Ellie's voice goes a little flat. "Yeah, so he told me." With Joel... the more she thinks about it, the more she feels like he took away her reason to keep living. But she knows how weird adults get when kids talk about death, like it isn't a thing that happens to everybody. She buries it, like she has a hundred times before.

And she hates herself for that. It's what Joel would do.

Ellie looks over her shoulder at Riley's smiling face, her bleeding gums, her red sclera. "My... best friend," Ellie says. "We were stupid. Snuck out one night."