Lucy feels almost winded by the time she reaches the dorm. Two state police cars are parked in the lot, and she sees Dot’s car a few spots down, but Lucy doesn’t risk going to the kitchen to find her, to ask if she’s seen him.
Continuing on, she notices the sidewalks seem busier than usual. Students stand together, trading hushed but anxious voices, and Lucy moves around them, leaning the bike against the side of Ethan Hall. She freezes when she spots the campus security guard standing at the door and talking to a teacher she recognizes. It seems impossible, but her guilty mind races, and she can’t help wonder if he’s looking for her. Lucy feels so alive right now—like every cell is pulsing with a heartbeat of its own—that she worries there’s no way she could hope to sneak by. She feels like an illuminated billboard.
A group of chattering girls approaches the entrance. They move like a school of fish, lost in a torrent of whispered conversations. Lucy tucks herself near the back and must manage to look like she belongs, because soon she’s through the door and racing up the stairs, praying that Colin is in his room. She can hear the music pulsing before she’s even reached the landing.
She runs down the hall, and not waiting to knock, bursts through the door. Jay is sitting at his computer, his head in his hands.
“I heard,” he says, with gentle gravity.
Lucy pulls up short, searching the small room for Colin. “What?”
“He died last night.”
She shakes her head, confused. “Who died last night?” “Your friend Alex.”
Lucy no longer has legs. They buckle beneath her, and she
sits on a pile of laundry as the world starts to spin too fast for her to hold on to any single point. “What?” “He collapsed last night. He was never in remission; he just didn’t tell anyone.” Jay points to his monitor, to the news article he was reading as she came in, but she’s crawling to the door as dread and sickness and terror wash over her. Fear is freezing her limbs, because if Jay is here and Colin is not . . . Lucy looks down at her arms. She is so solid she can see her skin roll firmly between her fingers as she pinches herself.
My presence is fighting the cancer, helping make him healthy again. And I feel stronger every day.
Kids like you? They always take someone with them. Try not to, Lucy.
“Where is Colin?” Jay asks, looking behind her. “I’m not sure he knows yet. But maybe, because he’s been camped out at Joe’s and—”
“Jay, I think Colin went to the lake to find me.”
Jay begins throwing supplies in a bag, shouting for Lucy to wait just a second, to let him call 9-1-1. But she can’t. Every particle of her body propels her out the door and down the stairs, sprinting to where she knows Colin is.
Her chest burns from trudging through the snow at this pace, and looking down as she runs, she sees two sets of footprints, converging. Colin’s and hers. Equally deep. The ice groans in warning beneath her weight, and she slips for the first time, cracking her solid hip on the surface. Closer, closer.
Lucy hates how strong she feels. The only thing keeping her going is that she’s still here. If Colin died, she would vanish, right?
“I’m almost there. Please don’t go looking for me. I’m here.”
At the edge of the ice lies a pile of clothes. Jeans, boots, his favorite blue hoodie. In the water, there are no bubbles, no ripples, no movement. Just blue water that slips into darkness.
Her scream carries through the trees and echoes off the surface of the water. The force of her anguish tears her in two and pulls her down to the brittle, thinning ice.
Every piece finally fits.
I’m no Guardian; I’m a lure.
She feels the streak of hot tears falling down her cheeks— the first ones she’s cried since waking. In the distance, sirens fill the air, the sound ringing in the empty silence of the frozen lake. Closer. Closer.
As she stares at the pile of clothes, they become covered with fluffy flakes of snow. When she looks to the sky, she finds only brilliant blue above. Holding her hands up in front of her, Lucy watches her skin disintegrate into snow and ash and air. She watches as she’s blown into the wind.
Epilogue
IT WASN’T AS SIMPLE AS SLIPPING INTO THE BLACKness and finding him there waiting. She expected it to be simple. She moved with the same instinct as before.
But instead, she was back in her mirror world, alone, and more aware this time. She’d never been lonely there before, because she’d needed only to look out into the other sky and see him. But when she returned alone, she remembered every minute with Colin, every smile, every sensation of him.
Time was her sole, begrudging partner. It twisted and slept, lingered interminably and then would burst past her in the few moments Lucy let herself enjoy her lush memories of togetherness. Minutes passed differently under the lake than they did above it. A minute here could be a second or a year to anything on earth. How long would it take him to get here? How long had it been?
Every time the strange sun rose, she thought, Today is the day we’ll be back together. Every day she walked to the gate, but the longing to walk through was gone, like it had drifted off with her body into the snow.
And then everything changed.
It was a different sort of morning, cold like the first day he went into the lake, with air so sharp you hesitate before taking it into your lungs, even if it gives you your shape and its coldest elements are your only essence.
She had a good feeling that morning, one she couldn’t explain. It was weather that would make Colin’s eyes flame golden and she would know he was thinking about falling into the water, about touching her with same hands and same lips and same skin.
The trail was deserted, of course. Downy snow buried the dirt and grass. Apples that hung ripe and round the day before lay like glittering rubies in the snow. And then he was there.
His eyes were full of confusion. He looked at his arms, at the apples in the snow, at the ice-blue sky, and at the path in front of him. When he saw Lucy, his face relaxed and he blinked once and then twice for her, the second one bringing with it a smile.