“Oh. Wow,” Henry says. “I’m so sorry, Lucy.”

“But then what is the connection? Why are we both here? And why can’t we leave?”

Henry and Alex look at each other, each of them shaking their heads. It doesn’t add up. Lucy pulls her sleeves over her hands. She’s not cold, exactly, but a strange creeping sensation spreads up her arms. “How are you so sure about the Guardian thing? Don’t you ever worry you’re . . . bad?”

Henry’s roaring laugh is so surprising, Lucy actually scoots back when it bursts from him. “You think you’d come back to hurt him? Can you even imagine?”

She can’t. She shakes her head, exhaling a slow, anxious breath as she aches to let go of Maggie’s horrible suggestion. “But you’re here and Alex is still sick.” Before Henry can protest, she adds, “And yesterday, Colin fell into a frozen lake and almost died. It’s hard to feel like it’s a coincidence that it was the first time I went along with him. I sort of feel like a bad omen.”

Henry’s expression straightens. “First, Alex might have been sick, but he’s getting better. And that kid who fell in the lake is your Protected?”

She nods. “Yeah, he fell in and . . .” She starts to tell them about the trail, about being able to touch Colin as if they were made of the same thing, but for some reason, she stops. It feels too complicit somehow, as if the accident benefited her too greatly. “And I thought he was going to die,” she says instead.

“But did he?” Henry asks, smiling a secret smile that makes Lucy uneasy, as if the location of the missing puzzle piece is obvious to everyone but her.

“Well, no, but he could have.”

“I’ve heard of him,” Alex says. “We don’t hang out with the same group, but he’s known to be pretty crazy. Hasn’t he broken, like, practically every bone in his body?” He laughs. “No wonder he has you.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Lucy, stop,” Alex says gently. His hand barely hovers over her arm, a practiced touch. “Colin’s here; he’s safe. Has it occurred to you that maybe you’re the reason he didn’t die?”

CHAPTER 21 HER

THIS TIME, WHEN LUCY WALKS BACK ACROSS campus, she barely registers that the howling wind no longer throws her across the path. Long strands of her hair whip around her face, and she pulls it back absently, lost in Alex and Henry’s words.

Guardian.

He almost died.

But did he?

She doesn’t think Colin has any idea how big a story this has been around school, and when Mr. Velasquez’s car pulls up in front of the dorm, it seems like the entire student body is camped outside. Colin looks pale and weak when he climbs out and walks to the front door, the headmaster pushing back the surge of whispering bodies to create a path forward. Lucy backs away from where she’s standing near the pond and sits on the bench where she first told Colin she died. She wishes she had even one drop of Henry’s certainty, because if she chooses not to believe him, then she’s every bit as lost as she was before.

Lucy’s grateful for the short days of winter. Sunset is at 6:08, and at 6:30 Colin is opening the dormitory door to silently let her in.

“Did you eat?” she asks once they’re in his room, door closed, music playing in the background. Jay has come in and left again, letting Lucy and Colin reconnect in relative peace.

He nods, studying her as he sometimes does, as if he can unlock her secrets with the pressure of his attention. “Dot brought me about five meals.”

Only now does it occur to Lucy that Colin could be sick, like Alex, that maybe that’s what they have in common and why each of them has attracted a ghost. But though Colin looks and feels different to her than other people, she doesn’t see the same underlying exhaustion she saw in Alex. There’s no illness draining the life from him right before her eyes. If anything, even in his weakened state, Colin seems more resilient. The air around him pulses with life. “Are you tired?” she asks, fidgeting.

“No. I feel like I’ve slept the last two days away.” He sits down on the edge of his mattress, pulling the heavy brown comforter up and over his shoulders. “And I can’t stop thinking about the lake.”

“I keep seeing you falling through. And then on the trail . . .” She tries to temper the longing in her voice, but her skin hums with the memory of what came after.

He blinks away and looks out the window. Fat snowflakes gather on his windowsill. “If I didn’t die, but I could touch you, then you must be somewhere in between, too.”

“I have no idea.” She moves closer but keeps some space between them when he shivers slightly. “I don’t think I’m the only one like me at Saint Osanna’s.”

Colin turns to look at her, his face shadowed in the dark room. Bluish marks sweep heavily under his eyes, but she can see interest bloom across his expression. His lips curl into a half smile. She tells him about looking for others and finally finding Henry and Alex.

“They’re like us. Henry died, too, and is back.” Colin’s brow furrows, and a hundred reactions cross his features before he says simply, “And the other guy, Alex, is . . . me in this scenario?”

“Yeah, they’re together.” “Alex Broderick? Tall, blond kid?” Colin asks, and Lucy nods. “He’s gay?”

“Do you know him?” she asks.

“Well, I don’t know him know him, but I’ve seen him around. He used to play lacrosse and stuff before he got sick. Cancer, I think.”

“Leukemia. I guess that’s when he found Henry, right after he was diagnosed.”

Colin shifts under the blankets, eyes growing heavy.

“So I’ve wondered, if I’m a ghost, then how do I move things, wear clothes, touch you? But if I’m mostly solid, how do I know I’m not some form of demon instead? Who sent me here?”