Chapter 8: : Chapter 8

COLIN STARES AT HER, PART confused, part horrified. “Okay?” he says, eyebrows slowly rising. Half of his mouth tilts in an unsure smile. This can’t be happening. It can’t. “Dead, huh?”

He blinks, pressing his hands to his eyes. He’s officially lost his mind.

“Yeah.” She stands and walks a few steps toward the pond.

Colin watches her as she gazes at her reflection and wonders if a dead girl would even have one. “So, when you said you’re here for me, you mean, you came back from the dead for me?”

He can see her nod even though she faces away from him. “That’s what I mean.”

Dread, heavy and cold, settles between his ribs. No, please no. “But if you’re dead, how can you open doors, or”—he points to the sweatshirt in her arms—“hold my hoodie, or even wear the school uniform?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I look the same. Still tall and knobby. But I’m less clumsy.” She looks over her shoulder and smiles at him sadly, then turns away again. “But I think I feel different, less solid, less . . .” She trails off, shaking her head. “Just less. I remember dying, but I’m here. That’s all I can tell you.”

Her long white-blond hair reaches the bottom hem of her blue shirt, and she looks so eerily beautiful in front of the pond with the perfectly sliced half-moon directly overhead. Suddenly the idea that he’s losing his mind doesn’t seem so impossible. Colin wonders if Lucy is even really here.

“Lucy, what color is your hair?”

She turns, a confused smile on her face. “Brown . . . ?”

With this, he drops his head into his hands and groans.

Lucy walks over, sitting beside him on the bench. “Why did you ask me that?”

“It’s nothing.”

She reaches out and takes his hand, but he immediately drops it, shooting up from the bench and wiping his palms on his thighs. “What the hell?”

His hand tingles where it touched hers, the sensation slowly fading into buzzing warmth. She felt like static, like charged particles in the shape of a girl. Colin stares at her and then puffs his cheeks out as he exhales.

“What is going on?” he murmurs, looking beyond her and up at the sky. He’s suddenly remembering every burnout kid that’s come back from the woods with a story about something they saw. How his mom used to talk about . . . God, he can’t start thinking about that. The idea that Lucy is a Walker is impossible. The idea that Walkers are real is even more impossible. But either scenario makes him nearly choke with panic. Because if Walkers aren’t real, then he is insane. And if they are real . . . then maybe his mother wasn’t crazy after all.

And right now, in every other way, he feels sane. He does. He remembered to grab a jacket before he came outside; he’s wearing shoes. He thinks he’s speaking coherently. When he looks around, he doesn’t see anything amiss—no spiders crawling up his body or stars weaving in the sky. Just a brown-haired girl who looks blond to him, says she’s a ghost, and feels like static heat.

That’s it. He’s insane.

“Why didn’t I think about it more?”

“Think about what?”

He waves a hand, blindly indicating the area around her head. “Your hair is blond, and Jay says it’s brown. And your eyes? Oh God. What is going on?”

“My eyes? My hair?” Lucy bends to catch his gaze. “I look different to you?”

He shrugs stiffly. It feels like there is a stampede of horses galloping in his chest.

“I look different to you and it didn’t freak you out before?”

“Not until now.” He groans. “I guess I didn’t want to think about it. I don’t ever want to think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” He shoves his hands into his hair, pulls.

“What did my hand feel like?” she asks, more insistent now.

“Um . . . ? Like . . .” He shakes his head, trying to find the right words. “Energy . . . and buzzing . . .”

She offers her hand again. After staring at it for what feels like an eternity, he steps forward, breathing heavily, and takes it. In his grip, her touch snaps against his skin before settling into a warm, vibrant hum. His voice shakes when he says, “Like energy and air? Um . . .” The hum begins to fill him with a longing so intense he feels disoriented. He releases it again and steps back, shaking both hands at his sides like he’s flicking away water. “It’s crazy, Lucy. This is crazy.”

She steps toward him, but he takes another step back, needing space to breathe. He feels like the air is being sucked from his lungs when she’s so close. As if reading his mind, she pulls her hands into the sleeves of her shirt.

But after a long moment, curiosity takes over. Reaching forward, he tugs at her sleeve, pulling her hand out and toward him. His fingertips run over her palm before he turns her hand and presses it to his. Snapping, crackling energy followed by a delicious warmth and the relief of a strange, deep ache. The shape of her is obvious, but he can’t close his hand over hers. When he presses too hard, her energy almost seems to repel his touch.

Is it really his mind doing this?

“Wild,” he breathes. She seems to pull back, as if his touch borders on painful for her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s a lot to take. Your skin feels hot and so . . . alive? It’s a little overwhelming for me.”

Colin winces, looking away as he drops her hand and mumbles an apology.

“It’s like I didn’t exist, and then suddenly I was there on the trail,” she says, explaining. “And that dress I was wearing? The thin flowery one? The little-girl sandals?” She grows quiet, and he looks up at her, waiting. “I think that’s what I was buried in.”

She’s afraid, he realizes. Her eyes are this rich, grinding violet, flecked with metallic red. Hope and fear, he thinks, but mostly fear. Colin squeezes his eyes shut. He can read her mood in her eyes.

“Colin, are you okay?”

He presses the heel of his palms against his brows and grunts, not a yes, not a no. He is most definitely not okay.

She steps closer. “After I saw you, I mean, I felt like I was supposed to find you, and I realize how that sounds. It sounds creepy. It’s why I ran away.”

“I almost went after you,” he mumbles, but immediately wishes he hadn’t. This conversation feels the same as barreling headlong into a sharp turn in the dark, on a new trail. He doesn’t know how to navigate it.

“After that first day, I felt drawn to the school. I would sit outside and . . .” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her look up at him. “You know when you hold your breath and everything gets tight and full and you wonder what’s causing your chest to burn? I mean, it’s only oxygen and carbon dioxide not being let in and out of your lungs, but it burns, you know?”

His eyes widen and he nods, barely. He knows exactly what she means.

“Seeing you was like being able to exhale and then inhale again.” She searches his expression. “I know it sounds lame, but when I’m with you—even though nothing else makes sense—I’m glad I’m back.”

She’s said too much, and Colin doesn’t know how to tell her that it’s impossible she’s dead, and this entire conversation is a figment of his imagination. But then again, if this is all in his head, should he even feel embarrassed for her that what she says can’t possibly be true? How does one fight the spiral into insanity? His mother certainly didn’t.

Rather, she fell into a depression so deep after his sister died that she wouldn’t eat or move for days at a time. Finally, she insisted she saw her dead daughter walking around campus, lost her mind, and drove the living members of her family off a bridge.

He stares at her, feeling as if he’s about to throw up. Her eyes are liquid metal infused with color. Her hair is white-blond only to him. She tells him she’s returned from the grave, that she’s here for him. “I . . . I need—”

“This sounds insane. You think I’m insane. I tota—”

“I’m sorry. I have to—”

“Please, Colin, believe me. I would never—”

He stands as she’s midsentence, turning woodenly and walking as fast as he can back to the dorm.