Sublime

by Christina Lauren

  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.”

  Colin doesn’t know if he could do that. He doesn’t think he could ever give Lucy up.

  He doesn’t realize he’s said it out loud until Maggie responds, her voice deep with sadness. “You’ll get there. You’ll find that point. Maybe it will be the first time she’s gone for more than a month. Maybe it will be that time she comes home for an hour and then is gone again for days. Or maybe she’ll get her way and you’ll do her dirty work for her.”

  He can hardly process what she’s saying, but forces himself to speak anyway. “Did he disappear for good?”

  Her eyes close, and a few tears escape. “I don’t know.”

  “But when did you last see him?”

  “Pretty soon after he came back. There were stories, always have been. I didn’t figure out till later that the dead around here are bound by the gates. I . . . stopped looking.” She straightens, shaking her head and reaching for a tissue in the front pocket of her scrubs. “I don’t know what takes more strength. Staying through it or letting him go. I don’t know. I just don’t.”

  A phone rings somewhere and the bubble pops; the bleak light seems to give way again to bright fluorescent and echoing silence.

  She walks past him, returning to nurse mode and telling him to take care, but he stops her with a hug, thanking her, squeezing her tight.

  • • •

  The entire way to Hillcrest Cemetery, Colin reminds himself that seeing Lucy’s tombstone is not the same thing as seeing Lucy. But he’s got a lot to talk out, and right now, she’s the only one he knows will understand it all.

  He parks and steps onto a trail that leads through stretches of manicured lawn, which, in the coming months, will shift from sleeping brown to vibrant and green. He looks down a familiar narrow path through a thatch of bare, spindly trees. The graves that way lie under an enormous oak tree; the earth is covered with acorns in the fall and dappled sunshine in the summer. Even when the sun is shining and the grass is brilliant and alive, Colin feels a strange vacuum there. He hasn’t been down that trail—the one that leads to his parents’ and sister’s graves—in more than two years.

  But the pull to find Lucy is different; it’s a hot urgency in his chest. Following the map, he continues straight and turns at a fork, to a plot sectioned off from the others and surrounded by an iron fence. He’s not sure what he’s expecting to find, but his heart beats heavier in his chest with each step, his boots making squelching sounds in the soggy ground.

  He matches the markers to the map as he goes:

  Mary Jorgey Stevenson, loving wife, mother, sister. 1923–1984

  Jeremiah Hansen, our father. 1901–1976

  Harry Hawkins, cherished son. 1975–1987

  Names, words, dates. Entire lives summed up in a few lines.

  And then, in a wide plot encircled with a crooked ornate gate, is a single headstone. It seems strange to see her alone, set away from the other graves. But he realizes the spaces next to her must be empty, waiting for her parents.

  He stands, hands clenched into fists at his sides, eyes moving over the simple script, the delicate flowers etched deep into polished granite. His fingers itch to touch the letters of her name, to see if they feel as real as she did, to see if there’s any of her left here at all.

  “Hey,” he says to the slab of stone. “ ‘Lucia Rain Gray. 1981 to 1998. Beloved daughter and friend.’ ” He feels irrationally angry at the generic memorial on her tombstone, letting out a few choice curse words before glancing behind him. Still alone, though he’s sure he could be heard from clear across the hillside. “Seriously? I think they could have done better than that.”

  He shoves his frozen hands deep into his pockets and looks out over the other graves. The cemetery seems to stretch on for miles. There are no trees, no buildings, nothing to stop the wind from tearing through this side, blowing dried flowers down the hillside and away from the intended recipients. It’s brutal and cold but eerily silent. Colin sits down on the damp, scratchy grass covering her grave.

  “There was a dance last night,” he says. “Jay took Amanda.” He smiles, knowing exactly how Lucy would react. “I’d been planning on asking you, but . . .” He picks up a stone and turns it over in his hand. The bottom is wet and looks like shiny onyx, but the top is dry and almost white in the light. It’s strange how water can make a simple rock look like a gem on one side and like a slab of concrete on the other. Just like the lake.

  “This is my first time on this side of the cemetery, and yeah, it’s creepy. You know my parents are right over there? How weird is that? I had a family plot already waiting for me when they buried you.” Colin shakes his head, and a chill makes its way beneath the layers of his clothes. “They weren’t kidding about cemeteries being creepy. You’d think they’d feel full of ghosts and death, but they just feel empty. That’s the weirdest part, to be in a place that feels completely hollow and deserted. Why would anyone stick around here? What’s there to see? No wonder you decided to come back on a trail with trees and water and . . .” He trails off again, eyes lifting to the ominous white sky. There’s a patch right above where the clouds have drifted apart, and it seems like a vortex where he can imagine souls are sucked up and away.

  “Is it strange that I’m glad I was the one who saw him . . . ? I mean, I don’t remember any of it, and I know this sounds all kinds of wrong, but I like that I saw h
im take you. I want to feel like him getting caught that night made a difference. The universe owes you, Lucy. You deserve to come back.”

  He clears his throat, taking a much-needed breath to soothe the knot in his stomach. “So, I realize I’m talking to myself. You’re not here, in the dust and the grass and the air, because if you were, you would have figured out how to create a body from all of that. I know where you are, though. Is it weird that I think these people in this cemetery are really gone but can’t accept that you are? Like, I’ve never said a word at my mom’s grave, because what’s the point? She left a long time ago. You know I hardly remember her face?” He shrugs, tossing the rock to the ground. “But not you. I remember every one of your smiles, and I spent probably a half hour last night trying to picture the expression you make when you’re braiding your hair. I know how you grip a pencil and that you cross your right leg over your left and almost never the other way around. And I know where you are, Lucy. I’ve never felt like anyone was waiting for me before, not my sister or my mom or my dad. It’s only ever been you.”

  He stares down at the dead grass near his legs and picks out a single blade. The root is tender and green even if the exposed section is dried and yellow. Beneath the ground, it was still alive.

  “I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how this happened, and I think I understand it now. I shouldn’t be here. Dot’s told me that enough times—joked that I have nine lives—but I never thought about it that much, you know? I should have died with my family—and at least a dozen times after that. Even the quarry didn’t scare me. When I fell and broke my arm? For the first time ever, I thought, that’s it. This is the end. But it wasn’t. You’d been watching me, waiting, and I think that thought was enough to finally bring you here. If it wasn’t over for me, it’s not over for you either. We’re connected in a way that no one else is. I didn’t let the man who killed you get away with murder, and you came back because you knew how much I’d lost.”

  He drops the blade of grass and runs his hand over the other yellowed blades, still firmly rooted in the soil. “I guess what I’m saying is that I hope you’re waiting for me, Lucy. Because this time, I’m taking you through the gate, not the other way around.”

  Chapter 35 • HER

  LUCY TAKES A BREATH AND blows it out, her eyes opening to the bright yellow glare of the infirmary hallway.

  No voices come from any of the rooms, and panic seizes her immediately; she’s disappeared again.

  How long has it been?

  She stands, moving silently toward the closest doorway.

  When she peeks in the room, she finds Colin asleep on his side. Her relief is a warm, tangible thing. A tangle of tubes dives down underneath the blankets, and only a tuft of hair is visible outside the bundle. She feels like she can finally breathe again, knowing he’s well enough to be here and no longer at the hospital.

  Instead of waking him with her cool skin, she sits near his bed and waits.

  She promises not to go into the lake again. She promises not to let Colin go in either.

  It’s okay, she tells herself. This is what she wanted, for Colin to be safe above everything else. She feels stronger with every deep breath, as if the air simply bypasses her lungs and builds into her, cell by cell.

  • • •

  “Excuse me?” The words and voice don’t mix; it sounds like courtesy dripping acid.

  Lucy looks up to meet the familiar deep brown eyes of Maggie. She can’t imagine the nurse is particularly thrilled to find her here, but the look on her face seems downright angry.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she asks in a hiss, glancing at the bed.

  “Waiting for him to wake up.”

  Maggie looks to Colin’s huddled figure and then back at Lucy as if she were sitting naked in the chair. “Girl, are you out of your mind? That’s not Colin.”

  The chair clatters backward as Lucy stands. “Where is he? I left while he was in the hospital but woke up here. I thought—”

  “Left?” the nurse asks in an angry hiss, pulling Lucy toward the door. “As in, stepping out for a moment? As in getting some fresh air? Lucy, Colin left that hospital three weeks ago.”

  “Three weeks?” she asks, a lead ball of fear crashing through her insides. Maggie nods and moves to pick up the chart at the foot of the stranger’s bed. Her words click into place in Lucy’s head. “What day is it?”

  “It’s a Sunday. And he was just here, came by looking for help finding you. That boy had a look on his face like he was going to search under every rock if he had to.” When she shakes her head, Lucy can tell she thinks his effort is wasted. “As if that’d matter. I told him this would happen, that you’d leave without a trace and he’d be left here, trying to pick up the pieces. Your kind ain’t good for nothing but heartbreak. Don’t want us safe and happy. No, you want us on the edge and broken, taking us somewhere we ain’t got no business going. Let’s hope he’s smarter than I was.” Maggie walks out of the room and toward a back office.

  “How long ago?” Lucy asks, following, a wave of anger building deep inside her chest.

  “I have things to do,” she says over her shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  This time it’s Lucy who reaches out, grabbing Maggie’s arm to stop her. The woman’s eyes widen, and Lucy can tell right away that something is different. Maggie looks from where Lucy grips her—knuckles white, skin solid and warm—up to meet her gaze. “You leave that boy alone.” There’s anger in her voice, but more than that, there’s fear.

  Red clouds the edges of Lucy’s vision, and the air moves in waves around the room. Maggie gasps, reaching up just as a small trickle of blood begins to run from her nose.

  “How long ago!” Lucy shouts, startling herself.

  Maggie pulls herself free, looking frightened and disoriented. “About . . . about a half hour,” she says, staggering on her feet.

  Just as quickly as the rage appeared, it’s gone, and Lucy looks down at her own hands, terrified. She reaches toward Maggie. “I’m sorry,” she begins, wanting to help. “I don’t know—”

  “Get away from me,” Maggie says, staggering backward before crumpling to the floor. The color has fled from beneath her dark skin, and the bleeding has increased, now running in scarlet rivulets down the front of her teal uniform. She knocks over a small metal table as she falls, sending it and the items on top tumbling loudly to the floor. It’s loud enough to get the attention of the woman in the hallway. She’s wearing her coat and gloves, as if she’d just walked in the door.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no,” Lucy says, shrinking back into the shadows and watching as the woman fumbles with her cell phone while trying to help Maggie, who’s lying in a growing puddle of blood.

  Nobody even notices Lucy as she stumbles from the room, tripping over a chair in the hallway and sending it skittering across the linoleum.

  What’s happening?

  • • •

  What they say about riding a bike is true. With no money for a cab or a phone call, Lucy steals a bike from outside the infirmary and has no problem remembering how to balance and take off. As she crosses the quad, she realizes she doesn’t even know Colin’s cell number. Her hands shake violently where she grips the handlebars, too afraid for a second glance behind her, to even consider what just happened. She has to get to Colin.

  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 wondering 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.