Except look, look at her bare feet, and the way they point, as if she’s standing on tiptoe on an invisible platform far above mine, which used to be ours. Look at the moonlight hit them. Those feet: I am close enough that I can see the bones and tendons suspended, straining. Now I want to tell you how my father always told me that a girl’s happiness was directly proportional to the amount of sunlight that hit the back of her knees, and how it was only at this moment, as I was writing it down, that I thought about it enough to realize that it wasn’t, couldn’t be, true.

I was watching her hair, the tips floating upward, as though she were suspended in water, when I heard her laugh. I laughed too, because I could never keep myself from laughing when she laughed. And when she threw back her head, I threw back mine, thinking about how wrong I’d been. She’d been telling the truth about levitation all along. Look, look: she had done it, and just at the moment she had needed to. Maybe we all should have jumped when we had the chance. Maybe the ending would be different if we had. But when I lifted my head to tell her, to apologize, to pledge myself to her forever, to follow her off the edge at last, she was gone. I closed my eyes and saw only the echo of her existence, shine-seared into the backs of my eyelids.

16

I don’t remember how we got back to the dormitory. I don’t remember the climb down the mountain, or taking off my clothes, or getting into bed. But I must have, because when I woke, I was curled around my pillow, and it was bright. Everyone else was gone.

I had no idea what time it was. The grounds were silent. I walked to the empty garden and sat on the bench. My fingers felt cold, despite the sun. Exhaustion, perhaps. It was August. I stretched them, pulled them to pop the knuckles, the way Luke had once done. Maybe he would come. I would wait for him to come. The sun would warm me, bring back the feeling. The Feeling. I may have fallen asleep. But if I did, my dreams were the same texture as the world: I was lying on the bench in the garden, face turned to the infinite sky, dreaming about lying on the bench in the garden, face turned to the infinite sky. They say we’re constantly dreaming, not only during sleep. It’s only that during the day our conscious minds overrule our dream minds, so sure are they of the rightness of their reality.

What had Serena said, holding Laurel over the abyss? You know what worked, that first time we fainted? Spilling a little blood.

Luke did not come.