For a brief moment, Lucy’s eyes catch Colin’s and hold on. And even though he thinks she’s been watching him, too, suddenly she’s walking faster and veering away from where he sits.
“Make me proud,” Jay says, clapping a hand on Colin’s back before walking away.
Colin stands and crosses the soccer field, accelerating his long strides to catch her. He has no idea what to say. It doesn’t feel the same as approaching one of the girls from school, the girls who knew him when he was five and couldn’t write the letter “S.” The girls who knew him when he was ten and wore the same Han Solo shirt for an entire week. The girls who, lately, never seem to say no. This feels like approaching an exotic snake on a trail.
As if she knows he’s there, Lucy turns and looks at him over her shoulder.
“Hey,” he says nervously, shoving his good hand into his pocket. The fingers of his other hand twitch at his side.
She frowns and keeps moving along the grass.
“I didn’t see you eat anything,” he continues, moving into step beside her. “Weren’t you hungry? Dot makes the best grilled cheese.” Lucy gives only a small shake of her head, but the response is enough to make something like hope spread in his chest. “Are you cold? I have a fleece in my room. . . .” He cringes inwardly. That sounded like the worst pickup line ever.
They walk for another minute in silence, leaves crunching beneath the soles of their shoes. Although it’s weird how quiet she is, for some reason he doesn’t feel ignored, either. “Did you move here?” Ducking his head, he smiles at her. “It’s like you just showed up one day.”
There’s a slight falter in her steps but nothing else. Colin studies her profile: creamy, pale skin and bee-stung lips that stick out in kind of a hot pout.
“Where did you go to school before?” he asks.
Lucy picks up her pace but doesn’t answer. He’s decided to give up and turn away when she slows, motioning to his cast. “How did you hurt your arm?”
He flexes the fingers of his left hand on instinct. “On my bike. I didn’t quite land a jump.”
“Does it hurt?” she asks. Her voice is scratchy, like she was at a show last night screaming her head off. He imagines her dancing alone, rocking out, not giving a crap what anyone thinks.
“Nah. I’ve had worse. Broken bones, fractures, concussions, stitches. You name it. This is nothing.” He stops talking abruptly, realizing he sounds like a frat boy bragging about slamming a beer can against his forehead.
Lucy frowns again. “Why would you do those things if you keep hurting yourself?”
Without thinking, Colin says, “For the rush? The burst of adrenaline? That feeling you get when you do something that reminds you you’re alive?”
Lucy stops in her tracks; her face goes blank and her arms wrap protectively around her stomach. “I have to go.”
“Wait,” he says. But it’s too late. With long, determined strides, she walks away.
Chapter 5 HER
ONCE LUCY REMEMBERS WHAT HAPPENED TO her, a tangle of other memories connect, plugging together bundles of fine, tenuous synapses. She remembers her loud, barking laugh, forever-skinny arms, and hair so straight it slipped right out of clips and bands. A gift for chemistry but also art, fear of dogs, and a love for the smell of oranges.
She remembers the face of her first teacher, but not her father. She remembers her favorite torn jeans and a Cookie Monster sweatshirt she wanted to wear every day when she was little.
In other words, she remembers nothing that tells her anything about why she’s here instead of floating on a cloud somewhere, or beneath the trails and pavement, dancing in flames.
And it’s that question —why am I here?—that begins to eat away at her quiet, composed shell. Questions burn on her tongue, wanting to be screamed into the cold. But she knows there’s no one to answer them. She’s spent hours since she woke trying to understand what she is. If she’s back where she was killed, then is she a ghost? And if she is, then how can she wear clothes and open doors and even be seen? Is she an angel who came crashing through the clouds and landed on the trail? Then, where are her wings? Where is her sense of purpose?
Her chest aches with the tickling anxiety that she could disappear as quickly—and mysteriously—as she appeared. Somehow, the idea of leaving and being sent elsewhere is more terrifying than the idea of staying here as a shadow. At least here is familiar. Elsewhere might be the stuff of nightmares: stitched-together monsters and blue-black darkness, yellowed claws and misery.
So much about this strange life doesn’t make sense. There’s the statue in the quad, the one with the outstretched arms and heavy marble cloak draped over her shoulders. Lucy is convinced she’s touched it a hundred times before, but now it doesn’t feel . . . right. Or at least, it feels more right than stone should. The first time, Lucy let her hand linger on the delicately carved fingers, trying to remember the exact moment she’d felt it before and marveling at the strange texture. But last time she jerked away, convinced she felt a faint warmth beneath the marble skin and certain one of the fingers had moved. Other students make a wide arc around the statue when they pass, but to Lucy, it beckons.
It feels like one more thing that separates her from the students around her: Her skin turns almost translucent in the sunshine. Normal objects like pencils and stones fascinate her when she stares at them, but when she picks them up, they grow dull in her hand. She’s solid enough to wear clothes, but they weigh a good deal more than she does and she never loses awareness of them: stiff and touching her everywhere. Her mind is full of questions and empty of memories. It’s as if she’s been dropped here and is waiting, suspended, for her fall to make a sound.
The unknown of it all sometimes slips in and makes her feel breathless, tight in the chest, panicked. In those moments, Lucy closes her eyes and shuts out everything but the quiet. She’s here, a ghost in girls’ clothing, haunting this private school; she should just get used to it. But she doesn’t want to haunt anyone. She wants to be tangible and solid. To sleep in a dorm and eat in the dining hall and flirt. With him. All she wants is to be near him.
And he seems to want it, too. Colin follows her everywhere, and where she feels as if she’s built of a million questions and doubts, he seems to be only instinct, happy to simply be near her. His presence raises a warm, soothing hum beneath her skin. He’s behind her as she walks down the halls between classes. Sometimes he walks beside her and talks about—everything—even though she rarely answers what he asks. He’s stopped offering to share his lunch. He’s stopped offering to share his books. Since that first day in the hall, he’s never tried to touch her. But he hasn’t yet revoked his company.
She isolates herself at school because she feels so other. She’s unable to throw away the clothes she woke up wearing, but they feel like a hook to another place, piled in the corner of the old shed she’s found. Every time Lucy looks at them, she knows she wore them when she lay buried somewhere. The new, stolen uniform hangs limp on her bony frame. She tells herself to keep going to classes because, really, what else does she have? At least here, she can be near him. And the closer he is, the more she relaxes. Is it dangerous to want so much to know someone without first knowing yourself?
She pretends she’s wandering the campus—not seeking him out—but is flooded with a wild, charged excitement when she finds him in the parking lot near the security gates, riding a BMX with the other guy she always see with him. His friend—Jay, she remembers—is good-looking, a bit shorter but wiry, with a constant smirk. His gaze slips past her to focus on Colin’s reaction as Lucy approaches. Then Jay stands on his pedals and moves away.
“Hey,” Lucy calls, and she thinks she’s said it too quietly, but Colin’s head snaps up and his eyes go wide. She sees his face every time she closes her eyes, but the reality of him in person still surprises her.
He pedals over, too-long limbs and too-long hair, hopping off his bike while it continues to come to a skidding stop only inches from her legs. He looks impressed that she hasn’t stepped back. “Hey, Lucy.”