Chapter 22: : Chapter 22

THE SILENCE IS LIKE A thick curtain between them. Colin washes dishes as best he can and hands them, through the invisible film of discomfort, to Dot, who dries and puts them away.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he says, digging his hands into the warm, sudsy water. They’re better today: fingers less stiff, his grip steadier.

“So are you,” she shoots back.

He drops the baking sheet he was scrubbing and turns to look at her. “Christ, Dot. Just say whatever it is that you’re thinking.”

“Are you going to tell me about this Lucy?”

Colin groans, turning away and looking out the window. He’s been expecting this ever since Dot heard the name “Lucy” at the hospital. Dot remembers Lucy’s murder as clearly as if it happened yesterday, but as far as he knows, Dot’s never seen him with her. For all she knows, it’s just another girl.

“She’s a girl in my class,” he says, returning to the dishes.

“I’ve seen her, you know. She looks a lot like a girl named Lucy who went here years ago. In fact,” Dot says, stepping closer, “she looks a lot like the dead girl you asked about a few weeks back.”

Colin stares at his hands in the water. They’re shaking now, but it has nothing to do with having gone into the lake.

“I told you, I always heard the stories,” Dot whispers, her voice trembling. “Different people insisting they’d seen a girl at the lake, the man in uniform sitting on a bench, or a man walking around campus, sweeping the walkway. Maggie swore up and down for years that this place was haunted. But, Lucy . . . being such a part of your world . . .”

Colin turns to her, eyes pleading. “Dot, do you remember when you told me and Jay that there are things we don’t understand in this world?”

Dot nods, eyes wide.

“And do you remember when you promised me I wasn’t crazy? Do you believe what you told me?”

She laughs, reaching up to put a soft hand on his cheek. “I do.”

“So can you trust me?”

Shaking her head the tiniest bit, she whispers, “I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“It doesn’t feel right because you don’t understand it, not because it’s wrong,” he says. “For the first time in my life, I feel like I know what I want.” Looking back and forth between her eyes, Colin can see that Dot is going to give him more leash than she’s ever given him before.

Her eyes fill with tears, and she offers him a half smile. “Just feels like I never see you anymore.”

Colin shifts where he stands, his eyes boring into the soapy water. “Been busier than normal. School . . . friends,” he says, swallowing down the guilt that blooms in his chest.

The silence stretches on before Dot sets her towel aside, reaching over to place her hand on his forearm. “Promise me you won’t do anything dangerous.”

When he nods, Colin realizes he’s made a promise he has no intention of keeping.

Colin is accustomed to being the center of attention. He’s competed in bike races and trials competitions practically since he could walk. He’s crazy tall; he’s never been shy. And when his parents died, no one gave him a minute alone for years.

But the attention he’s getting today is all wrong. Two news vans are parked on campus, and the reporters camped inside try to ask him questions before Joe calls security. His classmates are hysterical; some are insisting it was the ghost of the lake that made him fall in. Others eye him like he’s some kind of mythical creature. Everyone wants to touch him. Teachers seem shaken, and there’s a mandatory assembly on winter safety in the gym. He feels the pressure of every pair of eyes, watching to make sure he’s okay, that his arms work, his gait is steady, that he’s making sense. The words “tragedy,” “close call,” and “fences” are being thrown around.

Here’s the thing: It wasn’t a tragedy. It wasn’t a close call. If they build a fence around that lake, he’ll tear the motherfucker down. He wants to go back. He wants to know that what he saw was real, that the way Lucy felt wasn’t his imagination. The minutes with Lucy in that world felt better than any crazy trick, more visceral than anything else happening around him. His body might have been dying, but he felt alive. Really alive.

He knows that should scare him, but it doesn’t.

“Oh. My. God. Colin!” a voice screeches behind him, and reflexively, he ducks his head, anticipating the set of claws that will run up his neck and into his hair.

Amanda grips his head and digs in her nails as she pulls him into a hug. “I heard you died for like an hour!”

“I didn’t die.”

“I have been freaking out, Colin. Freaking. Out.”

“Sorry,” he says, extracting himself from her clutches. Of course, Lucy chooses this exact moment to drift down the hall and settle beside him. She glances at Colin, then at Amanda, but where he expects raised eyebrows, he gets only an amused smirk.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” He smiles at her, eyes lingering on her lips until she smiles outright. “That’s better.”

Amanda ignores Lucy. “Shelby called me last night and told me what happened. And, oh my God, I totally flipped out. Like, what if you had died? What if you had died, Colin? We would have been completely fli—”

“Amanda, have you met Lucy?” He interrupts, hoping she comes up for air. He’s embarrassed both for Amanda’s lack of manners and the Past-Colin who actually had sex with this girl.

Amanda regards Lucy as if she’s never seen her before. “Hey,” she says, uninterested, before turning back to Colin. “Did it hurt? Did you get all hot? And undress?”

He lifts an eyebrow in the way that Lucy likes and feels her slide closer.

“I didn’t undress,” he says.

Amanda has the gall to look disappointed. “Oh, good. I hear a lot of people do that when they’re hyperthermic.”

“Hypo,” he mutters.

“I was getting there,” Lucy says, grinning up at him. “Just didn’t have enough time.”

Colin feigns shock, pressing his fingertips to his rounded lips. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Amanda working up to something. She fills with an inhale, pulling together irritation and outrage and trying to coat it in indifference. “You were there?”

Lucy nods mildly at Amanda and stretches to kiss his jaw. “See you later.”

He waves, cursing Lucy under his breath for leaving him alone with his ex-girlfriend, though he can’t exactly blame her for not wanting to stay. With perfect timing, Amanda’s roommate approaches, wearing a sympathetic smile.

“Hey, Colin,” she says. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” he answers, for the thousandth time today. But this time, he doesn’t mind as much. He’s always liked Liz. He owes her big-time for the damage control she managed after his breakup with Amanda. “How are you?”

“Good,” she says simply. And right when Colin expects her to move on, she adds, “I had a cousin who fell through the ice. Up in Newfoundland.”

He nods, disappointed and already disengaged. He’s heard a variation of this story about half as many times today as he’s answered the obligatory “How are you?” What follows will be the predictable: You’re lucky you made it out alive. He was never the same again. She lost her left thumb, had permanent nerve damage in her face.

But he should have known Liz would break the mold. “He was unconscious on the ice for hours and lived.”

“What?” Amanda forgotten, he steps closer to Liz, surprising her so much she steps back into the wall.

“He fell in and managed to climb out, but it was four hours before he was found with no detectable pulse. At least, that’s what they guessed.”

“And he’s a vegetable?”

“No, that’s the weirdest part,” she says, smiling in a strange way that makes his skin hum. “He’s totally fine.”

By the end of the day, Colin is practically vibrating to talk to Lucy. It’s only when he sees her headed toward him and away from a mass of students walking to the trail, bundled up in holiday-themed scarves and hats, that he remembers tonight is the Winter Social.

“Where is everyone going?” Lucy asks once she reaches him, turning to watch the migration.

“The upperclassmen have this evil thing called Winter Social every year before the holiday. Everyone except us townies gets nostalgic and weepy over being separated for two whole weeks. The seniors decorate the overlook above the lake and—”

“Our lake?”

He looks down at her and smiles at the possessive bite to her voice. “Yeah. But don’t worry. They don’t venture down to the lake itself. Nobody does,” he adds, hoping she hears the same in his. “They decorate the area on the hill above it and play horrible pop music, and everyone makes out with everyone else, and then people start fighting because they’ve snuck in alcohol, so it turns into a giant drama.”

Lucy grins. “Sounds fun.”

“It’s a social at a boarding school. So, basically, you hang out with the same people, just half a mile away from where you usually hang out.”

Ignoring him, she says, “And it’s about time you took me on a date.”

“Trust me, Lucy. It’s not your thing.”

“How would you know?” Her grin turns seductive. “Being near the lake and kissing you sounds like my thing.”

He finds himself unable to argue with that reasoning.

A long path of battery-operated lights line the way to the overlook, and thousands more hang from every possible tree branch, illuminating the dozens of bodies that wave in swarms to the music blaring from four speakers flanking the area. The overlook is outlined with propped-up wreaths of holly, and everything in the surrounding area looks icy blue in the moonlight.

It’s hard to believe how close he is to where it happened, and Colin finds himself looking off into the distance, down the hill to the other side of the lake, where the ice opens up to the blackness below. There’s no way he’ll be able to see it from here, but he imagines the jagged hole surrounded by warning tape, the signs telling everyone to stay away. He wonders what it says about him that he’s not afraid, and rather than fear or dread at the memory of being plunged into the darkness, he feels longing and anticipation, the tease of adrenaline trickling through his veins.

Jay walks up beside them and stretches. “The lake looks so much smaller from up here.”

It feels like the world around them falls silent for a beat before Jay coughs, breaking the tension. Colin turns his attention back to the other students.

“Kiss me, Lucy. We’re under the mistletoe.” Jay makes exaggerated smooching sounds at her, pointing over his head to one of the many branches laden with plastic mistletoe.

Lucy pretends to stretch to kiss Jay’s face, but then runs away, feigning disgust. Colin watches, fascinated, as Jay chases her off down a small hill and she ducks behind a tree, laughing and shrieking when he tries to touch her. Colin has no idea how Jay would react if he felt Lucy’s skin against his, and even more, has no idea how she would react if he managed to actually grab her, but for the moment, she doesn’t seem concerned about it. It’s the first time Colin has ever seen Lucy act her age.

“Having fun?” he says when she returns. He can’t be imagining the pink flush to her cheeks, or the way she seems almost breathless with happiness. He can’t be imagining how substantial she feels when she presses against him, as if a solid girl is forming beneath the fog of her skin.

“The most. I have yet to see any flasks, kissing, or drama, though.”

Colin watches as Lucy bends to tie a loose shoelace on her boots. The boots are black, but tonight, under the lights and snow, they look iridescent. He wonders if everything becomes somewhat unearthly as soon as she puts it on.

“Ready to dance?” she asks.

“Not even a little.” He follows her anyway.

As Lucy dances, Colin wonders how she doesn’t stick out like a lit flare among the other, less graceful, students. Her hands move rhythmically over her head. Her feet glide, almost disconnected from the earth. She’s weightless as she playfully dances circles around him, lighting up with laughter. He’s never seen her like this, and it makes it easier for him to resist the pull he feels down the hill, toward the lake.

And then her smile fades for a beat, and her eyes move past him to the edge of the overlook, the tipping point, sloping downhill. The lake feels like a throbbing beacon in the blackness. Her eyes turn the same warm amber they do when they lie side by side, and he can think about nothing but how badly he wants to kiss her. As he stares, she blinks up to him, caught.

“I was remembering what it was like,” she says, guilt draining her eyes to a soft gray, adding, “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

For whatever reason, her voice sounds fainter when she says this last part, and he knows exactly why. If she feels what he feels, she wants to walk downhill, into the shadows, if only to just look at the sharp cracks and cold, silent water beneath.