual spot.”

Brady looked over, the light reflecting off his black hair. The sun made his pale skin look sallow and shiny. “I didn’t want to ruin it for you,” my brother called.

James pulled his eyebrows together, and then laughed. “Ruin what for me?”

“The usual spot. I figured you’ll still be able to go there after. Maybe you can teach Sloane how to finally swim.” He darted his eyes to mine and smiled. “She might listen to you.”

I paused then, and stared at him. “What are you—” Ice-cold pain ripped through my body when it hit me, when the moment actually became clear. At just about the exact same time, I saw James jump up from his towel.

My brother was poised on the end of a twenty-foot drop, and he bowed his head to me, his eyes glassy. The dark circles under them were navy blue. I hadn’t seen it coming. I hadn’t recognized the signs.

“Take care of each other,” Brady whispered to me like it was a secret. And then he held his arms out at his sides and fell backward off the cliff.