“But you didn’t?”

“I would have,” said Mary, “but I got to the bed. You see, when I started to sink, my reflex was just like anyone else’s; to grab on to something. I was already at the doorway to my parents’ room. I stumbled in, already up to my waist. Everything I tried to reach for, my hand just passed through and then I grabbed the post of my parents’ bed. Solid brass. Everlost solid. I held on to it and pulled myself up until I climbed onto the bed and tumbled into it, curled up and began to cry.”

“But how—”

“My mother,” Mary answered without even letting Nick finish the question. “Remember, she had died giving birth. She died in that bed.”

“A dead-spot!”

Mary nodded. “I stayed there for a long time until my father, not even knowing I was there, climbed into the bed with his new wife. I couldn’t bear to see them together, so I left. By then I had recovered enough so that the weight of being home wasn’t so overwhelming anymore. I raced out of the house and although I sank quickly, I didn’t sink entirely, and the farther away from home I got the easier it was to walk.”

“What about your brother?” Nick gently asked.

“I never saw him again,” Mary answered. “He sank to the center of the Earth.”

Mary didn’t say anything for a very long time. There was an unpleasant heaviness where her stomach had once been, but everywhere else there was a strange, ethereal sense of weightlessness. Everlost spirits did not float through the air as the living imagined, but right then, she felt like she might. “I’ve never told anyone that before, not even Vari.”

Nick put his hand gently on her shoulder. “I know it must be horrible to lose your brother like that,” he said, “but maybe, maybe, I could be like a brother to you.” Then he moved a little closer. “Or … well … what I mean to say is, maybe not like a brother but something else.” Then he leaned toward her, and he kissed her.

Mary did not know how to deal with this. In the many years that she had been in Everlost there were boys who would try to force kisses on her. She wasn’t interested in those boys, and she always had more than enough strength to fight them off. But here was a boy whose kiss she didn’t want to fight off. On the other hand, neither did she want to have her judgment clouded by unfamiliar emotions. So she didn’t respond to him at all.

“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly, taking her lack of response as disinterest.

“Don’t be,” was all Mary said, but kept all of her feelings wrapped up tightly inside, just as she was wrapped up inside her lacy velvet dress.

Rejection was every bit as humiliating in death as it was in life.

It’s because of the chocolate, Nick thought. No, it’s because I’m a year younger than her. No, I’m a hundred years younger than her. Nick didn’t wait for an elevator, he climbed up the stairs two steps at a time, and returned to his apartment, closing the door. Sure, Nick had been lovesick before. There was that girl in science—or was it history—he wasn’t sure anymore—but the point was it had passed. Here in Everlost, though, it would never pass, and he wondered if he tried hard enough if he would be able to simply disappear, because how could he ever face Mary again, much less face her for eternity.