under the desk, but I’m relieved that he isn’t planning anything crazy. If we can just keep it together through this latest threat, we’ll survive. And maybe in a few months, when her monitoring is over, we can convince Lacey to hang out with us again.
“James and I are leaving after lunch,” I whisper when I’m sure the teacher isn’t looking. “You in?”
“Hell yes. You think I’m here to learn?”
I smile. Miller sounds like himself for the first time today. Just before I text James to tell him it’s on, I glance once more at Miller, catching what he’s drawing in his notepad. A large, black spiral, taking over the entire page. I turn toward the front, pretending not to notice. In my pocket, my phone vibrates.
I covertly slide it out and check the message. KEEP MILLER CLOSE. EXTRA HANDLERS ON CAMPUS.
“Miller,” I whisper. “James says there are more handlers today. Do you think they’re here for you?”
Miller licks at his bottom lip, as if considering, then he nods. “Could be. Let’s leave before lunch then,” he says. “We’ll go to my house.”
I agree and text James, glad to leave. The last thing I want is to see my best friend get taken away. Again.
• • •
I sit next to Miller on his flower-patterned couch as James is in the kitchen rummaging through the refrigerator. Miller chews on his thumbnail, and when he moves to the next finger, I see that they’re all bitten painfully short, bleeding under the slivers of the nail still there. I reach out and smack his hand away from his face and he rests it in his lap.
“Saw her on the way to school today,” Miller says, staring out the picture window across from us.
“Lacey?”
“Yeah. Drove by Sumpter and saw her in the lot, talking to Evan Freeman. She . . . was laughing.” He begins biting on his nail again, but I don’t stop him. Instead I lean my head on Miller’s shoulder and stare out the window with him.
Returners aren’t allowed to get too close to people for a few months after coming back, but they are allowed to make a few friends—especially if they’re also successful graduates of The Program. I guess the handlers figure that if they’re both scrubbed clean, they can’t be bad influences on each other. Before Miller, Lacey actually went on a few dates with Evan Freeman. She said he used too much tongue.
And now, the fact that Lacey was talking to him—laughing—all while not realizing that she already knows him, makes me sick. It’s so disturbing that I can barely handle it.
“What do you think they did to her in there?” I mumble, not sure I really want the answer.
“They dissected her,” Miller responds, spitting out a bit of nail. “They opened up her head and took out the pieces, putting them back together as a happy-face puzzle. It’s like she’s not even real anymore.”
“We don’t know that,” I say. “She could still be the same on the inside. She just doesn’t remember.”
“And if she never does?” He turns to me, a tear spilling over onto his cheek. “Do you really think anything can ever be the same again? She’s empty, Sloane. She’s the walking dead now.”
I don’t want to believe that. I’ve seen returners for nearly two years, and although I’ve never had more than a standing-next-to-me-in-line-at-the-mall conversation, I’m sure they’re still people. Just . . . shinier, as if everything is great. They’ve been brainwashed or something. But they’re not empty. They can’t be.
“It would have been better if she had died,” Miller whispers. I sit up and glare at him.
“Don’t say that,” I say. “She’s not dead. And in time we’ll try again. She may not know you, Miller. But her heart will.”
He shakes his head, not meeting my eyes. “No. I give up. I’m letting her go just like the psychologist said I should.”
After The Program took her, they sentenced me, James, and Miller to two weeks of daily intensive therapy—therapy beyond the usual assessments. They asked for details, things they could use in her treatment. But really I think they were trying to see if we were infected too. Luckily we weren’t.
I want to tell Miller not to move on, to wait it out and try to win her again. But in a way, I know he’s right. The way Lacey looked, how she acted. She’s not the same. And she probably never will be.
I remember the first time Miller met Lacey.