Chapter 3

Mr. Miller knelt down and placed a gentle hand on his trembling shoulder.

"You're alive, son. That’s all that matters. You're alive."

Tara crouched beside him, her eyes rimmed with red as she dabbed at his cuts, trying to soothe him:

"Take a breath, Zach. We can figure out the paperwork and your ID later. Being alive is the most important thing."

Zach buried his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving with ragged sobs.

"I never should’ve listened to Chloe... I knew we shouldn't have gotten off... I didn't even want to go..."

Tara’s hand froze for a split second.

Her voice was faint, laced with a bitter edge:

"Honestly, I wanted to tell everyone to stay too. But seeing how much everyone trusted Chloe, I didn't think anyone would listen to me."

She looked up, glancing back at me.

I sat quietly in my seat, not uttering a single syllable.

I watched Zach sobbing on the floor. I watched Tara clumsily trying to comfort him. I watched Mr. Miller sighing as he dug out the first-aid kit.

My heart felt completely flat. There wasn't a ripple of pity.

If anything, a cold smirk almost tugged at my lips.

In my previous life, I was the one who saved Zach.

Back then, he was the very first person to jump to his feet, backing Chloe up and hyping everyone up to walk out, shouting that it was only a mile and that they could easily jog it.

Later, because I blocked the door and held them back until rescue arrived, he got to take the makeup exam and comfortably got into a four-year college.

And yet, when Chloe shoved me to my death later that summer, he was standing right there in the crowd.

He didn't step forward. Not by a single inch.

Chloe was gorgeous, ranked top ten in the entire senior class, and universally treated like the school’s golden girl. Throughout all three years of high school, everyone fawned over her, and the teachers treated her like royalty.

Whatever she said was law.

When she declared we should walk to the exam center, everyone blindly followed her out.

When she murdered me, everyone just stood by and watched.

Because she was pretty. Because she was accomplished. Because she was Chloe.

As for me? Over those three years, my grades were above average, my looks plain, and my personality quiet. My presence was virtually zero.

Nobody would ever mourn me.

Tara stood up, walked over, and slid into the seat beside me.

"Serena, are you okay? You look pale."

I looked away from the window and returned my gaze to my vocabulary notes.

"I'm fine."

Outside, the howling wind grew deafening.

Up in the driver’s seat, Mr. Miller was making call after call—talking to the police, reporting to dispatch, reaching out to the school board, one right after another.

Zach slowly stabilized. Wrapped in a wool emergency blanket Mr. Miller had given him, he huddled in a seat, staring blankly out at the endless swirl of suffocating yellow dust.

Tara went back to her seat and picked up her notebook, but it was clear she couldn't process a single word. Her eyes darted around, constantly flicking toward the storm outside.

Inside the bus, time felt frozen in amber.

The dust storm showed no signs of letting up. If anything, it turned more savage. Pebbles slammed against the reinforced glass with sharp cracks, sounding as if the windows could shatter at any second.

The heavy bus swayed slightly in the gale, its metal frame letting out low, groaning creaks.

I kept studying my vocabulary.

As I turned the pages, I wondered where Chloe was right now.

With her frail, paper-thin frame, how long could she actually last against a Category 5 sandstorm?

What about the rest of them?

Were the people who blindly followed her beginning to drown in regret?

Kevin had cracked his skull open. Who else had collapsed? Who else had been carried away by the wind?

The sky remained a suffocating, sickly yellow. It was impossible to tell whether it was noon or twilight.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the roar of the wind began to subside.

Outside the window, visibility crawled from three feet, to six, to fifteen.

In the distance, flashing lights pierced through the settling dust—red and blue beacons cutting through the haze.

State troopers.

And search-and-rescue squads.

Mr. Miller bolted out of his seat and kicked open the door, practically tumbling out.

"Over here! Over here! We still have students on board!"

A group of first responders in high-visibility vests hurried toward the bus, led by a state trooper wearing a heavy-duty dust respirator.

"How many kids on this bus?"

"Three students! They're all fine, none of them stayed out there!"

Mr. Miller’s voice cracked with the overwhelming relief of someone who had just cheated death.

The trooper stepped onto the bus, verified our IDs, and quickly escorted the three of us into the back of a squad car to rush us toward the testing center.

Sitting in the back seat, the world outside the window gradually sharpened into focus.

The car drove slowly.

And then, I saw Chloe.

She was huddled behind a massive boulder, curled tightly into a ball. Her hair was matted into coarse, filthy dreadlocks from the dust, her face covered in bloody lacerations, her bare arms mottled with deep purple bruises.

Her backpack was nowhere to be found.

She slowly lifted her head, her gaze locking directly with the squad car’s window.