The Remaining Read Free Page B

look at him. Suddenly she noticed Dan wasn’t tired and he wasn’t neglecting his question and he wasn’t only moderately interested.
    “Dan?”
    “I want to know if the girl I’ve spent the last few years dreaming about and loving would still like me around day after day. Will she grow tired of me? Will I be able to make her happy? Will she still laugh at my jokes? Will I be able to always be her knight in shining armor? These questions and ten thousand other ones all revolve around this girl I’m madly in love with.”
    We were all smiling and silent while Skylar turned to face him.
    “Dan . . .” she said in a soft voice.
    “No. Here’s the thing. There’s really only one question I want to ask. One important question that can change my whole life. But it’s one you have to answer. And I wanted to ask it to you in front of our closest friends. I wanted to surprise   —”
    “Yes!” Skylar said, wrapping herself around Dan before he could get any more words out of his mouth. “Yes, yes, yes.”
    They embraced and kissed and we all clapped and laughed.
    “Let him finish,” Allie said.
    “Isn’t there supposed to be a ring?” Jack asked.
    “I wish I had my camera,” Tommy said.
    “I wish this night could last forever,” I ended up saying.
    And I was being truthful. I wish the night didn’t have to end.
    Dan finally managed to say the words to Skylar and show her the ring. She definitely wasn’t saying no now. No way. Uh-uh.
    We sat around the campfire for a long time. None of us wanted to go to bed. We wanted to take this one last chance to be together and be young and not worry about tomorrow.
    Little did any of them know I was worrying about tomorrow. I was worried it wasn’t going to arrive.
    I felt like I still had so many things I wanted and needed to say. But for the rest of the night, I remained silent.
    The silence still haunts me.
    The world hasn’t ended. My friends aren’t dead. The wedding is right around the corner. Everything is fine, right? So why do I still feel terrified? Why do I still get the feeling something is coming that none of us will be able to escape from? What is God trying to tell me?
    I wish I knew.

1
CAMERAMAN
    Everything goes black.
    For a minute, Tommy can only stand there freaking out. His heart races.
    Not now. Not today. This is so not happening.
    But as quickly as the screen went blank, the camcorder bolts right back to life, just as a high-definition video recorder should do. Especially one bought just this year for over twelve hundred bucks. Of course, it’s not one of those professional cameras that cost close to five thousand. Tommy Covington might be good, but he’s not that good. Or that successful. Not to own one of those machines.
    Maybe not yet.
    He’s on a sidewalk right next to the river, facing the hotel, doing the kind of work a second unit on a film crew might do. Capturing some shots on location for mood and for setting purposes. No actors, no lines to be said. It’s just background work, the stuff usually done by a team Tommy hopes to one day be a part of.
    Before I become the next big-name Hollywood director like Christopher Nolan.
    Seeing the world in the rectangular frame of a camera’s viewfinder puts things into perspective. For the past half hour, Tommy has noticed things about the city of Wilmington he’s never really seen before. Having grown up in the Chicago area, he still feels more like a Midwest guy than a Southerner. Yet he has no intentions of moving back north. All of his family are still living in the Chicago suburbs, but his true family is here in this city. Many of them are here in this hotel.
    Two of them are actually getting married today.
    Tommy aims the camcorder at the hotel. The Plantation is one of those luxury places that Tommy wouldn’t be able to afford now or even probably five years from now. He’s already captured the fancy logo and impressive entrance in a digital file. Later on, when he begins to