Sublime(6)
Author: Christina Lauren

“Please don’t be scared,” she whispers. “I’m not going to hurt you.” At least, I don’t think I am. She slips her hands into her lap, as if they might be capable of something she hasn’t yet discovered.

He shifts back, his angular jaw clenched tight, and it’s clear in his expression the thought hadn’t occurred to him until she’d said it.

She shakes her head. “Sorry, I’m not doing a good job explaining. See, I think I know why I don’t remember anything and why it’s hard to pick things up and why I don’t need food or sleep or—your sweatshirt.” She looks up at him, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t. Licking her lips, her eyes pulsing with anxiety, she says, “I’m pretty sure I’m dead.”

Chapter 8 HIM

COLIN STARES AT HER, PART CONFUSED, PART horrified. “Okay?” he says, eyebrows slowly rising. Half of his mouth tilts in an unsure smile. This can’t be happening. It can’t. “Dead, huh?” He blinks, pressing his hands to his eyes. He’s officially lost his mind.

“Yeah.” She stands and walks a few steps toward the pond.

Colin watches her as she gazes at her reflection and wonders if a dead girl would even have one. “So, when you said you’re here for me, you mean, you came back from the dead for me?”

He can see her nod even though she faces away from him. “That’s what I mean.”

Dread, heavy and cold, settles between his ribs. No, please no. “But if you’re dead, how can you open doors, or”—he points to the sweatshirt in her arms—“hold my hoodie, or even wear the school uniform?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I look the same. Still tall and knobby. But I’m less clumsy.” She looks over her shoulder and smiles at him sadly, then turns away again. “But I think I feel different, less solid, less . . .” She trails off, shaking her head. “Just less. I remember dying, but I’m here. That’s all I can tell you.”

Her long white-blond hair reaches the bottom hem of her blue shirt, and she looks so eerily beautiful in front of the pond with the perfectly sliced half-moon directly overhead. Suddenly the idea that he’s losing his mind doesn’t seem so impossible. Colin wonders if Lucy is even really here.

“Lucy, what color is your hair?”

She turns, a confused smile on her face. “Brown . . . ?”

With this, he drops his head into his hands and groans.

Lucy walks over, sitting beside him on the bench. “Why did you ask me that?”

“It’s nothing.”

She reaches out and takes his hand, but he immediately drops it, shooting up from the bench and wiping his palms on his thighs. “What the hell?”

His hand tingles where it touched hers, the sensation slowly fading into buzzing warmth. She felt like static, like charged particles in the shape of a girl. Colin stares at her and then puffs his cheeks out as he exhales.

“What is going on?” he murmurs, looking beyond her and up at the sky. He’s suddenly remembering every burnout kid that’s come back from the woods with a story about something they saw. How his mom used to talk about . . . God, he can’t start thinking about that. The idea that Lucy is a Walker is impossible. The idea that Walkers are real is even more impossible. But either scenario makes him nearly choke with panic. Because if Walkers aren’t real, then he is insane. And if they are real . . . then maybe his mother wasn’t crazy after all.

And right now, in every other way, he feels sane. He does. He remembered to grab a jacket before he came outside; he’s wearing shoes. He thinks he’s speaking coherently. When he looks around, he doesn’t see anything amiss—no spiders crawling up his body or stars weaving in the sky. Just a brown-haired girl who looks blond to him, says she’s a ghost, and feels like static heat.

That’s it. He’s insane.

“Why didn’t I think about it more?”

“Think about what?”

He waves a hand, blindly indicating the area around her head. “Your hair is blond, and Jay says it’s brown. And your eyes? Oh God. What is going on?”

“My eyes? My hair?” Lucy bends to catch his gaze. “I look different to you?”

He shrugs stiffly. It feels like there is a stampede of horses galloping in his chest.

“I look different to you and it didn’t freak you out before?”

“Not until now.” He groans. “I guess I didn’t want to think about it. I don’t ever want to think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“Nothing. Forget it.” He shoves his hands into his hair, pulls.

“What did my hand feel like?” she asks, more insistent now.

“Um . . . ? Like . . .” He shakes his head, trying to find the right words. “Energy . . . and buzzing . . .”

She offers her hand again. After staring at it for what feels like an eternity, he steps forward, breathing heavily, and takes it. In his grip, her touch snaps against his skin before settling into a warm, vibrant hum. His voice shakes when he says, “Like energy and air? Um . . .” The hum begins to fill him with a longing so intense he feels disoriented. He releases it again and steps back, shaking both hands at his sides like he’s flicking away water. “It’s crazy, Lucy. This is crazy.”

She steps toward him, but he takes another step back, needing space to breathe. He feels like the air is being sucked from his lungs when she’s so close. As if reading his mind, she pulls her hands into the sleeves of her shirt.

But after a long moment, curiosity takes over. Reaching forward, he tugs at her sleeve, pulling her hand out and toward him. His fingertips run over her palm before he turns her hand and presses it to his. Snapping, crackling energy followed by a delicious warmth and the relief of a strange, deep ache. The shape of her is obvious, but he can’t close his hand over hers. When he presses too hard, her energy almost seems to repel his touch.

Is it really his mind doing this?

“Wild,” he breathes. She seems to pull back, as if his touch borders on painful for her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s a lot to take. Your skin feels hot and so . . . alive? It’s a little overwhelming for me.”

Colin winces, looking away as he drops her hand and mumbles an apology.

“It’s like I didn’t exist, and then suddenly I was there on the trail,” she says, explaining. “And that dress I was wearing? The thin flowery one? The little-girl sandals?” She grows quiet, and he looks up at her, waiting. “I think that’s what I was buried in.”

She’s afraid, he realizes. Her eyes are this rich, grinding violet, flecked with metallic red. Hope and fear, he thinks, but mostly fear. Colin squeezes his eyes shut. He can read her mood in her eyes.

“Colin, are you okay?”

He presses the heel of his palms against his brows and grunts, not a yes, not a no. He is most definitely not okay.

She steps closer. “After I saw you, I mean, I felt like I was supposed to find you, and I realize how that sounds. It sounds creepy. It’s why I ran away.”

“I almost went after you,” he mumbles, but immediately wishes he hadn’t. This conversation feels the same as barreling headlong into a sharp turn in the dark, on a new trail. He doesn’t know how to navigate it.

“After that first day, I felt drawn to the school. I would sit outside and . . .” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her look up at him. “You know when you hold your breath and everything gets tight and full and you wonder what’s causing your chest to burn? I mean, it’s only oxygen and carbon dioxide not being let in and out of your lungs, but it burns, you know?”

His eyes widen and he nods, barely. He knows exactly what she means.

“Seeing you was like being able to exhale and then inhale again.” She searches his expression. “I know it sounds lame, but when I’m with you—even though nothing else makes sense—I’m glad I’m back.”

She’s said too much, and Colin doesn’t know how to tell her that it’s impossible she’s dead, and this entire conversation is a figment of his imagination. But then again, if this is all in his head, should he even feel embarrassed for her that what she says can’t possibly be true? How does one fight the spiral into insanity? His mother certainly didn’t.

Rather, she fell into a depression so deep after his sister died that she wouldn’t eat or move for days at a time. Finally, she insisted she saw her dead daughter walking around campus, lost her mind, and drove the living members of her family off a bridge.

He stares at her, feeling as if he’s about to throw up. Her eyes are liquid metal infused with color. Her hair is whiteblond only to him. She tells him she’s returned from the grave, that she’s here for him. “I . . . I need—”

“This sounds insane. You think I’m insane. I tota—”

“I’m sorry. I have to—”

“Please, Colin, believe me. I would never—”

He stands as she’s midsentence, turning woodenly and walking as fast as he can back to the dorm.

Chapter 9 HER

SHE WATCHES COLIN WALK AWAY AND CAN almost feel the frenzy of his reaction. The air seems to cool with every step he puts between them, but the imprint of his palm burns against hers. The conversation went both better and much worse than she expected. Better, because she was actually able to explain. Worse, because he left the way he did, looking as if he thought she was making it all up.

Standing, Lucy wraps herself in Colin’s hoodie. She closes her eyes as she takes in his scent on the cotton. What else can she do but wait? She can’t blame him for his panic and for the fear she saw so plainly on his face. The only way she can earn his trust is to let him see that all she wants is to be near him. She has time. She may even have forever.

With one final look, she begins the long walk back to her shed.

She sits by the statue of Saint Osanna the next morning with her arms wrapped around her legs pulled tight to her chest. She’s grown used to the statue’s strangeness; it’s the only thing that feels as out of place in this living world as she does. The earliest risers shuffle past in the chilly air, talking, laughing, eating. Barely awake or focused. One with bright, flushed cheeks, one with wild red hair, and one with smooth, ebony skin. Despite this, Lucy is struck by how little there is to differentiate them. The space around each student feels dull and hollow.

Lucy thinks Colin must hate this weather, so drizzly and wet. Would he ride in this, hopping his bike from log to log, defying gravity on such simple engineering even in the rain? She wants to watch him like that—lost in something he loves.

Just as the sun finally reaches the tops of the buildings, Colin appears. He steps around the corner headed to work the morning shift in Ethan Hall, long legs, long strides, wild hair still too long. He pushes it off his brow and glances at his watch before starting to jog. Lucy ducks back into the shadows, pulling the hood of his hoodie up and over her head. Unlike every other student at Saint Osanna’s, the space near Colin seems so full; the air is heavy with him. It distorts as if heated, swirling inward, wanting to be as close to him as she does.

“Good morning,” she says into the cold, hoping it will pass along the message.

Chapter 10 HIM

HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY HOW AWESOME you are, Dot?” Jay asks, his mouth full and his second plate of French toast in front of him. They’re sitting at the secret table in the kitchen, watching Dot and the other cooks prepare breakfast for hundreds of students about to pour in through the doors. Back here, they can eat in peace and steal extra bacon.

But this morning, Colin picks at his breakfast.

“If I’m so awesome, then why do I always have to take your dishes to the sink?” she asks over her shoulder.

Jay immediately changes the subject: “You going out after work?”

Dot steps up behind Colin, setting a carton of orange juice on the table before turning back to the giant range and flipping about seventeen pieces of French toast in ten seconds. “Yep. I’m going to the poker tournament in Spokane. I pulled a royal flush right out of the gate last time. First deal of the night.” She smiles and does a little dance as she begins slicing oranges.

“Dot, I’m not sure I like you driving all the way down there,” Jay says.

“Oh please,” she scoffs. “My eyesight is better than yours, kid. I’ve seen some of the girls you date.” She makes exaggerated air quotes around the word “date.”

“You wouldn’t rather hang out with us than a bunch of old ladies? I’m hurt, Dot. If I were ten years older . . .” Jay trails off, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

“Jay, you are so creepy.” Colin doesn’t need any help feeling nauseous this morning. He got zero sleep. He barely wants to look up, for fear of seeing something new that confirms he’s lost his mind.