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.”