Sublime

by Christina Lauren

  Colin talks Jay into skipping school the next day. They throw the bikes in the back of his truck and head out to the lake, hiking their way to where a few daring sledders have packed down the snow.

  For a few hours, he’s almost able to forget. They ride through the cold until he’s sweating beneath layers of clothing, pushing himself harder than he has in ages. They tackle the trails, jump off ramps, and each wipe out at least a dozen times on an impromptu ramp they cut into the snow.

  Colin is balancing on the back of the bench near the lake when Jay finally asks the question Colin knows has been gnawing at him.

  “She’s gone again, isn’t she?”

  Colin’s tires land with a soft crunch, and he looks up at Jay, squinting against the brightness of the sky. “Yeah.”

  “Shit. Dude, do you think she’s off using somewhere?”

  “She isn’t into drugs.” Colin glares at Jay before looking down and flicking a leaf off his handlebar. The hills are silent, but the wind howls around them, catching the snow and spinning it before letting it fall back to the ground. “I think I need to tell you something.”

  Jay kicks the snow from his boots and waits.

  “So, Lucy . . . Man, I don’t even know how to say this.” Colin laughs at the absurdity of this and feels a wave of sympathy for Lucy in hindsight, for his reaction the night she told him the truth. But, God, he needs to tell someone. He’s not sure he can go another day shouldering the weight of her absence alone. “She’s dead,” he says simply, after all.

  Jay’s legs buckle, and he catches the back of the bench before slipping. “What the hell? How are you just telling me—”

  “No! Not like that. I mean, she’s always been dead, Jay. Well, not always. But at least as long as I’ve known her.”

  Eyes narrowed, Jay’s expression pinches into irritation. “That’s not funny.”

  Colin doesn’t answer; he only stares down at the slush as it seeps into the sides of his shoes. “You know she’s different.”

  “Yeah, different. Like with the boots and badass take on the frumpy uniform and how she doesn’t look at anyone but you. Not dead.”

  “I know it sounds crazy—”

  “You think?” Long moments of silence stretch between them before Jay adds, “You’re serious about this.”

  Colin meets his eyes, gaze unwavering, and nods.

  “So she’s what? Like . . . a Walker?”

  “Yeah, essentially.”

  “But I’ve helped her with her coat. I’ve . . .” Jay trails off, blinking.

  “We don’t understand everything. She met another ghost here at school, and he’s convinced they’re, like, guardian spirits or something.”

  “Okay?” Jay scratches his neck, looking completely confused.

  “So, just stay with me here, okay?”

  Jay nods, and Colin breaks a brittle twig from the tree beside him, poking deep holes in the snow near his rear tire.

  “When I fell into the lake that day, I think I had some sort of out-of-body experience. I was standing behind you, watching you freak out. Then, I don’t even know why, but I walked away, down the trail. Like, I wasn’t even worried or scared. Lucy was running down the trail, and I yelled for her to stop. She thought I got out of the lake somehow. I mean, she could see me, even though my body was with you, on the ice. And, Jay, I could feel her.” Colin can’t tell if Jay believes any of this because his face doesn’t register any reaction. But Colin pushes on. “Before I went in, and now . . . I can’t really touch her. I can, but it overwhelms her. And when she touches me, it’s never enough.” Colin can feel the heat in his cheeks; he and Jay don’t talk specifics. “Sorry, I know this is TMI, but I need to get it out.”

  “It’s cool. I mean, I sort of owe you one. I’m pretty sure you were awake that one time Kelsey stayed over and—”

  “I was,” Colin says, waving away the awkward memory. “Lucy’s touch makes me crazy because it’s always almost enough to feel good, but then it stops short.” Grabbing the back of his neck, he winces. “I mean, we can’t . . . like, no way could we be together like that. And it’s not even about that. It’s her and the way everything looked when I went in . . . Seriously, Jay, it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

  Jay blinks away, out toward the span of trees hiding the lake from their view. “This sounds crazy.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I mean, I’m legitimately worried that you have brain damage.”

  “I don’t. I’m not crazy, Jay.”

  Jay looks back at him then. Colin can tell when his best friend believes him because his face falls, and he looks defeated, as if insanity or brain damage would be a far easier solution. Colin laughs, because he’s had the same reaction.

  “This is funny?” Jay asks, confusion bleeding into defensiveness.

  “No, not even a little. It’s that I know exactly what you’re thinking. I wish I was crazy.”

  “I don’t have a lot of experience with crazy people. I haven’t ruled it out yet.”

  “Well, then, let me get everything out.” He pauses, glancing up at Jay before dropping his gaze to the stick he’s stabbed deep into the snow. “I think we could do it again.”

  “Do what again?” Jay asks slowly, enunciating every syllable.

  “Go into the lake.” Before Jay can get a word in, Colin barrels on. “I started researching hypothermia, and it takes a long time for the brain to shut down entirely. I mean, in between being cold and being dead, there’s a lot of room.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “No, Jay, listen. I understand it. Metabolism slows. The body shuts down to preserve energy. But the mind is still active, and in that time, I’m somehow able to be like her. Before Lucy disappeared, I promised I wouldn’t talk about it anymore, but staying out of the lake didn’t keep her here.”

  Jay groans and rubs his face, and it’s at this moment that Colin knows his best friend is going to help him. “So we do this now, or when she gets back?”

  “When she gets back. I don’t know if I can find her now. I don’t know where she is.”

  “Are you sure about this? I mean, this isn’t riding on chains and boards over the quarry, Colin. The day you went into the lake was fucking scary. I thought you died.”

  “I’m here and fine.” Colin tells him about Liz’s cousin, how he fell through the ice and stayed out for four hours. How he’s alive and walking around. He tells Jay about the forums, how the people there see hypothermia as the ultimate extreme sport. “You’re the only one I’d trust.”

  “So how would this work? We’d like, plan it? Have supplies? A time limit?”

  “Exactly.” Colin’s heart begins pounding in his chest; his veins are infused with a high better than any adrenaline rush. He lays out his plan: he’ll strip down, submerge himself long enough for his pulse to slow and his core temp to drop, and then Jay will pull him out. “We’ll time it right down to the second, and you’ll resuscitate me. We can take some equipment from the campus infirmary. After what happened on the lake, no way is anyone going to risk needing the winter emergency kit. Lucy will stand on the trail where she was before, and we’ll see if it works.”

  When he’s done, Colin is shocked to see that Jay doesn’t look all that horrified, even when he says, “See if it works as in see if you don’t die?”

  Colin smiles. “Jay, I’m not going to die.”

  Jay watches him, and Colin can feel the weight of every second as it passes. He doesn’t want to force Jay into anything, but he can’t lie to him either. “You don’t have to,” he says, hoping Jay can hear the apology in every one of his words. “But I’ll do it without you. I have to.”

  Jay doesn’t react, only nods like he’s hearing something he already knew. “You know this will be the wildest thing we’ve ever done.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jay exhales deeply. “Okay, you crazy asshole. I’m in.”

  Chapter 25 • HER

  CO
MING BACK THIS TIME IS just as mild. A blink. A tugging on her limbs. Darkness becomes light. But where she was warm and happy, waiting for the boy on the trail, she’s now scorching hot. Colin’s back is pressed to her front once again.

  And this time she knows she’s been gone, because she feels as if she’s been woken up, and Lucy knows she doesn’t sleep. She vanishes.

  “Hi,” she whispers into his back.

  He stiffens. “Lucy?” His voice is thick with sleep.

  “How long?”

  His spine relaxes, pressing back into her. “Just two days.”

  “You okay?”

  “No.” His alarm goes off, and he swats the snooze button with his palm before rolling over to face her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t need to be.”

  She pushes his hair back. “I am anyway. I tried not to get so relaxed again.”

  He kisses her so carefully, as if too much contact will cause her to evaporate. His tongue glances her lip, her tongue, the skin of her neck. His piercing is cold; his skin is hot. His hands pull her closer, shadow up and down her sides and over her curves. “Missed you,” he whispers.

  Last time, when she returned from being gone, he looked angry. This time, he seems resigned. She pulls back so she can see his face more clearly. His freckles have faded in the past month, and only now, with a couple of days away, does she notice. His eyes are dimmer in the dark room, but something fierce drums behind them, matching the rhythm of his pulse in his throat.

  His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows thickly. “I told Jay.”

  “Told him what?”

  “That you’re a Walker.”

  She falls silent in the face of such a blunt admission.

  “I was freaking out and worried I imagined everything. I needed someone else to hear it and believe it.” He laughs dryly.

  She nods, supposing she can’t be upset with him any more than he can be with her for disappearing. “Okay.” She draws out the word carefully. “How’d he take it?”

  He rolls onto his back, staring at the ceiling. He’s shirtless. Lucy’s eyes move instinctively to his bare skin, over the smooth lines of his chest, the definition of his stomach, and lower. “He didn’t believe me at first. But we didn’t talk about that for long. We talked about me going into the lake again.”

  Lucy’s body pricks, each element drawn to the surface, making her feel like a brittle, spiked shell. “Colin.”

  “He’s game, Lucy. He said he’ll do it for me.”

  “And are you doing it for me?” she asks, hearing the bite in her words and feeling proud that they came out the way she intended. “Because no, thanks.”

  “I’m doing it for both of us. I know it will work.” He gives her his trademark slow blink, filled with cocky confidence, but the gesture is wrong. He’s doing this because she would never ask it of him even though he probably sees straight through her to her traitor glee.

  “This is a bad time to talk about this,” she says quietly. “I just got back, and I know you were scared when I vanished again. I feel like I can’t say no to this, but I want to.” The lie burns in her throat.

  He sits up, facing away from her and bending to put his head in his hands. “We’ll talk about it later, then.”

  • • •

  Later turns out to be in the crowded dining hall, surrounded by four hundred other students. Later turns out to be with Jay.

  “I told Lucy that you know,” Colin says before taking a giant bite of pizza. Suddenly the drone of hundreds of students feels completely silent.

  Jay and Lucy stare at him for a beat before looking at each other. “Yeah,” Jay says. “He told me. Sorry about the . . . being dead.”

  Lucy smiles weakly, raises her hands and shakes them. “Ta-da . . .”

  With the truth out between the three of them, Jay lets himself look. Really look. It’s not like Lucy has never been inspected; Colin stares at her all the time, examining how she fits together or maybe trying to get his mind to believe what his eyes see and his heart feels. But other than Colin, no one ever looks at her. Not like this. Jay’s attention is unnerving and unrelenting.

  “Dude, she’s not made of wax. You’re making her twitchy.”

  Jay sits back in his chair, letting it teeter back on two legs. “I can’t tell.”

  Colin leans forward. “What?”

  “I mean, unless you look closely, she just looks like a chick.”

  “She is a chick,” Lucy says, annoyed at the conversation that’s happening as if she’s not sitting right here.

  “I mean, yeah, your skin is supersmooth, and you look kind of . . .” He waves his hands vaguely. “Glassy. But you look like a chick.”

  She scowls. “Maybe we can talk about this somewhere other than the middle of the dining hall during lunch.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, no one looks at you,” Jay says, slapping his chair down with a loud clap and reaching for his apple. “So no one is watching us, either.”

  She exhales and looks away, out the window to where snow is falling in fluffy handfuls from the silver-blue sky. She listens to the sound of the boys digging into their lunches for several minutes before Jay speaks.

  “Colin says you’re not up for the lake again.”

  Her head snaps to Colin, and she narrows her eyes.

  “I think he’s right,” Jay continues, leaning forward and catching her gaze. “I think it’s like an extreme sport. He’s healthy and young; my obsessive hunter father has ensured that I know CPR. The infirmary is full of supplies. And I got Colin back last time without anything.”

  “Which was lucky for everyone,” she counters. “Were you this enthusiastic when he suggested it to you yesterday?”

  “Nah,” Jay says, grinning. “I thought all those hits to the skull had finally done him in. But I’ve come around.”

  Lucy shakes her head at this strange display of trust and loyalty. “Why are you invested in this?”

  Jay takes a bite of apple and shrugs. “Colin’s lost a lot of people. I like the idea that he’ll chase you down and keep you from getting away.”

  Lucy looks at Colin, who is watching her with a painfully vulnerable, hopeful expression. He squints, analyzing her eyes, and then smiles. She doesn’t know what color they are or what he’s seen, but somehow he already knows she’s going to say yes.

  • • •

  She’d pushed for a warmer day, but January in Boundary County has few of those to offer. With blankets and a duffel bag of pilfered equipment in Jay’s backpack, the three of them head out to the lake.

  Jay talks nonstop as they walk. Lucy can’t tell if it’s nervous energy or how he is when heading out to do any activity motivated by complete insanity. She and Colin hum in agreement or dissent whenever it seems called for, but she can tell Colin isn’t listening either. His fingers are wrapped carefully around hers, and she grips them as tightly as she can manage. She can feel his skin squeeze between her fingers and meets his surprised eyes.

  They crunch through the snow to the giant open gash in the ice and unload everything, the air humming with the strangely loud silence that comes in a moment perched on the edge of adventure.

  While she waits, she takes a moment to look around. It’s easy to see why the lake’s gotten such a paranormal reputation. In the blue-gray light of the winter afternoon, it’s downright eerie, and ribbons of fog seem to cling to its surface. It isn’t hard to imagine ghosts walking aimlessly along the shore, or even a madman dragging a young girl to her death. Lucy stares at the icicles looping from the box elders, heavy and gaudy with splinters of sunshine slanting through. She looks at her tree towering above the two benches at the edge of the lake. She doesn’t think she’s ever taken the time to look at it before, but now that she does, a shiver runs through her that has nothing to do with the January wind tugging at the ends of her frozen hair. The branches arch upward, each spindly twig like fingers hoping to pluck a ghost from the sky. Jay
blows loudly into his hands and she turns toward him, grateful for the distraction.

  Lucy isn’t sure what she expected—maybe Colin walking around the site of the cracked ice, inspecting, maybe psyching himself up to the act—but whatever it was, she certainly did not expect him to strip down to his boxers within minutes of the supplies being set up and jump feetfirst through the original crack in the ice into the frigid water.

  She barely has time to be gripped with panic, to feel every part of her shift to the middle and clench where her heart used to beat. His head dips underwater and he surfaces, gasping and cursing, his arms grabbing wildly for the tether they’ve attached to his wrist.

  “Cold! Oh my God, it’s cold!”

  Jay bounces at the edge of the entry point, jittery and unsure. “You done? You want out?”

  “No, no, no, no!” Colin yells. “Just . . . shit, it’s cold.” He shivers violently.

  “Colin!” Lucy calls. Her chest grows with the sensation of hot, rushing water filling her empty heart. The heady sensation is disorienting, completely at odds with the panic her brain tells her to feel. “Get out!”

  I’m done.

  This is insanity.

  I don’t want this.

  She reaches for him, but Jay bats her hands away. “I got this. Lucy, this is what he wants to do.”

  Teeth chattering, Colin nods and then dunks under the freezing water again, determined to soak his hair.

  “This is wrong,” Lucy whispers. “Jay, this is going to kill him.”

  “It won’t,” he says, voice steady. How can he be so sure when everything inside Lucy is colliding?

  “I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay,” Colin whispers over and over again. “I’m okay.”

  After what feels like an eternity filled with the sound of water lapping against ice, of Colin’s huffing breaths, of Jay muttering reassurances over and over, “You can do this; you got this; you can hang, buddy, come on. A few more minutes and you get to touch your girl. You can do this,” Colin shudders once, and then his eyes roll back as he turns and bobs in the water.

  Jumping into action, Jay reaches for Colin’s arm and pulls him out, dragging him on his side to a foil blanket spread out on the ice. He checks the time and then watches him lying there, unmoving.