“I mean, unless you look closely, she just looks like a chick.”

“She is a chick,” Lucy says, annoyed at the conversation that’s happening as if she’s not sitting right here.

“I mean, yeah, your skin is supersmooth, and you look kind of . . .” He waves his hands vaguely. “Glassy. But you look like a chick.”

She scowls. “Maybe we can talk about this somewhere other than the middle of the cafeteria during lunch.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, no one looks at you,” Jay says, slapping his chair down with a loud clap and reaching for his apple. “So no one is watching us, either.”

She exhales and looks away, out the window to where snow is falling in fluffy handfuls from the silver-blue sky. She listens to the sound of the boys digging into their lunches for several minutes before Jay speaks.

“Colin says you’re not up for the lake again.”

Her head snaps to Colin, and she narrows her eyes.

“I think he’s right,” Jay continues, leaning forward and catching her gaze. “I think it’s like an extreme sport. He’s healthy and young; my obsessive hunter father has ensured that I know CPR. The infirmary is full of supplies. And I got Colin back last time without any anything.”

“Which was lucky for everyone,” she counters. “Were you this enthusiastic when he suggested it to you yesterday?”

“Nah,” Jay says, grinning. “I thought all those hits to the skull had finally done him in. But I’ve come around.”

Lucy shakes her head at this strange display of trust and loyalty. “Why are you invested in this?”

Jay takes a bite of apple and shrugs. “Colin’s lost a lot of people. I like the idea that he’ll chase you down and keep you from getting away.”

Lucy looks at Colin, who is watching her with a painfully vulnerable, hopeful expression. He squints, analyzing her eyes, and then smiles. She doesn’t know what color they are or what he’s seen, but somehow he already knows she’s going to say yes.

She’d pushed for a warmer day, but January in Boundary County has few of those to offer. With blankets, defibrillator paddles, and a duffel bag of pilfered equipment in Jay’s backpack, the three of them head out to the lake.

Jay talks nonstop as they walk. Lucy can’t tell if it’s nervous energy or how he is when heading out to do any activity motivated by complete insanity. She and Colin hum in agreement or dissent whenever it seems called for, but she can tell Colin isn’t listening either. His fingers are wrapped carefully around hers, and she grips them as tightly as she can manage. She can feel his skin squeeze between her fingers and meets his surprised eyes.

They crunch through the snow to the giant open gash in the ice and unload everything, the air humming with the strangely loud silence that comes in a moment perched on the edge of adventure.

While she waits, she takes a moment to look around. It’s easy to see why the lake’s gotten such a paranormal reputation. In the blue-gray light of the winter afternoon, it’s downright eerie, and ribbons of fog seem to cling to its surface. It isn’t hard to imagine ghosts walking aimlessly along the shore, or even a madman dragging a young girl to her death. Lucy stares at the icicles looping from the box elders, heavy and gaudy with splinters of sunshine slanting through. She looks at her tree towering above the two benches at the edge of the lake. She doesn’t think she’s ever taken the time to look at it before, but now that she does, a shiver runs through her that has nothing to do with the January wind tugging at the ends of her frozen hair. The branches arch upward, each spindly twig like fingers hoping to pluck a ghost from the sky. Jay blows loudly into his hands and she turns toward him, grateful for the distraction.

Lucy isn’t sure what she expected —maybe Colin walking around the site of the cracked ice, inspecting, maybe psyching himself up to the act—but whatever it was, she certainly did not expect him to strip down to his boxers within minutes of the supplies being set up and jump feetfirst through the original crack in the ice into the frigid water.

She barely has time to be gripped with panic, to feel every part of her shift to the middle and clench where her heart used to beat. His head dips underwater and he surfaces, gasping and cursing, his arms grabbing wildly for the tether they’ve attached to his wrist.

“Cold! Oh my God, it’s cold!”

Jay bounces at the edge of the entry point, jittery and unsure. “You done? You want out?”

“No, no, no, no!” Colin yells. “Just . . . shit it’s cold.” He shivers violently.

“Colin!” Lucy calls. Her chest grows with the sensation of hot, rushing water filling her empty heart. The heady sensation is disorienting, completely at odds with the panic her brain tells her to feel. “Get out!”

I’m done.

This is insanity.

I don’t want this.

She reaches for him, but Jay bats her hands away. “I got this. Lucy, this is what he wants to do.”

Teeth chattering, Colin nods and then dunks under the freezing water again, determined to soak his hair.

“This is wrong,” Lucy whispers. “Jay, this is going to kill him.”

“It won’t,” he says, voice steady. How can he be so sure when everything inside Lucy is colliding?

“I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m okay,” Colin whispers over and over again. “I’m okay.”

After what feels like an eternity filled with the sound of water lapping against ice, of Colin’s huffing breaths, of Jay muttering reassurances over and over, “You can do this; you got this; you can hang, buddy, come on. A few more minutes and you get to touch your girl. You can do this,” Colin shudders once, and then his eyes roll back as he turns and bobs in the water.