Gone

road, the humming, bright-lit power plant behind them, a dark road descending ahead.
    “I keep waiting for you to laugh, Sam,” Quinn said to Sam. “You know: say ‘gotcha.’ Tell me it’s all some trick. Tell me you’re just goofing on me.”
    “We’re in a new world,” Astrid said. “Look, I’ve known about Petey for a while. I tried to believe it was some kind of miracle. Like you, Quinn, I wanted to believe it was God doing it.”
    “What is doing it?” Edilio asked. “I mean, you’re saying this stuff was happening before the FAYZ.”
    “Look, I’m supposedly smart, but that doesn’t mean I understand any of this,” Astrid admitted. “All I know is that under the laws of biology and physics, none of this is possible. The human body has no organ that generates light. And what Petey did, the ability to move things from one place to another? Scientists have figured out how to do it with a couple of atoms. Not entire human beings. It would take more energy than the entire power plant produces, which means that, basically, the laws of physics would have to be rewritten.”
    “How do you rewrite the laws of physics?” Sam wondered.
    Astrid threw up her hands. “I can just about, barely, followAP physics. To understand this, you’d have to be Einstein or Heisenberg or Feynman, on that level. I just know that impossible things don’t happen. So either this isn’t happening, or somehow the rules have been changed.”
    “Like someone hacked the universe,” Quinn said.
    “Exactly,” Astrid said, surprised that Quinn had gotten it. “Like someone hacked the universe and rewrote the software.”
    “Nothing but kids left, there’s some big wall, and my best friend is magic boy all of a sudden,” Quinn said. “I figured, okay, at least whatever else, I still have my brah, I still have my best friend.”
    Sam said, “I’m still your friend, Quinn.”
    Quinn sighed. “Yeah. Well, it isn’t exactly the same, is it?”
    “There are probably others,” Astrid said. “Others like Sam and Petey. And the little girl who died.”
    “We have to keep this quiet,” Edilio said. “We can’t be telling anyone. People don’t like people they think are better than they are. If regular kids find out about this, it’s going to be trouble.”
    “Maybe not,” Astrid said hopefully.
    “You’re smart, Astrid, but if you think people are going to be happy about this, you don’t know people,” Edilio said.
    “Well, I won’t be the one blabbing about it,” Quinn said.
    Astrid said, “Okay, I think probably Edilio’s right. At least for now. And especially we can’t let anyone find out about Petey.”
    “I’m not saying anything,” Edilio confirmed.
    “You guys know. That’s enough,” Sam said.
    They started walking together toward the distant town. They walked in silence. At first, bunched together. Then Quinn moved out in front. And Edilio drifted to one side. Astrid was with Little Pete.
    Sam let himself fall behind. He wanted quiet. He wanted privacy. Part of him would have liked to drift farther and farther back until he was left behind, forgotten by the others.
    But he was tied to these four people now. They knew what he was. They knew his secret. And they had not turned against him.
    The sound of Quinn singing “Three Little Birds” came drifting back. Sam quickened his pace to catch up with his friends.

FOURTEEN
    255 HOURS , 42 MINUTES
    SAM, ASTRID, QUINN, and Edilio flopped on the grass of the plaza, exhausted. Little Pete remained standing, playing his game, oblivious, as though an all-night, ten-mile walk were just a stroll. The rising sun silhouetted the mountains behind them and lit the too-calm ocean.
    The grass was wet with dew that soaked straight through Sam’s shirt. He thought, I’ll never be able to sleep here. And then he was asleep.
    He woke up with sun in his eyes. He blinked and sat up. The dew had burned off, and now the grass was crisping in the heat. There were a lot of kids around. But he didn’t see his friends. Maybe they had gone looking for food. He was hungry himself.
    When he stood up he noticed that the crowd was moving, all in one direction, toward the church.
    He joined the movement. A girl he knew walked by. He asked what was going on.
    She shrugged. “I’m just following everyone else.”
    Sam kept moving till the crowd began to congeal. Then he hopped up on the back of a park bench, balancing precariously but able to see over everyone’s