He’s the lucky one; Audrey isn’t.
“Oh my god, Matt,” I say. “I can’t believe I said that.”
“It’s okay,” he says quietly before moving his eyes from me to the ceiling. There’s nothing of interest up there, but he stares anyway.
“No, it isn’t.”
The room is so still, it’s frozen.
“Actually, Daisy, you’re right,” Matt says finally, sighing loudly. He pulls his gaze from the ceiling and looks at me with fire in his dark eyes. “It’s not okay that a drug like this exists and it can’t help my sister. It’s not okay at all.”
I’m not sure what to do. Anxiously, I turn back to the screen and start closing files. I hear a clock chime downstairs; my breath sounds like a windstorm.
“We can never tell Aud about this,” Matt says flatly.
“You can never tell anyone about this,” I say.
“I said I wouldn’t,” Matt snaps. “But I guess you’ll have to trust me on that.”
“I do trust you,” I say softly. “It’s just that I’ve never told anyone this stuff before. I’ve never felt close enough to anyone to even consider telling them. And it would be a huge deal if it got out. I mean, there would be riots. Everyone would want it. But not everyone could benefit from it.”
“Like Audrey,” Matt says dismally. The anger is gone as quickly as it came, and I realize that I almost prefer it to sadness. Anger is manageable; sadness is heartbreaking.
“Like Audrey,” I echo.
Even though Audrey will never be in the Revive program, I think of reading her name in a case file. Of failed attempts at bringing her back scrawled in rough handwriting. Of her time of death noted like it’s nothing.
I can’t ignore the sick feeling in my stomach right now.
This little venture of mine into the world of Revive was meant as a gesture for Matt, but all it’s done is make me question my life. Revive brought me back, but the program stole a child from his mother and didn’t try other methods of saving seven people. Who knows what else might have worked on Michael Dekas or Kelsey Stroud? Maybe they needed surgery, not injections.
And beyond that, though I knew that telling Matt about Revive would be rough on him because of Audrey, I didn’t consider that it would also be rough on me. But as I sit here, that’s what weighs me down most.
Revive gave me life—it is my life—but it won’t give Audrey a second chance at hers. And for that, Matt has a right to be mad.
And so do I.
twenty
The sound of the garage door opening downstairs startles Matt and me out of our chairs. Quickly, I close everything on the computer and go through the steps to log off. We run out of the office and across the hall to my bedroom. Right as I’m wondering whether having Matt in my room is better than snooping in secret government files, someone starts coming up the stairs.
“Go sit in the beanbag,” I say. Matt bolts across the room. I sit on the floor, leaning against the bed. I take a deep breath seconds before I hear the knock on my door.
“Daisy?” Mason calls.
“Hey, Dad,” I say. The dad must have alerted him to someone else’s presence in my room—I only call Mason “Mason” at home—because when he opens the door, he’s all father. I can hear cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen downstairs; Cassie’s probably baking a casserole after seeing Matt’s car out front.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he says to me. “Hello, Matt.”
Matt waves.
“Hey,” I say. “We were studying English.”
At this point, everyone in the room knows it’s a lie—there aren’t even any schoolbooks around—but Mason doesn’t know I told Matt about the program, and I’m determined to keep it that way.
“I see,” Mason says. “I hope you got a lot done, but it’s getting a little late for a school night. It’s probably about time for Matt to go home.”
I glance at the clock and realize that it’s almost nine. Six hours with Matt have passed like six minutes.