Chapter 24: : Chapter 24

COLIN IS POSITIVE THAT LUCY is into the idea of returning to the lake. Her eyes are this crazy orange, as if her entire brain is on fire with the possibilities, and the light passes back through her irises like a telegraph to him: Do this. Do it.

“This can only end badly.” But her voice wavers a bit, and he wonders if it’s something she’s thought about before today too.

Days turn into weeks, and the snow keeps falling, blanketing everything that doesn’t move. Colin doesn’t push, doesn’t talk to Lucy about going into the lake anymore. Instead, their conversations slowly grow heavy with everything left unsaid.

One morning she asks him what he’s thinking about and his starkly honest answer, “How you felt on the trail,” makes her turn and walk away, arms crossed over her middle as if holding herself together.

But she finds him later, after class, a small apology in her eyes and in her smile.

He says his aloud. “Sorry. I know you don’t like the idea.” And holds her face between his palms, repeating it against her lips.

They walk together, hands entwined, back to his dorm. She reads on his bed while he does homework, lying on her stomach, her legs bent, feet slowly kicking back and forth. Colin gives up pretending to read for outright staring at her, remembering the trail, her hungry kisses, her solid weight. There was nothing insubstantial or unsatisfying about the kiss on the trail. He felt her laughter.

“Lucy.”

She hesitates before looking up, as if sensing something particular in his tone. “Mmm?”

He watches her fingertips stroking her collarbone while she stares at his hands. Her eyes flash warm and deep amber when she catches him looking at her throat, at the spot he first parted his lips and tasted her skin. It was sweet and the tiniest bit salty. She tasted of girl and rain and relief. He doesn’t say anything else, only looks at her, thinking, Please. Please.

“I can’t,” she says. “You can’t.”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if we did that.”

He can’t help it. He smiles when she says this, and her mouth twitches at the corners.

“Colin, I’m serious.”

But he can’t stand the thought that it won’t happen again. His curiosity feels like an itch across every inch of his skin. “I need to know if what I saw was real.”

Her eyes melt to the color of warm honey before she turns back to her book, her fingers making a tight fist around his comforter.

“There’s nothing in the world as good as what happened on the trail,” he says.

When she looks up, she looks so miserable. “I know.”

“But we don’t have that here,” he whispers. “It isn’t the same.”

She squirms, pulling her hair over her shoulder and squinting at the words on the page in front of her. He ignores her feigned distraction, crawling toward her in a way that makes him feel like a predatory cat hunting prey.

“Lucy.”

Her eyes remain trained on the page. “What?”

“Let me try this.”

“Try what?”

He reaches for her, gently urging her to twist and lie on her back, easing her down onto his pillow.

It takes nothing to undress her. The slip of a button, a tug of a zipper. Soft fabric pulled over her head. He pinches a simple clasp and exposes a world of smooth, bare skin.

“I have an idea,” he assures her, his hands slipping her pants down her legs. “Just trust me, okay?”

“Okay.” She nods, watching him with eyes that churn a deep, coffee brown.

“I’ve given this some thought.”

She laughs, and it’s husky and low. “I bet you have.”

He tastes the skin of her ankle, her knee. Thigh. He blows a breath across where leg meets hip. “Is this okay?”

She nods, eyes wider than he’s ever seen them, and he simply exhales right where her legs are parted.

He doesn’t even have to pretend to breathe fast. He’s practically out of his mind with wanting this girl, watching her writhe below him. Her fingers find his hair and pull. Her back bows, and with one last puff of air across her skin, he hears a sound he’s never heard a girl make before, something between a sob and a plea. But still, he sits up and kisses her afterward, and apologizes.

Curling into him, she apologizes too.

“I want to actually touch you next time,” he says into the sweetness of her neck.

She presses her face into his shoulder, her second apology coming out only as air.

He does what she asks and stays away from the lake and the misty trails and the ice. It feels like the snow swallows him too. A heavy weight settles into his bones, like blocks of cement anchoring his feet to the ground. But his insides rage. Colin and Lucy go to school, he works when he’s scheduled, and they spend long nights cocooned in his blankets and wrapped around each other so close that he can’t tell where he ends and she begins. But it’s not the same.

He tells her she’s more than he ever hoped for.

He tells her that he’s in love.

He asks her to never leave.

But she does.

When he opens his eyes in the blue-gray light of dawn, the air is unmoving. There’s no soft hum next to him, no phantom weight pressed against his chest. He sits up slowly, runs his hand through his hair, and stands, dressing in the first clean clothes that he finds. He doesn’t look back at the empty bed.

Eight hours of school stretch in front him, and he wonders how he’ll make it through, carrying around the restless need to look for her, wrapped up in the knowledge that it’s useless. He can’t even think about how long she might be gone this time. Days? Weeks? Longer? Thinking of her is like pressing on a bruise: fascination, sick pleasure, and lingering pain.

On the walk to work, he remembers what he said as they fell asleep. Stay. He thinks he felt her slipping through his fingers even then, felt her grow lighter in his arms as she arched against his body like a feather caught in a breeze.

He’s done everything she’s asked, but it wasn’t enough.

Colin talks Jay into skipping school the next day. They throw the bikes in the back of his truck and head out to the lake, hiking their way to where a few daring sledders have packed down the snow.

For a few hours, he’s almost able to forget. They ride through the cold until he’s sweating beneath layers of clothing, pushing himself harder than he has in ages. They tackle the trails, jump off ramps, and each wipe out at least a dozen times on an impromptu ramp they cut into the snow.

Colin is balancing on the back of the bench near the lake when Jay finally asks the question Colin knows has been gnawing at him.

“She’s gone again, isn’t she?”

Colin’s tires land with a soft crunch, and he looks up at Jay, squinting against the brightness of the sky. “Yeah.”

“Shit. Dude, do you think she’s off using somewhere?”

“She isn’t into drugs.” Colin glares at Jay before looking down and flicking a leaf off his handlebar. The hills are silent, but the wind howls around them, catching the snow and spinning it before letting it fall back to the ground. “I think I need to tell you something.”

Jay kicks the snow from his boots and waits.

“So, Lucy . . . Man, I don’t even know how to say this.” Colin laughs at the absurdity of this and feels a wave of sympathy for Lucy in hindsight, for his reaction the night she told him the truth. But, God, he needs to tell someone. He’s not sure he can go another day shouldering the weight of her absence alone. “She’s dead,” he says simply, after all.

Jay’s legs buckle, and he catches the back of the bench before slipping. “What the hell? How are you just telling me—”

“No! Not like that. I mean, she’s always been dead, Jay. Well, not always. But at least as long as I’ve known her.”

Eyes narrowed, Jay’s expression pinches into irritation. “That’s not funny.”

Colin doesn’t answer; he only stares down at the slush as it seeps into the sides of his shoes. “You know she’s different.”

“Yeah, different. Like with the boots and badass take on the frumpy uniform and how she doesn’t look at anyone but you. Not dead.”

“I know it sounds crazy—”

“You think?” Long moments of silence stretch between them before Jay adds, “You’re serious about this.”

Colin meets his eyes, gaze unwavering, and nods.

“So she’s what? Like . . . a Walker?”

“Yeah, essentially.”

“But I’ve helped her with her coat. I’ve . . .” Jay trails off, blinking.

“We don’t understand everything. She met another ghost here at school, and he’s convinced they’re, like, guardian spirits or something.”

“Okay?” Jay scratches his neck, looking completely confused.

“So, just stay with me here, okay?”

Jay nods, and Colin breaks a brittle twig from the tree beside him, poking deep holes in the snow near his rear tire.

“When I fell into the lake that day, I think I had some sort of out-of-body experience. I was standing behind you, watching you freak out. Then, I don’t even know why, but I walked away, down the trail. Like, I wasn’t even worried or scared. Lucy was running down the trail, and I yelled for her to stop. She thought I got out of the lake somehow. I mean, she could see me, even though my body was with you, on the ice. And, Jay, I could feel her.” Colin can’t tell if Jay believes any of this because his face doesn’t register any reaction. But Colin pushes on. “Before I went in, and now . . . I can’t really touch her. I can, but it overwhelms her. And when she touches me, it’s never enough.” Colin can feel the heat in his cheeks; he and Jay don’t talk specifics. “Sorry, I know this is TMI, but I need to get it out.”

“It’s cool. I mean, I sort of owe you one. I’m pretty sure you were awake that one time Kelsey stayed over and—”

“I was,” Colin says, waving away the awkward memory. “Lucy’s touch makes me crazy because it’s always almost enough to feel good, but then it stops short.” Grabbing the back of his neck, he winces. “I mean, we can’t . . . like, no way could we be together like that. And it’s not even about that. It’s her and the way everything looked when I went in . . . Seriously, Jay, it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

Jay blinks away, out toward the span of trees hiding the lake from their view. “This sounds crazy.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, I’m legitimately worried that you have brain damage.”

“I don’t. I’m not crazy, Jay.”

Jay looks back at him then. Colin can tell when his best friend believes him because his face falls, and he looks defeated, as if insanity or brain damage would be a far easier solution. Colin laughs, because he’s had the same reaction.

“This is funny?” Jay asks, confusion bleeding into defensiveness.

“No, not even a little. It’s that I know exactly what you’re thinking. I wish I was crazy.”

“I don’t have a lot of experience with crazy people. I haven’t ruled it out yet.”

“Well, then, let me get everything out.” He pauses, glancing up at Jay before dropping his gaze to the stick he’s stabbed deep into the snow. “I think we could do it again.”

“Do what again?” Jay asks slowly, enunciating every syllable.

“Go into the lake.” Before Jay can get a word in, Colin barrels on. “I started researching hypothermia, and it takes a long time for the brain to shut down entirely. I mean, in between being cold and being dead, there’s a lot of room.”

“You are crazy.”

“No, Jay, listen. I understand it. Metabolism slows. The body shuts down to preserve energy. But the mind is still active, and in that time, I’m somehow able to be like her. Before Lucy disappeared, I promised I wouldn’t talk about it anymore, but staying out of the lake didn’t keep her here.”

Jay groans and rubs his face, and it’s at this moment that Colin knows his best friend is going to help him. “So we do this now, or when she gets back?”

“When she gets back. I don’t know if I can find her now. I don’t know where she is.”

“Are you sure about this? I mean, this isn’t riding on chains and boards over the quarry, Colin. The day you went into the lake was fucking scary. I thought you died.”

“I’m here and fine.” Colin tells him about Liz’s cousin, how he fell through the ice and stayed out for four hours. How he’s alive and walking around. He tells Jay about the forums, how the people there see hypothermia as the ultimate extreme sport. “You’re the only one I’d trust.”

“So how would this work? We’d like, plan it? Have supplies? A time limit?”

“Exactly.” Colin’s heart begins pounding in his chest; his veins are infused with a high better than any adrenaline rush. He lays out his plan: he’ll strip down, submerge himself long enough for his pulse to slow and his core temp to drop, and then Jay will pull him out. “We’ll time it right down to the second, and you’ll resuscitate me. We can take some equipment from the campus infirmary. After what happened on the lake, no way is anyone going to risk needing the winter emergency kit. Lucy will stand on the trail where she was before, and we’ll see if it works.”

When he’s done, Colin is shocked to see that Jay doesn’t look all that horrified, even when he says, “See if it works as in see if you don’t die?”

Colin smiles. “Jay, I’m not going to die.”

Jay watches him, and Colin can feel the weight of every second as it passes. He doesn’t want to force Jay into anything, but he can’t lie to him either. “You don’t have to,” he says, hoping Jay can hear the apology in every one of his words. “But I’ll do it without you. I have to.”

Jay doesn’t react, only nods like he’s hearing something he already knew. “You know this will be the wildest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Yeah.”

Jay exhales deeply. “Okay, you crazy asshole. I’m in.”