“Are you asking me to go with you,” he asked, “or telling?”
“Telling,” she said, though she hadn’t been. She didn’t know why, but it felt like the right answer. “I never met Nate while he was still alive. I don’t know how this works. I don’t even know if he’ll recognize me. But he’ll recognize you. So you’re going to come with me.”
“All right, then,” he said, surprising her. “Let’s go to Chicago.”
Colton Price wasn’t the type of person to admit to being afraid.
He wasn’t the sort to wake sweating from a nightmare, his heart beating hard in his chest. He never left the lights on, wary of the unlit corners of his room. He didn’t hide in the kitchen, trapped by his ghosts.
He was hiding now. Dressed in nothing but a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, his feet bare against the night-chilled tile. It was early in the morning. For once, he wasn’t sure of the time. He’d woken in a start, without alarm, without rote, and stumbled blearily out of bed, a hangnail moon tailing him window to window as he headed down the hall and down the stairs.
He’d had a night terror, stark and clear, and now—awake and with his heart hammering—he felt as if time had been knocked clean out of him. Hands shaking, he helped himself to a cup of water from the fridge.
In his dream, he’d been trapped beneath the ice. On the other side was Lane. Her hands pressed up against the glassy shelf. Her eyes were wide and black. Not Lane’s juniper stare, but something Other. He’d cried out, pond water whittling his lungs. It drew him away with icy fingers, down to the bottom, where he knew he’d find Liam. Eyes open. Goalie pads lashed with pondweed. Waiting for police sonar to ping his location.
He was awake now. The light in his kitchen clicked on, chasing away the dark. The clock read 2:13. His father used to set all the clocks in the house five minutes fast on purpose. It was, Christian Price loved to say, excellent practice to keep from being late.
In the Price family, tardiness was careless.
Carelessness was ugly.
Ugliness was unacceptable.
Colton had been late getting to Walden Pond the morning Liam died. So deep in March, the season had already begun to turn. The sun turned the ice slick with sweat. Pools of water formed in the shallow places, colored brown with sludge. Too late to skate. Too warm to try. He’d begged Liam to go out with him anyway. He’d been in secondhand gear, wielding a secondhand stick, following a secondhand dream, trying out for the junior hockey league the way Liam had when he’d been his age. At dinner the previous night, their father had ordered Colton to eat his broccoli, to sit up straight, to work harder at his assist if he had any hope of making the team. Like Liam, like Liam, like Liam.
The sign by the pond sat askew, speared in earth already thawing.
NO SKATING TODAY
It was 11:45 when they pulled Liam Price out of the ice.
It was 11:58 when they called it.
Now the clock said 2:15. He slid his phone out of his pocket. 2:10.
He didn’t trust his eyes. All around him, time slipped and wavered. It slid past him in schools of thin, silvery fish, too quick to catch. His skin was cold. Pins and needles ran down his arms. He was drowning. Always drowning.
He slid open his phone and put in Lane’s number.
The bones in his hands felt as though they’d been shattered beneath a mallet.
At his ear, the phone rang and rang. Outside the yellow reach of light, the shadows pressed close. When he’d been a little boy—still afraid of monsters under the bed—he would get a running start from the bathroom. He’d leap up onto his mattress without getting near enough to risk something grabbing his ankles. In the top bunk, Liam would fold himself over the edge and swat Colton with a pillow.
“Jesus H. Christ. Don’t be such a baby, C.J. Monsters aren’t real.”
He knew better now. The truth pumped through his veins.
He shut his eyes. Braced himself for a voice mail.
Instead, he heard a soft “Hello?”
He let out a breath.
“Price? Hello?”
“I’m here,” he said. “Were you sleeping?”
“No.” She didn’t say anything else. He could hear her computer keys click, click, clicking. He slumped down onto the floor, his knees pushed out. “I’m not going to miss the flight,” she said, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”
