Sublime
: Chapter 15

HE’S NEVER STAYED OVERNIGHT AT a girl’s place, so maybe there’s a strange sense of intruding that he hasn’t yet experienced. But Colin has had girls sneak in and sleep over, and never in any of those nights did they ever up and leave while he slept.

Lucy is gone when he wakes up, and even though it’s probably because she was bored to tears, he still feels a little ditched.

From his window, he can see that it snowed sometime during the night. A lot. The sky is heavy and gray, and it’s almost impossible to tell where it ends and the ground begins. He groans when he sees Dot’s garden. He broke his arm the day before he was supposed to clean it out. There are still a few pumpkins scattered around, and the tomato plants are brown and brittle, nearly bowed to the ground beneath the bulk of the snow. Their forgotten fruit stands out in gruesome contrast to the frost-covered vines, like little shriveled hearts draped over a blanket of white.

He goes downstairs to help shovel and salt the walks behind the kitchens, wondering the entire time if Lucy went back to her shed. He has no idea how someone so slight walks in the thick, wet snow. He tries to not think about her stuck somewhere, locked in a step that went too deep, unable to pull her weight out of the drift. For about the millionth time, he wishes he understood what the hell she is. By now he’s sweating, but his fingers feel like ice. The very thing he’s been avoiding—the fear that Lucy could be gone as quickly as she came into his life—presses in on him.

“Hey, stranger,” Dot says.

“Hey,” he answers absently.

“You okay this morning, hon?” she asks as he stomps the snow from his boots. She’s buried in one of the lower cabinets, digging out a couple of large stockpots.

“Sure.” Inside the kitchen, Colin opens cupboard doors and closes them again. He feels like he’s shorted out somehow, and nervous energy courses through his limbs. He’s not scheduled to work today, but somehow being surrounded by the hustle of morning chaos and grumbling employees is more comforting than the silence of his room.

“You seem a little anxious.”

“I’m fine.”

She eyes him skeptically.

Turning away, he starts putting bread into the huge industrial toaster. “Just wondering if I should put out some more salt.” He motions out the window, where white blankets the grass and walkways, drapes every shrub and tree.

“Let the groundskeepers do that stuff.” Dot steps up behind him and pats his shoulder to soften her words. “You’re a sweet kid, you know that?” she says, attempting to smooth his hair. “And you’re so much calmer lately. Haven’t seen you in the infirmary in more than a month.”

“Har-har.” He sits, takes a bite out of his toast. He hadn’t realized it had been that long.

“So either your bike, skateboard, and kayak are all broken, or you’ve found a new girl.” She hovers for a moment before stepping away, but Colin doesn’t bother answering. Now that she knows the truth, he wonders how Dot would react if she saw him with Lucy.

As she continues her morning routine, he listens to the familiar squeak of her shoes on the tile floors and pushes his food around the plate. If he didn’t have breakfast, Dot would bring in the cavalry. But each bite feels like hardened glue settling in his gut.

The minute he’s done, thoughts of doing anything but replaceing Lucy are out the window. Maybe it’s true that she came here for him, but it’s also now true that he feels a strange shift in the fabric of the sky, as if a weightless girl pulls the entire atmosphere with her when she leaves his room in the middle of the night.

The first thing Colin notices when he reaches Lucy’s field is that the snow is undisturbed. He tells himself it’s fine. He doesn’t even know if Lucy would leave footprints, but somehow he knows she hasn’t been back.

He’s panting by the time he gets to the shed and bursts through the door. The blankets on the old air mattress are smooth and untouched. Lucy’s book sits, undisturbed, on the table, a dried piece of lavender marking the page.

• • •

He’s running on adrenaline, and before he realizes it, he’s gripping the handrail and climbing the steps of Ethan Hall. The bell has rung, the halls are empty, and a strange sense of déjà vu washes over him.

He looks in every classroom on the first floor before heading upstairs. In the library, he checks the little alcove near the storage closet where she likes to sneak away and wait for him to finish work.

She’s not there.

Colin checks the bathrooms on the second floor, peeks into each classroom that he passes, the dining hall, and even the janitor’s closet. Nothing.

He texts Jay to meet him near the auditorium. Jay comes whistling down the hall, but the moment he sees Colin, his expression sobers. “Whoa. What’s wrong?”

“Have you seen Lucy?”

“Not since yesterday.”

Colin presses his forehead against the window.

“Col, what—”

“She’s gone.” His voice sounds so hollow and strange, like it belongs to someone else, and his breath fogs up the glass in front of him. “She was with me last night, and when I woke up . . . she was gone.”

“Relax. She’s probably just with—”

“She doesn’t have anyone else.” He meets Jay’s eyes, waiting, wanting him to understand what he’s saying without actually having to say it.

“I think we’re having a moment here,” Jay says, trying to ease Colin’s suffering. It works, and he almost smiles. Then, serious again, Jay adds, “She’s kind of a quirky girl, isn’t she?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“All right, man. Let’s replace your Lucy.”

• • •

But they don’t replace her.

When they trudge out to the trail, Jay doesn’t say a word. When they circle the entire lake, he follows in Colin’s wake. When they cut across the snow-covered field and step inside the little shed to replace it empty, he doesn’t ask Colin any questions.

Lucy doesn’t come back that night.

And when Colin skips school the next morning to wait for her in the shed, she doesn’t show up then, either.

For ten days, he looks. He goes to class, he works when he has to, he replaces his way to the trail where she woke up, hoping she’ll be there again. Maybe she’ll walk toward him, wearing her ass-kicking boots and a stolen uniform that’s too big.

He considers telling someone that she’s missing, but then realizes there’s nobody to tell. No one even notices that the pretty girl with the unsettling eyes and snow-colored hair is gone.

Finally, he can’t take the dorm, the school, the shed, any of it. Every single wall is imprinted with her shape, her willowy shadow. He bursts from the grounds on his single speed, blowing powdered snow and slush over the sidewalk as he takes off.

Legs pumping, heart racing, blood so hot so hot so hot in his legs, his chest, his grip so tight he can feel electric pulses of pain up and down his newly healed arm.

He jumps from curbs and trucks, train cars and the cables between. He rides over an icy rope bridge he’s never been able to balance on before, along a narrow train track, and slips only twice. The sound of the train as it roars down the track, closer and closer, only makes him see more clearly, breathe freer. Feel alive. He does backflips he shouldn’t. He rides until his outsides feel as battered as his insides.

He tries to pretend that he’s not looking in every shadow for her. He decides it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Death lingers in cars, in quiet school buildings, and beneath the freezing earth. Death is everywhere, but his ghost is gone.

When he makes it back to his room in the thick of the night, he’s bruised and covered in scrapes. He suspects one of his ribs is cracked, but he’s alive and Lucy is only a memory.