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uptight.
    “And besides, it’s not like anyone thinks you can’t do it on your own. You’re, like, number one in the class.”
    “Correction:
was
number one in our class.” I feel my lips curl into a scowl. Missing a couple hundred days of school doesn’t exactly work wonders for your academic
record.
    “Whatever. You know what I mean. Everybody missed you. It’d be nice to actually get to see your face now that you’re back for real.”
    “Henry. Nobody missed me. I’ve been practically invisible in this school since, like, my diagnosis.”
    “I wouldn’t say nobody.”
    I stare up at him, trying to give him my best puppy-dog eyes. For good measure, I thrust out my lower lip, too. “Look, I’m sorry. I know I’m lame and I swear I’m going to
change that, but…I just have to do this my way, okay?”
    Henry tilts his head back and stares up at the locker pod ceiling for a good five seconds. “You, Stella Cross, are too good for your own good.”
    “True,” I say, this time giving him a playful punch in the gut. “But that’s why I keep you around.”
    Just then, two clammy hands reeking of cocoa butter and chlorine cover my eyeballs. “Guess who-oo?”
    “Oh my God, Brynn!” I squeal, spinning to wrap her in a big hug, too. Brynn’s auburn hair is swept into a messy bun and she’s wearing a blue zip-up hoodie over her
uniform. When Brynn and I were little, we’d once tried to count the freckles on her cheeks but kept losing track, so we decided she must have infinity freckles, which at the time didn’t
make sense, but ended up being sort of true, since she seemed to keep getting more every summer. I haven’t seen her since post-op at the hospital. Once home, my parents had adopted the title
of “Germ Nazis” and hadn’t allowed visitors.
    “You look ah-mazing!” She twirls me around. “Here I was thinking you’d be all like zombified with stringy hair and fingers falling off. But nope. Good as new.”
    As hard as I try to keep up—which until now hasn’t been very—Brynn continues to outpace me on everything, whether it’s rounding third base with the captain of the
cross-country team or getting caught with a cigarette after last period. I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore when I come back from a long absence to find she’s not the same
freckle-faced kid I knew growing up. For instance, she seems to have a new piercing every time I see her, and this time it’s her eyebrow, a neon-green barb that looks like it hurts, threaded
through the skin above her right eye.
    “I think to be a zombie, I’d have to have been bitten by a zombie. You don’t just spontaneously become a zombie by dying and coming back to life.”
    “Not necessarily,” says Henry. “You could be Patient Zero. Like, you could have been the first person infected and the zombie disease was just lurking inside of you so that
when you died and reanimated, you’d be total walking dead. Don’t you guys ever watch TV?”
    I stick my tongue out at him.
    “See?” Brynn crosses her arms. “For all we know, you could be about to start the apocalypse.”
    “Noted,” I say. “Then I guess you two better stay on my good side.”
    I spend the rest of the day fighting to keep my eyes open. Recovery is still exhausting, and there are several times when I have to creep along like an old woman. I try extra
hard not to fall asleep in calc, and, in AP lit, and I finish reading
The Awakening
while the rest of the kids in my class take a quiz on
All the King’s Men
. By lunchtime,
I’m so tired, I’m not even hungry. I’m seriously considering finding a picnic table to crawl under to nap. Ever since the surgery my appetite has shrunk to zilch, probably because
I spend half the day worrying about the time I’ll be met with my next lightning-round burst of pains. If side effects were baseball cards, I’d have a half-million-dollar collection.
    I stayed late to talk to Dr. Schleifer, my government teacher,