“The rules are so old that piercings never made it into the book, but I dare you to try and wear short pantaloons to class. Dot and Joe say I can look like a ‘no-good punk’ as long as I act like a gentleman. You don’t like it?”

“No, I do. It’s just—”

“You sound surprised that you do.” He laughs, watching her stand.

“I don’t think many boys did that when I was in high school. At least not boys like you.”

“‘Boys like me?’”

“Nice boys. Burnout boys would be inked and pierced and rowdy.”

“Oh, I’m definitely rowdy.”

Her lips curve in a half smile. “I don’t doubt that.”

“And how do you know I’m nice? Maybe I’m a burnout with a ghost fetish.”

She gapes at him, surprised, and he wants to grab a rock and crack himself over the head with it. But then she throws her head back and laughs this ridiculous loud, snorting laugh.

Colin exhales a shaky breath. Apparently ghost jokes are okay.

She grins up at him. “You are nice. I can see it all over your face. You can’t hide a thing.”

He watches her eyes shift from green to silver in the light, and her lips skew into his favorite playful smile. He considers her hair, her eyes, the way she fades into the background for everyone but him. “Neither can you.”

“Really?”

“At least, not from me.”

Her smile leaves her lips but stays in her eyes, even when she blinks away. “Good.”

Something flaps in a cluster of reeds next to the trail, and the last forgotten leaves crunch beneath their shoes as they walk deeper into the woods. Their steps are evenly paced, but Lucy’s seem lighter than his, quieter somehow.

And now that he’s starting to let himself believe, he sees other differences: Her cheeks aren’t flushed from the cold. While each of his breaths seems to float like small puffs of smoke in the air in front of him, the space in front of Lucy’s lips is noticeably empty.

Beside him, she looks around as if she can see every detail in the light of the moon, and it makes him wonder, is she like a cat? Does she have amazing night vision? Although it seems strange that there would be any off-limit topics now that they’ve both acknowledged that she is dead and he isn’t, he feels like it would be strange to ask her what it’s like.

“So you believe me?” she asks.

He considers telling her what Joe said, but opts instead for the simpler answer: “I looked up your story. Saw your picture. You were killed by the former headmaster, out by this lake.”

She nods, staring out at the water, and seems largely uninterested in what he’s told her. “I wonder why I like being out here, then. That’s sort of morbid.”

“Is it weird to not remember everything?”

She picks up a leaf and examines it. “I guess. The weird thing is it’s all or nothing, and about the strangest things. I remember with crazy detail a bouquet of flowers my dad bought me for a holiday, but I can’t remember his face.”

“Wow.” Colin feels lame, but, really what can he say to that?

“The other night I was thinking about it. You know those game shows where someone stands in a phone booth and money shoots up from the floor and the person gets to grab as much as they can in a minute?”

He has no idea what she’s talking about but goes with it. “Sure.”

“Well, some of the bills are twenties, maybe a few hundreds but most of them are ones. So it looks like it’s a ton of money blowing around, but it’s not. And no matter what you end up with, you’re happy because you have money in your hands.”

She glides around a boulder in the middle of the trail, and he hops on it and then leapfrogs onto a long, rotting log. He can feel her watching him out of the corner of her eye.

“Anyway, I feel like at some point after I died, I must have had a minute in a booth with my memories and I grabbed a couple of fives, but mostly ones.”

“So, in other words, you’re happy to have something—”

“But what I ended up remembering was pretty useless,” she finishes, smiling wryly.

“Not enough green to buy much, eh? Like who you were or why you’re here?”

She laughs, her eyes glowing with relief. “Exactly.”

It’s the relief that kills him because he’s starting to believe that if one person was supposed to understand her from the start, it was him. “I’m sorry I was a dick.”

“You weren’t a dick.” She snorts. “God, I forgot how much I love that word used like that. And ‘douche.’”

“That one applies too. You were all, ‘Hey, I died,’ and I was like, ‘Wow, that sucks. I gotta jet.’”

She laughs again, and this time it’s loud enough to echo off the tree trunks around them. He loves hearing it, loves how someone so finespun could make such a big sound. “Well, how were you supposed to react? Actually, I think I’d have been more worried if you’d been totally calm about it. I would have probably thought, ‘Maybe this guy has a ghost fetish.’”

It’s Colin’s turn to laugh, but it quickly fades away. “My mom started seeing things. It’s how she . . .” He pauses, stopping to face her. “See, a few weeks after we moved here . . . my older sister, Caroline, was hit by a delivery truck heading into school. She was on her bike. Never saw it coming, I guess. Mom kind of lost it, went off the deep end. Then, after about a month, she started saying she saw Caroline on the road a few times. One night, she got us in the car, told us we were going out for ice cream in town, and then drove the car off a bridge.”

“Colin,” Lucy whispers, horrified, “that’s awful.”

“My parents died. I survived. So, when you told me you thought you were dead, I guess you understand why I flipped out.”

“God, yeah.” She pulls her hair off her face, exposing every inch of smooth, pale skin. She’s so beautiful; he wants to feel his cheek against hers. “I’m so sorry.”

He waves her off, hating to linger on this. “Where did you go the last few days?”

“I don’t really remember what I did, but I’m sure I was around. Here, or in the field. I can’t leave campus grounds.”

“You mean, at all?”

She shakes her head and watches him a minute longer before dropping her leaf on the path. It disappears almost immediately into the mud. It’s his turn to stare, watching her profile as she looks out across the water.

“Lucy?”

She turns to him with a smile. “I like it when you say my name.”

Colin smiles back, but it turns down at the corners after a beat. “Do you know why you’re back here?”

She shakes her head. “Are you scared of me?”

“No.” He should be, absolutely. And he wants to say more, to talk about the school and the stories that surround it, about the Walkers and how maybe that’s what she is, and are they all trapped by the gate? He definitely should be scared. But now that he’s with her, close enough to touch, he can feel only relief and that strange, intoxicating longing.

Suddenly walking side by side isn’t enough anymore.

“Hold my hand?” he asks.

She coils her long fingers around his, both cool and warm, solid but retreating. He can feel points of contact against his skin, but never in the same place for very long. When he squeezes, a current runs through his fingers, making his muscles relax. She’s like a constellation, alive against his hand.

When he looks up, her eyes are closed, her teeth biting down on her lower lip.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. “Does this hurt you?”

Her eyes open, and hunger and joy swirl green and auburn inside. “Have you ever been in a pool and you hop out and jump right into a hot tub?”

He laughs. He knows exactly the feeling she means, flushing hot and amazing, but also such an intense change it feels like every nerve ending is firing. “Yeah. And how it settles into soothing hot instead of that intense oh-my-god-yes hot.”

She nods. “I keep waiting for the settling.” Her eyes fall closed again. “It never comes. When you’re touching me, it’s like the first moment of submersion, always. It’s a relief so overwhelming it almost takes my breath away.”