Absent (Katie Williams)

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.
    Somehow, though.
    Somehow.
    On my death spot, the only place where I can touch the world, and the world me . . . my hand closes on his.
    When I grab Lucas’s hand, his shoulder makes a popping sound and Brooke howls. But I hold on. The moment holds, too: me stretched over the edge of the roof, Lucas hanging below. The crowd draws a breath that sucks all the noise away, leaving Lucas swaying from side to side in a pocket of silence and space.
    Then, the moment breaks. Brooke looks up at me through Lucas’s eyes. Her face crumples, and she lifts a hand to mine, grabs on tight.
    “Save him,” she says.
    Together we pull him onto the roof.

25: HOW BROOKE DIED
    EVAN ARRIVES ON THE ROOF JUST BEFORE THE OTHERS. HE finds me kneeling on the ledge, my hand still clasped in Lucas’s hand, Brooke’s hand. Lucas has curled himself up into a ball, his head dropped to his chest, his face pale and waxen as carved soap.
    “Please,” I say when I see Evan. “I don’t want to do this.” I nod to our clasped hands. “I don’t want to . . . but I’m scared to let them go.”
    “It’s okay,” Evan says. He kneels next to me. “Brooke?” he says softly. No response.
    “She’s still in there. She’s got to be, but my hand, Evan. I don’t want to hold her hand. She . . . what she did . . . I can’t hold her hand.”
    “You can let go now,” he says.
    “Can I? Because—”
    “Paige. You’re done now. You can let go.”
    I pull my hand free and climb from the ledge. As I do, I glance down at my classmates’ upturned faces, flushed and animated. Usha stands at the front of the crowd, her hands knotted at her chest,her fierce gaze on Lucas’s hunched back, as if she could hold him up there with the power of her eyes alone. Jenny stands on one side of her, Chris Rackham and Whitney Puryear on the other, their arms all around one another’s backs. At the far edge of the crowd, Kelsey leans against Wes, his arms and coat around her bare shoulders, his chin resting on the top of her head. I feel the memory of those arms around my shoulders, and they warm me, even though they’re just a memory, just ghosts. I scan the crowd, and there are dozens and dozens of other faces. They’re standing vigil, and I don’t think it’s because he is Lucas Hayes; I think it’s because he is one of them. One of us.
    I retreat to the doorway just as Mr. Fisk is coming through it, followed by a couple of Lucas’s friends from the basketball team. Mr. Fisk stops, staring at Lucas, hunched over on that ledge. Evan looks up sharply, as if someone has called to him. He walks over to Mr. Fisk until he stands just in front of him and then, with a look of wonder, steps into him, disappearing.
    “Evan?” I say.
    Mr. Fisk gives a small nod and then, without a word, crosses the roof and encloses Lucas in his arms. When he has him, Mr. Fisk starts crying, his broad shoulders shaking with his sobs. In his arms, Lucas is shaking, too. “You’re okay now,” he says. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
    Mrs. Morello and Principal Bosworth come up from the stairwell and stand by Lucas’s friends. The ambulances set up their call in the distance, but none of us turns to look for their lights. Instead, we