Colin dreams of Lucy in her flower dress and white sandals, her hands clasped on her stomach and lilies all around her.
CHAPTER 14 HER
SHE’S TRYING TO STAY PERFECTLY STILL AS HE falls asleep, listening to the pattern of his breathing. Colin hasn’t biked in days, hasn’t beaten himself up and worn himself out like he used to. Lucy is used to seeing him always moving, almost vibrating with his barely contained vitality. But now, as he approaches sleep, he seems oddly quiet. It gives her the tiniest twinge of unease, even as his arms are tight and strong and his broad chest presses to the curve of her spine.
Colin inhales and mumbles something before his body seems to deflate, growing easy and tired and even warmer somehow. She misses that release, the physical letting go of sleep.
Lucy has been back here for more than two months. Sixty-five sunsets, and tonight is the first time she feels the sensation of drifting to darkness. She assumes people who love to sleep mean that they love this part of it most: the peaceful disengagement.
As she relaxes, she feels like she’s back on the trail, but this time it’s only in her mind and it’s different somehow. She’s underwater. Bubbles rise from her lips as she exhales, and when she looks up, they turn into silvery stars in a violet sky. Reeds become branches, stretching to touch each tiny spot of light. Ahead of her is the same dusty trail, but in the darkness it is a soft brown-black. The surface seems covered in a strange mixture of the lake bottom and tree bark from the earth outside.
The trail doesn’t go on forever as trails sometimes do in dreams. It ends straight ahead, where there is no turn or hill; there is only nothing. A soft blackness. In this world, where ghost girls can walk and touch and laugh, black isn’t a terrifying chasm. It’s just the other side of white.
She keeps walking until she’s not walking anymore; she’s simply moving. Turning left, then right, then left again until she’s back at her trail, waiting. Instinctively, she feels her body curve and press back against Colin one more time just before she lets herself fall into the black.
CHAPTER 15 HIM
HE’S NEVER STAYED OVERNIGHT AT A GIRL’S place, so maybe there’s a strange sense of intruding that he hasn’t yet experienced. But Colin has had girls sneak in and sleep over, and never in any of those nights did they ever up and leave while he slept. Lucy is gone when he wakes up, and even though it’s probably because she was bored to tears, he still feels a little ditched.
From his window, he can see that it snowed sometime during the night. A lot. The sky is heavy and gray, and it’s almost impossible to tell where it ends and the ground begins. He groans when he sees Dot’s garden. He broke his arm the day before he was supposed to clean it out. There are still a few pumpkins scattered around, and the tomato plants are brown and brittle, nearly bowed to the ground beneath the bulk of the snow. Their forgotten fruit stands out in gruesome contrast to the frost-covered vines, like little shriveled hearts draped over a blanket of white.
He goes downstairs to help shovel and salt the walks behind the kitchens, wondering the entire time if Lucy went back to her shed. He has no idea how someone so slight walks in the thick, wet snow. He tries to not think about her stuck somewhere, locked in a step that went too deep, unable to pull her weight out of the drift. For about the millionth time, he wishes he understood what the hell she is. By now he’s sweating, but his fingers feel like ice. The very thing he’s been avoiding—the fear that Lucy could be gone as quickly as she came into his life—presses in on him.
“Hey, stranger,” Dot says.
“Hey,” he answers absently.
“You okay this morning, hon?” she asks as he stomps the
snow from his boots. She’s buried in one of the lower cabinets, digging out a couple of large stockpots. “Sure.” Inside the kitchen, Colin opens cupboard doors and closes them again. He feels like he’s shorted out somehow, and nervous energy courses through his limbs. He’s not scheduled to work today, but somehow being surrounded by the hustle of morning chaos and grumbling employees is more comforting than the silence of his room.
“You seem a little anxious.”
“I’m fine.”
She eyes him skeptically.
Turning away, he starts putting bread into the huge industrial toaster. “Just wondering if I should put out some more salt.” He motions out the window, where white blankets the grass and walkways, drapes every shrub and tree.
“Let the groundskeepers do that stuff.” Dot steps up behind him and pats his shoulder to soften her words. “You’re a sweet kid, you know that?” she says, attempting to smooth his hair. “And you’re so much calmer lately. Haven’t seen you in the infirmary in more than a month.”
“Har-har.” He sits, takes a bite out of his toast. He hadn’t realized it had been that long.
“So either your bike, skateboard, and kayak are all broken, or you’ve found a new girl.” She hovers for a moment before stepping away, but Colin doesn’t bother answering. Now that the knows the truth, he wonders how Dot would react if she saw him with Lucy.
As she continues her morning routine, he listens to the familiar squeak of her shoes on the tile floors and pushes his food around the plate. If he didn’t have breakfast, Dot would bring in the cavalry. But each bite feels like hardened glue settling in his gut.
The minute he’s done, thoughts of doing anything but finding Lucy are out the window. Maybe it’s true that she came here for him, but it’s also now true that he feels a strange shift in the fabric of the sky, as if a weightless girl pulls the entire atmosphere with her when she leaves his room in the middle of the night.
The first thing Colin notices when he reaches Lucy’s field is that the snow is undisturbed. He tells himself it’s fine. He doesn’t even know if Lucy would leave footprints, but somehow he knows she hasn’t been back.
He’s panting by the time he gets to the shed and bursts through the door. The blankets on the old air mattress are smooth and untouched. Lucy’s book sits, undisturbed, on the table, a dried piece of lavender marking the page.