Something flaps in a cluster of reeds next to the trail, and the last forgotten leaves crunch beneath their shoes as they walk deeper into the woods. Their steps are evenly paced, but Lucy’s seem lighter than his, quieter somehow.

And now that he’s starting to let himself believe, he sees other differences: Her cheeks aren’t flushed from the cold. While each of his breaths seems to float like small puffs of smoke in the air in front of him, the space in front of Lucy’s lips is noticeably empty.

Beside him, she looks around as if she can see every detail in the light of the moon, and it makes him wonder, is she like a cat? Does she have amazing night vision? Although it seems strange that there would be any off-limit topics now that they’ve both acknowledged that she is dead and he isn’t, he feels like it would be strange to ask her what it’s like.

“So you believe me?” she asks.

He considers telling her what Joe said, but opts instead for the simpler answer: “I looked up your story. Saw your picture. You were killed by the former headmaster, out by this lake.”

She nods, staring out at the water, and seems largely uninterested in what he’s told her. “I wonder why I like being out here, then. That’s sort of morbid.”

“Is it weird to not remember everything?”

She picks up a leaf and examines it. “I guess. The weird thing is it’s all or nothing, and about the strangest things. I remember with crazy detail a bouquet of flowers my dad bought me for a holiday, but I can’t remember his face.”

“Wow.” Colin feels lame, but, really what can he say to that?

“The other night I was thinking about it. You know those game shows where someone stands in a phone booth and money shoots up from the floor and the person gets to grab as much as they can in a minute?”

He has no idea what she’s talking about but goes with it. “Sure.”

“Well, some of the bills are twenties, maybe a few hundreds but most of them are ones. So it looks like it’s a ton of money blowing around, but it’s not. And no matter what you end up with, you’re happy because you have money in your hands.”

She glides around a boulder in the middle of the trail, and he hops on it and then leapfrogs onto a long, rotting log. He can feel her watching him out of the corner of her eye.

“Anyway, I feel like at some point after I died, I must have had a minute in a booth with my memories and I grabbed a couple of fives, but mostly ones.”

“So, in other words, you’re happy to have something—”

“But what I ended up remembering was pretty useless,” she finishes, smiling wryly.

“Not enough green to buy much, eh? Like who you were or why you’re here?”

She laughs, her eyes glowing with relief. “Exactly.”

It’s the relief that kills him because he’s starting to believe that if one person was supposed to understand her from the start, it was him. “I’m sorry I was a dick.”

“You weren’t a dick.” She snorts. “God, I forgot how much I love that word used like that. And ‘douche.’”

“That one applies too. You were all, ‘Hey, I died,’ and I was like, ‘Wow, that sucks. I gotta jet.’”

She laughs again, and this time it’s loud enough to echo off the tree trunks around them. He loves hearing it, loves how someone so finespun could make such a big sound. “Well, how were you supposed to react? Actually, I think I’d have been more worried if you’d been totally calm about it. I would have probably thought, ‘Maybe this guy has a ghost fetish.’”

It’s Colin’s turn to laugh, but it quickly fades away. “My mom started seeing things. It’s how she . . .” He pauses, stopping to face her. “See, a few weeks after we moved here . . . my older sister, Caroline, was hit by a delivery truck heading into school. She was on her bike. Never saw it coming, I guess. Mom kind of lost it, went off the deep end. Then, after about a month, she started saying she saw Caroline on the road a few times. One night, she got us in the car, told us we were going out for ice cream in town, and then drove the car off a bridge.”

“Colin,” Lucy whispers, horrified, “that’s awful.”

“My parents died. I survived. So, when you told me you thought you were dead, I guess you understand why I flipped out.”

“God, yeah.” She pulls her hair off her face, exposing every inch of smooth, pale skin. She’s so beautiful; he wants to feel his cheek against hers. “I’m so sorry.”

He waves her off, hating to linger on this. “Where did you go the last few days?”

“I don’t really remember what I did, but I’m sure I was around. Here, or in the field. I can’t leave campus grounds.”

“You mean, at all?”

She shakes her head and watches him a minute longer before dropping her leaf on the path. It disappears almost immediately into the mud. It’s his turn to stare, watching her profile as she looks out across the water.

“Lucy?”

She turns to him with a smile. “I like it when you say my name.”

Colin smiles back, but it turns down at the corners after a beat. “Do you know why you’re back here?”

She shakes her head. “Are you scared of me?”

“No.” He should be, absolutely. And he wants to say more, to talk about the school and the stories that surround it, about the Walkers and how maybe that’s what she is, and are they all trapped by the gate? He definitely should be scared. But now that he’s with her, close enough to touch, he can feel only relief and that strange, intoxicating longing.

Suddenly walking side by side isn’t enough anymore.