Текст книги "Sublime"

Автор книги: Christina Lauren

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 13 страниц)

He’s not ready to be gone, but he knows he gets to keep her anyway, and every second of today has been better than any second that came before. Colin vanishes with the vision of Lucy, rumpled and half undressed, her swirling eyes and ruby lips smiling out the word “bye.”

CHAPTER 27 HER

LUCY DOESN’T NEED TO REMEMBER HER ENTIRE life before to know she’s never spent so much time staring at a boy’s fingers.

They jerk as if attached to a metal cogwheel, ratcheting open and closed. Colin flexes them again and again and then, catching her watching, curls them into a fist. “Luce.”

She looks up at his scowl. “Mm?”

“I’m fine.”

“Your hands are . . .” She makes jerky finger gestures, unwilling to say broken, or stiff, or, worst of all, wrong.

“Come here. I’ll show you how fine they are.”

Finally, a relieved giggle escapes from her throat in a sharp burst. It sounds edgy, like it might be too close to a sob to hold its shape. She can’t believe he’s here, and person-colored, and warm. And that, five hours after being in the frozen lake, the only thing that seems to be off is how slowly he bends his fingers.

“It wasn’t that bad. Coming back, I mean,” he whispers into the darkness of his dorm room. He’s hidden beneath several layers of blankets, and the space seems exceptionally quiet now that Jay has worn out his postresurrection high and left for the night.

What he says is true. Jay insists that bringing Colin back was easy. But agreeing with Colin right now feels wrong, as if the universe is merely waiting for her to say that stiff fingers and a few bruises are a small price to pay, and snatch everything away at once.

It felt like they were together for days. Days of talking and touching and holding each other so closely there was no air left between them. In reality, it was only fifteen minutes. Jay said he started to freak when Colin was shivering so bad he almost jerked off the foil blanket. But time felt generous then, stretching every minute into what felt like twenty.

“Lucy, stop staring at my hands and come over here.”

She slips in beside him, and he pulls her close, her big, warm spoon. She feels stronger and more present than she can ever remember feeling, and Colin mumbles something happy and content.

“What?”

“You,” he says sleepily. “Just wondering if you feel different because you’re different or because I’m feeling you differently.”

“What do you mean?”

“You feel more solid. Stronger.”

“Stronger how?” She wants to know if it feels the same to him, as if she’s growing more permanent.

Instead of answering, he says simply, “I want to go in again.”

If Lucy thought Jay and Colin were organized before, they’re almost militaristic this time around. New rescue equipment and supplies are spread out on the carpet in front of them. They choose the best time of day based on the almanac and weather predictions. They pack and repack supplies, outlining every possible scenario down to the smallest detail.

It’s reassuring . . . in a completely warped way. She knows that if she protests too much, Colin will hear the lie in her words. She doesn’t want him to risk his life, but there’s a part of her that strengthens and blooms every time he talks about this. Is it greed? She’s not sure how to process what she’s feeling, this fascination with watching someone she loves be so wholeheartedly reckless.

“Last time I held your core temp pretty steady at around ninety-two.” Jay snickers and adds, “’Course, it’d be more accurate if I could measure rectally.”

“How many times do I have to tell you you’re never going there,” Colin says. Lucy stares as they cackle like twelve-year-olds before turning back to the notebook in her lap. She scribbles messy circles and squares, flowers and clouds, trying to remember her favorite words and how they come together under the pressure of her pencil.

Crystalline. Lattice. Momentum. Sublimate. Enthalpy. The words burst into her thoughts, reminding her of a classroom, of traveling to the university to study in the humid summer months, of a scholarship that would have been hers. When she looks down at the paper, she’s surprised to find each letter written in perfect script, no shaky or disappearing lines. She stares at them, reveling in these small pieces returning. She’s never been able to hold a pencil for long, let alone put ideas to paper, so watching the words uncurl from the tip of her pencil is almost as fascinating as the guys’ strange obsession with this new lake activity.

“Holy crap, Luce!” Colin shouts, and she immediately freezes, breaking the pencil lead against the paper.

“What?”

“You’re writing.” He’s grinning as if she’s a toddler and just took her first step.

Jay gives her a slow clap and whistles. Standing, Colin leaves their giant sprawl of gadgets and books and blankets to come sit near her on the bed.

He reaches over, rubs her shoulder, and announces, “I think you’re stronger lately. More solid.”

She watches him. He’s repeating himself, and his speech seems the slightest bit off, as if he has to build his thoughts one piece at a time. Before she can tell him that this is the same thing he said last night, a window blasts open, bringing a sharp funnel of freezing air inside and interrupting Colin’s excitement. He forces the window closed, and when he returns, his hands are as cold as hers, but somehow the thrill it gives her—the hint of the cold to come—feels like fire.

She wonders if this is how a tiger feels when it catches the scent of prey on the breeze, or how a long-distance runner feels with his toes bordering the starting line. She feels like she might explode from her skin and vaporize into a million tiny glittering particles. Does this lightness, this exhilaration she feels as Colin strips down to his boxers, mean she might take flight?

Last time Colin stripped and jumped straight in, like if he thought about it too long, he wouldn’t go through with it. This time, he stares at her, his grin building as slowly as his blinks are delivered. She steps back, and then again, turning to the trail before he’s even submerged.

It’s exactly what she expects it to be. They meet at the spot on the trail, and turn, laughing and running with the wind down the path to the shed, feet tripping over feet.

Jay said he thinks he can give them an hour.

An hour.

Even with the bright white-blue of morning outside, it feels like night inside the shed. Beams of light play with the stars of dust in the air, and Colin’s skin looks lit from within, as if he’s the different one now.

He curses under his breath, a sound of wonder, cupping her face and kissing her so hard, so hungrily, and then he’s walking her backward, around, helping her down onto the air mattress, shoving aside the pile of blankets. Dust clouds up around them, leaves crumble beneath, but the setting doesn’t matter. His skin, her skin, it slides and presses, hot and smooth. Not too much, not too little. Perfect.

They kiss, pulling away the last remnants of clothing, and then he’s moving into her, moving over her and talking, and she doesn’t care that it’s going to end because this feeling– this feeling—is what they’ve been missing. The connection and touch, the communication that words can never reach. Colin whispers his love into her neck as he shakes above her.

She clutches him, pressing her face against his skin and listening to the rustle of the blankets near her head as he releases them from his fists. Lucy doesn’t want to move from this spot, maybe ever.

“Are you okay?” he asks quietly, his open mouth kissing a path across her throat to her ear. When she nods, he whispers, “Not sure how I feel that our first time was in a dirty shed.”

She laughs. “I don’t care about the setting.”

He pulls back and looks at her, playfully bereft but obviously giddy, and then he blinks, languid, just for her. “I don’t either.”

The moment stretches. Colin hovers over her, kissing, eyes open, with an intensity that makes every muscle in her body tighten, makes her chest ache with how much he consumes her.

He doesn’t need to say he loves her, but he does.

Then he’s pulled from her body, flying backward again as if a band pulls at his chest, his mouth wide in an anguished cry in the shape of her name. He passes through the dancing bands of light and dust, he filters easily through the cracked walls and damp wood planks, and then Colin is gone.

Hours. It feels like it takes hours to get dressed and tear back down the trail, to where Jay pulled him out early, to where Colin will be awake. Lucy trips over roots and sticks in the snowy mud of the shore. She doesn’t know how to manage these new, strangely heavy limbs.

And then she’s there, falling on top of his blue-gray body and apologizing and kissing his unconscious face. “What happened? Why did you bring him back early?”

“I didn’t, Lucy. I waited exactly an hour.” Jay pushes her away, forcing air into Colin’s lungs and smacking his chest. “Wake the fuck up, C.”

Lucy’s hands curl into fists, a wave of anger flashing along her skin, and she shoves Jay’s arm away, causing him to cry out, stare at her for a beat in horror.

“What happened to you?” Jay asks, voice shaking. He squeezes his eyes shut and looks at her again before he reaches for another hand warmer to shove into the mittens covering Colin’s fingers. “What happened to your face?”

“My face?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. I must have . . .” Lucy ignores Jay’s rambling and bends over Colin, hugging him through the heavy layer of blankets. “I’m here. You’re going to be okay. I’m here.”

CHAPTER 28 HIM

IT’S SO STRANGE TO BE IN THIS PLACE AGAIN, caught between life and life unraveling. Colin feels the faint burn of ice and snow against his skin, but he’s not cold. Flashes of light pulse beyond his closed lids, and the echo of his name rings through the air in panicked voices, but he can’t gather the strength to open his eyes. Despite the noise in his head, his chest is strangely silent. It’s taking too long, and the instinct to return grows fainter and fainter.

He feels a mild tickle of fear, but it’s gone quickly, the urge to slip back into darkness wrapping around him like a blanket. In a thick, creeping realization, Colin understands that his inclination to curl back into the lake is because it’s Lucy’s lake. He’s less surprised to feel positive that Lucy is the ghost at the lake than he is to feel in his frigid bones that she’s been waiting for him. For so long there hasn’t been anything for him here, and there is everything for him in the lake. It would be so easy to go back in and walk down the trail to Lucy.

That’s all he’s ever had to do.

CHAPTER 29 HER

HIS EYES OPEN AT ONCE. NOT THE CALM, fluttering awakening she expected, but one moment he’s blue and unconscious, the next he’s staring at her, gulping for air, his face burning red.

“Luce,” he gasps. He inhales roughly, as if he’s sucking oxygen through a straw.

She presses on his neck to feel his pulse.

“Colin.” She has a million questions. Can you feel me? Do you remember? Do you hurt? Can you move?

“I think I know where you go,” he mumbles thickly into her neck. His entire body has begun to shiver violently, and it takes him a moment to get the words out. “I think you live in the lake.”

Her veins run cold at the thought that her home is in that deep, isolated world. That she is the one haunting this school. But something about it rings true; she’s more peaceful at the lake than she is anywhere else on campus. And there are no waters entering or leaving it; it’s as landlocked as she is.

Sunlight steals the darkness from Colin’s bedroom inch by inch and finally shines a spotlight on his warm, breathing body. For the hundredth time she memorizes his face, his neck, the way his hair curls and falls over his forehead.

“Wake up. Talk to me,” she says. It’s been one of the longest nights she’s spent with him, waiting for him to come to and show that he’s not hurt. Or sick. Or brain damaged.

He makes some groggy waking-up noises, turning to face her. “Your skin feels so different lately.” He pauses, and Lucy hopes he’s realizing that this conversation seems familiar. “Do you think it has to do with me?” he says instead.

She pulls back to look at him. Really look at him, as in try to see if his pupils are reacting to light and his skin has taken on his normal color. Does he not remember that they’ve had this conversation before, twice now? “Maybe.”

“Do you think me being close to you, or even like you in the lake somehow makes you more . . . ?” He shakes his head, rubbing his face. “Like, more real?”

She smiles, trying to shake off the strange tickle in her spine she feels looking at his innocently wide-eyed expression. “I want to be a real girl, Geppetto.”

“I’m serious.”

“Me too.”

“Maybe we can shift into some dimension that shows us how to make you human again,” he says. “With more practice.” She gives him her best what-on-earth-are-you-talkingabout look. “I don’t think we’ll be doing any more interdimensional Colin travel. I worry you’ve used up your last ticket.”

He shakes his head, immediately riled up, and although her mind worries, her heart feels a silent, electric thrill. Something inside her begins beating. And it’s this that worries her: If she’s his Guardian, why does it feel so good that he’s falling apart?

Lucy’s never seen Jay rattled before. At least, that’s what she assumes is going on at lunch when he’s silent and fidgety. His usually piercing eyes are focused on his shoes, where he doodles with a black marker over older doodles. The fresh black ink stands out against the faded now-gray.

Over “ grenouille,” he writes “eau.” Over “papillon” he writes “froid.” Almost as an afterthought he adds CHAUD, in capital letters above it all.

Frog and butterfly become cold water, then hot. She digs in her thoughts for more words in French but is greeted by only a vast expanse of gray. She can’t puzzle out her memories, how they seem to be vaulted inside until they get the smallest nudge and then spill forward. She wonders what other things will tumble out when prodded. Maybe something to explain where she goes when she’s gone and what kind of Guardian lets her Protected dive into a frozen lake over and over just so she can touch him.

“I didn’t know you took French,” she says. Beside her, Colin is buried in a book about the acute effects of hypothermia.

“I don’t,” Jay says defensively, as if he’s been caught somehow. As if he’s the one who should be explaining himself.

They’re an awkward threesome, with a secret the size of the Pacific Ocean between them, carrying on with their normal lives in the strange world of private school. Sneakers squeak on the asphalt of the basketball court in the distance. A short, chubby kid makes three baskets in a row from the three-point line. Lucy wants to ask Jay how he knows the French word for frog if he doesn’t take French, but it also seems like the most inconsequential question she could ask after everything that happened this last weekend. “Are you okay, Jay?”

“My mom is French,” he says instead of answering.

“So that explains grenouille,” she says, and he grins, correcting her pronunciation under his breath. “But it doesn’t explain why you’re nonverbal today. Are you freaked out?”

His shrug is loose and slow. Jay is jerky and twitchy; the shrug is a decidedly non-Jay gesture. “Just thinking.” He reaches for a magazine inside his bag. The front is creased and covered in scribbled notes, drawings, and watermarks. The pages are dog-eared and torn on the edges, DIRT RAG emblazoned across the top in jagged green lettering.

“Jay,” Lucy begins, unsure of his mood and how to best phrase her thoughts. She looks over at Colin, satisfied that he’s sufficiently distracted. “Don’t either of you have that voice in your head saying that what you’re doing is crazy?”

“I do,” he says, then nods toward Colin. “He never has.”

Of course Colin picks that exact moment to look up from his book. “I never have what?”

“The self-preservation instinct. You never turn back from a hill or a jump. I’ve never seen you look at something and say, ‘I shouldn’t try that.’ It doesn’t mean you always land it, but you always try. You have no good angel on your shoulder.” Bending to his magazine, Jay adds quietly, “Only the devil.”

Colin laughs, and it feels like a fist squeezes Lucy’s heart.

Jay continues. “I can’t believe it went like it did at the lake.”

“How so?” Colin asks carefully.

Lucy starts to compile an apology to Jay, shifting words in her head to make the best, simplest statement, so he understands that she appreciates what he did more than he knows. She considers adding they would never ask it of him again, but the words feel slippery in her thoughts.

But instead of explaining his concern, Jay gives Colin a slow-growing smile. “It worked. I mean, look at you. You’re fine. It’s crazy that we can actually do this, and I’m over here just tripping out about it. I don’t know why more people don’t try. Makes me want to try.”

Already nodding, Colin sweeps into the conversation, and the two of them are off a mile a minute, and although Lucy knows she should be worried, everything inside her surges with relief. Apparently, jumping in a frozen lake is like any other extreme sport. You think you’re going to die, but what you get is the adrenaline rush of your life.

She hates her reaction, hates her calm. She hates how much she wants Colin in the lake. She hates not understanding.

So Lucy can’t listen to their fascinated planning; it feels too much like condoning their insanity. Instead, she pats Colin’s leg as she stands, telling him she’s going for a walk. Despite her internal struggle, she feels strength wrapping solidly around her bones, her muscles zip with vitality at the simple thought of seeing Colin go underwater, of meeting him on their trail. She wants to hide this strange, bounding strength from him but knows she can’t walk far enough to hide it from herself.

Was it because she died near the lake? Is that the connection for them? Maybe if she understood what happened to the other Guardians on campus, she’d know more about why she was back and why she can take Colin to her world. Colin’s little sister died on the school road, and her mother drove them all over a bridge, possibly trying to find her. Now that Colin knows how to find Lucy’s world, could it be different for them? Could they manage this strange balance in the world above and the one below? Where did Henry die, and is that where he goes when he’s gone?

In the library, Lucy searches the archives for any information about Henry Moss. The name shows up in several places: for a dentist in Atlanta, a high school football star in Augusta. And then a story about a twenty-two-year-old college student from Billings killed by a hunter’s stray bullet while hiking deep in the woods of Saint O’s campus. Leaning back in her chair, she stares at the picture of Henry before he died, smiling at the camera with his trademark wide grin.

Caroline Novak was hit by a delivery truck heading into the school. Henry died in the woods. Lucy died in the lake. All of them returned and seemed to return for someone: a heartsick mother, a boy with cancer, and an orphan who kept a murderer from killing countless others.

“But why do we disappear?” she asks aloud, absently rubbing the firm shape of her arm. She’s starting to suspect that she returns to the lake and had always been there. Is it true for the others too? Are they hovering in some mirror image of this world when they’re gone?

She needs to find Henry. She needs to ask when he feels the most solid and permanent and whether he feels the polar opposite right before he vanishes. But she needs to do it without giving away that she feels the best when Colin is only barely escaping death.

It turns out this time he’s easy to find, reading on a bench beneath a large naked maple near the arts building. When Henry sees her, he stands, shouting her name and gesturing for her to join him. They climb the stairs and walk through the massive doors together, right as the sky opens and the snow begins to fall.

“Where’s Alex?” she asks. Henry gestures to the quad at their backs. “English. I’m tired of the history class I’ve been sitting in on this semester. It’s not like I remember anything about the past, but I still feel like I’ve heard it before.” With a wink, he tugs on her hand, and she follows him into the auditorium, down the long center aisle, and into the deep orchestra pit. Although their footsteps echo in the small quasi cave, it’s easy to tell that they’re completely alone. They’d be able to hear a pin drop on the stage.

“I have to tell you something,” she says, pulling at the sleeves of her shirt. “I know how you died, or, at least I know who killed you.”

“Oh,” he says. “Oh. I was . . . murdered too?”

“Yeah. Well, maybe ‘manslaughter’ is a better word. You were hit by a hunter’s stray bullet. I think you were visiting the area on a break from college and that’s when you were shot.”

Henry stands, takes a few steps away before sitting down again, and Lucy bites back a smile at his familiar ignorance. If Colin hadn’t told her about her death, she would probably still be in the dark about it all, too. Henry looks up to the ceiling, pauses, and then blinks back to Lucy. “I always half worried that I’d have that last piece of information and boom, the sky would open up and I’d be set free or sent back or whatever it is we’re waiting for.”

“That’s why Colin didn’t tell me how I died at first; he worried it would be the thing that would send me away for good.” Lucy shivers, hating the ticking-time-bomb sensation beneath her skin, that bleak unknown. What will be the thing that sends her away? She hesitates. “But I think there’s something about this school. Like it traps us somehow. Everyone I know of who died here, died on what was technically school grounds. I think there have been others, maybe there are others here now.”

“Have you seen someone?”

She shakes her head. “No, but Colin’s mother swore she saw the ghost of her dead daughter, Caroline. She drove them off a bridge, and I wonder if she thought she figured out a way for the family to be together again. Colin barely survived the accident. What if his mother was seeing her daughter? What if we’re just ghosts, and we’re just . . . here?”

“Without a purpose?”

Lucy nods. “Without a purpose. Haunting. Stuck.”

Henry doesn’t seem to like this idea, shaking his head sharply. “If Caroline were a Guardian like us, no way would she have led her mother over a bridge.”

Unease tightens Lucy’s chest. “I guess.”

He stares at her in his intense Henry way, as if he can see her thoughts hovering beneath her skin. “How’s Colin lately?” he asks.

“He’s good,” she says, not adding what a miracle that is.

“What else is on your mind, little sis?” Henry turns his chair so he’s facing her, elbows resting on his knees.

“Do you sometimes feel stronger than other times?” she asks.

“What do you mean by ‘stronger’? You mean more solid?”

She nods, picking at a thread on her sleeve. “I know this is personal, but sometimes Colin can barely touch me, and other times I feel like . . .” Lucy remembers the picture of Colin at prom, his hands resting on a human girl’s curves. “Like he can grab on to me. But I don’t think I understand what I do to make it happen. I wish I knew so I could do it more.”

“I have no good advice because it doesn’t ever seem to change for me,” Henry says apologetically. And then he growls, giving her a playfully dirty look. “Lucky.”

“But when Alex touches you, can he, like, touch you?”

As if on cue, Alex walks into the auditorium. His boots clomp down the center aisle and down the steps into the pit before he collapses into a chair next to Henry. He looks back and forth between them, the bruises beneath his eyes almost black in the shadows. “What’s up?”

Henry reaches down and pulls Alex’s legs across his lap. “Lucy asked if you like to touch me.”

She groans and buries her face in her hands. “That is not what I asked. I asked whether you can touch him. I don’t need a testimonial.”

Alex grins. “Yeah. But he feels like he’s covered in static.”

Henry watches Lucy for a beat before asking, “I’m sure you’ve already considered this, but what’s going on when you feel strongest?”

She thinks back to when she’s noticed it: at the lake, when Colin leaves for a ride. But also when Colin got back from the hospital. She wishes she could pinpoint a mood or even an event. “I notice it when we’re outside together, or when he’s riding his bike. I thought it was about him being happy, but then I felt it also when he was recovering.”

“Even if he was recovering, I think he was probably happy to be alive, in his bedroom with his hot girlfriend, so I wouldn’t rule out your theory.”

Lucy ducks her head, grinning at her lap. “I guess.”

“But my theory? You feel strongest when you’re on the right path, when you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing here. Maybe it’s when Colin is happiest, maybe it isn’t. Pick the one moment you felt strongest, most real, and do that again.”

She looks up at the ornate ceiling overhead, painted deep scarlet and gold and decorated with intricate molding. She felt almost solid before Colin chose to go into the lake. Is it wrong, she thinks, to keep this secret from Henry? Wouldn’t he want to know that he could be with Alex like this?

“I mean,” Henry says, breaking into Lucy’s internal debate, “I think I feel stronger every day. And Alex is still in remission. It tells me that whatever I’m doing for him is right.”

That makes up Lucy’s mind for her. She can never tell Henry what she’s letting Colin do in the lake. “Okay.”

“My point is, look at Colin. Watch him. If you do something to make him happy, you should feel that strength inside you build. If the strength is from something else, you’ll notice. I saw your name on some chemistry plaques in the science building,” he says with a wide grin. “Go do some experiments.”

She stands, but decides to start right away. “Henry, what color is my hair?”

He gives her a tilt of his head before breaking into soft laughter. “Not the strangest thing you’ve asked me, but okay, I’ll bite. It’s brown.”

CHAPTER 30 HIM

IT’S COLD AS HELL, AND COLIN CUPS HIS HANDS around his mouth and breathes, trying to warm them up. The wind whips around the side of the library, chilling him through a thermal, two T-shirts, a beanie, and his favorite jacket. Colin shrinks further into the warmth of his hood and rocks slightly, forward and back on his skateboard, watching Jay buzz his bike down the long flight of stairs. Huge piles of dirty snow line both sides of the stairway, and the sky looks heavy and swollen, like it’s ready to crack open and fall all around them.

The deicer scattered along the sidewalk pops and crunches beneath Colin’s wheels as he rides over to Jay.

“I thought it was supposed to warm up. Why is it so damn cold?” Jay grumbles.

Colin doesn’t answer, not wanting to think about what will happen when the lake begins to thaw. Instead, he relishes the freezing temperatures, the way each breath burns cold in his lungs, and how the other students rush by, practically sprinting up the stairs to get inside.

“Thank God we’re not at the lake today,” Jay says, teeth chattering. “We’d both be freezing our balls off. Literally.”

Colin laughs. “You’re not the one that ends up naked and wet.”

“Yeah. I’m the one sitting on the side of a frozen lake for an hour while you’re having all the fun.”

Colin snorts at Jay’s use of the word “fun.” Their idea of a good time has never made much sense to anyone else, but with Jay, it seems perfectly normal to characterize jumping into a freezing lake in January as fun.

“Think she’ll want to go again?” Jay adds. “She got up and left kind of suddenly today.”

“No clue.” Colin exhales loudly into the cold, the condensation forming a small cloud in front of him. He remembers how, as kids, he and Jay used to think they were cool and pretend they were puffing on invisible cigarettes. He knows the tiny particles in his breath freeze when they meet the icy air, moving from a gas to a denser liquid and solid state, forming ice crystals before dissolving back into invisible particles. He sort of hates that this reminds him of Lucy, like it’s some giant metaphor for what will happen when the days becomes dry and warm in the spring and there’s nothing left in the air to hold her together. Is it possible she’ll vanish along with the cold?

Jay pops his wheel and leans against the railing. “So that’s it, then? We’re done? Just when we’re getting it down?”

“I don’t know,” Colin answers. “She says she doesn’t want me to, but . . .”

“God, I still can’t believe it worked. I mean, for all of my doubts, have you ever really thought about what you’re doing? You’re having an out-of-body experience and making out with a ghost. Never mind how insane that is. It’s like you’re cheating death, Col. Again! It’s totally awesome.”

“Do not say it like that in front of Lucy,” Colin says. He climbs the stairs and looks out across the quad. He hated that phrase growing up—cheating death—as if he were somehow more life-savvy than his parents and managed to pull an ace out of his sleeve at the last minute, leaving him alive but his parents dead. “I’m not cheating anything. People get in cars every day, get on planes, get into boats. People hike and hang glide and ski down ridiculous mountains. Enough people have done those things and survived that we don’t even think twice when we start the ignition on our car and head out on Route Seven with the drunk and methed-out truckers barreling down there every day. But what if what I’m doing isn’t any more dangerous than skiing a black diamond? You don’t know, Jay. No one does it, so you think it’s wild. Maybe it isn’t.”

Jay is nodding almost the entire time Colin is ranting, and he puts his hands up in the air when he’s done. “I get it. Like, at first I was doing this only because it felt like I never saw you anymore. But now I think it’s cool. Leave it to you to find the fun in freezing your nuts off.”