Sublime

FOR ME,” SHE ANSWERS, REACHING to press a fingertip against the cool metal.

“Wrap your hand around the pipes,” the teacher said. “The cold and the warm together feel scorching.”

Lucy released the pipes with a surprised hiss, looking up at the teacher in shock.

“Some skin receptors sense cold, some heat. Both are sent to the brain, but the brain hears these mixed signals as powerful heat. It’s a form of perception we call paradoxical warmth.”

Lucy gasps at the perfect memory and the intensity of the touch, pulling her finger back in surprise.

Colin’s lip ring was cold from the wind and his skin was warm with blood, and like the pipes, the feeling of his lip pressed to her fingertip was scorching. And although she understands the science behind the pipes experiment, there can’t be any explanation in the world for what happened between them just now. For the brief contact—a few seconds—the air incinerated.

Colin swallows, his eyes never leaving her mouth. He blinks a few times. Is he going to kiss her? Her skin warms at the thought, and the closer he leans, the more flooded she becomes with a strange, intoxicating relief. It overwhelms her like a head rush.

Lucy knows now that she’s been kissed before—even that she’s not innocent—but it felt nothing like this. Memories of those monochromatic touches pale next to the vibrancy of Colin’s skin. But this reaction turns sour in her thoughts, unsettling her. If the simple touch of his lip on her fingertip felt so intense, what would it feel like to actually kiss him? She’s afraid she’d be unable to process so much sensation. And so she turns back to the trail, eyes closed for a moment as she savors the feel of the cold metal ring, the heat of his breath as he exhaled against her fingertip.

She’s taken a few steps before she hears Colin move to catch up with her. If he’s surprised by her reaction, he doesn’t show it, and they continue to walk in silence. Every few steps, Colin’s hand brushes against hers. Eventually, he gives up pretense and wraps his fingers around hers again. So carefully, just like the first time.

He bends to meet her eyes. “Still okay?” he asks adorably, somehow managing to look both confident and completely unsure of himself. She can only nod, overwhelmed by his simple touch. His skin feels hot and alive, as if with each of his heartbeats she can sense the surge of blood in his veins.

He smiles widely. “So, if you can’t ever leave campus, where do you live?”

• • •

Lucy takes him to her little home and is impressed when he doesn’t look shocked to find her living in an abandoned shed beside the school. She lights the small gas lamp in the corner before stretching out her arms, almost touching the wall on either side. “This is home sweet home.”

He folds his long frame on an old crate and she sits on another and tells him everything she remembers. The fragmented pieces from her human life are random and meaningless, but he listens like each piece is a part of a larger, greater story. When she starts to tell him everything she remembers since waking on the trail, she sees a shadow flicker on his face for a brief moment, as if he’s sad that the story of her first life adds up to so little. But her memories from this life are so numerous in comparison, she treats them like gems. He watches and listens as he leans back against the dilapidated wall of the shed.

She tells him about sitting outside the school and watching students in their everyday routine and how she didn’t feel even a single moment of envy; she simply felt as if she was waiting. She tells him that she didn’t feel the need to find her parents even though they might still be alive and how that lack of compulsion worries her somehow. Wouldn’t a girl want to join her peers? Wouldn’t she go straight to her family?

She brings him up to the present moment with a simple, “I told you I died. You freaked. I wandered around and forced myself to stay away from the school and then . . . you came and found me. The end.”

He laughs. “I had no idea you could talk so much.”

“I haven’t wanted to talk to anyone else.”

His smile fades, and he looks around, like he’s seeing the shed for the first time since he arrived. “Don’t you want to be in a more comfortable place?” he asks. “It’s kind of weird that you’re alone out here.”

“I like it. It feels like mine now, and it’s clean and quiet and no one has ever come over here.”

He hesitates and then glances down at his phone. “I should go.” She watches him brush the leaves and pine needles from his pants. When he looks up, he tilts his head, wincing. “I can’t leave you here.”

“I’ve been here for almost three weeks now.”

“Come with me, just tonight.” He senses her hesitation and pushes on. “Just until we scare up some blankets and make this whole place less . . .”

“Rustic?” she offers.

“I was going to say creepy. We should aim for rustic.”

We.

She follows him down the trail, unable even in her weightlessness to match his grace over logs and through the marshy bits. All of their talking seems to have emptied them of words, and they move through the moonlight in an easy silence until the hulking gray buildings of Saint Osanna’s appear above the tips of the trees. The idea of a dorm room, of a comforter, a rug, and walls that keep the elements at bay seems almost decadent.

Colin’s room screams “boy.” Muted earth tones, bike magazines, dirty laundry. Greasy bolts on his desk, a soda can, a row of trophies. She can see, beneath the layers, strong architectural bones: dark wood windowpanes, polished hardwood. The shelves built deep into the walls are now cluttered with papers and bike parts and small stacks of photographs.

“Quite a man lair,” she says. Colin flops down on his bed and groans a relaxed-happy noise, but Lucy doesn’t want to sit down. She wants to go through his stuff. She has two school uniforms, a pair of boots, and a shed. She’s fascinated with all of his things.

“A brown comforter? How understated.” She smiles and runs her hand along the edge of his mattress.

“I like to imagine I’m sleeping in the dirt,” he jokes. She feels him watching her while she studies a pile of clothing near the closet door. He throws an arm over his face and mumbles beneath it, “Jay and I . . . we’re not so skilled with the cleaning.”

“Yeah . . .” She pushes aside a pair of socks on a shelf so she can read what books he has stacked there.

“At least my sheets are clean.” He immediately clears his throat, and she continues to stare at his books. Awkward settles like a thick gel into the room. “I didn’t mean that. Yes, I mean, my sheets are clean but . . . for sleeping. Oh my God, never mind.”

Lucy is already laughing. “I don’t sleep.”

“Right. Right.” He’s quiet for several beats before asking, “Won’t you get bored?”

“It’s nice to be near someone. I promise I won’t draw a mustache on you in your sleep.”

He yawns suddenly, widely. “Well, if you do, give me a Fu Manchu. Go big or go home.” He stretches as he stands, and a strip of bare stomach is exposed beneath his shirt. Heat pulses through her, and she wonders if it’s possible for him to notice the way her entire body seemed to ripple. Hooking a thumb over his shoulder, he says he’s going to go brush his teeth.

Without Colin’s eyes on her, she feels free to look around a little. Not to dig in his drawers or look under his mattress, but to take a closer look at the pictures on his desk, the trophies on his shelves.

He’s won races and stunt contests. He snowboards, and from the looks of it, he used to play hockey. Ribbons and plaques line two shelves, and there are so many, she quickly stops trying to read each one.

On his desk there’s a picture of a small boy with a man who looks like she imagines Colin will in his thirties—thick, wild, dark hair and bright eyes. Scattered on his desk are papers and Post-its and a few pay stubs from what she assumes is the dining hall. Tucked under his keyboard and sticky with spilled soda is a picture of Colin at a school dance with a short brunette. His hands are on her hips. She’s leaning back into him, and they’re not just smiling tight, staged smiles. They’re laughing together.

A tight ball forms in her chest and expands into her throat. The way his hands rest on her hips is mesmerizing, as if she is firm and his and there. Lucy doesn’t know how his touch will ever feel normal to her and whether she’ll ever be able to be close to him the way she imagines this girl was.

The skin on the back of her neck burns warm when she feels him return to the room, and she quickly puts the picture back where it was. She thinks he notices, but he doesn’t say anything and neither does she. It’s too soon for the conversation of what they are, let alone who that girl was. Even so, Lucy can’t quite stop the jealous fire that licks at her insides at the image of Colin with someone else.

“I realize this is lame,” he says, “but I’m actually really tired.”

The clock reads two a.m. “God. Of course you are. Sorry . . .”

With a small smile, he climbs under the covers and pats the mattress next to him. Lucy climbs onto the foot of the bed, careful to stay on top of the comforter, and sits cross-legged facing him.

“You’re going to watch me?”

“Until you’re asleep and I can sneak a permanent marker from your desk.”

He smiles and curls onto his side. “Okay. ’Night, Lucy.”

Questions pulse in her mind in the blackness of the room, begging for answers. About her, about him. About why the universe sent her back here and why he seems to be the only thing that matters. “ ’Night, Colin.”

• • •

“Hey there, new girl.” Jay grins, pulling out a chair next to his and patting the seat.

Colin ignores this, pulling a chair out for Lucy across the table from his friend. “Lucy, Jay. Her name is Lucy.”

“Lucy is a sweet name, but New Girl is better. It’s mysterious. You can be whoever you want to be.” Leaning forward, Jay gives Lucy his best smoldering smile. “Who do you want to be, New Girl?”

Lucy shrugs, thinking. She’d never considered this aspect of being new, and untethered, and unknown. Everything she’s done has been on instinct. She looks through the open doorway to the dining hall, where most students eat. All of the girls bleed together into a single, boring uniform.

“I play bass in an all-female band called the Raging Hussies, have a math fetish, and open beer bottles with my teeth.” She grins at him. “One of those is true.”

Jay’s eyes narrow. “Please tell me it’s the band one.”

“My vote is teeth,” Colin says.

“Sorry,” she says with mock sympathy. “Math.”

Jay shrugs, taking a bite of bacon. “That’s also hot. I mean, whether or not you play the bass with a bunch of hussies, you like the lake. That makes you interesting.”

“What’s interesting about liking the lake?” Lucy turns and searches Colin’s face for explanation, as if trying to decipher if he’s told Jay her secret. “What’s not to like about it?”

“I love the lake,” Colin says with an easy smile, apparently enjoying the interaction. “Tons of bike trails, and no one else ever goes out there.” With a wink, he adds, “I’m not afraid of what’s out at the lake.”

“I don’t care about the stories,” Jay says. “It just looks creepy. In the summer, it gets so hot and muggy that everything in the air warps. In the winter, the glacial lake freezes and everything turns blue.” Jay spears a forkful of eggs and points them in Lucy’s direction. “You’ve heard about the Walkers, right?”

Lucy shakes her head, cold spreading from her fingertips up her arm. Instinctively, she shifts closer to Colin.

“People say Saint O’s is haunted. And no one goes to the lake; some people around here claim they’ve seen a girl walking around under the water. Hell, this whole place is supposed to be haunted.”

Lucy shivers, but only Colin notices. He puts a gentle hand on her thigh below the table.

“But if you want to know what I think,” Jay begins, and the eggs fall back onto his plate with a quiet smack. “People don’t like walking all the way down there because they’re a bunch of lazy asses who’d rather sit in their rooms and open beer bottles with their teeth.”

“I see,” Lucy says. Jay watches her, expression unreadable.

“Jay and I aren’t scared of ghosts,” Colin says.

Jay laughs and shoves his plate away. “No, dude. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

When Lucy looks over at Colin, he’s watching her, grinning with their secret in his eyes.

• • •

Lucy creates a schedule built of classes with teachers who never take roll. Only one class is with Colin—history—but it’s in the middle of the day when she needs to see his reassuring half smile, his fingers tapping out an impatient rhythm on his desk, the fingers that she knows want to touch her.

It’s harder than she’d have imagined to be, well, nothing. She watches everyone constantly, wondering if some phrase, some small mannerism, will spark a memory or a hint of what she was and of how she can stay earthbound and leave the school someday with Colin.

She finds herself thinking back on what Jay said about the Walkers and the stories that surround the school. She knows she should have asked more questions, should ask them still, but the instinctual tug she feels to be near Colin builds like static in her ears, blocking everything else out. Her questions, her doubts, her purpose, seem secondary to the corporeal buzzing she feels beneath her skin in his presence. She’s as physically drawn toward Colin as she is repelled by the gate.

“Lucy?” Her head snaps up at the sound of her name, all thoughts of Walkers gone. It takes a minute to remember where she is—French class, with Madame Barbare, who Lucy doesn’t think has ever noticed her before. Like most teachers at Saint Osanna’s, Madame Barbare assumes that if you’ve made it past the security gates and are wearing a uniform, you obviously belong in her class even if you’re not on her roll.

Her voice echoes in Lucy’s ears, reverberating up into her skull, where it bounces around uncomfortably. It’s the first time in days someone other than Colin has said her name. “Y-yes?” Only when Lucy looks up does the teacher’s attention move to her, and Lucy can tell she’s called a name whose owner was a mystery to her.

“I have a slip here telling me to send you to the counselor’s office?” She phrases it like a question, and it feels like she’s asking Lucy to confirm. She stands, painfully aware of the attention of the entire class, and takes the slip.

Send Lucy to Miss Proctor’s office.

Clearly someone has noticed the girl with the stolen uniform.

Lucy has seen Miss Proctor in the halls, speaking casually with students or calling out to wild, wrestling boys down the hall. She’s young and pretty, and the boys stare at her backside when she walks past. But the woman sitting in the counselor’s office isn’t Miss Proctor.

This woman is short and squat, settled in a chair to the side of the desk, her eyes focused on a stack of papers in front of her. Her blue suit is the color of the springtime sky of Lucy’s memory, and it feels incongruous with the dark, shadowed office and the woman’s bulky, shapeless form.

The woman looks up, watching Lucy walk from the door to the chair.

“Hi,” she says finally. “I’m Lucy?”

“I’m Adelaide Baldwin.” The woman’s voice is softer and more sultry than her appearance would ever suggest.

“Hi,” Lucy says again.

“I’m the head of counseling services at Saint Osanna’s.” Ms. Baldwin sets some papers on the desk beside her and clasps her hands in her lap. “You’ve flown under the radar here, it seems.” She pauses. When Lucy offers no explanation, she continues. “I like to check in with the faculty every month or two, to find out if we have anyone . . . anything different on campus. This morning Ms. Polzweski mentioned that she’d seen a girl around school who she didn’t believe was enrolled. We generally like to handle these issues internally before bringing in any authorities.”

Lucy feels as if a brick has caught in her throat. “Oh,” she whispers.

“Where are your parents?”

Lucy doesn’t have an answer. She can feel Ms. Baldwin’s eyes on her as she fidgets with a magnetic paper clip bowl on the desk in front of her. It’s strange to be alone with someone other than Colin and be the object of such careful scrutiny.

“Lucy, look at me.” Lucy looks up at the woman, meeting eyes filled with concern. “Oh, honey.”

Something like hope unfurls inside Lucy when she registers that there are no secrets between them and that somehow Adelaide Baldwin knows Lucy isn’t any ordinary student walking into this office. Lucy plays with the hem of her sleeve, asking, “You know who I am?” She suspects that with this question, she has irrevocably shifted the conversation away from something official and related to enrolling her, to something unofficial and related to keeping her hidden.

“You were a local star heading to Harvard before you were killed.”

Lucy has to swallow her fear of the answer in order to push the question out: “If you know I died, why aren’t you surprised to see me?”

Instead of answering, Mrs. Baldwin asks, “When did you come back to Saint Osanna’s?”

“A few weeks ago.” Lucy looks past her, at the kids leaving the building and walking toward the quad, or dorms, or dining hall. “I found classes where the teachers don’t seem to notice me. Why is that?” she asks. “Why is it that nobody sees me?”

“Because they aren’t looking. They don’t need to see you, Lucy.”

“Need to see me? I don’t understand,” Lucy says. Does Colin need to see her? And for what? “So there are others? Here, at the school? Jay said something about Walkers?”

“That’s what some people call them, yes. They walk around the grounds, tied to this place for one reason or another and unable to leave. It’s different for each of them.” Ms. Baldwin begins placing files and stacks of paperwork back into her bag. Apparently their conversation is over.

Panic begins to fill Lucy like a rising tide. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she says quickly. Will Ms. Baldwin report her to the authorities she mentioned? Are there some sort of ghost hunters that will send her back? “It felt right to come here.”

“I know.”

“Do you know why I’m here?” Lucy asks.

“No,” she says. “You’re not the first I’ve seen in my day.”

“Where are the others? The Walkers? Is that what I am?”

Ms. Baldwin doesn’t answer, simply gives a little shake of her head. It’s as if she’s already resigned to the reality that there’s nothing to be done about the problem of Lucy.

“Can I stay here? At Saint Osanna’s?”

The social worker nods. “I don’t think we have a choice. Exorcisms don’t work. Nothing seems to work. We just have to wait for you to vanish.” She blinks away, dropping a pen into her bag and mumbling, “Thankfully, most do.”

Lucy’s chest seizes and she turns to the window, staring out the filmy glass. Vanish? Where would she go? How can she stop it?

Ms. Baldwin pulls her out of her thoughts. “Do you have money?”

Lucy hasn’t had a need for it yet, being confined to the campus and lucky enough to not need food or water. No one in the laundry facilities noticed a ghost girl sneaking out boots and socks and old uniforms. “No.”

Ms. Baldwin reaches for her bag, pulls out an envelope, and removes several twenties. “I doubt anyone would notice, but I don’t want you getting caught taking something. Where are you staying?”

Lucy takes the money and curls it into her fist. It feels warm from the purse and scratchy against her skin. “In a shed.”

Ms. Baldwin nods again as if this is satisfactory. “Does anyone else know about you?”

“A boy.”

The woman laughs and closes her eyes, but it isn’t a happy laugh. It’s an of-course-a-boy-knows laugh. A why-did-I-even-bother-asking laugh.

Ms. Baldwin nods resolutely as she stands. “Take care, honey.” She hitches her purse up and over her round shoulder.

“Thanks.”

Adelaide Baldwin faces her and smiles a little before turning to the door. With her hand on the knob, she pauses, facing away so Lucy can’t see her expression as she says, “The other kids who are like you? They seem to want to take someone with them. Try not to, Lucy.”