She was tired of everyone’s stupid stories. The obnoxious blind girl Lily roomed with before Maria used to talk about ghosts, too. She even dreamed about them. She’d wake up panting in the middle of the night. Once Lily had to hobble over to her bed and shake her until she woke up. She’d been gasping so much Lily was afraid she was going to stop breathing.

Lily had been having nightmares all her life. People didn’t need to make such a big deal about them. She never had.

She leaned into Maria’s shoulder and rubbed her hands together. Their room was always cold, and the bathroom was especially freezing. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Maria looped her arm around Lily’s back absently.

“Swell party.”

“Tell me about it.” Maria took another swallow of beer.

Lily took the can out of her hand and put it on the sink. “How many of those have you had?”

Maria shrugged. Lily smiled uneasily.

It had been Lily who’d suggested the two of them become roommates. That was the summer before last year, when her old roommate finally graduated. There were no other disabled students left at Acheron, so Lily could’ve had a single room, but she asked Maria to move in. They were only casual friends back then, because Maria was a jock with a string of popular ex-boyfriends and Lily was neither of those things. Even so, something about Maria had always struck Lily.

It wasn’t just that Maria was gorgeous. It was more the way she looked at Lily. Like she was really looking at her. Really listening to what she had to say.

Maria was the only one in their class who looked at Lily like she saw a girl who happened to be holding crutches. Not a pair of crutches that happened to be holding up a girl.

Lily waited a full minute to see if Maria would start talking, but she didn’t say a word. Instead she played absently with the tail of Lily’s braid and stared straight ahead, as though mesmerized by the mildew forming in the cracks under the sink.

It was eerily reminiscent of how she’d looked the night before. Staring into that empty corner of the ceiling, like there was something up there only she could see.

“Can we talk about last night?” Lily finally said. “Please?”

Maria shrugged again.

“I barely even remember what happened,” Lily said. “Was that real? Because I know I didn’t move that thing myself. And I don’t speak Spanish.”

Maria slowly turned to face her. “What difference does it make?”

Lily laughed without humor. “It said something to you, didn’t it?”

“So?”

“So? What did it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please don’t lie to me, Ree.”

“I’m not lying.”

Lily took Maria’s hand and squeezed it. Maria squeezed back.