A pause followed before Balthazar said, “I guess maybe he had his reasons.”
“Or maybe he was too chicken to face the truth.” Skye turned the volume up on the radio, so that the sad song was even louder. For the rest of the ride, it was the only sound in the car besides the slap-slap of the windshield wipers pushing away the snow.
Darby Glen High became a lot creepier after dark.
Skye had been here at nighttime before, of course, but always for a dance, ball game, or recital, which meant that the parking lots were filled with cars and a few people were always milling around. Now the place was deserted, so eerily silent that she could hear the echo of their footsteps on the tile and Balthazar’s keys jangling in his pocket. The flashlight Balthazar held provided their only illumination.
They reached the door of Ms. Loos’s room and stopped. Neither made a move. Skye breathed in and out, keeping the rhythm regular and slow.
“Is it getting to you already?” Balthazar stepped closer to her. Once again she remembered how much bigger he was than her, with his dark outline looming overhead. “We should go back.”
“No. I don’t sense anything, I’m just—”
“I know.” His hand hovered next to her shoulder for a moment before he dropped it again, denying them both the touch.
After one more deep breath, Skye put her hand on the doorknob and turned.
When she first walked in, the room looked like any other classroom. Written on the dry-erase board in all caps were the words UTERINE CYCLE, which made her profoundly glad she’d dropped out of Ms. Loos’s class when she did.
“Anything?” Balthazar kept glancing around the room, like he expected a ghost or vampire to appear at any second. At least they would have known how to fight those.
“It usually takes a few minutes.” Skye sat on the edge of one of the desks—the one where Britnee Fong used to sit. She hadn’t really thought about Britnee since her fight with Craig; she’d hardly had a chance. Now, though, she realized that if Craig was telling the truth, Britnee wasn’t the schemer Skye had believed her to be. Craig wasn’t off the hook with Skye yet—not by a long shot—but maybe she’d try being more polite to Britnee in the future. Or at least get Madison to quit snarking on her so much.
Then she saw him: the janitor, always unaware, always defeated looking, as he wheeled his trash can into the room again. “Here we go,” she said, stepping backward until she half sat, half fell into the chair. Balthazar came nearer, but already it was harder for her to see him. The world was taking shape in a new way. She was seeing through a dead man’s eyes.
Pain curls up his arm, lances into his heart. It shallows his lungs, blurs his vision. For one moment he can taste metal, as if he were about to be struck by lightning. His heart, he thinks, and there’s nothing scarier than the feeling that a time bomb is ticking in his chest, and someone’s just pressed the detonator.
“Skye!” Balthazar had seized her shoulders and was trying to shake her out of it. But this time she didn’t let him. Instead of struggling against the visions—which she’d always tried to do before—Skye exhaled and let go completely. It was like swimming in the river and allowing the current to take you under. Like giving in.
The pain clamps around him, a vise squeezing tighter and tighter. His tongue feels thick in his mouth, his eyes too large for their sockets. There’s no pain worse than this. There can’t be. This is every cell in the body screaming for air, devouring itself, total immolation inside and out.
She was vaguely aware that she’d collapsed, that Balthazar had her leaned against his chest and was saying something—pleading with her—but that was too far away to pay attention to any longer.
The pain builds, and builds, beyond any endurance, beyond any imagining—
Until it turns inside out.
The cells stop screaming. There’s no need for air anymore, or for blood. No need for anything. He’s complete as he is. He let go so the pain could stop, and there’s nothing more joyous than that surrender. The contentment he feels in the death of his human body is the same he might feel when cuddled within a very snug blanket—warm and enveloping, but not any part of him, really.
That makes it easy to throw the blanket aside.
Skye opened her eyes. She sat on the floor, legs twisted up, leaning against Balthazar. He kept saying, “Stay with me, stay with me, stay—Skye?”
“Yeah.” She breathed in, and the mere movement of air in her lungs was inexpressibly sweet. Life is irreplaceable, Balthazar had said, and now she thought she understood some fraction of what he’d meant.
“We have to get you out of here. It’s too much for you.”
“It’s over.” Shakily she coughed once—how did even that feel good? Her pulse seemed to hum throughout her body. The high, silvery sound of her nervous system chimed like a rolling cymbal. “I’ll be okay now.”
And from now on, she thought. Although she knew that there was no telling what other deaths might do to her—she couldn’t begin to imagine facing Battlefield Gorge again—she understood instinctively that this death, in this room, wouldn’t overcome her in the same way if she ever returned.
“You weren’t okay a minute ago,” Balthazar insisted. Still he held her close, and she realized one of his hands was stroking her hair.
Skye jerked back from him. The fast movement dizzied her, but only for a moment. Balthazar seemed to realize what he’d been doing, and he pulled back, scooting farther away on the floor.