Girls Save the World in This One - Ash Parsons Page 0,127
grunts” and said something about a commendation.
I leaned over to Imani, and elbowed her in the ribs.
“A commendation!” I whispered. “Eat your heart out, Harvard! Imani Choi is getting a freaking medal.”
* * *
? ? ?
After a while the convention center was secure; even local news was allowed to set up outside the front of the main entrance. The army command told us we’d have to report to the base hospital tomorrow for more debriefing.
But until then, we could go.
I stop right outside the tent, remembering.
“Hang on, I gotta get my phone.” I turn to hobble back inside.
“Wait here,” Hunter says, and trots back into the tent for me. He reappears a few moments later, holding my phone, and with an amused expression on his face.
“Nice lock screen,” he says, handing my phone over.
Oh no.
I look down. The fake-prom selfie I took with the life-sized poster of Hunter Sterling positively blares out from my newly charged phone.
I feel like a large blinking sign should appear over my head: DERP.
“Okay, laugh all you like,” I say.
“Oh, I’m going to.” Hunter moves next to me, and pulls my arm around his shoulder, even though it’s not strictly necessary to help me walk anymore.
“For the record, we had a great time,” I say.
“I clean up good, huh?” Hunter says, and I can’t help but laugh, because as Clay Clarke in that poster he’s sweaty, grimy, and unkempt.
Also, you know, completely gorgeous.
But the boy standing next to me is way better.
“I told you to rent a tux,” I say. “But nooooooo.”
“Next time,” he says. “I demand a do-over.”
“This doesn’t count as a promposal, for the record,” I say.
“Noted, Ms. Blue. Noted.” Hunter smiles at me, humor in his hazel-green eyes, and my heart does a skitter-lunge.
I smile back.
We make our way out of the triage area, past the loading dock, around the corner under the hamster tube skyway, and back around the front of the Senoybia Convention Center.
It’s dark, full night, but you’d hardly know it from the large, generator-powered klieg lights on poles.
We walk together, me, Hunter, Imani, Siggy, and Blair, out toward the farthest edge of the containment area, where our parents and news vans and a crowd of onlookers wait.
James Cooper is ahead of us, talking to a reporter in a pool of bright light from the camera.
We stop to take it all in, still behind the orange plastic barriers.
Voices shout at us, other reporters seeking exclusive interviews.
“You made it!” The voice is somehow familiar, yelling from across the broad swath of concrete in front of the convention center.
I turn, and see the rando guy from this morning, the one who said he was a survivor. His ZOMBIES HATE FAST FOOD T-shirt’s a little worse for the wear now, torn and spattered like all our clothes, but he’s got a huge smile plastered on his face.
“You did, too!” I yell back. I give him a big thumbs-up. He does a slow clap for me before going back to his interview.
“Hey, I have a question,” Hunter says, touching my elbow.
I turn to him, smiling. Movement catches the corner of my eye. I glance behind us.
It’s the ZombieCon! banner, dangling loose, falling across the lower half of the convention center windows. Fluttering in the wind.
The slouching front of the loose banner obscures the start of the words, so now it reads YOU SURVIVE.
“What?” I ask.
Hunter puts his hands at my waist.
“What are you doing next weekend, June Blue?”
I smile up at him.
“Oh, I’m killing the SAT, dude. Definitely.” I frown and nod my head like a serious student.
Hunter laughs, so I put my hands up to his head, in his hair.
“Better give me a kiss, though. For luck.”
I tug gently, and he lowers his lips to mine.
The kiss is like a fission of everything that’s good in this world. Everything, yes, but mainly kissing, which is very, very good, and Hunter Sterling’s lips, which top the list right now at the present moment.
A fusillade of flashes snaps us out of it.
Our picture has been taken by the photographers waiting to report on the scene.
“Who needs to get a room now, June?” Siggy drawls. But she’s smiling.
“Seriously,” Blair teases, but her eyes light up with her smile.
“No, keep going.” Imani is holding her phone up, like she’s recording. “When I sell this to TMZ it’ll pay for our summer trip to Cancún.”
Siggy squeals.
“I love that idea! Oh, we should definitely go!” She jumps, clapping, her hair pluming out behind her.
“Absolutely!” I agree, meeting Blair’s eyes. “We should all go.”
Blair smiles at me, a big, easy grin, spreading across her face, wide open like she’s a little kid.
Like it’s the first day of kindergarten again.
A rush of love glows through me, an actual physical rush, at the sight of my friends smiling back at me. I drink in the sight of Siggy, Imani, and Blair, standing there, arms crossed and legs propped out, their hips cocked to one side, almost like they’re simply over everything, so casual and so cool.
Complete badasses.
We did it. We survived, in spite of everything, and here we are, on the other side. All together.
Imani—always attuned to me, or me always to her, or both of us somehow on the exact same page, or feeling, with perfect empathy—reaches her hands out at the same moment I do.
My group of friends huddles in and we hug tight, laughing with pure joy at life, at each other, with each other.
I point toward the barricade, where the flash pops haven’t stopped since the moment survivors started walking out.
“You know what time it is, right?” I ask.
Imani laughs, then Siggy, and Blair, and we holler, all together, “Special Memories!”
Our huddle opens up, and still laughing, with our arms around each other, we smile for our photo op.