Page 5 of Roses & Ruin

“Hey, that’s your favorite!” Dad crows, like he’s thrilled he’s finally gotten something right about me.

“Yeah, it is!” I make a show of stretching and checking my wristwatch. “You know what, Dad? I think I might take your advice. Go grab some dinner, then head to the library, get a head start on my reading for lit. Thomas Hardy,” I add, throwing him a bone.

“Oh yes, yes, go do that—”

“Sweetheart.” Mom grabs the phone from Dad, filling the screen with her furrowed brows. “Don’t go anywhere alone after dark. Ask your roommate to walk you anywhere if you have to go to the dining hall or something. Just last week a junior girl at Boston College vanished without a trace. Snatched just outside her apartment building. All they found was her phone and wallet.”

“That’s forever away, Mom,” I say through a grimace.

“It’s not that far away. I’ll send you the article.”

“Please, please don’t. I’ll be fine,” I plead.

“She’ll be fine, Nancy. You’re always reading headlines,” Dad says. “Leave the girl alone. She has a date with Hardy!”

We say our goodbyes. As soon as they hang up, I shove my phone into my pocket. A few seconds later, it buzzes. Mom’s murdered college girl article. A chill skitters down my spine, but I pull up my hood and make my way across campus toward the library, hunching against the wet wind.

The main library is easily my favorite building on campus. It’s huge, at least five floors tall, with gorgeous Gothic spires. It made me feel like I could be in Paris the first time I stood in front of the magnificent stained-glass windows in the atrium. I longed for a ladder so I could climb up and press close against the candy-bright reds, oranges, and blues. I wanted to run a finger along the colorful mosaic clouds, the great landscape of trees and grass, the enormous sky of blue shards.

I notice none of that right now. I hardly register my walk across campus. Don’t notice who I flash my student ID at as I stride past the ancient front desk and slump into a table in the far corner on the first floor, hidden in the stacks.

All I can do is think about him.

A year ago today should have been my death day. The only reason it wasn’t—the boy who saved me—apparently does not exist.

I push the heels of my palms into my eyelids until I see bursts of color and my eyeballs ache.

When they asked me how I survived, I told them the truth: I was rescued by a boy who mysteriously disappeared from the scene of the accident. No one believed me. The only eyewitness said there was no one else on the bridge that night. But there’s no way I could have saved myself. The truck was swerving too fast; I was about to be crushed when someone pushed me out of the way.

For my candor, my reward was exploitation from local churches and paranormal groups. Social media posts made the rounds. Podcasts and local news stations reached out, but by then it was clear I was just a sideshow.

“Then how did I survive?” I screamed one night, scraped raw by the fact that everyone in my life, including my parents, thought I was batshit.

“A miracle, Rose,” my mother, who has two PhDs and never raises her voice, screamed back. “It was a miracle. Accept that and stop talking about him. You sound—you sound crazy.”

She’d never said that word before. Crazy. It was almost a relief to finally hear her admit it. Not that it didn’t sting. Tearfully, I’d marched to the bookshelf and yanked out a dictionary. I’d torn my way to the Ms, ripping a few tissue-thin pages in my fury.

“ ‘Miracle,’ ” I spat, reading from the book. “ ‘A welcome event not explicable by nature or scientific laws.’ ” My lip trembled as I glared at my mother’s red, shiny face. “ ‘Therefore, considered to be the work of a divine agency.’ A divine agency? How is that any crazier than—than what I…” My voice had gotten very small. “Don’t you believe me, Mom?”

My mother’s bottom jaw shifted from side to side, like she was trying very hard not to cry. “Rosie,” she finally said. “You’re alive. The how doesn’t matter. We need to move on. You need to move on.”

I never mentioned the boy to my parents, or anyone, again. I told them I’d stopped thinking about him. That they had been right. He’d just been a near-death hallucination. He wasn’t real.

But tell that to my bones, which still carry the memory of his voice. His eyes, the color of blue jacaranda during a California thunderstorm.

“It is now eight fifty,” announces a voice over the intercom. “The library will be closing in ten minutes. Please begin making your way to the exit now.”

Crap. I blink down at my unopened copy of Far from the Madding Crowd. I forgot the library closes early the week before classes. How is it already almost nine? I can see through the giant arched windows that the sun’s already set, probably a long time ago. I shove my stuff in my bag, zip up my rain jacket, and hurry out the front door.

It’s raining harder now. I look up at the building behind me. In the foggy dark, this library feels different. All I can see are the gargoyles now. Have they always had pointed teeth? I pull my hood tight over my head and jog down the front steps, searching for a cluster of students to glom on to.

I know my imagination is wild. I pay for it every night in lurid nightmares and bone-deep fear. But I did not imagine that boy. I know it.

But it’s such frigid comfort when I’m the only person in the world who does.

Well, maybe, except for him.

Chapter 3