Please Remain Calm (This Is Not a Test, #1.5)

by Courtney Summers

It’s the kind of tired where the thing you need is rest and the most you can hope for is sleep.

I’m afraid everything I was is gone and all that’s left is everything I’m not.

“How many people you lost?” he asks after a second. God. Numbers heavy in my mind will be even heavier off my tongue. I don’t know what’s worse, holding their names, or turning them into a body count.

I wonder if all hearts are made with the same pockets for fear and pain and sadness. They must not be, or if they are, maybe we all don’t know how to use them. Because otherwise so many of our stories would have ended differently.