Page 7

I

The girl sleeps like she is dead.

Face turned into the pillow, pale hair drying on her cheek, limbs flung out like roots, no longer shrinking like she did against the wall, but stretching, sprawling to fill the space. Her lips are parted slightly, her shoulders rising, falling, rising with the bellows in her chest.

Lottie lies there on her side and studies the girl.

Alice—a name like a whisper, like a sigh, sound slipping between her teeth.

Lottie stares, unblinking, as if she were a piece of photo paper, a slow exposure, soaking in the angle of Alice’s limbs, the shade of her hair—dry sand—the kisses Lottie left like breadcrumbs on her fair skin.

She reaches out a cool and cautious hand, careful not to wake the girl, and twines a blond lock around her finger, thumbs the edge like a painter testing their brush, catching the scent of rain, and want.

It would be easier, she knows, to let go of these details, instead of clinging to them.

It would be easier, but it would be lonelier, too. And she wants to pretend. Pretend that when she gets up, the spell won’t break. Pretend that when she leaves, she might come back.

Pretend that this is a beginning, and not an end.

Lottie stays as long as she can, which is never long enough.

She imagines dozing off, waking with her arms looped around Alice, the morning spilling through the window.

But despite the time, she isn’t tired. Her skin buzzes with a restless energy, a longing for fresh air, and she knows, she knows, she has to go.

Has learned to rip the Band-Aid off. The danger’s in the dwelling, and so before the voice in the back of her mind can start to whisper What if, what if, what if, Lottie is up.

Slipping from the bed, and picking her way, barefoot, through the cluttered room, reclaiming her outfit piece by piece and dressing in the dark.

She is Orpheus, she tells herself. She won’t look back.

And this time, she almost makes it. Her back is to the bed, her hand is on the doorknob, but then she hears the girl sigh, and turn over in her sleep.

Lottie looks over her shoulder and falters at the sight of Alice, pale limbs tangled in the sheets, one arm out, palm up and fingers curled as if to say Come back.

Lottie chews her lip, then drifts over to the desk, cluttered with textbooks and Post-its. She scribbles a note and presses it like a kiss against the bedside lamp before she goes.

Lottie steps out into the night and sighs, the hours sloughing off like clothes.

She pads, barefoot, across the rain-damp quad, heels hanging from hooked fingers as she drifts, unhurried, savoring the hour when everyone’s asleep except for her.

The storm has passed, the weight replaced by something light and cool as she makes her way through Cambridge. The second one she’s known.

She twirls across an intersection, empty at this hour, carried by a song so faint she can’t tell where it’s coming from, or if it’s simply in her head. She makes her way across the bridge and back into the city proper, where the night feels empty, but it’s not.

A car slows as it passes.

A man comes toward her down the block. Shoulders hunched, eyes hanging on her body. Her curls are drying wild, her minidress still damp and clinging to her hips, and she knows exactly what he’s thinking.

A girl like you, alone at night.

Dressed like that, you’re asking for it.

His hands twitch in his pockets, and then he’s close enough to meet her gaze, close enough for her to feel the menace rolling off him, the If I wanted to, I could, but she doesn’t shy back, doesn’t make herself small.

She looks right into his eyes, and smiles, and whatever he sees, it’s enough to make him flinch and shuffle sideways off the curb, just to get away.

And Lottie ambles on, thinking If I wanted to, I could.

The bell chimes over the door as Lottie ducks into the mini-mart, the one that’s open day and night, trading the softness of the lampposts for the harsh blue-white of the overhead lights.

She wanders the aisles, the snacks and cereal boxes, the bottles behind fridge doors, before ordering a black coffee and a Danish.

The coffee smells burnt.

The Danish, a little stale.

But then again, they’re not for her.

She pays and covers the last two blocks to the hotel, where a sleepy man behind the front desk says, “Welcome back, Miss Hastings.”

“Hello, George.”

“Awfully late,” he muses, no judgment, just an air of fatherly concern.

“Awfully early,” she counters, depositing the paper cup and sack on the counter.

“Come now,” he says, “you didn’t have to do that.”

But he smiles, and she knows the exhaustion on his face has less to do with the graveyard shift he’s pulling, which pays double, and more to do with the med school books he’s got stashed behind the counter.

Lottie says good night, and drifts up the stairs, fingers skimming the blue wallpaper as she heads to her room, the tiredness just beginning to catch up as the darkness thins beyond the windows and the first gray light of dawn creeps in.

She shrugs out of the silver minidress and into a plush robe, sinking onto the sofa at the foot of the bed.

She unzips her bag and reaches in, drawing out a battered paperback, cradling it lightly, the edges foxed, the cover fraying after so many years.

She thumbs past the novel’s end, to the three blank sheets in the very back, a printer’s excess paper—only they’re not blank anymore.

Lines of small, dark writing run down the inside seam.

Heather. Green eyes like bottle glass.

Isabelle. Tattooed flowers down her throat.

Renee. Smelled like lavender and smoke.

Lottie fishes around in the bag until she finds a pen.

She runs her tongue thoughtfully along her teeth as the pen tip hovers just above the page, her gaze sliding down the list.

Maddie. The bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Jess. Freckles like stars across her cheeks.

Chloe. Rings on every knuckle.

On and on. Each encounter bound to a single line, a token, a snapshot, a memory.

She could fill whole journals with her thoughts on each and every one, brief as they were—but what would be the point, except to haunt herself?

Isn’t that exactly what this is? whispers an unkind voice inside her head. A gallery of ghosts.

But that’s not true.

After all, these girls are still alive.

Lottie bows her head over the book, and adds her latest entry.

As she writes, she lets herself look back, one final time, savors each and every moment of the night, reliving the warmth of the girl’s skin beneath her fingers, the heady beat of her heart, the way their bodies tangled in the cheap dorm sheets as Alice gasped her name in the dark.

Savoring it the way she would the last bite of a meal. A parting kiss.

And then it’s over, and all she has is a line.

Six words at the bottom of the list.

Alice. Scottish. Gentle. Tastes like grief.

Lottie frowns, not at the words, but the punctuation on the end.

She must have lingered, let the pen rest a beat too long against the paper, because ink has begun to bloom outward from the period, throwing tiny black roots.

She curses softly and sets the pen aside.

Blows gently on the paper till it dries, studying the words one last time before she closes the book, and climbs into the lush hotel bed, and sleeps.