Текст книги "Sublime"

Автор книги: Christina Lauren

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Even so, his body fights the clarity. Colin can feel his thoughts clouding, letting go, as if he’s supposed to not care how strange it seems. This time, he pushes back, listening instead to the rational side of his brain and sliding away from her the tiniest bit. He’s always known Lucy wasn’t a normal girl. Her hair is blond to him, not brown. She never seems cold; she never seems to eat. She’s so . . . different. And when her eyes meet his and they are a slow, grinding, anxious gray—filled with metal and ice, worry and hope, and wholly unlike anything Colin has ever imagined before—he wonders for a flash if Lucy is even real.

CHAPTER 7 HER

HER THROAT IS TIGHT, ALMOST AS IF INVISIble hands strangle down the words inside her. But it isn’t some strange, supernatural force urging her to keep her death a secret. It’s fear, plain and simple. Her murder—the blood and death and unanswered screams—is the sharpest memory of her life. She has no idea how much time has passed since she died, or whether anyone in this town was alive when it happened. A boy she kissed? A favorite teacher? Her parents? But after the week of wandering the grounds, of not knowing her name or who bought her the shoes on her feet, of feeling a rising panic stirred up by the sheer emptiness inside, knowing something about her life—even that it’s over—was a bittersweet relief.

But whereas the human rules are always so straightforward—priority number one: stay alive—rules after death are a complete mystery. Was she somehow responsible for what happened to Joe? It feels that way. Worry fills her hollow chest with an icy chill at the thought that she could hurt someone without meaning to.

Now one thing is for sure: The only thing keeping her from being completely alone in this world is the nervous boy sitting next to her. And she does have a story to tell. It might be short and unreal and full of holes, but she can’t keep it from him much longer. The question is whether he’ll want to have anything to do with her once he hears.

“Lucy?” Colin asks, ducking to reclaim eye contact. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like you have to talk. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“No, I’m putting the words together.” She smiles weakly at him. Swallowing down her apprehension, she begins. “I woke up by the lake a few weeks ago.” She points behind them, over her shoulder. “The day I saw you? I had only just stumbled off the trail.”

His first reaction is silence, and it reverberates dully between them. She chances a look at his profile; he’s squinting as if translating the words in his head. “Sorry. I don’t know what you mean,” he says finally. “You fell asleep out there? In the woods?”

“I appeared there,” she says. “I don’t know if I fell from the sky, or materialized out of thin air, or if I’d been sleeping there for a hundred years or a day. I woke up with no memories, no belongings, nothing.”

“Really?” he asks, his voice high-pitched and shaky. He meets her eyes then, studying. She sees his expression cloud with something. Anxiety, maybe fear.

“Please don’t be scared,” she whispers. “I’m not going to hurt you.” At least, I don’t think I am. She slips her hands into her lap, as if they might be capable of something she hasn’t yet discovered.

He shifts back, his angular jaw clenched tight, and it’s clear in his expression the thought hadn’t occurred to him until she’d said it.

She shakes her head. “Sorry, I’m not doing a good job explaining. See, I think I know why I don’t remember anything and why it’s hard to pick things up and why I don’t need food or sleep or—your sweatshirt.” She looks up at him, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t. Licking her lips, her eyes pulsing with anxiety, she says, “I’m pretty sure I’m dead.”

CHAPTER 8 HIM

COLIN STARES AT HER, PART CONFUSED, PART horrified. “Okay?” he says, eyebrows slowly rising. Half of his mouth tilts in an unsure smile. This can’t be happening. It can’t. “Dead, huh?” He blinks, pressing his hands to his eyes. He’s officially lost his mind.

“Yeah.” She stands and walks a few steps toward the pond.

Colin watches her as she gazes at her reflection and wonders if a dead girl would even have one. “So, when you said you’re here for me, you mean, you came back from the dead for me?”

He can see her nod even though she faces away from him. “That’s what I mean.”

Dread, heavy and cold, settles between his ribs. No, please no. “But if you’re dead, how can you open doors, or”—he points to the sweatshirt in her arms—“hold my hoodie, or even wear the school uniform?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I look the same. Still tall and knobby. But I’m less clumsy.” She looks over her shoulder and smiles at him sadly, then turns away again. “But I think I feel different, less solid, less . . .” She trails off, shaking her head. “Just less. I remember dying, but I’m here. That’s all I can tell you.”

Her long white-blond hair reaches the bottom hem of her blue shirt, and she looks so eerily beautiful in front of the pond with the perfectly sliced half-moon directly overhead. Suddenly the idea that he’s losing his mind doesn’t seem so impossible. Colin wonders if Lucy is even really here.

“Lucy, what color is your hair?”

She turns, a confused smile on her face. “Brown . . . ?”

With this, he drops his head into his hands and groans.

Lucy walks over, sitting beside him on the bench. “Why did you ask me that?”

“It’s nothing.”

She reaches out and takes his hand, but he immediately drops it, shooting up from the bench and wiping his palms on his thighs. “What the hell?”

His hand tingles where it touched hers, the sensation slowly fading into buzzing warmth. She felt like static, like charged particles in the shape of a girl. Colin stares at her and then puffs his cheeks out as he exhales.

“What is going on?” he murmurs, looking beyond her and up at the sky. He’s suddenly remembering every burnout kid that’s come back from the woods with a story about something they saw. How his mom used to talk about . . . God, he can’t start thinking about that. The idea that Lucy is a Walker is impossible. The idea that Walkers are real is even more impossible. But either scenario makes him nearly choke with panic. Because if Walkers aren’t real, then he is insane. And if they are real . . . then maybe his mother wasn’t crazy after all.

And right now, in every other way, he feels sane. He does. He remembered to grab a jacket before he came outside; he’s wearing shoes. He thinks he’s speaking coherently. When he looks around, he doesn’t see anything amiss—no spiders crawling up his body or stars weaving in the sky. Just a brown-haired girl who looks blond to him, says she’s a ghost, and feels like static heat.

That’s it. He’s insane.

“Why didn’t I think about it more?”

“Think about what?”

He waves a hand, blindly indicating the area around her head. “Your hair is blond, and Jay says it’s brown. And your eyes? Oh God. What is going on?”

“My eyes? My hair?” Lucy bends to catch his gaze. “I look different to you?”

He shrugs stiffly. It feels like there is a stampede of horses galloping in his chest.

“I look different to you and it didn’t freak you out before?”

“Not until now.” He groans. “I guess I didn’t want to think about it. I don’t ever want to think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” He shoves his hands into his hair, pulls.

“What did my hand feel like?” she asks, more insistent now.

“Um . . . ? Like . . .” He shakes his head, trying to find the right words. “Energy . . . and buzzing . . .”

She offers her hand again. After staring at it for what feels like an eternity, he steps forward, breathing heavily, and takes it. In his grip, her touch snaps against his skin before settling into a warm, vibrant hum. His voice shakes when he says, “Like energy and air? Um . . .” The hum begins to fill him with a longing so intense he feels disoriented. He releases it again and steps back, shaking both hands at his sides like he’s flicking away water. “It’s crazy, Lucy. This is crazy.”

She steps toward him, but he takes another step back, needing space to breathe. He feels like the air is being sucked from his lungs when she’s so close. As if reading his mind, she pulls her hands into the sleeves of her shirt.

But after a long moment, curiosity takes over. Reaching forward, he tugs at her sleeve, pulling her hand out and toward him. His fingertips run over her palm before he turns her hand and presses it to his. Snapping, crackling energy followed by a delicious warmth and the relief of a strange, deep ache. The shape of her is obvious, but he can’t close his hand over hers. When he presses too hard, her energy almost seems to repel his touch.

Is it really his mind doing this?

“Wild,” he breathes. She seems to pull back, as if his touch borders on painful for her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s a lot to take. Your skin feels hot and so . . . alive? It’s a little overwhelming for me.”

Colin winces, looking away as he drops her hand and mumbles an apology.

“It’s like I didn’t exist, and then suddenly I was there on the trail,” she says, explaining. “And that dress I was wearing? The thin flowery one? The little-girl sandals?” She grows quiet, and he looks up at her, waiting. “I think that’s what I was buried in.”

She’s afraid, he realizes. Her eyes are this rich, grinding violet, flecked with metallic red. Hope and fear, he thinks, but mostly fear. Colin squeezes his eyes shut. He can read her mood in her eyes.

“Colin, are you okay?”

He presses the heel of his palms against his brows and grunts, not a yes, not a no. He is most definitely not okay.

She steps closer. “After I saw you, I mean, I felt like I was supposed to find you, and I realize how that sounds. It sounds creepy. It’s why I ran away.”

“I almost went after you,” he mumbles, but immediately wishes he hadn’t. This conversation feels the same as barreling headlong into a sharp turn in the dark, on a new trail. He doesn’t know how to navigate it.

“After that first day, I felt drawn to the school. I would sit outside and . . .” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her look up at him. “You know when you hold your breath and everything gets tight and full and you wonder what’s causing your chest to burn? I mean, it’s only oxygen and carbon dioxide not being let in and out of your lungs, but it burns, you know?”

His eyes widen and he nods, barely. He knows exactly what she means.

“Seeing you was like being able to exhale and then inhale again.” She searches his expression. “I know it sounds lame, but when I’m with you—even though nothing else makes sense—I’m glad I’m back.”

She’s said too much, and Colin doesn’t know how to tell her that it’s impossible she’s dead, and this entire conversation is a figment of his imagination. But then again, if this is all in his head, should he even feel embarrassed for her that what she says can’t possibly be true? How does one fight the spiral into insanity? His mother certainly didn’t.

Rather, she fell into a depression so deep after his sister died that she wouldn’t eat or move for days at a time. Finally, she insisted she saw her dead daughter walking around campus, lost her mind, and drove the living members of her family off a bridge.

He stares at her, feeling as if he’s about to throw up. Her eyes are liquid metal infused with color. Her hair is whiteblond only to him. She tells him she’s returned from the grave, that she’s here for him. “I . . . I need—”

“This sounds insane. You think I’m insane. I tota—”

“I’m sorry. I have to—”

“Please, Colin, believe me. I would never—”

He stands as she’s midsentence, turning woodenly and walking as fast as he can back to the dorm.

CHAPTER 9 HER

SHE WATCHES COLIN WALK AWAY AND CAN almost feel the frenzy of his reaction. The air seems to cool with every step he puts between them, but the imprint of his palm burns against hers. The conversation went both better and much worse than she expected. Better, because she was actually able to explain. Worse, because he left the way he did, looking as if he thought she was making it all up.

Standing, Lucy wraps herself in Colin’s hoodie. She closes her eyes as she takes in his scent on the cotton. What else can she do but wait? She can’t blame him for his panic and for the fear she saw so plainly on his face. The only way she can earn his trust is to let him see that all she wants is to be near him. She has time. She may even have forever.

With one final look, she begins the long walk back to her shed.

She sits by the statue of Saint Osanna the next morning with her arms wrapped around her legs pulled tight to her chest. She’s grown used to the statue’s strangeness; it’s the only thing that feels as out of place in this living world as she does. The earliest risers shuffle past in the chilly air, talking, laughing, eating. Barely awake or focused. One with bright, flushed cheeks, one with wild red hair, and one with smooth, ebony skin. Despite this, Lucy is struck by how little there is to differentiate them. The space around each student feels dull and hollow.

Lucy thinks Colin must hate this weather, so drizzly and wet. Would he ride in this, hopping his bike from log to log, defying gravity on such simple engineering even in the rain? She wants to watch him like that—lost in something he loves.

Just as the sun finally reaches the tops of the buildings, Colin appears. He steps around the corner headed to work the morning shift in Ethan Hall, long legs, long strides, wild hair still too long. He pushes it off his brow and glances at his watch before starting to jog. Lucy ducks back into the shadows, pulling the hood of his hoodie up and over her head. Unlike every other student at Saint Osanna’s, the space near Colin seems so full; the air is heavy with him. It distorts as if heated, swirling inward, wanting to be as close to him as she does.

“Good morning,” she says into the cold, hoping it will pass along the message.

CHAPTER 10 HIM

HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY HOW AWESOME you are, Dot?” Jay asks, his mouth full and his second plate of French toast in front of him. They’re sitting at the secret table in the kitchen, watching Dot and the other cooks prepare breakfast for hundreds of students about to pour in through the doors. Back here, they can eat in peace and steal extra bacon.

But this morning, Colin picks at his breakfast.

“If I’m so awesome, then why do I always have to take your dishes to the sink?” she asks over her shoulder.

Jay immediately changes the subject: “You going out after work?”

Dot steps up behind Colin, setting a carton of orange juice on the table before turning back to the giant range and flipping about seventeen pieces of French toast in ten seconds. “Yep. I’m going to the poker tournament in Spokane. I pulled a royal flush right out of the gate last time. First deal of the night.” She smiles and does a little dance as she begins slicing oranges.

“Dot, I’m not sure I like you driving all the way down there,” Jay says.

“Oh please,” she scoffs. “My eyesight is better than yours, kid. I’ve seen some of the girls you date.” She makes exaggerated air quotes around the word “date.”

“You wouldn’t rather hang out with us than a bunch of old ladies? I’m hurt, Dot. If I were ten years older . . .” Jay trails off, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

“Jay, you are so creepy.” Colin doesn’t need any help feeling nauseous this morning. He got zero sleep. He barely wants to look up, for fear of seeing something new that confirms he’s lost his mind.

He’s a disaster.

Dot fills Jay’s plate again and wipes her hands on her DON’T FRY BACON NAKED apron. “You know I’d go nuts if I never got away from this place.”

Everyone grows silent, and Colin can feel them both watching him, waiting for his reaction to Dot’s casual words. Colin: the orphan who has no idea what comes next and will probably never leave this tiny town.

To change the subject, he asks the first thing that comes to mind—“Dot, you ever see a Walker?”—and immediately regrets it.

She stops chopping, knife hovering in the air. Colin can hear the rhythm of footsteps through the kitchen wall as students stomp their way into the dining hall. Finally, she shrugs. “I sure hope not, but sometimes . . . I’m not so sure.”

It takes a few seconds for her words to make it from Colin’s ears to the part of his brain that makes sense of them. “You think they exist, though?”

She turns and points the spatula at him. “Is this about your mom again? You know I loved her like a daughter.”

Jay grows silent, his interest in his French toast suddenly renewed. He knows practically everything there is to know about Colin. He definitely knows the story surrounding how his family died, and more than that, he knows how much Colin hates to talk about it.

“I just want to know,” Colin mumbles.

Turning back around, she flips more French toast in lingering silence before saying, “Sometimes I think they’re with us and maybe we don’t want to see.”

Jay laughs as if Dot is joking. But Colin doesn’t.

“I’m a crazy old lady about most things, but I think I’m right about this.”

“What do you mean?” Colin begins tearing the edge of a campus newspaper into narrow strips, trying to look like this is just casual conversation. Like he’s not hanging on her every word. “You believe the stories?”

“I don’t know. We’ve all heard about the army man on the bench and the girl disappearing in the woods.” She squints, considering. “Newspapers love to talk about how this place is different. Built on land where kids were buried. The fire that first week the school opened. We all know people have seen things, and more than a few. Some a bit clearer than others,” she adds quietly. “Who even knows what’s real anymore?”

Colin pokes at his food. “So you think they’re all over, then? Ghosts and spirits and stuff? Not only here at Saint O’s?”

“Maybe not ‘all over,’ but I bet there’s always a few around. Least, that’s what people say.” Colin wonders if he’s imagining the way she looks out the window, off into the direction of the lake.

“If you haven’t seen them, how do you know?” Jay asks, joining in. “Some of the stuff I’ve heard—it’s pretty crazy. You’d have to be nu—” He stops, glancing quickly in Colin’s direction before stuffing his mouth full of French toast again.

“If you think this world isn’t full of things you don’t understand, Jay, you’re too dumb to use a fork unsupervised.” Dot’s quiet laugh softens her words.

Colin feels sort of wobbly all of a sudden, like his insides have liquefied. He’s not sure which scenario would be worse: that he’s lost his mind, or that the stories he’s dismissed his entire life could be true. That Lucy could be dead.

“Why are they here, do you think?” he asks, quieter now.

She pauses, looking over her shoulder and raising an eyebrow. “You’re taking this pretty seriously, kiddo.” Turning back, she doesn’t answer right away and begins chopping a large pile of dried cranberries. The sharp, fresh scent fills the space. “Who knows? Maybe to watch over us,” she says, shrugging a shoulder. “Or to meet us so that we’ll know someone when we’re gone.” She drops the entire pile into the mixer. “Or maybe they’re just stuck here. Maybe they need closure.”

“Closure like they want revenge?” Colin asks.

“Well, if they’re bad, I reckon it’s pretty easy to tell. I’ve always figured anyone from the other side is undiluted—good or bad. Life is all gray. Dying has to be pretty black or white.”

She pulls the dough out and begins forming rolls as Colin watches, just as he has hundreds of mornings in his lifetime. Somehow every movement she makes feels more substantial, like he never noticed how much her experience weighs until now.

“Thanks, Dot.”

“For what? Waxing poetic about dead folks?”

“I mean, when you’re not talking about the hot barista at the coffee shop or the benefits of pineapple for your sex life, you’re all right.”

“I try.” She points to the cabinet above the counter. “Grab my baking sheets.”

Even after the familiar routine of helping Dot bake, Colin doesn’t feel much better. If anything, he feels worse. He can count on one hand the number of times in the past ten years he’s felt this mopey, but the things Dot said were the same kind of things he’s heard his whole life: vague slogans about the afterlife and how Walkers probably exist and maybe his mother wasn’t insane. It’s the kind of reassurance that’s easy to give because, ultimately, it doesn’t matter anymore whether she was. She’s gone.

She’s gone, and his father is gone, and his sister, Caroline, has been gone even longer. Now Colin might be losing it too. It’s the first time since his parents died that Colin is faced so baldly with the knowledge that he’s completely alone in this world. No matter how much they care, Dot and Joe and Jay can’t help him with this one.

Dot finds him sitting on the back step, drawing in the lacy ground frost with a long stick in his good hand. She opens the door, and warm air blows against the back of his neck.

“What are you doing out here?” “Thinking.” He wipes his face and she catches it, moving to sit by him.

“Are you upset, baby?”

“I’m good.”

“You’re not,” she says, putting a warm hand on his knee. “Don’t lie to me. You’re the boy who never stops smiling. It makes it easy to spot when something’s off.”

Colin turns to look at her, and her face softens when she sees his red-rimmed eyes. “I’m losing it, Dot. Like, I seriously wonder if I’m crazy.”

He hates the way her face falls and how guilty she looks, as if she’s responsible for the weight of his tragic life. “You’re not.”

“You don’t even know why I think that.”

“I can hazard a guess,” she says quietly. “You want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” He gives her a small smile. “But thanks.”

“I’ve seen some crazy things in my day. And Lord knows you’ve got better reasons than the rest of us to have some wrinkles in your sanity, but will it help if I tell you I know for a fact you’re as sane as they come?”

Colin laughs humorlessly. “But how could you know that?”

Her expression steadies. “Because I know.”

“Maybe I’m imagining you saying that. It’s okay, Dot. I’m okay.”

She studies him for a beat before pinching him hard on the arm. He cries out, immediately rubbing the spot. Dot has a pretty mean pinch. “What the hell, Dot?”

“See?” she says with a quiet laugh. “You didn’t imagine that. And for someone who’s survived things that would have left anyone else in the ground and lives their days like there will never be any more, sure, you sometimes give me good reason to think you’re nuts. But if you’re crazy, then I’m young and ugly, and we know neither of those is true.”

Colin makes a quick trip to check in on Joe before heading to class and is relieved to see his godfather sitting up, enjoying an enormous plate of French toast and bacon.

“Dot delivery?” he asks. Joe nods, pointing with his fork to the chair beside the bed. “You have time to sit?”

“A couple minutes.”

Colin sits, and the warm silence fills the space between them. It’s their familiar routine: quiet sitting, little conversation. Colin looks out the window, watching students trudge to class while Joe eats.

“Sleep good?” Joe asks around a bite.

“I should be asking you that.”

“I slept like the dead,” Joe says. “Maggie pumped me full of painkillers.”

Nodding, Colin says, “Yeah, you were looped.”

“Who’s the girl?”

Once he processes the question, Colin’s heart seems to freeze, and then it explodes into a gallop. “Which girl?”

“The one who came to me on the porch. The brownhaired one. Wanted to help, but said she couldn’t.”

“She said that?”

Joe sips his coffee, eyeing Colin. “You’re going to think I’m losing my mind, kid, but I’ve got to know: Is she beautiful or horrible?”

“What?” Colin moves closer.

Looking quickly up at the door to ensure they’re alone, Joe whispers, “The girl. Is she beautiful or horrible?”

Colin whispers, “Beautiful.”

“I thought . . . Her face melted right off and then she became the most amazing thing I’d ever seen.”

Colin is caught by a head rush so powerful, he needs a few seconds before he can answer. “It’s probably the pain meds,” he says, swallowing. “They make you see crazy things.”

“No, kiddo,” Joe mumbles, eyes trained on Colin. “That was before I fell.”

“I . . .” Colin can barely feel his fingers and feels like his entire world has closed in around him. “You must be remembering it wrong.”

Joe doesn’t respond, and Colin reluctantly continues. “Her name is Lucy.”

Joe’s eyes close, and he shakes his head. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

Bile rises, thick in Colin’s throat. “Joe?”

“Lucy was . . . the name of a girl who was killed here. Ugly time for this place, must be some ten years ago now. Looks just like her. I’m sure that’s why my mind went off.” He laughs, taking a bite of orange. “Must be the pain meds after all.”

Colin ducks into a computer lab, leaving the lights off to remain hidden. He remembers the first time he did this—high and drunk with Jay after a bonfire and ghost stories on the edge of the woods—sneaking in to see if any of the gruesome stories could actually be true. There were more hits than he would have imagined for something most people wrote off as folklore. Stories of a place where students seemed to die at a higher rate than any other boarding school in the country. But how many schools have such harsh winters and enormous, wild grounds? Colin never understood why it was a surprise that kids died or disappeared more frequently here than other places from things like exposure, pneumonia, and suicide. Even stoned he didn’t believe any of it.

He has a vague memory of seeing the one Joe mentioned, about the girl who died. Most websites have information about the murderer and his subsequent trials and execution; because the murder happened a decade ago, there are only two news stories online from the time of the killing. Colin clicks a link with a photo, and covers his mouth with a cupped hand to keep from crying out when he sees her face.

Her hair is brown, her features less glasslike, but it’s her. Beneath the photo is a story from the Coeur D’Alene Press. Monday’s arraignment of accused serial murderer Herb August Miller, who is being held for the killing of seventeen-year-old Lucia Rain Gray as well as seven other teens over the past eight years has been continued to June 1.

Prosecutors allege the 42-year-old former headmaster of Saint Osanna’s boarding school outside of Coeur D’Alene stalked Lucia for several weeks prior to the murder. The murder of a teen at his school indicates Miller, who previously only selected victims far from his home state, was growing increasingly confident in his ability to evade law enforcement. Miller allegedly invited her to his cabin, drugged her, and took her to the woods, where he slit her throat before cutting open her chest. In what is now believed to be his gruesome trademark, Miller then removed her heart.

Police found Miller attempting to bury the body on a trail beside the school after a young boy saw him carrying a struggling girl into the woods. The boy alerted a staff member, who called 911.

“This is a killer we’ve been hunting for eight years and who has caused unspeakable heartache to many families across the country. It’s possible he would have simply carried on at the school if it hadn’t been for the bravery of the young boy in finding help,” Coeur D’Alene sheriff Mo Rockford said at a press conference early Friday. “The capture of Herb Miller is a huge weight off the minds of national law enforcement, and this community owes a debt of gratitude to the boy and the staff for making the prompt call.”

Miller has been indicted on seven counts of first-degree murder. The state is seeking the death penalty in light of the gruesome aggravating torture and mutilation factors. Seventeen-year-old Gray was the youngest victim of Miller’s killing spree.

This isn’t the first round of tragedy for the school, which was built on a burial site for settlers moving west and which lost two young children in a fire two days after the school opened in 1814. Saint Osanna’s has been struck by tragedy regularly over the years, with its proximity to the woods, glacial lakes, and harsh elements resulting in a number of student and visitor deaths.

Colin stops, closing the window on the screen before anyone sees what he’s reading. “Lucia Rain Gray,” he says aloud. He lets his heart take over every sensation in his body, pounding relentlessly in his chest and throat and ears. Lucy was telling the truth.

Colin doesn’t see her all day. She doesn’t show up for history, and she’s not outside at lunch. He doesn’t find her anywhere on campus, and he grows more frantic as he circles buildings and checks every classroom. He tells himself he’ll stop looking after this preliminary search but gives that up after gym, dressing quickly so he can scout the woods bordering school before seventh period.

Days go by, and Jay tells him that she’s stopped coming to his English class, too. The desk she sat in that first day stays empty. Colin doesn’t understand why that feels like a punch to the stomach. If this situation is as crazy as he keeps telling himself, then why does he even care? Why does he keep rubbing his palm, trying to remember what it felt like to touch her? Why does he want to do it again?

He wants to remember: Her skin was warmer than air, but not by much. Her eyes change, like ripples in a pond. She’s never cold, even with the strongest wind outside. Except for a pencil on that first day, he’s never really seen her touch anything. And even that looked hard, like she had to work at keeping it between her fingers. Her eyes, when she asked about Joe, changed colors as he watched, from deep gray to an aching, honest blue.

He considers leaving campus to try and find her but has no idea where she even goes when she isn’t here. Does she vanish into thin air?

By Friday night, Colin has the same feeling he gets when he doesn’t ride his bike for a long stretch—antsy and like something is growing inside him and pushing his vital organs into a tiny corner in his chest. He’s worried that Lucy has left, but he’s even more worried that she’s simply evaporated. That she reached out to him and his rejection somehow sent her away. He takes his bike to the woods, riding the narrow trails along the rickety boards he and Jay propped there years ago. He hops boulders and streams, crashes down hills. He beats himself up until he’s bruised and sore. He does everything he can to clear his mind, but nothing works. He eats dinner and tastes nothing. The heat in his dorm room feels claustrophobic, oppressive.