THE ONLY PERSON LOOKING AT her is the same boy whose face has haunted her all week, with wild dark hair that needs to be cut, an arm in a new cast, and eyes that pierce her, amber and fierce.
“Hi,” she rasps, tucking away her smile. Her voice is rough because this is the first time she’s used it in six days. The first time she used it since she spoke to him and then burst from the dining room, intending to run into town to find the police and tell them she needed help. She could get only as far as a hulking metal campus gate a half mile down the gravelly road. Each of the three times she tried to escape, one step past the gate put her right back on the trail where she woke up, as if she’d stepped into a skipping song.
The boy’s gaze narrows and slips across her cheeks, over her nose, pauses at her mouth. He blinks once, slowly, then again. “Where did you go?”
Nowhere, she thinks, envisioning the empty shed she found in the middle of a barren field beside the school. It was as deserted as her memory bank, after all, and seemed the perfect home for a girl who has no name, no past.
After being inexplicably drawn to this school building every morning for a week, she finally grew brave enough to steal a uniform, walk inside, and sit down.
“You disappeared,” he says.
She shifts in her seat, glancing at his mouth. “I know. I wasn’t quite sure how to follow up my stunning opening line.”
Laughing, he says, “Here,” and pushes his open textbook closer to her.
She blinks, the phantom trace of a pulse racing inside her throat at the way his eyes move over her face, the way he purses his lips slightly before smiling.
“Thanks,” she says. “But I’m okay. I can just listen.”
He shrugs, but doesn’t move away. “I think we’re covering the history of labor-management relations today. Wouldn’t want you to miss out on the full experience.”
The girl isn’t sure what to do with his attention. She suspects, from the way her skin seems to be aching to move closer to him, that he’s the reason she’s drawn here every morning, just as she found herself in the dining hall that first day. But he seems so sweet, almost too open, like she’s a strip of paper dragged through poisoned honey and this perfect boy flies innocently around her. How good can a girl be when she doesn’t need to eat or sleep and keeps finding herself snapped back to school grounds every time she tries to leave?
He continues to stare, and she shifts her hair over her shoulder, lowering it like a curtain between them.
“Colin?” It’s a woman’s voice, clear and authoritative.
The pressure of his gaze on her lifts. “Sorry, Mrs. Polzweski,” he says.
Now that the girl knows his name, she wants to whisper it over and over.
“Who are you, honey?” the teacher asks.
The room is a vast bubble, silent and pulsing with expectation, and the girl realizes this Ms. Polzweski is speaking to her.
But with the question hanging in the air, a man’s voice speaks in the girl’s mind.
“I bet you didn’t know your name means light,” he whispered, lips too close to her ear.
“I did know,” she wanted to say, but the hand on her throat made it hard to even draw breath.
“Lucia,” she remembers in a gasp. “My name is Lucy.”
The teacher hums in acknowledgment. “Lucy, are you new?”
Something inside Lucy stirs at the sound of someone else saying her name. For a heavy moment, she feels real, as if she’s a balloon and someone has finally weighted her to the ground. Maybe a girl with a name won’t float off into the sky.
Lucy nods, and a phantom heat burns across her cheek where Colin’s gaze settles again.
“You’re not on my roll, Lucy. Can you go to the office to check in?”
“Sorry,” Lucy says, fighting panic. “I just started today.”
Ms. Polzweski smiles. “You need to make sure to pick up your add card. I’ll sign it.”
Lucy nods again and slips away, wanting to disappear like a shadow into black.
- • •
Lucy knew she’d be told to go, but she doesn’t even know where the office is and isn’t quite ready to brave the outdoors and the winds that weigh more than she does. And here her feet seem grounded anyway, keeping her from leaving. She sits at the end of the hall, knees to chest, waiting for the next tug of instinct to pull her up and forward.
A door opens and closes shut with a quiet click.
“Lucy?” It’s one of the only two voices in this world that she’s connected to a name—Colin—and it’s hesitant and deep and quiet. It cuts straight down the hall, and his lanky figure moves just as smoothly, straight to her. “Hey. Do you need help finding the office?”
She shakes her head, wishing she had something to gather to take with her so she could look purposeful and less like a lost girl sitting on the floor. Instead, she stands and turns, watching the lines of wood flooring weave a path in front of her as she walks away. She knows how it would go, anyway: He would walk with her, notice how she fights the wind, ask if she’s okay. And how would she respond? I don’t know. I only remembered my name five minutes ago.
“Hey, wait.”
She reaches a door, but it’s locked. She tries another beside it. Also locked.
“Lucy, wait,” Colin says. “What are you looking for? You can’t go in there. Those are janitor closets.”
She stops, turning to face him, and he’s looking at her. Really looking, like he wants to capture every detail. When their eyes meet, he makes a strangled sound, narrowing his gaze and leaning closer to look. Her eyes are murky green-brown; she’s stared at them for hours in an old mirror, hoping to remember the girl behind them.
“What?” she asks. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
He shakes his head. “You’re . . .”
“I’m what?” What will he say? What does he see?
He blinks again, slowly, and she realizes it’s just something he does: an unselfconscious, unhurried blink, as if he’s capturing an image of her and developing it on his lids.
“Intense,” he murmurs.
With that word, the other man’s voice appears in her head again, an echo from the same intrusive memory. “You have to know how intense this is for me.”
She stumbles back, eyes wide.
“Are you okay?” Colin reaches for her arm, but she’s already turning, hurrying away.
With lips wet and pressed to her ear, he asked, “Are you afraid of dying?”
“Lucy!”
A flash of her reflection in a crisp blade of silver. Breath smelling of coffee and sugar, cigarettes and delight. Cool water lapping near her head. A knife, drowning in her own blood, the feeling of being pried open.
She bursts through the side exit, sucking in a huge gasp of sharp, autumn air.
So that’s who she is. She’s the girl who isn’t alive anymore.
