Page 3 of Zero Chance

What was there to decide?Hehadto go.If all four of my grandparents were making me do this, then Alec had to do it too.That’s all there was to it.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so eager after all.

Dread pooled in my belly.

What if Alec wasn’t there?What was I supposed to do then?

As soon as we arrived and Pop-Pop stopped the car, I popped out in a rush, needing to know if my friend was around or not.

I craned my neck, searching the parking lot for his familiar brown curls.Except I didn’t see him anywhere.

Dang it.He better show up.

There were a lot of other people around—kids and adults alike—so it was possible he was just jumbled in with the mix, and I’d meet up with him soon enough.But I wasn’t fond of this not-knowing nonsense.

I darted forward, only to be forced to slow down when Gram and Pop-Pop called me back because they couldn’t keep up.It boggled my mind just how slow grandparents could be.

Inside the center, we waited in this long line tocheck in.I guess it was the center’s first day open, and every youngster here needing grieving lessons was as new to this as I was.When I glanced around, more than one kid was crying.

Not really liking that, I inched closer to Gram, beginning to wonder just what we were supposed to do here.

She immediately set a hand on my hair to comfort me, but then—before I was ready for her to go—this adult dude took me away from both herandPop-Pop.I barely got time to wave goodbye before I was ushered into another huge room full of noise and commotion.

The man who’d brought me in bent down to point past my arm toward a cluster of seats that had been set up in a circle, where it looked like we might play musical chairs.

“Over there, kiddo,” he told me with a pat on the back.“That’s going to be your troop today, okay?”

I glanced at the enormous sign in front of the circle labeledAges 5–9,and I nodded.

As I approached, I saw four others already seated, but no Alec.

Grumbling under my breath, I frowned at everyone whowasin my group but wasn’t my best friend.

One boy looked as if he had to be three or four years old—no way was that runt five—and he couldn’t seem to stop bawling.Two adults hovered around him, trying to comfort him, while a pair of girls sat huddled together, gossiping.

When they saw me approach, they glanced up with wrinkled noses as if I stunk and then they went back to snickering with each other.

I turned my attention to the fourth kid, a girl with brown hair.With her head bent slightly, her long, straight tresses fell into her face and hid half her features.

It reminded me so much of how my mother had always kept her hair that I felt drawn to her, and a second later, I plopped down in the seat beside her.

“Howdy,” I said.

She’d been looking down at her hands and ticking off her fingers as if counting silently in her head.

But at my greeting, she lifted her face and blinked dark brown eyes.

When she said nothing, I waved.“I’m Keene.Keene Dugger.There’s an E at the end, but it’s silent.Lots of people try to pronounce it when they see it, though, and they call me Keeney, so I gotta straighten ’em out and tell ’em I’m just Keene.”Motioning toward her hands, I asked, “Watcha doing?”

She looked down at her lap, then up at me, and she squinted slightly as if she couldn’t fathom a reason why I would talk to her.Then she answered, “I’m waiting to die.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise.“Are you sick?”I wondered.“Cancer?My mom died of cancer.Lady cancer that boys can’t get.Do you got the lady cancer too?”

The girl shook her head and stared at me as if I was some kind of puzzle she couldn’t figure out.

I furrowed my brow, confused too, because I sure as heck couldn’t figure her out right back.“Then how do you know you’re gonna die?”

She shrugged.“Because everyone dies.”

---