The Boy Who Died

Marcie

I sling my backpack over my shoulder and step out of my apartment onto the sunny breezeway outside. Early September in Virginia retains most of the heat of summer, so I wipe instant sweat off my forehead before my brown curls can catch in it. This semester is going to be different. That means not showing up looking like a drowned rat, even if I doubt anyone in my photography elective is going to care.

Birds sing as I lock the door then test the knob to make sure it actually locked. A voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Dana, my therapist, reminds me I'm not supposed to be indulging those instincts. I'm safe here. The only person I've been in danger from since setting foot on the campus of Ardent University is myself, and she's getting out of my way this year. I unlock the door, lock it again, and walk away without testing the knob.

My heavy backpack bounces against my shoulder. I don't want to have to return to my apartment between classes, even if it's technically on campus, and the weight of my books reminds me exactly what kind of day I'm in for. A long one. My very first semester with a full course load. I massage my shoulder and shrug on the second strap to even out the weight. Nursing textbooks aren't light.

But I'm not worried. All summer, I talked with Dana and the guidance office. Both of them asked me a dozen or more times if I was sure a full slate of classes wouldn't lead to what they called "a repeat of last time" and what I call "honestly, a pretty minor mental breakdown, considering." But I am not thinking about that. I'm thinking about the fact that I told them I was sure so many times that they both believed me, and now I have my very first college elective to look forward to. My outlook feel light and bright, and I take a second to categorize the feeling like Dana taught me.

Hope. I smile and stride down the wide, cobblestone path cutting through the main quad toward the art building. This is going to be a good year if it kills me.

Emerson Hall, a glass-covered building that hosts most of the art classes, welcomes me through its wide-open double doors. If I'd lived a different life, most of my classes would've been here. But after months in the institution, I wasn't able to face the idea of grim professors judging my performances like the musclebound nurses judged my fingerpainting and macaroni necklaces for any sign I was a danger to myself or others. I haven't even entered the building since then. It's light and airy, like I remember from the tour Ryan and I took so many years ago. As always, his name hits me like a spear to the chest. I suck in a deep breath and plunge forward.

The photography class is on the far side of the building from the door in a room covered in windows. A handful of desks sit haphazardly around the room, and a middle-aged woman wearing a blazer with elbow patches looks up from one of them as I walk in.

"I'm Professor Washington," she says. "I love an early student. Really shows the dedication you need to get the shot in the real world. Take a seat, and we'll wait for the rest of the stragglers to wander in."

I nod and surreptitiously check my watch as I claim a desk near the back. Twenty minutes early. Dammit! I tried so hard to arrive a chill, normal five minutes ahead. I'll just do better tomorrow.

Minutes tick away. Professor Washington scribbles in a tiny notebook balanced on her desk. I pull out my laptop, then the simple camera suggested for the course. A few more students filter in. As always, they're all a few years younger than me. Between my reduced course load and the six months I lost to the institution, I'm entering my sixth year attending Ardent. At least I've got kind of a young face. I never lost the baby fat in my cheeks, and I like to keep my hair braided back away from my face in a way my roommate, Heather, says makes me look like an orphan on Ellis Island.

A guy sits in front of me, and my breath catches. His hair is the exact same golden blond as Ryan's in the summer. My rib cage squeezes, crushing all the air out of my lungs. My hands shake. I clutch the edges of my desk to try to still the tremors.

Dana's voice, easy and certain, pours over my thoughts. Breathe. Three reasons he's not Ryan.

I inhale. The guy in front of me is shorter than Ryan's 6'3" by a few inches.

I exhale. Ryan lived in goofy graphic T-shirts his mom picked up for him at the local thrift store, and this guy is wearing a kind of ridiculous blazer.

I inhale. The guy in front of me has thick, muscular arms. Despite his height and his few seasons on the basketball team, Ryan hated sports and barely had enough muscle to lift some of his older cameras.

And the most important one? The Dana in my mind taps her pencil against her clipboard.

Ryan is dead. The guy in front of me isn't Ryan because I watched Ryan die, and I remember every second like it was yesterday. I exhale shakily and relax my grip on the desk.

The guy in front of me twists in his seat to reveal a thick, blond mustache. "Can I borrow a pencil?"

I almost laugh as I hand over my spare. What a stupid close call. He looks nothing like Ryan. I fiddle with the settings on my new camera as the last of the desks fill up. The moment class actually starts, Professor Washington stands and begins handing out syllabi. There's no reason to stress today. I doubt I'll be doing anything trickier than reading paragraph five on page two aloud this week. I relax into the flow of class.

"In addition to the two photography expeditions I'm leading on the eighth and the twenty-seventh," the prof says as we approach the end of class, "we have three others, to be led by an actual, working photographer. You're very lucky." She smiles conspiratorially. "Please help me welcome Ben Andrews, the newest photojournalist at the Ardent Weekly!"

I clap politely with everybody else, but I'm too busy circling the expeditions Professor Washington will be leading. Her attendance policy is lax as long as people turn in the work, but I'm not going to lose my chance to actually go out in the field with her.

A light, teasing laugh bounces off the windows, and my stomach drops to my toes. He sounds exactly like Ryan. I inhale and look up, ready to start listing differences.

There are none. The man standing at the front of the class, waving his hands to try to get people to stop clapping, looks exactly like my high school best friend, plus the six years I've been without him. His hair is a little longer, curling around his ears instead of shaved tight to his skull. He's grown into his hands and his ears. He wears the sort of preppy, short-sleeved button-down with a tiny pattern we used to make fun of people for. But there's nothing else to separate him from the boy I knew.

"All right, I'm not exactly Ansel Adams." He smiles self-consciously. "I just moved here from a little town in Illinois, and-"

That's Ryan's smile, the one he used when people told him he was so tall he had to play basketball. My stomach lurches. My heartbeat drowns out the rest of his words.

Inhale for three. Hold for three. Exhale for three. Still Ryan. I pinch myself until my jagged nails break the skin. Still Ryan. I shut my eyes, rub them, and open them again. Still Ryan. My rib cage caves in on my lungs as I fight through every goddamn exercise Dana ever taught me, looking for anything that will make this hallucination go away.

It has to be a hallucination. Ryan is dead. He's dead! I saw his blood, still taste it sometimes. But if it's a hallucination... then I'm losing my mind again.

Professor Washington claps her hands, and I jump.

"All right, that's Ben. Why don't the rest of us go around and introduce ourselves? Name, and why you decided to take this class." She smiles. "I decided to teach photography because I think there's nothing more beautiful than giving others the gift of art."

Oh, god, they want me to talk. To talk without throwing up. My skin vibrates as if attempting to escape from my body.

"And you?" Professor Williams looks at me.

So does Ryan. Ben. Ryan. I swallow.

"Marcie Holt," I manage. "Needed an art elective."

Professor Williams purses her lips and turns to the next student. Ben doesn't. He lingers on me. There's something in his eyes I don't recognize. I tear at the skin around my thumbnail.

"That's it for today," Professor Williams finally says. "I look forward to-"

I lurch out of my seat, bolting for the door. It doesn't matter what she thinks of me. I'm changing electives.

Marcie

Nothing else in that time slot. I can rework my whole schedule and drop one of the core nursing classes I need to graduate, setting me back another semester, or I can stick with photography. I spend the rest of my day turning the words over and over like there's a loophole I'm just not seeing. The rest of my professors blur. I get lost in the familiar halls of McKinley, the science building. Somehow, I make it back to my apartment. My hands shake as I unlock the door without testing to see if it was locked all day. I'm not supposed to indulge.

I don't want to know.

"Heather?" I call as I step inside.

Silence. I drop my keys on the shoe rack-table combo in the tiny rectangle of space Heather calls our foyer. She must still be at work at the newspaper on campus. I spent the whole summer hearing about what an amazing opportunity being a staff writer for the Ardent Weekly-or, as she calls it, the Arkly-is for a junior like her. I like her well enough, but sometimes I can really feel the age gap.

Just in case, I peer into the kitchen over the breakfast bar as I pass-nothing but peeling laminate and dishes I need to wash-and detour through the living room. The massive, squashy orange couch Heather arrived with doesn't even show signs of someone recently sitting down, and it holds onto butt prints for several hours. I am home alone.

I sit on the couch and take a deep breath. I could call Dana. She always says she's open for emergency sessions. But, god, I promised her I had my shit together this time. I don't want to go back to everyone looking at me like I'm the crazy girl.

With a yell, I flop back against the cushions. I can't lose my semester. I can't lose my progress. Maybe I couldn't dispel the hallucination in class, but there's no way Ben looks as much like Ryan as I think.

"Okay," I say out loud, totally not making myself seem even crazier. "I just have to prove that my brain is playing tricks on me. Then, I'll be normal again."

With trembling fingers, I pull out my phone, open it, and plug in the second password that takes me to the folder of pictures of Ryan I haven't gotten rid of. If Dana ever found out about this, she'd be so disappointed, but I can't live a life where I never see him. Ryan's mom didn't approve of social media; she thought he was going to get kidnapped by a pedophile or something, so I only have the pictures I took. I swipe through them one by one. He sits in the branches of our tree, sticking his tongue out at me. His eyes are the same laughing, pale blue I remember. The same color as Ben's.

Stupid. I swipe to the next one. At our lunch table, he grins with his arm slung around Theresa, the final member of our trio, who holds a set of bunny ears behind his head. My throat grows thick, and tears threaten. Last one, then I'll look for pictures of Ben.

A black-and-white picture of him perched on the rock in front of school with his chin on his hand. He made me take the picture and save it for the documentary they'd make about him someday.

I shut my phone as the first tear slips out. I'm indulging, and that's more likely to make me crazy than anything else. I scrub the tear away, sniff back a second one, and pull out my laptop. What did he say his name was? Ben Andrews. I type that into the search bar of the first social media I have open and groan. A hundred thousand results within a hundred-mile radius. This is going to take a while.

The living room grows dark around me as I plug his name into social media after social media. Ben Andrews. Benjamin Andrews. B. Andrews. Lots of accounts, but none of them match what he looks like. Nothing, nothing, nothing. In a fit of frustration, I open a regular search engine and type his name with the word "photography" on the end. The page populates with results, and I click on the very first one.

It's a portfolio website. Simple, modern layout. I click on the "about" tab. No picture, but a short description. This Ben Andrews is a freelance photographer for hire in the greater Peoria area. Indiana. The Ben in class said he was from Illinois. It also references Ansel Adams as an inspiration. My stomach turns. This has to be the same person. I click on the "portfolio" tab and pray for a self-portrait so I can convince myself I was just being dramatic.

Dozens of highly saturated rectangles fill the screen. My heartbeat roars in my ears. This is beyond indulgence; this is sickness. I'm stalking my professor! Well, my professor's guest lecturer, but stalking is stalking. I have to stop.

I click on the first picture. A beautiful woman curls around the trunk of a tree, a gauzy, flower-studded robe hiding all the private parts of her while making it very clear that she's naked underneath. Next. A man stares out a window, lit and framed in such a way that I can only see a neon-red sheen on his hair and the edge of his jaw. Next. Another woman. Next.

The pictures start to blur, and a distant part of my brain picks out patterns. Almost all of them feature people. No self-portraits. Not a lot of men at all. Ben obviously prefers female subjects, and suggestively scantily clad ones at that.

Not all of his photos are of women, but those that are show a specific type. There's some variance, but most of his shots are of pale, long-haired brunette women with dark eyes. They're often pretty tall, too, framed around trees or fences or cars that make judging their height pretty easy. Bigger on bottom and smaller on top-

My heart slams into my throat. My stomach flips. I fit the description of the women Ben likes to photograph to a T. Like... like they are all based on me. Like this whole portfolio is a sign from Ryan that he hasn't forgotten me.

I shut my laptop, shoot up from the couch, and switch on the light. In the wash of fluorescents, all my fears abruptly seem stupid. What the hell am I thinking? There's no way that's true. Ryan is dead. I watched him die. He's not sending me messages from beyond the grave. I grab my phone and text Dana to ask if we can move this week's appointment up. After a brief hesitation, I add that I might need some extra support this semester. My face burns. One day of classes, and I'm already falling apart at the seams. I need to pull myself together before Heather comes home. She wasn't here when I had my first big breakdown, and I like having someone in my life who isn't waiting for me to crack. I scoop up my laptop and start to head for my room.

Keys scrape in the lock. I freeze then force myself to take a deep breath. Heather opens the door, and I roll my eyes internally at my needless panic.

"Hey," she says breathlessly, yanking her keys out of the door. "Good first day?"

I shrug. "You?"

"Decent." She holds up a folder I know means an assignment from the Arkly and grins. "Oh, the new photographer asked about you."

Marcie

My heart hammers so loudly I can barely hear myself ask, "The new photographer?"

"Yeah, Ben something." Heather drops her keys on the hall table along with a small pile of envelopes, likely bills.

Oh, god. Oh, fuck. My feet move without my command, dragging me closer to Heather. Her blonde hair in its usual high ponytail shines in the summer sun. I try to focus on that, to ground myself. My ribs feel like they're caving in.

"What did he say?" I manage.

"Well, he thinks you're cute." Heather furrows her eyebrows and takes a step back. "He's helping out in one of your classes, right?"

Heather doesn't know about my institutionalization. She wasn't on campus yet. And, god, I'd like to keep it that way. I need one person on campus who knows me and doesn't look at me like I'm about to crack. Deep breaths, Marcie.

"Yes." I take another step back that I hope doesn't look robotic and drop my laptop on the table. "How did he find you?"

That seems to put her a little more at ease. She saunters into the kitchen and begins pulling out the kettle for tea. I watch her through the breakfast bar and try not to seem like I'm about to explode.

"Oh, he basically stumbled into the office in a daze, and Steph asked him," she says. "And then apparently Danny, which I couldn't explain with a gun to my head."

I nod. She needs to go faster. I need to be normal.

"Anyway, Steph and Danny told him I was your roommate, so he came to me." She pours water into the kettle, plugs it in, and turns around. "He wanted to know if you wanted to go out sometime."

Ben's hair is the same color as Ryan's. Ben's smile is the same smile as Ryan's. Ben has a million pictures of women who look exactly like me. Maybe Ryan survived, and he knows what I-"

"What did he say?" I blurt.

Heather raises a perfectly arched eyebrow. "That he wanted to go out."

"No, like exactly." I pick at the skin around my thumbnail where she can't see. Should I giggle? Normal girls giggle when a guy likes them. I force a laugh, and it comes out sounding like I'm insane.

"You know, I thought he was cute, but I didn't expect you to turn yourself inside out like this." Heather laughs and grabs another mug. "I'm making you chamomile. You need to chill."

She thinks I like him. Is that good? Should I correct her?

She turns back before I decide. "I don't remember exactly what he said, but he was really sweet. Kind of awkward. He barely met my eyes, and he started across the room to talk to me like three times before he actually made it."

Ryan was confident. He had no problem approaching people. But I haven't seen Ryan in six years.

Because Ryan is dead, the Dana-voice in my head reminds me.

I nod and pick up the mail to give my hands something other to do than tearing my hangnails to shreds. Magazine for Heather. Bill for me. Bill for Heather. And at the bottom of the pile, a piece of spam mail clearly bearing the name Lily Nelson. My heart skips a beat.

"He called me Marcie?" I ask. "Like, without fumbling?"

Heather blinks a few times. "Uh, yeah? Why? I think he got your name from the class list."

He called me Marcie. Not Lily. My heart rate starts to slow. When I finally got released from the institution and started rejoining the living world, I returned to just about a million messages across my various social media platforms. Condolences for Ryan, for being locked up. More than enough messages asking if I saw something that night that "drove me crazy." I ran into Dana's office on a day we didn't have an appointment, sobbing, and told her I couldn't be Lily Nelson anymore. I wanted to be dead. But Dana pointed out I could just delete my accounts and change my name. Starting fresh was often smart after a trauma. So I deleted everything, smashed my old phone, filed a bunch of paperwork, and left Lily in the past where she belonged.

I'm Marcie because Ryan only knew Lily.

The kettle pops. Heather pours two mugs of tea and sets them on the breakfast bar between us.

"So, should I tell him you're interested? It might be good for you to have a boyfriend. Get you out of the apartment a little more." Heather grins. "Oh my god, you can double with Everett and me!"

"No," I say sharply.

Heather flinches back a little. "I thought-"

"I'm not interested." Even if he's not Ryan-and he's not, he can't be, it's not possible-I could never go out with Ben. I don't even know if I can see him again. "I never will be. Tell him to back off."

"Whoa." Heather fiddles with her teabag. "Should I, like, tell other people to stay away? Am I missing part of the story?"

If he's not Ryan, I don't want to ruin his life. I shake my head. "He just... gives me the creeps."

"Noted." She nods. "Maybe I'll warn Steph anyway. He did go up to her first. Did he, like, say anything or...?"

"I want to talk about something else." I gnaw on my lip. "Please."

"No problem. God, I'm sorry, I didn't realize." She shakes her head. "Trust me, I have plenty to talk about. So, you know how excited I was to work with Mrs. Mathers?"

I nod. She spent almost all summer gushing about the head editor of the Arkly and what a dream learning from her would be.

"Well, it turns out she fucking quit the week before classes started." Heather yanks the teabag out of her cup and drops it immediately in the trash. "So we've got this new guy, Scott." She says his name like it's poison. "He wants us to call him Mr. Daugherty, but there's no way I'm doing that."

"That bad already?" I ask, trying to hold onto the normalcy of this conversation instead of letting my mind wander.

"I can't even begin to explain." Heather rolls her eyes luxuriously. She's really good at it, somehow. "It's like he literally doesn't even see the writers. I got chucked this assignment, which I'm really fucking grateful for, but he took my photographer into his office to have a whole conversation about his 'angle' for the piece. Kel literally had to leave the meeting and come out and tell me the whole thing."

I grimace supportively and fiddle with my own tea. I only have to make a few listening noises for Heather to keep going, which is one of my favorite things about her. It's not that she doesn't care about me-I think she does, in her own way-but she's a nonstop conversation machine powered by "mm-hmms." After Scott, she tells me about the weird power dynamic between juniors and seniors on the paper, as well as how crazy it is to work with real adults for the first time. I don't mention that I've done that with my summer job at one of the cafes in town. Heather's parents help out with tuition, so she spent the summer volunteering with a few other kids on a paper they were writing, editing, and publishing themselves. The spam letter for Lily taunts me from the pile of discarded mail. My mom would probably help out with tuition if I asked her. But I cut her off with everyone else in the great phone-smashing. Marcie's parents are on a sailboat trip around the world with no cell reception. It's easier this way.

By the time Heather moves onto what her assignment actually is, I almost feel normal, and my tea is brutally over-steeped. I pull out the bag and lean over the breakfast bar to drop it in the trash next to hers. She smiles sheepishly.

"The universal Marcie signal for homework you really need to get to?"

I nod. "But I hope Scott pulls his head out of his ass soon."

"Thanks." She rolls her eyes again like she's not hopeful. "But, oh my god, I completely forgot. How was the first day of your first full semester?"

I wander over to the table where I left my laptop, turning the question over in my head. "Remains to be seen, I think."