Sublime

by Christina Lauren

  She watches as the two men lift Colin onto a stretcher. His hand reaches out weakly, and she waves.

  “I’ll meet you there.” Somehow, she thinks. Her thoughts grow panicked and jumbled as the ambulance starts up, beeping loudly in the echoing quiet of the lake as it backs down the trail. How can she possibly follow him?

  She runs toward the school, and in the distance, sees Joe and Dot begin jogging to the parking lot. Brake lights flash on a shiny blue pickup truck as Joe unlocks the doors with a remote.

  Without thinking, Lucy sprints to the truck, crouching behind the back gate. Just as the two passengers shut their doors, Lucy throws her body over the side, into the open bed.

  Gravel spits up behind them as they peel out of the lot, chasing the ambulance down the dirt road leading out of the school.

  It’s only when they pass through the iron gates that Lucy realizes she hasn’t been bounced back to the trail. Ahead of them, the ambulance wails down the two-lane highway.

  But why now? What’s changed? She looks up to the flashing lights down the road, to where her heart lies, strapped into the back of an ambulance. Where you go, I go, she thinks.

  Always.

  • • •

  “Eighteen-year-old male, severe hypothermia. BP ninety over fifty-four. Current temp is ninety-four point eight, respiratory rate fourteen. Lactated ringers pushed at one hundred fifty milliliters an hour. EKG stable with normal sinus rhythm. Chest X-ray results are here for your review. Blood work was sent to the lab for stat processing.”

  Lucy pushes her way into the corner about ten feet from where a physician is looking down at Colin’s chart while one of the paramedics ticks off the vitals. Lucy has managed to walk into the triage area without anyone saying a single word to her.

  The attending physician listens to the account of the scene: The kids were playing on the lake, Colin went in, they had equipment to revive him, and it seemed intentional.

  “Isn’t this the kid they were talking about on the news? Around Christmas?”

  “Colin Novak. From Saint O’s.”

  “Yeah.” The doctor gently pushes hair off of Colin’s forehead. “That’s him.”

  Lucy turns as they wheel him away and through two wide doors. She wanders the halls until she can’t take the beeping and antiseptic smell and chatting nurses. She’s glad for them that the stress of the ER becomes as tolerable as with any other job, but their conversation about the recently passed Valentine’s Day is too far removed from the updates on Colin she wants to be hearing. She wants news about him blared through the intercom.

  She wishes she were a ghost like on television, only as solid as a hologram. She’d be able to walk through walls and into any room, peek her head through and watch the color return to Colin’s skin.

  On her seventh circuit of the halls, she peers into the family waiting room. Jay is gone, but Dot remains and stares, unseeing, out of a large window that overlooks the parking lot. There’s no one here to comfort her, and there’s no one here to comfort Lucy. She steps into the dark, silent room, ready to share her loneliness.

  Dot is so lost in her misery that she doesn’t even look up when Lucy walks in. She simply stares down at the book she clearly isn’t even reading. Lucy wants to talk to her, to explain what happened and assure her that Colin is okay and they’ve almost got this whole mystery figured out, but the words turn into dust in her throat. Instead, she sits down on a couch in a dark corner and waits.

  Over the next twenty minutes Dot asks the receptionist to let her see Colin four times, paces the room seven times, sits and stares at her book the rest of the time, but never once does she turn the page.

  Dot is tall—some might even describe her as formidable—with surprisingly young skin and hair that has been left alone; silver dominates the deep brown. It’s bundled back in a messy ponytail, exposing her large blue eyes. Even with her striking physical presence, Lucy can tell Dot feels small. Helpless. She’s a mass of constant movement and anxiety.

  And then Dot stills. Her hands freeze midway up her thigh as she’s rubbing them worriedly, and she turns to look at Lucy. To her horror, in Dot’s face Lucy sees a mixture of understanding and fear.

  “I remember you, you know.” Her soft voice carries a bite of accusation. “You’re the girl I saw in the dining room, covered in dirt.” She lifts a shaking hand and pushes a loose thread of hair behind her ear. “But I remember you from before that too.”

  Lucy feels the layers to the statement and looks away before nodding, unable to face the worry and accusation she can see in every line of Dot’s expression.

  Many minutes pass before Dot speaks again. “Say your name.”

  “Lucy.”

  Dot says her name again, and then adds, voice shaking, “Lucia Gray.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Something cold and leaden thunders in Lucy’s limbs, brought on by Dot’s expression: fear. Beneath it, anger.

  “You care about him?” Dot asks, leaning forward to get a better look at Lucy in the dim room.

  Lucy nods again but turns her eyes to the floor.

  “Tell me.”

  “I love him.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says, finally looking at Dot’s face. “Yes, I care about him. I want him to be safe. I don’t know anything else about what I’m doing here, other than I’m supposed to protect him.”

  Humming, Dot closes her book on her lap and stares at the wall. Lucy can feel her unease rise like a curtain between them. “You care about him enough to let him take blankets and resuscitation equipment to the lake?”

  “I didn’t ever want anything bad to happen to him,” Lucy begins, but her words ring false with the sound of hospital equipment behind them. “We were trying to figure out how to bring me back.”

  “Bring you back?” Dot lets out a confused breath and shakes her head. “I always knew it would catch up with him eventually. Just didn’t think it’d be so soon, or he’d be the one chasing it.”

  Before Lucy can ask what she means, the nurse steps into the room with Joe, beckoning to Dot. With one last, lingering glance to where Lucy sits in her stiff chair, Dot leaves her alone in the waiting room.

  Lucy waits five minutes before following. She’ll never believe she’s worthy of being Colin’s Guardian. It’s what she should have told Dot. She should have told her she’ll do anything to deserve him and to tell her what that is.

  Dot’s in his room now, speaking in soothing tones as Joe walks down to the end of the hall, head down, tired eyes on the shiny linoleum floor as he disappears into the elevator. Lucy perches in a vinyl seat just outside Colin’s door, waiting until she can see him, feel him, apologize.

  “Colin,” Dot says, apology thick in her voice. “I met your girl.”

  “You met Lucy?” His voice is worse than she could have imagined. Raw and weak.

  “Yeah, sweetie.” She’s silent for a beat, and Lucy hears a quiet tapping sound, as if she’s holding his hand and patting it reassuringly. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t need to. But I do need you to promise me this is the last time you’re going near that lake.”

  The only sound Lucy hears for a long time is the steady beep of his monitors and the garbled voices and laughter from the nurses’ station.

  Finally, Colin clears his throat. “Dot.” He sounds like he’s swallowed crushed glass. “I can’t promise that.”

  “I knew you’d say that, but I’m afraid I need you to promise anyway.”

  “It’s not what you think. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I don’t know what to think, baby. All I know is this was no accident. I don’t trust that girl.”

  Lucy hears sheets rustle and Colin saying something that sounds like, “Please don’t cry.”

  “Are you trying to kill yourself?” Dot asks.

  “What? Dot, no. No. I’m trying to help her come back. It’s making a difference, She’s stronger and I—”


  “No more, Colin. Because it will kill you. You understand that, don’t you? You’re meant to be here, not there. You can’t bring her back, baby. You aren’t meant to die.”

  Lucy feels her heart begin to beat to the rhythm of the monitor in his room. The familiar tick of a clock seems to pulse beneath her skin.

  Minutes pass.

  Don’t make me leave him. Don’t make me leave him.

  She remembers the feeling of his hands on her arms, the soft exhale of his kiss against her shoulder. She’s traced the constellation of freckles across his nose, felt the cold press of his lip ring. She remembers his first tentative touch and his most recent fevered ones.

  She’s silently begging him to not let her go. Not to promise, never promise, and hating herself at the same time.

  “Okay, okay, Dot. Don’t cry. Please.” He exhales in a quiet, defeated hiss. “I promise I’ll stop.”

  The ticking stops and Lucy closes her eyes, feeling like she’s unraveling at the seams.

  “I promise I won’t go back into the lake.”

  Chapter 34 • HIM

  COLIN SLEEPS FOR WHAT FEELS like days. His eyelids are like sandpaper when they finally open. The room is too bright: Daylight streams in through an opening in familiar curtains, washing the foot of the bed in blinding yellow sun. There’s a vase of flowers on a table, his duffel bag and a haphazard stack of schoolbooks on the couch.

  “There you are,” Dot says, standing from a chair by the door. She tucks a well-worn paperback into her bag and crosses the room toward him. She seems lighter, happy, and for a single, oblivious moment, Colin almost forgets why. “I guess you really needed your sleep, didn’t you?” Her smooth hand touches his cheek and tries to make some sense of his hair, like she’s done a hundred times in his life.

  “What time is it?” he asks, wincing at the feel of words in his throat. It takes some effort, but he manages to sit up a little. Dot brings a green bendy straw to his lips and he drinks. His empty stomach revolts, clenching tightly. The room shifts and weaves around him.

  “Around eleven. Now, lie back down,” she tells him.

  “Eleven a.m.?” he asks, wide-eyed.

  She smiles. “Yes, eleven a.m., Friday, February eighteenth.”

  Colin tries to remember what day it should be, feeling sick when he finally does. He’s been asleep for two days. “Where’s Lucy?” he asks, heart racing, the color of dread bleeding into the edges of everything around him.

  “I don’t know, honey,” Dot answers, the relief slipping from her face. “I haven’t seen her since the night they brought you in.”

  • • •

  Colin is released from the hospital the next day. Joe and Dot don’t talk much to him or each other on the drive back to campus, and for a long while there’s only the sound of tires on asphalt to break the silence. It’s a strange tension and one that Colin has no idea how to reframe, even with his side of the story. Joe and Dot couldn’t understand what he has been through even if they tried. Colin’s pretty sure they both think he has some sort of a death wish by now, that he was trying to hurt himself on purpose. He’s glad Joe doesn’t ask, though; it’s almost impossible for most people to understand how much space there is between craving danger and craving death.

  When Joe finally does speak, their conversation is short. Joe asks how he’s feeling, lets Colin know that he won’t be returning to school for a few days and that he’ll be staying with him until further notice. Colin grunts something resembling a response in the appropriate places. He’s disappointed, but not surprised.

  He hasn’t seen Lucy since he was pulled from the ice and doesn’t hold much hope that she’s waiting for him in his room, even less that she’s at school or the shed. Somehow he knows she’s disappeared again. It’s almost like he can feel her absence in every particle of everything that they pass. The trees look emptier; the air looks bleak.

  He closes his eyes and imagines her in the blackness just before she breaks the surface. He can see her on the trail beneath the mirror sky and wonders if she managed to get through the gate without him.

  At first Colin tells himself that he needs to be patient and wait. She wouldn’t stay away, not now. So he does as he’s told: He goes to class and comes home right after. He spends an entire afternoon talking to a counselor because Dot says it’s important to her. He stays away from any trouble. He waits.

  But the storm is always there, gathering. He feels it spread like the wind that creeps across the lake, like icy fingers that close around his lungs until he can barely breathe—until he’s nearly frantic with the need to find her.

  Days turn into weeks, and the ice begins to thin, and though it sounds cliché, he feels like he’s drowning—melting into the lake right along with it. He does his best not to let his growing frustration show, not to take it out on Dot or Joe, both of whom now watch him like a hawk. Colin wonders what they’ve said to Jay, who seems to have been scared straight, immediately shooting down any discussion of going to the lake.

  Three weeks after he woke up to find Lucy gone, Colin knows he can’t sit still anymore. He makes a show of cleaning his room, studying at Joe’s kitchen table, and volunteering to help Dot finish up dessert prep.

  The sky has grown dark, and Joe raises an eyebrow when Colin settles into the couch beside him. A few distant shouts carry in from outside, as students start making their way across campus.

  “It’s good to see you busy,” Joe says. He drinks from a steaming mug before setting it carefully on the table at his side.

  “If feels good,” Colin answers, and they’re silent for a few minutes, Joe’s eyes on the evening paper and Colin’s on the TV. “I was actually wondering if I could get a suspended sentence tomorrow, maybe get off campus for a few hours.” There’s hope in his voice, something he knows has been noticeably absent the last few weeks.

  Joe eyes him skeptically. “And what exactly would you be doing?”

  “Nothing,” he says, easing off a bit and trying to sound nonchalant. “See a movie, maybe stop by one of the bike shops in town.” He shrugs for added effect. “It’d be nice to get away.”

  Joe considers him. Colin can almost see the release of tension in Joe’s shoulders, his relief at hearing him talk about things that are so normal.

  “Actually, I think that sounds like a great idea,” Joe says, surprising him. “Your grades are good. You haven’t been in any trouble.” He glances at Colin over the top of his paper, expression serious now. “But back here by dark. No exceptions.”

  “Yes, sir,” he says, smiling. Joe shakes his head, but Colin doesn’t miss the way his lips twitch at the corners.

  “I’ll get you your keys in the morning.”

  Colin leans back, happy, his eyes on the game but his thoughts somewhere else completely.

  • • •

  Slush covers the walkway leading to the door of the infirmary, and Colin laughs quietly, realizing this is the first time he’s climbed these steps without A) the aid of someone else, or B) blood gushing from some part of his body.

  He lets the door close softly behind him and wipes his feet on the rug, walking toward the sound of movement at the end of the hall. It’s too quiet, and his sneakers squeak on the linoleum, the sound bouncing off the walls around him. Colin’s been here so many times he knows exactly where he’s going, knows what each piece of equipment is for and which room has the bed with the spring that pokes you in the back. He also knows Maggie won’t be thrilled to see him and that his footprints are probably mucking up her clean floor.

  Right on cue, she peeks her head out of an open doorway, scowling in his direction. “You better be bleeding,” she says, looking behind him.

  He smiles. “I’m not.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  He follows her into the room where she’s changing out one set of sheets for another. A kid he’s never seen before sleeps in a bed on the other side. “I need to ask you about Lucy,” he whispers.

/>   She glances to the sleeping boy and back to him. “I don’t think so.”

  Maggie picks up the basket of sheets and walks into the next room. He follows again.

  “Please.” His voice cracks, begging. She won’t look at him. There’s a hardness in her expression, something that tells him she’s building a wall to keep tears from leaking out. “Please.”

  After a long pause, she finally meets his eyes. “Why today?”

  “Because I can’t find her.”

  She watches him, eyes narrowed. “Heard you did something pretty stupid. Stupid enough it landed you in the hospital. Stupid enough you’re lucky to even be here.”

  Colin tries to laugh it off. “What’s new, right?”

  Maggie clearly doesn’t find it funny. “This is . . . You’ve done some stupid stuff, but this . . .”

  He nods, guilt and shame warring with the unrelenting need to find Lucy. “You heard the details, huh?”

  “Ain’t nobody around here who didn’t hear.”

  “Maggie, you knew about Lucy. When will you tell me how?”

  She keeps working, and Colin rounds the bed, taking the other side of the new sheet and fitting it over the mattress.

  “Almost died and didn’t learn a damn thing. Fool-headed child,” she mutters.

  Colin waits; it’s not exactly like he can argue with her.

  “There’s only one way this can end, Colin. You know that, right?”

  “I can’t believe that, Maggie. I don’t.”

  “Of course you don’t.” She sighs, defeat written in the slump of her shoulders. Maggie straightens, looking out into the hall before closing the wide door. “You’re lucky I don’t kick your skinny butt out of here.”

  Colin tastes salt water and the thick, choking tide of sobs, but pushes it down. “Thanks.”

  Perched on the edge of the bed, she swallows and says, “I met Alan here when I was nineteen. I wasn’t always the person I should have been, Colin. I was young and stupid and did a lot of stuff I’m not proud of. I was on my own, trying to keep up with nursing school and homework and a full-time job. Right before I started here, a friend noticed I was having a hard time and gave me something to get me through it all.” She pulls a pillowcase into her lap, tugs on a loose thread. “Not long after, I was walking from the dorm to my car, and he was there. He was sweeping the sidewalk, and he looked up, smiled like I was a rainbow after the storm. I saw him like no one else did. Saw those crazy eyes and felt something I’d never felt before. He was mine; you know what I mean?”