already about that, and she’d told me a horrible story about their train, surrounded and under siege by those twisted, jerking corpses. They pounded and moaned and whispered things…Morgan barely got through the story. She’d told me that something in Abraham’s light, when he’d tried to erase me, had revivified Zack. And her, too, when we moved to her room. At least, that had been Puck’s explanation.
Our small talk expended, Zack stared at me across the table, I couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably under the gaze.
I couldn’t bear the wait. He wasn’t speaking, and his eyes drifted between mine and the table in front of him. Finally I reached across the table, my staked-out parents be damned, and squeezed his hand.
He flinched. I let go.
“What’s going on?” I asked him. I felt a hitch in my throat.
He looked down at the table.
“I had to see you,” he said. “In person.”
I felt the color run out of my face, and I felt a cold trickle drip into my stomach. His face, so handsome, yet pale and drawn. He looked like a man about to vomit, or maybe one who just had.
“I—”
“What is this?” I asked him. He was beginning to blur. The entire Starbucks was beginning to blur.
“I don’t know,” he said. “When I woke up in the hospital room—”
“That’s over,” I said. I tightened my jaw. I tried to swallow, but it was like downing a fistful of dry crackers, “Stop. That’s over now. All of that is over—”
“It’s not that…it’s not what happened. It’s not Abraham or post-traumatic stress or fear or anything like that—”
“How do you know?” I asked him. I blinked, trying to clear away the sudden blur. “It’s only been a few days.”
Zack took a deep breath. His eyes hadn’t left the table. He hunched forward, like he was exhausted. His shoulders were rounded, his arms tucked in. He smelled good. I could smell him from across the table. It made it worse.
“I—something changed. I look at you,” he said, though he didn’t. “And I see you. You’re still beautiful, you still crinkle your forehead when you’re thinking…still smile—”
“—like a little girl?” I prompted, and he nodded, a tiny heartbreaking smile tugging the corner of his lips.
“You’re funny and smart and perfect,” he said. I closed my eyes. “But I don’t…I can’t feel you anymore. It’s like looking at picture—like you’re not there.”
“Because…because of—”
“No,” he said. “It’s not what happened to you. More like, what happened to me. I— I’m sorry.”
“Are you saying you feel nothing?” I said. The barest breath, like someone whispering two tables down. I opened my eyes but I couldn’t see anything but wet shapes.
Zack said nothing. He folded his hands on the table, right over the spot he was staring at. He wasn’t crying. He looked upset, and terrified, and guilty but—he wasn’t shaking. Not like I was. Not shivering, not clutching my own hands. Not on the edge of a hysteria I couldn’t control. Not like the floor had just dropped out.
“I’ve never been kissed like how you kissed me that day,” I said, suddenly, pathetically. My voice sounded stretched, tinny, weak. “That wasn’t nothing. You’re goddamn kiss brought me back from the dead.”
Zack shifted in his seat.
“I loved you that day, Lucy,” Zack said, in the barest whisper. “I don’t think I’ll ever love anything like I loved you that day.”
Zack closed his eyes.
“What about today?” I asked him. I didn’t have to.
“Lucy—”
“What about today, Zack?” I said, louder. A few of the employees turned our way, and Zack shifted again. Good. Great. I hoped the world could hear me.
“Please. I don’t want—”
“What. About. Today. Zack?”
Zack shook his head. He looked up at me, and his face raged more than I gave him credit. His eyes shined with tears, making them look even more like lapis lazuli, and his lips were thin and pale. He locked my eyes with his and would not let go. In those eyes, I saw pity, and remorse, and fear, and guilt. But not sadness. Not gut wrenching loss. He sucked in a breath. It caught in his throat.
“Nothing.”
I stood up, slowly, and everything seemed louder, and brighter. My chair scraped across the tile floor, and it could have been an entire desk being dragged. I could hear strained whispering behind the counter. The light from outside dazzled me.
When I saw just how badly my hands were shaking, I tucked them into the pockets of my jacket. I looked down at Zack. He looked up at me.
“Please, Luce, don’t go.”
I felt my body convulse in a sob, and I touched my lips to hold it in. I wasn’t going to do this. Not there. I wasn’t going to break down. I growled, low in my throat, trying to find some well of resolve or willpower or strength, inside of me. I dug deep for sterner stuff, even as it felt like my guts were shriveling away.
Zack felt nothing for me.
I turned and walked out the door, as gently as I could, as deliberately as I could. I watched my hand, still shaking, unfold from the jacket pocket, reach forward, and grasp the door handle—a robotic gesture, the movement stilted, unnatural. I opened the door and walked, step by step, to the car. I thought only of my feet moving, of my steps carrying me away.
I touched the handle of the car. I opened it. I sat down in the car. I put on my seatbelt. I looked up when Mom asked me a question. I answered it with a lie. My dad asked the same question, and I answered it with a lie. I told them I wanted to go home. They took me home.
I walked in the door. I walked up the stairs. I told my Mother I would sit alone for a while. I closed my door. I looked across the room, at my dresser. There were three pictures on my dresser. One was last year, at the beach. It was me and Zack and Morgan and Daphne in bathing suits. Zack was pretending to cringe in terror while Daphne and Morgan and I pretended to hit him with giant Day-Glo Fun Noodles.
I thought about Zack. I thought about the little nugget of heat still in my belly, the one that belonged to him. The last glowing piece of what I’d taken. Of what had broken me today. Of what Zack would never feel, or have, or know again.
I took that tiny spark of what could have been, of what
That little coal in my belly was gone.
I wished I could dump myself out. I fell onto my bed, and I cried myself into oblivion. I let them come out. I thought of every kiss and ever shy touch and every smile and every time he held me and everything he said to me. I thought of the times he’d saved my life, and the times I’d saved his, and the way his smile made my stomach feel.
Eventually, when I was all used up, when my body shook with tiny after-shocks, I fell asleep.
My first time, since I’d died.
I didn’t wake up until morning.
Interlude
