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“Thanks for asking me to the dance.” Her voice was barely above a whisper, her lips curling up in a tiny, uncertain smile.

“Thanks for saying yes.”

I could feel her breath on my face.

“I’m glad you came to Maxfield,” she said.

My heart was thumping in my chest. She smelled so good, like fresh roses. “Me too.”

She leaned toward me, and I wrapped my arms tighter around her back.

Her lips were cool and soft, and every other thought disappeared from my head. There was only Jane.

I didn’t let go, didn’t want to ever let go. I didn’t want to go back to normal life.

Why couldn’t this be normal life?

She pulled back. She was beaming, her eyes sparkling in the starlight.

We stared at each other for a moment. The scent of her perfume still hung on my lips, and I wanted to kiss her again. But I could see from her smile that she wanted to say something.

“What?” I asked, unable to hide my own grin.

Jane stepped up to me again, her face an inch away. I could almost feel her lips on mine, but instead of kissing me she spoke.

“You don’t still want to leave, do you?”

I smiled. “Well, not tonight.”

Her eyes narrowed and she moved back slightly. Her arms hung around my shoulders. “You’re still planning on it, though.”

“Of course,” I said, confused. “We’ll go together, you and me.”

“But…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked up at the stars.

“I can’t stay here.”

Her hands fell to her sides. “But this is good,” she said. “Can’t you see that? We can be happy here.”

“If we stay here we’ll die.”

“If we stay here then we’ll have more of this,” she insisted with desperate eyes. “We can be together. We can be happy.”

I took a breath, wishing we could rewind the conversation and go back to where we were a minute before.

“I’m not saying that we have to escape tomorrow.”

She clutched my arms, her face again close to mine. “Then let’s just not talk about it. Let’s wait. Let’s just be like this, you and me. Think about it.”

“Think about it?” I said, my voice raised. “No, you think about it. What do you think is going to happen a year from now, or two years from now? This is some weird prison-it’s not a resort. No one grows old here.”

Her eyes flashed as she stepped away from me and folded her arms. “Don’t tell me what this school is like. I know it better than you do.”

I yelled, “Then what do you think is going to happen?”

Jane spun away from me, facing the cold rough stone of the school’s walls.

I could feel adrenaline pumping in my veins, and I tried to calm down. I didn’t want to act like this, not tonight. But Jane, of all people, should have realized that the school was a death trap. Every day we stayed was a day closer to detention or worse.

I reached out with one hand and touched her shoulder.

She shrugged me away. “Don’t.”

“Jane…”

I could tell she was crying now. It didn’t have to end like this. But maybe it was better if it did. Mason’s words rang through my head. If you’re going to get killed next week crossing the wall, stay away from Jane.

I touched her shoulder again. “I’m sorry.” She didn’t shake me off this time.

Her hand reached up and touched mine. She was ice cold. She turned toward me.

Suddenly her eyes went wide, looking over my shoulder. Her mouth opened in a scream, but it was knocked out of her-something hit me in the back and I smashed forward into Jane, knocking her into the wall.

I stumbled and turned just in time to see Dylan swinging a pipe. I wanted to duck but turned my back to the blow to shield Jane. Pain rocketed through my body, and I collapsed to the ground. I could hear Jane screaming above me, and then she let out a yelp, and I felt her fall next to me.

My lungs weren’t working. I desperately sucked at the air.

“You couldn’t leave well enough alone,” a female voice shrieked. I turned my head just enough to see it was Laura, standing behind Dylan. He was holding the pipe like a bat.

I couldn’t breathe.

I turned to look at Jane. She was dazed but awake, lying against the wall. Her neck and chest were splattered with blood.

“You, Benson,” Laura spat, “think that you’re the big man because you don’t care about the rules. Do you think that Lily would have tried to escape if you hadn’t been goading her on?”

I didn’t even care about arguing. I just wanted to protect Jane. I forced my aching lungs to breathe the word “stop.”

“Stop?” Dylan mocked. “I shouldn’t have stopped last time. I should have finished you off at the wall.” He raised the pipe and there was nothing I could do. He swung it down like an axe, smashing my raised arm and pounding down into Jane’s leg. She groaned, low and soft.

I could barely move, but they were going to kill us, and I couldn’t let them. He took a step back, preparing the heavy pipe again. I started to stand and got up on one knee before Dylan’s swing caught me in the stomach. I reached for something, my fingers dragging across Jane’s bleeding leg, but I couldn’t stay up.

I plummeted down into the deep window well.