The Program (The Program #1)(15)
Author: Suzanne Young

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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

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.