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VIII

Alice steps out of the elevator.

She crosses a lobby she wasn’t there to see, and pushes open a pair of doors she doesn’t remember walking through, and exits onto a Boston street.

It takes her a moment to get her bearings, to point herself in the right direction.

She starts walking, scuffing her boots a little with each step.

It is so quiet inside her now, without a pulse, but even at this hour the city around her is full of sound.

The thud of the bass in a passing car. The whisper of the television in a nearby flat.

The bartenders announcing last call. The dishwashers cleaning up kitchens.

The people out late now heading home to sleep.

Her hand drifts to the pendant, now empty, around her neck.

Catty is gone.

Their mum is gone.

But Alice is still here.

She digs her phone out of her pocket, taps over to Catty’s voice note as she walks, holding on to her sister’s voice as if it is a rope.

Hey, Bones.

You ever think about how mad it is, that we only get one life?

(It is a lie, Sabine told Lottie and Lottie told her, that you only get one story.)

Maybe that’s what death is, and we just don’t know it. A chance to play again.

It must be cold, thinks Alice, watching a group of people spill out of a closing bar and turn up their collars. She remembers that she’s wearing nothing but a thin green dress, and folds her arms a little tighter across her chest, blows out a breath she doesn’t need until they pass.

Until she’s alone again with Catty’s voice.

What did Mum used to say? I know, you don’t remember . . . something about tired minds being good soil for bad thoughts. How the best thing you can do is go to bed. Bet I’ll wake up, and feel brand—

Alice doesn’t let the message finish.

She taps the screen, is about to start it over again, when the phone buzzes with a call.

Home .

Alice hesitates, then answers, and her dad’s voice greets her, bright, the way it always is first thing in the morning. He’s always been the type to get up early.

“Hey, Al. Oh shit, just seeing the time. Did I wake you?”

A tired laugh escapes. “No, Dad.”

“I forget how late you stay up, studying. All the times I’d come in and find you head down on the books.” A car goes by, and she can almost hear him frowning. “Are you out? On your own?”

“I was at the library,” she lies. “I’m just walking back to campus.”

A disapproving grunt, and then, “I’ll keep you company until you get there.”

And Alice doesn’t tell him how far away she is, doesn’t say it isn’t worth it, or that she’ll text him when she’s back so he knows she got there safe.

She just says, “Okay, thanks,” and spends the next half hour walking, and listening to him talk about Finn starting school, and the painting classes El’s begun to take, and some drama at the pub concerning brands of gin.

She listens to him talk about everything and nothing, about life going on, the way it does, until she’s back across the bridge and the familiar buildings around campus are coming into sight.

“Hey, Al,” he says.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“I know uni can be hard. Everything feels new. But you’ve got this, you know that, right?”

Alice looks up at the sky, the stars, brighter than she’s ever seen them. “I know.”

She tells him that she’s made it safe, and he tells her loves her, always has and always will, and she says it back, and then he’s gone.

Her building sits, waiting, at the edge of the Yard, but Alice isn’t ready to go in just yet. Instead, she turns and starts to walk again. It’s early, after all, and the night stretches out ahead of her. A road with no end.

(How frightening. How freeing.)

As for the stillness—the unnerving silence behind her ribs, a reminder of what she is, and what she isn’t—what does it matter?

Alice will be okay. She’ll find her way through the dark.

She tips her head back as she strolls, forcing air she doesn’t need into her lungs, again, and again, until it feels like breathing.

Until the sound of her steps beats like a drum inside her chest, reminding her she is alive.

Alive.

Alive.

And she is hungry.