“I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been here forever. I only really remember being here for the past year and a half.”

“But you’ve heard of the Walkers?”

“I’ve heard stories, sure,” he says, shrugging. “It’s why students are told not to go down to the lake, why this place has such a creepy reputation and Halloween is this huge deal.” He presses a hand to his chest, giving her an indulgent smile. “I just assumed we were misunderstood.”

Lucy allows a small smile to escape before she remembers her biggest fear, and the question comes bubbling up abruptly: “Have you ever vanished?”

He winces sympathetically. “Happened to me a couple of times when I first got here. That was the scariest. But it hasn’t happened again for a while now.” He looks to the boy beside him, confirming, “Maybe a year, Alex?”

“At least a year,” Alex agrees.

“Really?” she asks, curiosity and vibrant hope making her voice come out thick.

Shrugging, Henry says, “I assumed it was kind of an adjustment thing.”

Relief floods her so rapidly that for a pulse she feels unsteady. Her gaze drifts back to Alex. There’s something oddly fascinating about the living boy. Henry doesn’t look quite human to her, but there’s something strange about Alex, too. She feels an eerie pull toward him. It’s different from Colin, of course, but the air around Alex isn’t empty like it is around the other students. Instead, it has almost a hypnotic hum to it.

His skin is sun-kissed, but now that she’s closer, she sees the circles beneath his eyes. And there’s something underneath, an exhaustion in the way he holds himself, bruising that pushes up beneath his skin, stiffness in his movements. It’s almost like Lucy can see through him, to a part that lies deep inside, draining him.

“Lucy, where is your Protected?” Henry asks. Lucy jerks herself back to the conversation. His eyes move over her face as she tries to understand his question.

“My ‘Protected’?”

He grins. “Sorry. It’s how I think of Alex. I mean, where’s the person you came back for?”

“You mean Colin?”

Laughing, he straightens and wipes his hands on his jeans. “I need to start at the beginning with you, don’t I?”

She presses her hands to her cheeks in what she knows to be reflexive movement, a leftover from the long-forgotten days when she would have blushed. “I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time processing some of this. I knew there had been others at one point or another. I just didn’t think I would meet any.”

“Well, partly that’s because you’re here for Colin. I don’t think it’s natural for Guardians to think that much about anyone other than our Protected. But I suspect we’re all over. We’re the kids no one ever remembers. We’re the ones no one misses at the reunion. Even I haven’t noticed you before.”

Because he wasn’t looking, she thinks.

Alex and Henry continue to watch her with the same small and patient smiles while his words hover in the air. She laughs briefly, a soft exhale. “You think we’re Guardians?”

“I do,” Henry says. “And there’s no one here to tell me I’m wrong. I didn’t know anything when I got here. I walked around, aimless. But when I found Alex, being near him didn’t just feel right; it felt critical. As in, when I left him alone, I felt I was doing something wrong.”

“Yes,” Lucy whispers, tingling down to her fingertips.

“I don’t know why he needs me, if it’s because he was sick and I make him healthy, or something else. But in the year since I found him, I feel like I finally have purpose, and lately, I feel stronger every day. Just look at him; he looks so much better, too. Something in his eyes . . . I know I’m doing what I’m here to do.”

Lucy looks to Alex again. Is that what she sees, his illness? She wonders if Henry sees it too. When she looks at Alex, she doesn’t feel quite as hopeful about his condition. She also doesn’t see anything different about his eyes. They’re blue, in the same way that hers are brown. Except to Colin.

“You’re sick?” she asks.

“Acute lymphocytic leukemia,” he says matter-of-factly. “Henry found me the week I was diagnosed.” He glances at Henry before adding, “I’m in remission now.”

“I’m so glad,” Lucy says. “But—who? Who sent us back? Why us? Why Colin and Alex?”

Henry stills her with a hand on her knee. “You’re wasting your time asking questions. I asked them every day for a year, and trust me, no one will drift down from the clouds and give you the welcome pamphlet.”

Lucy envies Henry’s certainty, and maybe the only way she’ll get it is with more time. The thought is both a relief and mildly depressing. “How much do you remember about your life before?”

“Not much,” Henry admits. “I know my name. I know I loved sports because I have brief memories of playing, or watching. But other than a flash here and there—a face, a feeling—it’s pretty blank. Nothing around here looks familiar.”

Lucy remembers waking on the trail and the instinctive way she knew where to find someone. “So you weren’t a student here?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“We’ve gone through the yearbooks,” Alex offers. “Nothing.”

“Huh.” Lucy pulls at her lip, thinking.

“What’s ‘huh’?” Henry asks, leaning forward to catch her gaze.

“I was a Saint Osanna’s student. I died here. According to an article Colin found, I was killed at the lake. That’s where I woke up. I figured that we had this connection, which explained why I was here for him.”