She remembers the feeling of his hands on her arms, the soft exhale of his kiss against her shoulder. She’s traced the constellation of freckles across his nose, felt the cold press of his lip ring. She remembers his first tentative touch and his most recent fevered ones.
She’s silently begging him to not let her go. Not to promise, never promise, and hating herself at the same time.
“Okay, okay, Dot. Don’t cry. Please.” He exhales in a quiet, defeated hiss. “I promise I’ll stop.”
The ticking stops and Lucy closes her eyes, feeling like she’s unraveling at the seams.
“I promise I won’t go back into the lake.”
Chapter 34 HIM
COLIN SLEEPS FOR WHAT FEELS LIKE DAYS. HIS eyelids are like sandpaper when they finally open. The room is too bright: Daylight streams in through an opening in familiar curtains, washing the foot of the bed in blinding yellow sun. There’s a vase of flowers on a table, his duffel bag and a haphazard stack of schoolbooks on the couch.
“There you are,” Dot says, standing from a chair by the door. She tucks a well-worn paperback into her bag and crosses the room toward him. She seems lighter, happy, and for a single, oblivious moment, Colin almost forgets why. “I guess you really needed your sleep, didn’t you?” Her smooth hand touches his cheek and tries to make some sense of his hair, like it has a hundred times in his life.
“What time is it?” he asks, wincing at the feel of words in his throat. It takes some effort, but he manages to sit up a little. Dot brings a green bendy straw to his lips and he drinks. His empty stomach revolts, clenching tightly. The room shifts and weaves around him.
“Around eleven. Now, lie back down,” she tells him. “Eleven a.m.?” he asks, wide-eyed.
She smiles. “Yes, eleven a.m., Friday, February eighteenth.” Colin tries to remember what day it should be, feeling sick when he finally does. He’s been asleep for two days. “Where’s Lucy?” he asks, heart racing, the color of dread bleeding into the edges of everything around him.
“I don’t know, honey,” Dot answers, the relief slipping from her face. “I haven’t seen her since the night they brought you in.”
Colin is released from the hospital the next day. Joe and Dot don’t talk much to him or each other on the drive back to campus, and for a long while there’s only the sound of tires on asphalt to break the silence. It’s a strange tension and one that Colin has no idea how to reframe, even with his side of the story. Joe and Dot couldn’t understand what he has been through even if they tried. Colin’s pretty sure they both think he has some sort of a death wish by now, that he was trying to hurt himself on purpose. He’s glad Joe doesn’t ask, though; it’s almost impossible for most people to understand how much space there is between craving danger and craving death.
When Joe finally does speak, their conversation is short. Joe asks how he’s feeling, lets Colin know that he won’t be returning to school for a few days and that he’ll be staying with him until further notice. Colin grunts something resembling a response in the appropriate places. He’s disappointed, but not surprised.
He hasn’t seen Lucy since he was pulled from the ice and doesn’t hold much hope that she’s waiting for him in his room, even less that she’s at school or the shed. Somehow he knows she’s disappeared again. It’s almost like he can feel her absence in every particle of everything that they pass. The trees look emptier; the air looks bleak.
He closes his eyes and imagines her in the blackness just before she breaks the surface. He can see her on the trail beneath the mirror sky and wonders if she managed to get through the gate without him.
At first Colin tells himself that he needs to be patient and wait. She wouldn’t stay away, not now. So he does as he’s told: He goes to class and comes home right after. He spends an entire afternoon talking to a counselor because Dot says it’s important to her. He stays away from any trouble. He waits.
But the storm is always there, gathering. He feels it spread like the wind that creeps across the lake, like icy fingers that close around his lungs until he can barely breathe—until he’s nearly frantic with the need to find her.
Days turn into weeks, and the ice begins to thin, and though it sounds cliché, he feels like he’s drowning—melting into the lake right along with it. He does his best not to let his growing frustration show, not to take it out on Dot or Joe, both of whom now watch him like a hawk. Colin wonders what they’ve said to Jay, who seems to have been scared straight, immediately shooting down any discussion of going to the lake.
Three weeks after he woke up to find Lucy gone, Colin knows he can’t sit still anymore. He makes a show of cleaning his room, studying at Joe’s kitchen table, and volunteering to help Dot finish up dessert prep.
The sky has grown dark, and Joe raises an eyebrow when Colin settles into the couch beside him. A few distant shouts carry in from outside, as students start making their way across campus.
“It’s good to see you busy,” Joe says. He drinks from a steaming mug before setting it carefully on the table at his side.
“If feels good,” Colin answers, and they’re silent for a few minutes, Joe’s eyes on the evening paper and Colin’s on the TV. “I was actually wondering if I could get a suspended sentence tomorrow, maybe get off campus for a few hours.” There’s hope in his voice, something he knows has been noticeably absent the last few weeks.
Joe eyes him skeptically. “And what exactly would you be doing?”
“Nothing,” he says, easing off a bit and trying to sound nonchalant. “See a movie, maybe stop by one of the bike shops in town.” He shrugs for added effect. “It’d be nice to get away.”
Joe considers him. Colin can almost see the release of tension in Joe’s shoulders, his relief at hearing him talk about things that are so normal.
“Actually, I think that sounds like a great idea,” Joe says, surprising him. “Your grades are good. You haven’t been in any trouble.” He glances at Colin over the top of his paper, expression serious now. “But back here by dark. No exceptions.”
“Yes, sir,” he says, smiling. Joe shakes his head, but Colin doesn’t miss the way his lips twitch at the corners.
“I’ll get you your keys in the morning.”
Colin leans back, happy, his eyes on the game but his thoughts somewhere else completely.
Slush covers the walkway leading to the door of the infirmary, and Colin laughs quietly, realizing this is the first time he’s climbed these steps without A) the aid of someone else, or B) blood gushing from some part of his body.
He lets the door close softly behind him and wipes his feet on the rug, walking toward the sound of movement at the end of the hall. It’s too quiet, and his sneakers squeak on the linoleum, the sound bouncing off the walls around him. Colin’s been here so many times he knows exactly where he’s going, knows what each piece of equipment is for and which room has the bed with the spring that pokes you in the back. He also knows Maggie won’t be thrilled to see him and that his footprints are probably mucking up her clean floor.
Right on cue, she peeks her head out of an open doorway, scowling in his direction. “You better be bleeding,” she says, looking behind him.
He smiles. “I’m not.”
“What’re you doing here?”
He follows her into the room where she’s changing out one set of sheets for another. A kid he’s never seen before sleeps in a bed on the other side. “I need to ask you about Lucy,” he whispers.
She glances to the sleeping boy and back to him. “I don’t think so.”
Maggie picks up the basket of sheets and walks into the next room. He follows again.
“Please.” His voice cracks, begging. She won’t look at him. There’s a hardness in her expression, something that tells him she’s building a wall to keep tears from leaking out. “Please.”
After a long pause, she finally meets his eyes. “Why today?”
“Because I can’t find her.”
She watches him, eyes narrowed. “Heard you did something pretty stupid. Stupid enough it landed you in the hospital. Stupid enough you’re lucky to even be here.”
Colin tries to laugh it off. “What’s new, right?”
Maggie clearly doesn’t find it funny. “This is . . . You’ve done some stupid stuff, but this . . .”
He nods, guilt and shame warring with the unrelenting need to find Lucy. “You heard the details, huh?”
“Ain’t nobody around here who didn’t hear.”
“Maggie, you knew about Lucy. When will you tell me how?”
She keeps working, and Colin rounds the bed, taking the other side of the new sheet and fitting it over the mattress.
“Almost died and didn’t learn a damn thing. Fool-headed child,” she mutters.
Colin waits; it’s not exactly like he can argue with her.
“There’s only one way this can end, Colin. You know that, right?”
“I can’t believe that, Maggie. I don’t.”
“Of course you don’t.” She sighs, defeat written in the slump of her shoulders. Maggie straightens, looking out into the hall before closing the wide door. “You’re lucky I don’t kick your skinny butt out of here.”
Colin tastes salt water and the thick, choking tide of sobs, but pushes it down. “Thanks.”
Perched on the edge of the bed, she swallows and says, “I met Alan here when I was nineteen. I wasn’t always the person I should have been, Colin. I was young and stupid and did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of. I was on my own, trying to keep up with nursing school and homework and a full-time job. Right before I started here, a friend noticed I was having a hard time and gave me something to get me through it all.” She pulls a pillowcase into her lap, tugs on a loose thread. “Not long after, I was walking from the dorm to my car, and he was there. He was sweeping the sidewalk, and he looked up, smiled like I was a rainbow after the storm. I saw him like no one else did. Saw those crazy eyes and felt something I’d never felt before. He was mine; you know what I mean?”
Colin nods, knowing exactly the feeling she describes.
“He found me for a reason,” she continues. “I was alone at this big school and needed someone. He was so lonely. No family, no friends, practically invisible to everyone here. He took care of me, saw me stressed and understood why I needed something to get me through the day.”
Colin nods and isn’t even embarrassed to realize he’s crying.
“And when I realized what he was”—she laughs, shaking her head—“when I found out that he’d died? Here? That he haunted this place? I could handle that. But the disappearing? That’s what broke me,” she whispers. “How long has your Lucy been gone?”
“Twenty-four days.”
She pushes a skeptical exhale through her lips, shaking her head. “Twenty-four days you get used to. Twenty-four days you can live with.”
Bile rises in Colin’s throat at the idea of even one more day. “Did he disappear because you were unhappy?” he asks.
“Don’t know why he left. I went to rehab, and he didn’t visit me once. I started using again and he was back. Telling me it was okay, that I needed it. Almost encouraging. First time he was gone for six days. Second time, I didn’t see him for forty-three. And that wasn’t even the longest.”
Colin wants to move somehow, to release this discomfort that’s burrowed into his stomach. He paces to the other side of the room, pushing his hands into his gut, hoping something inside him untangles. “How long?”
“Two years. I had two years with him and then he was gone for two. I’d been clean for a while but going through a rough patch.” Maggie pinches her eyes closed, takes a deep breath. “I took some pills from the infirmary. When I got back to my room, there he was, sitting at the kitchen table like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like I’d gone out for a cup of coffee and he’d been waiting for me to come back. But it’d been too long, Colin. I couldn’t do it.”
“Two years?” Terror wraps a cold fist around his lungs, pulling down, and the sensation of caving in on himself takes over. He would chase Lucy anywhere. He doesn’t know how to function without her anymore. Maggie stays put in front of him, but she weaves, his vision blurry.
“He still felt the memory of the night before. Meanwhile, I’d lived two years—going to school, coming home, looking for him, trying to stay clean. Going to school, coming home, looking for him again. Every day, for two years. And there he was. My life was falling apart and he looked like he’d won the lottery. So, I left him. I wish I’d told him to stay away long before that. I wish I’d told him to leave me alone the first time he came back.”