He looked furious for a moment. Then he turned away from me and went on with his story. Emily haunted the bridge. She was still waiting for her lover to show up. All the kids in Cole’s town went in the middle of the night to catch a glimpse of her shadow on the water, swinging from her rope. Or to hear her crying. The bridge shook, cars parked on it overnight rolled back and forth, even with the emergency brake on; cars came off the bridge with long scratches through the paint; kids came off the bridge with long scratches down their backs, their T-shirts ripped.

“So what does it mean?” I asked.

We picked up our shoes and began to walk home.

“Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

My shoulder bumped against his. I reached out and stopped him walking. “Some things last past death,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “Some things continue on.”

I pulled him toward me. I pressed my cheek against his shoulder. I saw the threads of his jacket, each stitch. A strong wind blew my hair off my face, my clothes against my body. The sand hit my ankles, a little shower of artillery.

I wanted to know the things he knew, to have the things he had. I wanted what he had with Lucas, that effortless ease. I wanted the intimacy he’d somehow forged with my mother. My consciousness zinged around to each part of me that was touching a part of him. His fingers, my arm. His shoulder, my cheek. His hip, my waist—

Then the rain came. It happened in an instant. The sky went black. Cole put his arms around me. “Fuck,” he said into the roar of the rain. I leaned my face against his rain-soaked chest. Water so near us, sand all around, air full of rain, clothes and skin soaked. The wind was rising, blowing birds out of trees. I put one hand on his neck, one on his chest as if listening for a heartbeat. We fell to our knees in the wet sand. Then we lay down in the wet sand. He reached into my clothes, peeled them off so there was nothing between me and the sand—between my skin and his. The rain crashed around us, and he pressed against me, and into me, and all my thoughts exploded into a million fragments, and then came together, floated together, like so many drops of water converging into one bright ocean. I had just this one thought with hard, impenetrable edges, just this: now you are ours.

Chapter 15

15

“Wake up,” I said.

“What is it?”

“I want to talk.”

“Nightmare?” Lucas said. I sat on the edge of his bed.

“I dreamed you were so mad you stopped talking to me,” I said.