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He handed me the paper wordlessly as I ht," Liaht We should have read it We would have known not to bother"

It was the dead way he spoke, so flat, so coated with grief, that made me crumple the letter and throw it across the roo a hand over his eyes

I fumbled with the inside pocket of his jacket, where I had stashed Chubs’s letter all those days ago Liaed beside me

"He told me he didn’t write it for them," I said "He wrote it for you He wanted you to read it"

"I don’t want to"

"Yes, you do Because when you get out of here, you’ll want soain"

"Ruby" Now he sounded angry His arm dropped from around my shoulders, and he stood up "Do you really think that if he lives, they’re going to let us see hiether? That’s not how these people work They’re going to control our every ht down to e see and e eat Trust me, it’ll be some precious piece of luck if we even find out if he’s alive, never "

Liam paced the room once, twice, three times, and it felt like an hour had passed before I worked up the nerve to open Chubs’s lettertime

"What?" Liam asked, finally His voice was laced with fear "What does it say?"

It was blank There was nothing written on the sheet of paper aside from Chubs’s parents’ nale drop of ink

"I don’t understand…" I said, passing it to hiinal letter, or was carrying the real one? When I looked up again, Lia the letter in his fist, the other pressed against his eyes And then I realized I already knew the answer

Chubs hadn’t written anything because he didn’t think he had to He thought he was going to be able to tell his parents everything he wanted to say in person He believed he was going to get home

Liam’s knees seemed to buckle out from under him as he sat back down on the bed His forehead caainst my shoulder, and I wrapped both ar, he believed you

I felt so much older, then Not sixteen, not sixty, not even a hundred, but a thousand years old Older, but not brittle I felt like one of the oak trees that grew along the highway overlooking the Shenandoah Valley, with deep roots and a strong core

He gets to go, I thought He gets to go ho but hold on to him I wanted to memorize the way his hair curled at the ends, the scar at the edge of his lips I had never felt ti as sharply as I did then Why did it only ever see speed?

"The crazy thing is, I had all of these plans," he whispered "What ere going to do All the places I was going to take you I really wanted you to ht I felt his hand trail down the length of my arm "We’ll be okay," Liam said "We just can’t let them separate us"