SEVEN DAYS OF SNOW

Chapter 8 -* Day Zero*

The car that came at one o'clock was black. Expensive. New York.

Elias had his small suitcase. One suitcase for a man who thought he was coming to Harrow to die. He had his black notebook. He had Luna's hand.

Luna didn't get in the car.

"I can't," she said at the door of The Open Book. Her bookstore. Her entire life behind her, snow melting on the sign. "I can't go to New York. I have seen numbers above people's heads since I was seven. What if New York is full of them? What if I see thousands? I would go crazy."

Elias looked above his own head like he could see what she saw. He couldn't. He only saw her.

"Then stay," he said. "Stay and I will come back. After surgery. If I live, I will come back to Harrow. I will come back to you. Seven days of snow became seven days of you, and I don't want any life after this that doesn't have you in it."

Above his head, the number had changed. No longer 1 Day Left. Now it said: 0 Days.

Zero.

Day Zero. The day he was supposed to die. The day every number she had ever seen had come true.

Luna touched his face. "You have zero days left."

"I know," he whispered. "I feel it. My chest. It hurts, Luna."

It was happening. Right now. At the door. At the moment of goodbye.

His knees buckled. The suitcase dropped. The black car driver got out, shouting. Luna screamed.

"Help! Help him!"

They dragged him back into the bookstore, onto the rug between Romance and Mystery where she had first looked up at him and seen seven days. His face was white. His lips were blue. Stoic even in pain, he tried to smile.

"Hey," he breathed. "Bookstore girl. Maybe... maybe you were right. Maybe zero means..."

"Don't talk like that!" Luna was crying, holding his hand, shouting at the number above him. "Don't you dare! You don't get to die! You have a book! You have me! We have day eight! We planned day eight!"

Elias's eyes fluttered. His hand went cold in hers.

"0 Days," he whispered. "It's kind of... romantic. To die in a bookstore. With you."

"No!" Luna pressed her forehead to his. "Listen to me, city boy. Listen to me. I love you. I love you and I have never said that to anyone who was going to die. I love you and love has to count for something. It has to be stronger than a number."

She kissed him. Hard. Desperate. Not romantic. Survival.

Outside, the black car honked. The driver was on the phone, calling 911, but Harrow's ambulance was still stuck in snow, twenty minutes away.

Elias stopped breathing for three seconds. Three seconds that felt like seven years.

Luna screamed his name. "ELIAS!"

And then, like a lightbulb turning back on, like a story that refused to end, he gasped. A loud, ugly, beautiful gasp. Air back in his lungs. Heart stuttering, then beating.

Above his head, the number that had said 0 Days... flickered. Cracked. Like ice.

And disappeared.

Luna stared. Empty air. No number. For the first time since he walked into The Open Book seven days ago, there was nothing above his head.

"Elias?"

He opened his eyes. Confused. Alive. Tender. Mysterious and alive.

"Did I... did I die?" he asked.

"You tried," Luna sobbed, laughing and crying at once. "You tried but you didn't. You don't have a number anymore. Elias, you have no number. That means..."

"That means I have infinite days?"

"That means you have forever."

The driver burst in with the nurse from Harrow clinic. They lifted Elias, they checked his heart. The nurse said, "It's a miracle. It stopped, then started. Like it changed its mind."

Luna knew it wasn't a miracle. It was a girl who sees death finally learning how to see life. It was love breaking a curse.

Elias looked at Luna from the stretcher, being carried to the black car that would now take him not to die, but to live, to surgery in New York.

"Wait for me?" he said. "Day eight?"

Luna held up his black notebook that had fallen on the rug. "I'll be here. Writing our day eight. Go live, city boy. Come back to your bookstore girl."

The car drove away through melting snow. Harrow road was open.

Day Zero was over. And he had lived.

Luna looked in the bookstore window at her own reflection. For a second, she thought she saw something above her own head. A faint number. But it wasn't a countdown.

It looked like... 8 Days Left.

But 8 days left of what? She smiled. Maybe 8 days left until he came back.

She had finally learned: numbers don't have to mean death. They can mean beginning.