Sublime

THERE’S THAT NEW GIRL,” JAY says through a mouthful of sandwich.

Colin follows his gaze and grunts, noncommittal, as Lucy glides across the soccer field. When she’s alone, she’s statuesque, long lines and slim profile. When she gets closer to the other students, she shrinks in on herself: shoulders pulled in, head down.

She reminds him of himself after his parents died and he didn’t and the sadness and guilt felt like a crushing weight under his ribs. He didn’t know how he was supposed to weather it. When people tried to talk to him at first, it made him wish he could turn into air and disperse in a thousand different directions. Lucy carries that same kind of bewildered fragility.

It’s been three days since she showed up in his class, offered the most achingly vulnerable smile he’d ever seen, and then ran away again. Nobody talks to her. Nobody looks at her. She has no books, or even a backpack. She looks at every building as if she’s trying to see through its walls to what lies inside. She always touches the outstretched arm of the statue of Saint Osanna Andreasi as she passes through the darkest corner of the quad, pulling back as if she’s been burned before reaching out to touch it again, carefully. No one ever touches the statue—it’s said to be haunted—but Lucy does. Colin has never seen her with anyone. Lucy doesn’t even go to the same classes every day. She kind of hovers around campus.

He feels like a total stalker for knowing these things when everyone else seems content to let her be. Most new students get a schedule of classes and let the tide carry them. Lucy seems determined to remain disorganized.

At least she looks more peaceful today, as if she’s enjoying the weather before it all goes subzero. It’s still a bit on the cool side, but she never wears a jacket. Thin blue fabric wraps down the length of her arms. How can she be warm enough? She must live off campus, he reasons. Maybe she left her coat at home.

“She seems weird, though,” Jay says.

This catches Colin’s attention, and he looks over at Jay, wondering what he means. Two nights now Colin has fallen asleep thinking about Lucy’s mood-ring eyes. Does Jay notice too? “Weird, how?”

Jay shrugs and takes another bite, propping his feet on the wall of the arts building. His dirty sneakers blend into the gray concrete. “She’s been in my English class a few times. Doesn’t talk much.”

“And her eyes, too.”

Glancing at Colin, Jay asks, “Eyes?”

“Never mind. They’re . . . I don’t know. Different.”

“Different? Aren’t they, like, brown or something?”

Colin mumbles, “Maybe gray,” but his heart is thundering. He’s pretty sure if he says, “They’re like melted metal,” Jay will actually have a T-shirt made for him with the words I AM A DELICATE POET printed across the chest.

“Brown hair, gray eyes,” Jay says as if reciting the ingredients for average. Colin pauses with his sandwich partway to his lips. He turns to Jay and follows his gaze again, making sure they’re both looking at the same girl. They are.

“Brown?” Colin asks, motioning to where she’s reached the edge of the field. “That girl over there?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jay answers. “The same one you’ve been staring at for the last twenty minutes.”

Lucy’s hair isn’t brown. It’s not even close. Colin watches her again and shivers, pulling his hood up.

Colin wonders if it should freak him out that Jay sees brown hair when he sees almost white-blond. But, with a strange rush of warmth in his limbs, he finds he likes that he sees her differently. It feels strangely surreal, and it occurs to him that this reaction might come from the same part of his brain that turns on when he looks over a cliff and instead of thinking, Back off, he thinks, Pedal faster.

“Amanda said they saw her walking down by the lake,” Jay says.

“The lake?”

“Yeah. She’s new; wouldn’t know the stories, would she?”

Colin nods. “No, she wouldn’t know any of that.”

The stories are as old as the buildings here: Walkers out in daylight, wandering lost and confused. A man in military uniform sitting on the bench near the lake. A girl vanishing between two trees. Sometimes a student will claim a Walker tried to talk to them or, worse, grab them. But it’s all ghost stories, a legend built on the morbid history of the school. The Catholic institution was built on grounds where deceased children of settlers were buried before the survivors made their long trek through the mountains, but in the first week the school was open, two more kids died in a fire that burned down the chapel. For years, students claimed to see the two lost children standing by the newly erected statue of Saint Osanna, or sitting in a pew in the rebuilt chapel. The legend lived on, and over time, the population of Walkers grew in the students’ collective imagination.

It’s a morbid history, Colin knows, and the students keep the stories alive because it makes the school interesting and makes them sound brave. But even though everyone swears they don’t believe the Walkers exist, only stoners and drunk kids given a dare on Halloween hang at the lake or deep in the woods. Or dumbasses like him and Jay, who are doing shit they don’t want to get busted for. Of course Amanda would be the one to have seen Lucy there.

Jay pulls his feet from the wall. “You like her.”

Colin bends and ties shoelaces that don’t need tying.

“It’s cool if you like her. She’s not ugly or anything, but she’s . . . I don’t know. Quiet.” Jay takes a long pull from his water bottle. “Which isn’t always a bad thing. Amanda would never shut up. God. Was she always talking when you guys were—”

“Dude.” Colin doesn’t want to think about another girl while he’s watching Lucy. It feels wrong, like comparing a river stone to a ruby.

“She totally was,” Jay guesses, and makes a yapping gesture with his hand. “Oh, Colin, Colin, Colin,” he gasps in a high, breathy voice.

Colin doesn’t reply, choosing instead to shove a handful of chips in his mouth. Jay actually does a fairly good Amanda impersonation.

“Have you talked to her?” Jay asks.

“Amanda?”

“New girl.”

Colin shrugs and wipes his palms on his jeans. “Once or twice. Last time I tried, she ran away.”

“That’s because you’re a dick,” Jay says with a punch to his arm. “A nice dick. But still a dick.”

Colin pauses before balling up his garbage and tossing it into the trash. “You called me a nice dick.”

Jay winks at him, but two seconds later punches his good arm again. “So are you going to talk to her, or what?”

Colin shrugs, but of course he knows he will.

“All right, lover boy,” Jay says, stretching his arms over his head. “This chat’s been great, but I told Shelby I’d meet her behind the school.”

“You’re a walking cliché.”

Jay cycles through girls the way Colin goes through bike tires. Only used for a few, wild rides. Ignoring the comment, Jay juts his chin toward where Lucy has turned and is walking back toward the quad, only twenty or so feet away. “She’s coming back.”

For a brief moment, Lucy’s eyes catch Colin’s and hold on. And even though he thinks she’s been watching him, too, suddenly she’s walking faster and veering away from where he sits.

“Make me proud,” Jay says, clapping a hand on Colin’s back before walking away.

Colin stands and crosses the soccer field, accelerating his long strides to catch her. He has no idea what to say. It doesn’t feel the same as approaching one of the girls from school, the girls who knew him when he was five and couldn’t write the letter S. The girls who knew him when he was ten and wore the same Han Solo shirt for an entire week. The girls who, lately, never seem to say no. This feels like approaching an exotic snake on a trail.

As if she knows he’s there, Lucy turns and looks at him over her shoulder.

“Hey,” he says nervously, shoving his good hand into his pocket. The fingers of his other hand twitch at his side.

She frowns and keeps moving along the grass.

“I didn’t see you eat anything,” he continues, moving into step beside her. “Weren’t you hungry? Dot makes the best grilled cheese.” Lucy gives only a small shake of her head, but the response is enough to make something like hope spread in his chest. “Are you cold? I have a fleece in my room. . . .” He cringes inwardly. That sounded like a bad pickup line.

They walk for another minute in silence, leaves crunching beneath the soles of their shoes. Although it’s weird how quiet she is, for some reason he doesn’t feel ignored, either. “Did you move here?” Ducking his head, he smiles at her. “It’s like you just showed up one day.”

There’s a slight falter in her steps but nothing else. Colin studies her profile: creamy, pale skin and bee-stung lips that stick out in kind of a hot pout.

“Where did you go to school before?” he asks.

Lucy picks up her pace but doesn’t answer. He’s decided to give up and turn away when she slows, motioning to his cast. “How did you hurt your arm?”

He flexes the fingers of his left hand on instinct. “On my bike. I didn’t quite land a jump.”

“Does it hurt?” she asks. Her voice is scratchy, like she was at a show last night screaming her head off. He imagines her dancing alone, rocking out, not giving a crap what anyone thinks.

“Nah. I’ve had worse. Broken bones, fractures, concussions, stitches. You name it. This is nothing.” He stops talking abruptly, realizing he sounds like a frat boy bragging about slamming a beer can against his forehead.

Lucy frowns again. “Why would you do those things if you keep hurting yourself?”

Without thinking, Colin says, “For the rush? The burst of adrenaline? That feeling you get when you do something that reminds you you’re alive?”

Lucy stops in her tracks; her face goes blank and her arms wrap protectively around her stomach. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” he says. But it’s too late. With long, determined strides, she walks away.