A tight ball forms in her chest and expands into her throat. The way his hands rest on her hips is mesmerizing, as if she is firm and his and there. Lucy doesn’t know how his touch will ever feel normal to her and whether she’ll ever be able to be close to him the way she imagines this girl was.

The skin on the back of her neck burns warm when she feels him return to the room, and she quickly puts the picture back where it was. She thinks he notices, but he doesn’t say anything and neither does she. It’s too soon for the conversation of what they are, let alone who that girl was. Even so, Lucy can’t quite stop the jealous fire that licks at her insides at the image of Colin with someone else.

“I realize this is lame,” he says, “but I’m actually really tired.”

The clock reads two a.m. “God. Of course you are. Sorry . . .”

With a small smile, he climbs under the covers and pats the mattress next to him. Lucy climbs onto the foot of the bed, careful to stay on top of the comforter, and sits crosslegged facing him.

“You’re going to watch me?”

“Until you’re asleep and I can sneak a permanent marker from your desk.”

He smiles and curls onto his side. “Okay. ’Night, Lucy.”

Questions pulse in her mind in the blackness of the room, begging for answers. About her, about him. About why the universe sent her back here and why he seems to be the only thing that matters. “’Night, Colin.”

“Hey there, new girl.” Jay grins, pulling out a chair next to his and patting the seat. Colin ignores this, pulling a chair out for Lucy across the table from his friend. “Lucy, Jay. Her name is Lucy.”

“Lucy is a sweet name, but New Girl is better. It’s mysterious. You can be whoever you want to be.” Leaning forward, Jay gives Lucy his best smoldering smile. “Who do you want to be, New Girl?”

Lucy shrugs, thinking. She’d never considered this aspect of being new, and untethered, and unknown. Everything she’s done has been on instinct. She looks through the open doorway to the dining hall, where most students eat. All of the girls bleed together into a single, boring uniform.

“I play bass in an all-female band called the Raging Hussies, have a math fetish, and open beer bottles with my teeth.” She grins at him. “One of those is true.”

Jay’s eyes narrow. “Please tell me it’s the band one.”

“My vote is teeth,” Colin says.

“Sorry,” she says with mock sympathy. “Math.”

Jay shrugs, taking a bite of bacon. “That’s also hot. I mean, whether or not you play the bass with a bunch of hussies, you like the lake. That makes you interesting.”

“What’s interesting about liking the lake?” Lucy turns and searches Colin’s face for explanation. “What’s not to like about it?”

“I love the lake,” Colin says with an easy smile, apparently enjoying the interaction. “Tons of bike trails, and no one else ever goes out there.” With a wink, he adds, “I’m not afraid of what’s out at the lake.”

“I don’t care about the stories,” Jay says. “It just looks creepy. In the summer, it gets so hot and muggy that everything in the air warps. In the winter, the glacial lake freezes and everything turns blue.” Jay spears a forkful of eggs and points them in Lucy’s direction. “You’ve heard about the Walkers, right?”

Lucy shakes her head, cold spreading from her fingertips up her arm. Instinctively, she shifts closer to Colin.

“People say Saint O’s is haunted. And no one goes to the lake; some people around here claim they’ve seen a girl walking around under the water. Hell, this whole place is supposed to be haunted.”

Lucy shivers, but only Colin notices. He puts a gentle hand on her thigh below the table.

“But if you want to know what I think,” Jay begins, and the eggs fall back onto his plate with a quiet smack. “People don’t like walking all the way down there because they’re a bunch of lazy asses who’d rather sit in their room and open beer bottles with their teeth.”

“I see,” Lucy says. Jay watches her, expression unreadable.

“Jay and I aren’t scared of ghosts,” Colin says.

Jay laughs and shoves his plate away. “No, dude. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

When Lucy looks over at Colin, he’s watching her, grinning with their secret in his eyes.

Lucy creates a schedule built of classes with teachers who never take roll. Only one class is with Colin—history—but it’s in the middle of the day when she needs to see his reassuring half smile, his fingers tapping out an impatient rhythm on his desk, the fingers that she knows want to touch her. It’s harder than she’d have imagined to be, well, nothing.

She watches everyone constantly, wondering if some phrase, some small mannerism, will spark a memory or a hint of what she was and of how she can stay earthbound and leave the school someday with Colin.

She finds herself thinking back on what Jay said about the Walkers and the stories that surround the school. She knows she should have asked more questions, should ask them still, but the instinctual tug she feels to be near Colin builds like static in her ears, blocking everything else out. Her questions, her doubts, her purpose, seem secondary to the corporeal buzzing she feels beneath her skin in his presence. She’s as physically drawn toward Colin as she is repelled by the gate.

“Lucy?” Her head snaps up at the sound of her name, all thoughts of Walkers gone. It takes a minute to remember where she is—French class, with Madame Barbare, who Lucy doesn’t think has ever noticed her before. Like most teachers at Saint Osanna’s, Madame Barbare assumes that if you’ve made it past the security gates and are wearing a uniform, you obviously belong in her class even if you’re not on her roll.

Her voice echoes in Lucy’s ears, reverberating up into her skull, where it bounces around uncomfortably. It’s the first time in days someone other than Colin has said her name. “Y-yes?” Only when Lucy looks up does the teacher’s attention move to her, and Lucy can tell she’s called a name whose owner was a mystery to her.

“I have a slip here telling me to send you to the counselor’s office?” She phrases it like a question, and it feels like she’s asking Lucy to confirm. She stands, painfully aware of the attention of the entire class, and takes the slip.

Send Lucy to Miss Proctor’s office. Clearly someone has noticed the girl with the stolen uniform.

Lucy has seen Miss Proctor in the halls, speaking casually with students or calling out to wild, wrestling boys down the hall. She’s young and pretty, and the boys stare at her backside when she walks past. But the woman sitting in the counselor’s office isn’t Miss Proctor.

This woman is short and squat, settled in a chair to the side of the desk, her eyes focused on a stack of papers in front of her. Her blue suit is the color of the springtime sky of Lucy’s memory, and it feels incongruous with the dark, shadowed office and the woman’s bulky, shapeless form.

The woman looks up, watching Lucy walk from the door to the chair.

“Hi,” she says finally. “I’m Lucy?”

“I’m Adelaide Baldwin.” The woman’s voice is softer and more sultry than her appearance would ever suggest.

“Hi,” Lucy says again.

“I’m the head of counseling services at Saint Osanna’s.” Ms. Baldwin sets some papers on the desk beside her and clasps her hands in her lap. “You’ve flown under the radar here, it seems.” She pauses. When Lucy offers no explanation, she continues. “I like to check in with the faculty every month or two, to find out if we have anyone . . . anything different on campus. This morning Ms. Polzweski mentioned that she’d seen a girl around school who she didn’t believe was enrolled. We generally like to handle these issues internally before bringing in any authorities.”

Lucy feels as if a brick has caught in her throat. “Oh,” she whispers.

“Where are your parents?”

Lucy doesn’t have an answer. She can feel Ms. Baldwin’s eyes on her as she fidgets with a magnetic paper clip bowl on the desk in front of her. It’s strange to be alone with someone other than Colin and be the object of such careful scrutiny.