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.”

“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.”