Sublime

by Christina Lauren

  Colin laughs, shaking his head. “I’d forgotten about that. We were twelve. I broke my ankle.” There’s a hint of pride in this admission that makes her smile.

  “I saw you ride out here the first time,” she says, the images unrolling in her head like a reel of film. “You were a little scared but a lot more excited.” She grins as she remembers his pink cheeks and smiling face, the way he kept glancing back over his shoulder as if he expected to be caught any minute. “You two were the only ones who came out here at first, but you didn’t seem to be looking for me.”

  “I remember that! Jay dared me to walk out on the ice when we were seven. The joke ended up being on him because he cut himself on the dock and needed a tetanus shot. Man, we got in trouble for that.”

  Their joined hands swing between them as they continue to walk along the trail. Every few minutes Colin lifts the back of hers to his mouth, kissing it. His lips are warm.

  “And obviously it didn’t stop you.”

  He grins. “No way. We’ve grown up hearing stories about this place. About Walkers and disappearances, of people claiming to see a girl slip along the shore or hearing voices.” He bends to pick up a leaf, spinning it in front of him. “I mean, it was creepy, yeah. But not everyone bought into it. Just adults discouraging crazy kids from drinking and fornicating at the lake. Made it sound cooler, really.”

  Lucy snorts and shakes her head. “Of course the prospect of danger would make it more appealing to you. And even before I died, I don’t think we were supposed to come out here. Too far from the main buildings, too many ways to get in trouble.”

  They stop walking, and he bends to her, whispering, his smiling kiss covering her lips, “I can think of lots of ways to get in trouble out here.”

  “How long have we been gone?” she asks, tilting her head back as Colin kisses a path from her chin to her neck. He mumbles something unintelligible, and she means to ask him what he said, but a bird cuts through the air over his shoulder. A raven. It’s beautiful, with wings like shards of ebony. It flies overhead, calling out into the silence before circling back and landing somewhere in front of them.

  Lucy turns to find it, to point out the hauntingly beautiful bird to Colin, but she freezes, the words lost in a gasp when she realizes how far they’ve walked.

  She can see the hulking shape of Ethan Hall behind them in the distance, and ahead of her is the raven, its talons wrapped around the highest arch of the imposing metal gate that surrounds Saint Osanna’s.

  But something is different. Instead of feeling an invisible bubble pushing against her chest and sending her back to the trail, she feels like a fish caught on the end of a hook. Pulled. Slowly reeled in.

  She takes a step forward.

  “Luce?” Colin asks. “You okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, continuing on, her steps quicker now. Purposeful. As she nears the iron fence, she looks up and meets the raven’s watchful stare, can see her own reflection in the luminous black of the bird’s eyes. “Something . . . something’s different.”

  She hears the crunch of snow as Colin jogs to catch up, feels the beat of a pulse in her hollow veins. When Colin stops at her side, the pull gets stronger. “Do you feel that?”

  “Feel what? Lucy, what’s going on?”

  “Like suction? Like I’m metal and there’s this giant magnet on the other side? You don’t feel that?”

  Colin shakes his head, eyes wide as he blinks from Lucy to the gate and back again. “Do you think you can get through?”

  “I don’t know.” Her mouth is suddenly so dry, drier than she can ever remember. For the first time since waking, she wants something to drink, can almost imagine the feel of cold water as she swallows.

  “Touch it,” she hears Colin whisper. “Lucy, touch it.”

  She licks her lips, shaking as she lifts her arm, fingers trembling as they find the icy metal. There’s no resistance. She holds her breath, watching as her hand passes between two of the ornate balusters and to the other side.

  “Oh my God,” she gasps. “Oh my God!” There’s the faintest hint of a tan; blue veins form a map across her palm and up her wrist. There’s a scar. Freckles. Imperfections. She forms a fist, feeling the warmth of her own skin. “Colin!”

  But he doesn’t answer. Colin is gone.

  Chapter 32 • HIM

  SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT, COLIN feels Lucy slip into bed behind him. The mattress shifts with her weight as she burrows under the layers of quilts and electric blankets to wrap her arms around his chest. He’s not sure how, but Lucy and Jay have managed to move him from the lake to the dorm and up to their room without anyone noticing. He’s wearing a set of old flannel pajamas and is in bed beneath a pile of blankets. Jay is gone, so Colin assumes he must have had the first watch. He doesn’t remember anything after leaving Lucy’s underwater world.

  “Hi,” she says, her voice muffled against his back.

  “Hey.” It comes out as a croak, and he closes his eyes tight against the burn. His throat feels swollen, scorched, as if he ate a meal of solid fire. “Have you been lying here for long?”

  “No. I got here a few minutes ago. I’ve been waiting for Dot to go to sleep. She’s been down in the common room stirring the same cup of coffee and staring at a blank TV for more than an hour.”

  He doesn’t want Dot to see him like this, and the guilt he’s been trying to ignore flares inside his chest. “She didn’t see you, did she?”

  “No,” Lucy assures him. “She never would have let me get past the stairs.”

  So Dot came to his dorm to be close to him? He rubs his face, groaning quietly. “She’s worried. She feels so responsible for me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think she knows I’m doing something crazy. She knows about you.” He shivers and presses the heating pad closer to his chest.

  “I thought she might.” Lucy ignores the way anxiety burrows into her skin and tucks the blankets more securely around his body. “Are you warm enough?”

  “Mm-hmm. But if you want to seduce me, you might have to leave on my socks,” he says, trying to lighten the mood. He doesn’t want to think about the downside to any of this. Only wants to feel her curled behind him and remember the world underwater. A fraction of his mind registers how crazy this is, that from the outside looking in, he might even appear suicidal. And with a piercing stab to his chest, he realizes this is how his mother must have felt. Doing whatever she could do to have even one more day with her daughter. Colin has never been more positive that his mother wasn’t insane after all. She simply wanted her family back.

  It’s early—hours before the sun comes up and the students flood campus—and Colin can hear one of the delivery trucks outside, dropping off supplies at the kitchen. The steady beep as it backs up echoes off the stone buildings and fills the empty quad. “Hey, how’d you two get me up here anyway?”

  “That would be Jay. Turns out he’s excellent at distraction and a lot stronger than he looks.”

  “How is he?”

  “He’s okay,” she says, and he feels her shrug slightly. “I mean, he seems to thrive on this kind of thing. I don’t get it, but I’m glad he’s like that. What he’s doing for us is amazing.”

  “I know.”

  “I wonder if we’d be able to do it without him. I wonder if I could get you out of the water somehow.” She pauses, watching him. “I wonder if that’s why I’m so strong now.”

  Colin is silent in response to that. He’s given this some thought. If the lake is where Lucy was before she found him and where she goes when she disappears, Colin wonders if he could simply go find her there. He’s not exactly sure how they got to the other side because his head is still a bit foggy, but he likes to think if he had to, he could find it alone.

  “Tell me what happened,” he says. “It’s true, isn’t it? You got past the gate.”

  “You remember that?”

  He nods.

  She shivers beside h
im. “Other than finding you, I don’t remember ever feeling so drawn to something. I saw my hand, and it looked alive, Colin. I felt like I needed to be on the other side of the gate.”

  “Do you think that’s how it works? We need to get you off campus? Like, unlocking some puzzle?”

  “I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think it’s that simple. It can’t be.”

  “Maybe you’re overthinking it.”

  She doesn’t answer, just presses her cheek into the back of his shirt, reassuring herself that he’s warm and really here.

  “It’s where you were before you came back?” he asks.

  “I think so. I feel like I’d been pacing inside a cage, looking out through the lake, waiting to come be with you.”

  “And you think it’s where you go when you disappear?”

  Her arms tighten around him when he says that. “Yeah, but I don’t plan on disappearing again.”

  Maybe not, he thinks. But at least I know where to find you. Colin relaxes. This knowledge makes the prospect of the approaching spring much less terrifying.

  Chapter 33 • HER

  THE DEEP PURPLE WATER-SKY TREMBLES above them, with stars made out of a million of the smallest bubbles. The illusion of earth and lake bottom turns into the soft, inviting blackness. An instinctive burst of energy courses through Lucy’s system, and she pushes forward faster.

  “God, I can’t wait to get there,” Colin says, floating behind her. “I hope we can stay longer this time. I want to try the gate again.”

  Lucy doesn’t respond, simply kicks her feet through the icy clear water. It’s all she’s been able to think about: how her skin looked like real flesh, that she felt the sting of the cold air on her fingertips, but she’s worried there’s something they haven’t considered yet.

  It’s strange to not be able to see but to know exactly where to turn, like the directions are embedded in her muscles. Does he feel it too?

  “Can you find it?” she asks, stilling.

  “What?” He stops next to her, his arm pressed along the length of hers.

  “Do you remember how to get there? Could you find it on your own?”

  He looks behind them, to where the water has simply emptied into blackness, and then forward again. “Not like this. I can’t see anything. I don’t think this is how we got here before.”

  “Never mind,” she says, grabbing his hand to pull him closer. “I guess it’s a feel thing. Maybe after you’ve been here a few more times.”

  “Maybe,” he says, though he sounds unsure.

  A few seconds later, she instinctively turns. A light in the distance grows brighter and brighter.

  It takes a moment for their eyes to adjust, but everything is exactly as they left it. A canopy of crystalline leaves sparkles above them. The sun is a trapezoidal beam of yellow sweeping across the frozen shore. Orange, blue, red, and purple flowers bloom in small pops before they freeze, leaving waves of stained-glass color in their wake. A light snow is falling, and Colin holds out his hand; intricate, lacy snowflakes land in his palm.

  She grins at him, watching him look around. It’s everything at once: vibrant color and glistening ice. They can smell the wet earth beneath the snow and hear the water freeze across the lake. It becomes disorienting and overwhelming, and she can see the moment it becomes too much for him when he sits on the bank and covers his eyes.

  She sits next to him, resting her hand on his bent knee. “Are you okay?”

  “I love you,” he says quietly, slowly blinking up to the sky.

  She breaks into a grin so wide it takes her several seconds to respond. “I love you back.”

  He picks up her hand and massages her fingers. “I thought I knew what love was before.”

  “I didn’t.” She leans down, kisses the back of his hand.

  Colin looks over at her, his eyes as hungry as she feels when she pushes him onto his back in the snow.

  “Cold?” she asks, moving over him.

  He shakes his head, hands running up her sides, lifting her shirt up and off in a single movement. “Not even a little.”

  Her hair falls in a curtain around them, and he pushes it back, kissing her like she’s a normal girl he can grip and feel and not worry about breaking.

  Lucy wonders if time moves down here at all because before she knows it her clothes are gone and Colin is smiling down at her, snowflakes in his hair and clinging to his lashes, disappearing into the skin of his bare shoulders. He bites his lip as he moves above her, fingers memorizing every inch and finding where they come together.

  Frost gathers on their skin and disappears as quickly. Light explodes behind her eyes, and Colin holds her shaking hands with his. He says her name against her mouth, that he loves her, that even having all of her will never be enough. He groans into her neck, and when they still, his heart silent against her chest, she can hear the sound of feathery snow falling around them.

  • • •

  “How’s it possible to feel like I want to be here with you but I shouldn’t be?” he asks. They’re on the trail again, hand in hand as they make their way toward the front of the school. Lucy tried to say no—to distract him—but there wasn’t any conviction behind her words.

  “I don’t know,” she says, “but it’s how I feel bringing you here too. It feels selfish.”

  “Lucy?” he says, and she watches a cloud of anxiety pass through his eyes. “I think this is what we’ve been missing. Don’t you?”

  She looks up, watches how fast the sun seems to move across the snowy sky. She can feel it with every step: the need to keep going, to escape.

  They stop with the iron gate in front of them, its hulking mass like a scar blooming out of the pristine snow. Lucy notices Colin rubbing the spot over his sternum. “Jay’s bringing me back. My chest hurts,” he says. “We don’t have much time, Luce.”

  He reaches for her then, pulling her to him with a smile that doesn’t completely fill his eyes. His mouth is soft but insistent, wet and warm.

  She turns, a sense of longing filling her chest like a warm bath, a tug behind her ribs pushing her toward whatever is on the other side of the fence.

  The same feeling of anticipation coats her skin, and she reaches out to lift the latch. The old gate groans, the hinges squeak, and Lucy steps back as it swings open.

  She twists her fingers with his, and as if acting on instinct, steps through first.

  She hears the gasp before she’s even turned around. He’s smiling. Tear tracks line his face, and he’s looking at her as if she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

  “Your hair,” he says. She looks down. It’s brown, every shade of brown at once. “And your eyes.” He’s laughing now, disbelief etched in every part of his face. “They’re green.”

  “Come here,” she says, and pulls him forward.

  • • •

  She’s on the old trail again. Her feet dig easily into the snowy earth, but she almost trips on a bank of snow when she catches sight of Jay, curled in half and throwing up the contents of his stomach several feet away from where Colin’s body lies.

  Colin’s lips are blue, and when she gets closer, she can see that his eyes are open, but hollow and staring straight up at the heavy gray sky. His chest rises and falls in shallow pants, but when he hears her feet crunching across the ice, he turns his head to her and tries to smile. His breathing grows more ragged; his eyes roll closed.

  “GET AWAY FROM HIM!” Jay screams, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and stumbling to Colin, shoving Lucy out of the way. “I just got him back, Lucy. Stay away from him!”

  Jay’s eyes are squeezed shut. He refuses to look at her.

  “What happened, Jay? Why is he so bad?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he mumbles. “It’s not working.” Still, he keeps his eyes down, frantically shoving hand warmers under the blankets and against Colin’s cold skin.

  Dread trickles along her arms. “Are you afraid of me?”
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  “When he comes back, you look fucking terrifying,” he says, voice shaking in the cold. He points without looking. “Grab that bag; it has gloves.”

  She walks to the bag numbly, Jay’s words echoing over and over. He’s said it before: When he comes back, you look terrifying.

  It’s the same reaction Joe had when he fell through his porch. He told Colin she looked like a demon. Lucy feels the high of her time with Colin underwater begin to evaporate.

  “Here,” she says, carefully handing Jay the gloves. “What can I do? Is he going to be okay?” Her voice is so flat, sounds so indifferent. She squeezes her eyes shut, unable to get rid of the image of Colin in front of her, smiling up into the sun right before he slipped away.

  “He’s been under for more than an hour, Lucy! He’s nonresponsive with a pulse of thirty. Thirty! His normal resting pulse is sixty-four. Do you even know what that means? He might die!”

  “Just let me closer; he’ll be better when I’m there.” She’s so sure of it that at first she doesn’t register that when she puts her hand on his arm, the small monitor at his side lets out a steady, flat beep.

  “Lucy!” Jay gasps, pulling at her arm and staring where his hand wraps firmly around her flesh. “Go away. Go away. Go away,” he whispers over and over. She realizes she was completely wrong when she assumed a silent Jay is a panicked Jay. This Jay is panicked, and he’s unable to stop whispering to himself. He’s a rubber band pulled taut, about to snap.

  “Let’s get him to the dorm,” she says. “I think I can help you carry him. I feel so strong.”

  “No. Don’t touch him again. I don’t think you’re helping.”

  “Of course I’m helping. Jay, we have to get him out of here. You can’t carry him alone!”

  Sirens wail in the distance, and Jay meets her eyes, apology and fear and anger and fresh tears brimming inside. “I called nine-one-one. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  The ambulance crunches along the trail, coming to a skidding stop. Paramedics burst from every door, rushing to Colin’s body, pulling away the blankets and heat pads, checking his vitals. They wrap him in some type of bag and pepper Jay with questions. How did he go in? How long was he under? Has he said anything? Jay answers, wooden. No one even looks at Lucy.