“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.