Chapter 60

• The diary felt like a live thing in my hands, its worn leather a direct link to my sister’s heartbeat. Hope was a fire in my chest, a white-hot nova that burned away the despair.
• “She was here,” I whispered, my voice breaking in relief. “She made it. She went to the safe zone.”
• The others gathered around me in the dead, silent bus, their faces illuminated by the thin beam of my flashlight. The gloom of the ravine seemed to recede, pushed back by the sudden, impossible light of this discovery.