Katie Williams: Absent

“Like you?” Evan asks.

“No. That’s not what I was going to say.”

Evan repeats the sentence. “ ‘She’s going to make him jump like . . . she made me’?”

“I slipped,” I tell him. “It was an accident. I slipped.”

But had I?

I hadn’t committed suicide. I knew that much.

But Usha said she’d seen me step off the roof, that Kelsey had seen it, too. And maybe Kelsey had seen it, because that’s what she’d told people, that I’d jumped. Why would she say that? Why would both of them say it?

I picture it again: the roof. One of my feet stepping up onto the ledge, then the other. Mr. Cochran heading back to Lucas. Someone shouting Catch! The sound of the egg breaking. I’d started to turn because I’d decided that I was going to smile at him, even though I’d been chiding myself for smiling at him a moment before. Like some no-respect burner girl, I’d thought, like poor, dead Brooke Lee.

I’d thought of her.

I’d invited her in.

Horror rises in me, wider and giddier than the bleak gray sky. I’m falling again. I’m falling. Except I’m not; I’m still here, standing on the ground.

“It was her,” I whisper. “Brooke. She inhabited me. She stepped off the roof.”

“I’m sorry,” Evan repeats. “I’m so sorry.”

“But why? Why would she do that?”

“Because you were with Lucas?”

“You think she was jealous? You’re wrong. She hated him.”

“She hated him.” Evan nods. “And so she could make him watch it all over again, his girlfriend dying.”

“I wasn’t his girlfriend,” I reply automatically, thinking how ridiculous this now sounds. Then I think of something else. “When I was alive, Brooke was following me. Harriet told me.”

Evan sucks in a breath. “Did she tell you that in front of Brooke?”

“Harriet!” I clap my hand over my mouth. “Do you think Brooke—”

“Made Harriet get into the accident?” Evan asks.

“She hit Heath Mineo,” I say.

“Who sold Lucas the drugs she OD’d on,” Evan finishes.

“Evan”—my voice breaks—“she killed me.”

The weight of it hits me, and I curl up, wishing I could sink lower than the ground, down into the earth, down through the layers of sediment and silt and bedrock until my spirit puffs to ash in the Earth’s core. It feels like maybe I could, if I wanted to enough.

Except I can’t. Because even though Lucas was a coward, he doesn’t deserve to die. Because Brooke could hurt someone else next, someone I care about, like Usha or Wes, or even someone I don’t care about, some pious biblical or nodding pony or smug well-rounder. I don’t want anyone else to be hurt. I want them to have a chance at life, even if I don’t anymore. I want them to have a chance because I don’t.

I stand.

And as I stand, Lucas steps, one foot after the other, onto the ledge of the roof.

“What are you doing?” Evan asks.

“I’m going to talk to her.”

He scrambles up next to me. “We’ll go together.”

“No. Just me.”

“Why?”

“Because I can get there quicker.”

Evan looks from the school roof to the property line.

“Stay down here,” I tell him. “In case . . . ” I don’t finish. In case she jumps.

He nods once. “Go.”

But I’m already running.

At first, I see stars.

I’ve appeared on the roof, looking up at the night sky. I drop my gaze down. There, at my feet, is the crack in the cement where the little stem of ivy that I plucked weeks ago is trying to grow back. Then I gather all my courage and look along the edge of the roof.

There.

A few feet away from me, also up on the ledge, Lucas Hayes inches forward so that the scuffed toes of his dress shoes are over the edge. And I have no way to touch him, no way to pull him back.

“Brooke,” I say, begging my voice not to wobble, “I know it’s you.”

Lucas turns in my direction. He might just be surveying the roof and the neighborhoods spread out to his right, but his eyes (Brooke looking out from behind them) catch on me before they scan by.

“I could do it,” Lucas says, as if to himself. Even though the words come out in Lucas’s deep drawl, it’s Brooke saying them. And I know she’s saying them to me. “I could jump.”

“Don’t,” I say. “Please don’t.”

“After all I did, you have to admit, I deserve what I get.” She looks right at me then, and her eyes are empty.

“You should get down,” I say. I step down myself, onto the roof, and walk in a slow half circle until I’m on the other side of her (him? them?).

“You hate him,” I tell her. “Fine. Okay. I understand about hate because I hate you. I hate you for what you did to me.”

She twitches at this.

“You took my life away. My whole life.” My voice shakes. “But I’m still up here trying to save you anyway.”

“Him,” she mutters. “You’re trying to save him.”

“You,” I insist. “Both of you.”

I reach out to her, palm up.

She looks at my hand, and I almost think she’s going to step onto the roof with me. But just then, Evan’s voice sails up from the parking lot. “Paige! The dance is ending!” And Brooke’s expression on Lucas’s face hardens into a mask.

“You can’t touch me,” she says, and shuffles back along the ledge.

I take another step forward, arm still extended. She takes another step back. The heel of Lucas’s shoe hits up against the crack in the roof’s ledge, stopping her, the little shoot of ivy peeking out from under his sole. She looks at the ground below, then back at me.

“They’ll be here soon,” she says.

She’s right. They will. The two of us pause in the moment of silence before the noise. Then the gym doors rattle open, voices bursting out into the night, too loud and too giddy and just the exact right amount of alive. The students don’t spot Lucas right away, but you can hear it when they do, huge pockets of silence dropping into the noise, as if pieces of the floor have fallen away.

“Get a teacher!” someone shouts.

“Lucas!” a few of them cry. “No! Don’t!”

I peer over the edge. There are about a dozen couples there, the girls bright splotches of silk, taffeta, and tulle, the boys shadowlike in their suits. Their faces, all lifted up toward us, are flushed pink from dancing.

“Step down, Brooke!” I say. “Please!”

With one last glance at me, Brooke turns to address the crowd below us.

“I didn’t want it to be this way,” she calls down to them. “There are some things I have to tell you. And when I do, you’ll understand.”

The crowd is silent, listening.

“I killed Brooke Lee. I’m the one who bought the drugs for us. I was there, and I lied about it. I pretended to care about her, but I didn’t. She was nothing to me. Nothing at—”

“You’re wrong,” I interrupt. “Lucas cared about you. You’re wrong.”

Brooke pauses, then shrugs me off, turning back to the crowd below. “That’s why tonight I have to—”

“Think about it. How have you been able to inhabit him?” I ask.

“Tonight I have to—” she repeats.

“Because he thought of you, right?”

“To . . . to pay for—”

“How long did it take for him to think of you? Minutes? Seconds? Not even an hour, I bet.”

“I have to—”

“Isn’t that proof? He thinks about you all the time. He cared.”

She stops. The crowd rustles and murmurs. But she turns away from them, the audience below, and faces me. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But I have to.”

And with that, she steps off the roof.

I’m not quick enough to stop Brooke from jumping off the roof. But I am quick enough to throw myself half over the ledge, my arms instinctively reaching. After months of touching nothing, I expect my hands to remain empty. After all, I’m dead and gone. I can’t touch anything, certainly not the arm of a boy falling through the sky.