The first time Stevie died, it was raining, and it was only for a second.

She was six, hunkered down under the pile of blankets Leigh’d knitted specially for her last winter. Ma was sat in a rickety chair they’d brought out of hiding, clammy hands dwarfing Stevie’s. The sun bounced off her straw hair, setting the pruny, VapoRub skin at Stevie’s chest to glisten. Stevie’d thought, oh. She thought, hell, then, Stevie slipped down and dark—

There’s a man in the dark.

—blinked out like a light, and blinked back on.

She didn’t tell anyone about the man.

The second time it happens, Stevie isn’t so lucky.

Jay Cooper is a hell boy, rough-edged and finely drawn, with a warrish heart and a catch-all grin. He’s the only kid in the neighborhood who gets sicker than Stevie in the winter, on account of his hollow bones, and the first time they met, Stevie sent him sprawling on the dirty blacktop.

The second time they meet, he’s up a tree, snagged by the feathers of his great blue wings.

“Hey—hey Stevie!” He shouts, all of nine years old and quaking.

Stevie freezes, halfway between her house and Mary Ann Harper’s. There’s still orange paint flecked under her fingernails where Mary Ann’s ma couldn’t reach with soap. She scowls up through the red leaves and brambles.

“What d’you want?”

“I—” Jay stammers “—I need help.”

Stevie narrows her eyes. Just last week, Jay’d called her a pipsqueak nobody and shoved her into the dirt, laughing with his bigger friends till Stevie kicked him where the sun don’t shine.

“Too bad,” she decides.

“Aw, c’mon, Stevie. I’m sorry I pushed you.”

“No you’re not.” Steve glares. “You’re just sorry you’re stuck.”

Jay heaves a great sigh. He’s taller than she is, with limbs as thin and gangly as a maple tree, and eyes the same blue-grey of lake ice, shining out of an olive face. His dark hair is slick with the very sweat that yellows his t-shirt, and he’d be handsome if he weren’t so damn mean.

“Please,” Jay begs. “I can’t get down. I’ll do anything you want if you’ll just help me down before my dad sees.”

Stevie perks up.

“Anything?” she asks.

A month ago, a bike appeared in the Cooper’s driveway—a slick red thing with oil-black handles and a wicked chrome basket. Best of all, there was a real live motor hooked up to the white-walled wheels. Jay rode it to school every day—he didn’t even have to pedal. Stevie’s been staring at that bike longer than she’s been glaring at Jay.

Opportunity fizzes in her little head.

“I want your bike.”

Jay blanches.

“But it’s my bike.”

“And?”

A twisty sneer wraps around Jay’s mouth.

“I’m not giving you my bike. Pick something else.”

“I don’t want something else.”

“Well too bad! You can’t just take it.”

“It’s not taking—it’s a trade.”

“Still, I—!”

He cuts himself off with a huff, brow screwed up in concentration. “What if you get it on weekends?”

“I want it for school. You get it on weekends.”

“But I need it for school!”

“You could walk.”

“I don’t want to—”

Another huff, huffier this time.

“What if…” He pauses, mouth screwing to the side. “What if we rode to school together?”

Which is. A concept. Stevie bites down on her cheek. On one hand, it’s less than asking price. On the other hand, she’ll get a go on the coolest bike she’s ever seen, and Jay Cooper’ll have to ride to school with a pipsqueak nobody.

“For how long?” she asks.

“How long do you want?”

Stevie shrugs. “Till I say.”

“Aw c’mon Stevie, that’s not fair,” Jay groans. “It won’t even take that long to unstick me.”

“Fine.” She turns on her heel. “If you don’t want my help—”

“Wait—wait!”

She waits. Then, after a long moment, Jay heaves a great sigh and says, “Okay.”

Stevie’s never climbed so fast in her life.

It’s a good thing too, ‘cause Jay is stuck. Greedy twigs reach into his feathers, like the tree’s trying to hold him tight in place.

“How the hell’ you manage that?” Stevie asks.

It’s hard to balance on the rough bark, but Stevie manages to shimmy over to where Jay’s lodged. He’s up on his tippy-toes, his left wing hooked in a branch.

“None of your beeswax,” he grumbles.

Stevie bites down on the inside of her cheek. It does nothing to stop her grinning as she reaches for Jay’s wings.

“What do I do?”

“Just…untangle me, alright?”

His feathers are soft and downy when Stevie sinks her fingers in, one arm hooked around a branch to keep steady as she works. They’re twenty feet up, easy.

It’s a simple job. Stevie settles into a rhythm of pluck-separate-smooth, working down the row and ignoring Jay, who’s sighing up a storm. She’s halfway through the first wing when Jay gives the stormiest sigh yet.

“Sorry, am I bothering you?”

“No,” he says, softer than Stevie’s ever heard. She frowns, glances up to where Jay’s got a forearm pressed to his eyes. He’s smiling, the maniac—all syrupy and content.

“Uh—”

“My mama usually cleans my feathers for me this way. S’just—” he tries to scuff his toe, but he can’t reach. “S’nice’s all.”

Stevie—doesn’t know what to do with that. So she says, “Okay,” and keeps picking at Jay’s wings.

They go on like that, silent-like, until Jay breaks it.

“Thank you, by the way,” he says. “I know it was a trade n’ all, but—”

“Is Jay Cooper thanking me?” Stevie’s grin is creepy-crawly on her cheeks. “Your mama raised you right after all.”

Jay snorts, then goes somber. “I really am sorry, though. For shoving you. And calling you names.”

He’s being kind—at least, he’s trying at it—but the space above Stevie’s ribs turns waspish anyhow, fluttery and acrid.

“If you’re sorry, then why’d you do it?”

“I dunno.” Jay’s shrug is lopsided, the best he can do with his wing caught. “They said it was a game.”

The bigger boys. The waspish flutter of Stevie’s heart grows to a buzz.

“Stupid game,” she grumbles.

“Yeah,” Jay agrees. “Yeah, I figured that out just after I shoved you. Learned it real good when you kicked me. You’ve got a strong kick.”

“You’ve just got hollow bones.”

“I have. Maybe it’s both.”

They share a look, and suddenly they’re giggling. And it’s—nice. Sort of correct-feeling. The wasps build themselves chrysalises and emerge as butterflies, wet-winged and fragile.

“You’re welcome, by the way.” Stevie wiggles her hand between the joint and the bark, and hoists the wing over the branch.

Jay sighs his relief. Onto the next.

“How’d you get stuck up here, anyhow?” She asks as she untangles a bramble from an alula.

“Practicing my flying,” Jay replies. “Turned the wrong way. It was worse before you got here.”

He points down, to the blue feathers scattered like confetti around the base of the tree.

“Jesus,” Stevie whistles.

“Language, Stevie,” Jay says, and Stevie lets out the loudest honk of a laugh this side of the Mississippi.

“You’re a brat,” Stevie tells him. Jay grins like a fool.

Not till she’s reached the other joint does she remembers what Jay said about his dad. She asks, “Why d’you need to get out of here before your dad gets back?”

Jay’s face goes hot and fast and cold, all at once.

“No reason,” he says, like a liar.

“C’mon.” She pokes him in his sweaty ribs. “Who am I gonna tell?”

“Mary Ann Harper,” Jay says automatically. Stevie scoffs.

“Naw,” she says. “Mary Ann can’t keep a secret worth shit.”

That coaxes a smile onto Jay’s frozen mouth, and Stevie’s hit with the lightning realization that she likes Jay’s smile very much. She smiles back.

“You can come over to my house if you like. My ma’s a nurse. She can fix anything I missed.” Stevie’s hands are steady as she offers, as she untangles the last feather, and Jay’s wings give a great shudder.

“Yeah,” he says, that coaxed-on smile growing. “Yeah, I’d like that very much.”

“Okay.” Stevie ignores the pleased shudder of her heart as she straightens, steps back on the branch. “Let’s just get down and then we—”

But then, Stevie messes up—she can tell by how Jay’s lake-ice eyes shoot wide, by how she slips, by how the ground rushes up to meet her with a hearty smack, and by how everything goes horribly dark.

There’s a man in the dark.

His face is carved from alabaster, ivory, his knuckles heavy with rings.

“Hello,” he says. His voice rattles like a cicada in its shell. “Who are you?”

Then—

“Stevie! Stevie!”

Someone’s yelling. Iron pools between Stevie's teeth, sticks to the roof of her mouth as the sun dyes her vision green. Everything hurts, but it’s worst at her elbows and the back of her head, like when she took a tumble on Leigh’s scooter and slid three feet on the blond concrete.

The man is gone, and Jay’s knelt at her side, a new scrape coloring his chin an ugly reddish-brown. His shoulders sag with relief.

“Jesus Christ, Stevie.”

“Language,” she mutters. She reaches around to the back of her head, where the hurt is worst. Her hair’s sticky, the ends dyed like Jay’s chin, but darker.

“Stevie, Stevie you—”

“I’m okay.” There’s an unbearable tremor in her left hand. “Really, Jay.”

But that’s not enough for Jay. “I’m taking you home,” he says, and doesn’t wait to hook an arm around her waist and haul her across the road.

Stevie’s ma is home, because of course she is, and she sends Jay away, because of course she does. But Jay stays rooted to the porch, throwing these limpid, puppy-eyed glances at Stevie and the mess at the back of her head. He refuses to leave until Stevie promises she’ll see him tomorrow, bright and early, with his bike.

Then, Ma tilts Stevie’s head over the sink and washes the blood from her hair.

“Stevie, sweetheart,” she says. “Do you know this is the second time you’ve died?”

Stevie frowns.

“I didn’t die,” she says. “I hit my head.”

“You died, lovebug,” Ma says, cool as anything. “If you’d hit your head you’d have a big bruise, see? It’s like when you were little and that fever did you in, and you came back healthy as a horse.”

“Oh,” Stevie says. Alright then.

Ma hums.

“Gotta be careful with that, lovebug,” Ma’s hands are sure and warm on Stevie’s scalp. “Never know how long it’s gonna last.”

Hello.

Stevie clenches her fists so tight, little crescent moons bury themselves in her palms. She’s lucky, isn’t she? Eight years old, and she’s already died twice, but she’s still here. It’s a good thing—it must be. It must be.

She doesn’t tell Ma about the man.

The next day she meets Jay Cooper outside her house. He’s come with his shiny red bike, freshly fitted with spokes.

“C’mon.” He tosses her a helmet. “Gotta tell my friends I’m hanging with the pipsqueak little nobody.”

Stevie grins.

She dies twice more before high school. A bad flu catches her when she’s ten, bad enough that Ma takes her to the hospital, where a steady rotation of nurses ply her with ice chips and bad jokes. Leigh’s at work, and Ma’s on another floor. They visit when they can, but they’re both Adults, so for most of the day, Stevie’s alone. Then, one morning, she wakes to find Jay sprawled across the bed.

They’ve grown together over the last two years. The rides to school have turned to walks to class, have turned to sharing lunches, have turned to them, joined at the hip, accidental and inevitable in turn. Jay’s kinder than Stevie’d expected, the fact of it hidden under charm and wit and the way he calls her ‘Steve’ just to get her face all red. But it’s not until now, with a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea facedown in Jay’s lap, her legs shaking from his snores, that Stevie thinks, you’re my best friend, and gets a chestful of gooey-warm rightness in return.

She dies with Jay’s voice in her ear, listing all the different kinds of jellyfish.

The man in the dark is different this time, closer. Or maybe Stevie’s just taller.

“My wife is gone,” he moans. “She’s gone where I can’t follow. Will you follow? Will you follow?”

Stevie shakes her head.“I don’t understand.”

The man’s eyes are bloodless looking into hers.

“You will.”

Then, there’s the car crash that nearly kills Leigh. Stevie holds Ma as they cry over the busted leg and shattered arm and the part of Leigh’s skull that the doctors cut out so she wouldn’t die right there on the table, and Stevie doesn’t let herself remember the dashboard crushing her ribs, or how the cold had crept up her legs before seeping into her heart.

“Will you follow?”

Stevie can’t look at him, at his ivory face. “Who are you?” She asks.

The man doesn’t answer.

“You will.”

Mrs. Harper drives Stevie home alone that night while Ma stays, plies her with soup and an empathy that makes Stevie want to yank her hair out at the root. As soon as Mrs. Harper’s gone, Stevie collapses, right there in the middle of the kitchen, and hardly notices when Jay comes in and sets the pot of chicken noodle to simmer.

“I should be dead.”  Stevie tells it like a secret as he tucks them into her bed, like they’ve done for years. His wings are brilliant against the maroon quilt.

“Don’t you say that.” Jay whispers. He’s fourteen, half a man, but mostly a boy when he tucks her under his chin like she’s something precious.

“It’s true,” she insists.

“I don’t believe it,” Jay says. “Not now, not ever.”

“But—”

“Go to sleep, Stevie.”

There’s an edge to his voice that grates like sandpaper.

“Jay?”

His eyes are invisible in the dark, but she knows his brow’s all scrunchy and tight. Then, he presses hard lips to her forehead.

“I don’t know what I’d do if you died.” He tells it like a secret, his heart thudding in Stevie’s palm.

In the wake of that chapped warmth, Stevie vows that Jay’ll never have to find out.

She breaks that vow before the year is up.

It happens the dead sweat of summer. Ma’s forbidden her from leaving the house, but Stevie’s lean and mean and jonesing for trouble. Her fourteen years hang like a yoke round her neck, a yoke that can only be lightened with some good old-fashioned fun. She waits until her ma’s fast asleep in the easy chair to duck through the brambles to the Cooper’s house.

She finds Jay posted in the tall grass, shirt hanging off the lawn chair, wings fanned in the sticky afternoon. His daddy’s pistol is cocked in his hand, and there’s a beer can sitting on a log some ten yards away. He’s got one eye anchored shut, like a cowboy in one of Leigh’s westerns, and he looks like a fucking idiot.

“The hell’re you doing?”

Jay yelps, and the shot goes wide, hitting the wooden board Mr. Cooper keeps out for practice with a solid thwump!

“Jesus Christ, Stevie,” Jay sighs, big and brash. “I coulda shot you!”

Because she’s nice, Stevie doesn’t look at the beer can, whole and hale and hearty in the sun. Jay knows what she’s thinking anyhow.

“Shut up,” he gripes.

“I mean,” she starts, ‘cause maybe she’s not so nice after all, “if you weren’t aiming for me—”

“Shut uuuupp, Steve.” He’s groaning, but he’s laughing too, hard enough to shake the skinny ladder of his ribs. The sun catches on his hair just then, spins it into something fairytale and golden, and all the air whooshes right out of Stevie’s lungs.

“How’s Leigh?” He asks. Stevie has to breathe again.

“All right.”

Near Jay’s feet, there’s a tuft of grass, softer and greener than the rest, that Stevie wants to sink her toes into. “Speech therapy’s going well.”

“Good.” Jay nods. Then he lifts the gun, scrunches his one eye, and fires.

It’s an awful shot. Horrid. Embarrassing. Good thing his daddy’s out, or Jay’d get a whooping for messing with his gun and missing the can, but Jesus, does he try. He looks stupid doing it—a rickety pile of bone and boy, spine yanked straight by his wings, horsing around like some big hero. The fact of him shouldn’t ensnare Stevie’s eye and brain so, yet she watches from the lawn chair with a helpless sort of smile.

“Open your other eye, dumbass,” Stevie crows as the sun touches the horizon. Jay’s mama brought them lemonade before she left for the store, warning them to be careful. Stevie’s already drank hers and Jay’s too, and Jay still hasn’t managed to hit the damn can.

“You think you can do better?” he asks. Sweat dribbles down his armpits, darkens his nape, but he’s all smug and electric in that golden light. Maddening.

Stevie sets his glass down.

“I sure do.”

“Then by all means, Miss Ives,” he bows low, a twinkle in those lake-ice eyes of his, and he’s never so deserved to get hit. But Stevie’s got something better in mind.

“Why thank you, Mister Cooper.”

The gun’s warm and a little slippery. Stevie wipes her hands on her shirt before she aims, doesn’t copy a damn thing Jay did, and fires.

Clang!

“Motherfucker—”

“Yes!”

“I can’t believe you—”

“Suck it, Jay Cooper—!”

“Where the hell’d you learn that?” Jay shakes his head, hands mounted on his hips as he stares at the empty log. Glee fizzes in Stevie’s belly.

“Nowhere.” She spins the gun like a Hollywood cowboy. Leigh taught her how to do it with an empty gun when she was too young to shoot. The trick is to turn the butt end towards you, and let gravity do the rest.

“You’re so full of shit, Stevie.” Jay smiles. “Seriously.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” she says, leaning into the country twang. Leigh used to do the same thing, back when she’d swing Stevie and her ma across the kitchen floor till they giggled. She can’t swing much now with her leg how it is and all. The thought saddens Stevie. Leigh used to love swinging.

Stevie shakes her head, gives the gun another turn, and thinks instead of Leigh and her ma, holding hands like they’ve been lately, all shyness and reverie.

“C’mon, Stevie, just tell me,” Jay begs.

She slaps on a grin, just to piss him off. Another turn.

“Was it your daddy?”

Shake of the head, another turn. Stevie hasn’t got a daddy.

“Your ma?”

Another turn.

“Leigh?”

Her hand slips.

As it turns out, the other trick of the trick is that the safety has to be on.

There’s a great bang, and then—

Pain blooms like rose thorns and peonies all along Stevie’s side. It takes her out at the knees, lays her on that soft patch of grass she’d wanted to dig her feet into. Jay’s screaming, he’s screaming, he’s shoving the gun away, shoving his shirt into the mess of red at her flank, shoving his dumb face into her dumb face and telling her to hang on, but what’s she supposed to hang on to? Grass? Guts? They’re not real, nothing’s real except for all the hurt knotted under her skin. She’s not a person, she’s a knife, a knifepoint, and everything is awful, awful, awful. Her legs are gone; so are her arms and her head. All that’s left is blood and Jay Cooper’s hands and Jay Cooper’s shirt and Jay Cooper’s lake-ice eyes and even that’s—

Gone.

There’s a man in the dark.

“Who are you?” Stevie asks.

“Who are you?” The man asks.

“I’m Stevie,” she says. “Who are you?”

“No,” the man shakes his head. “No, you are me.”

Stevie blinks. Shakes her head.

“I am the dead,” he says. “You are the dead.”

But before Stevie can ask what it means, he’s gone.

When Stevie gasps awake, Jay’s sharp face is buried in her belly, and he’s shaking like a crazy man shakes. His dumb cheek’s wet with her blood, wetter with his drippy tears.

“Jay Cooper.” She smiles for him, even though her mouth tastes of iron and her teeth are probably weird and pink. “You crying over me?”

But Jay only gasps, “Stevie,” and then he’s squeezing her tight, tight, tight, like she isn’t getting blood on his pretty blue wings, like they aren’t dying his mama’s grass red.

“You were—fuck you, Steve.”

“Love you too, sweetheart,” Stevie croons. When she’s had her fill of being handled like a doll, she taps him sharp on the back. But Jay just shakes his head and hunkers deeper into her shoulder.

“You died.”

“Yeah,” Stevie sighs in defeat. “I do that, I guess.”

Stevie doesn’t think about the lonesome scrape of metal at her ribs; or the hot blood on her jaw; or the white shock of nothing at the end.

You are the dead.

Stevie shivers.

So, Jay: the quaking breadth of him in her palms; sun-baked skin and the hollow bones; rough hands gathered round her back. The world’s back.

“It’s alright,” she tells him, like maybe she can speak it true.

When Jay finally tires himself out, he draws back and takes a good look at her.

“You need fresh clothes,” he says.

He lends her an old beater and his best pair of Dickies, then stands close as she combs her wet hair, thumb running over the new, pink skin at her side.

“Take a picture,” she says, but Jay’s not ready to joke.

He wraps her up, nose cold against the shallow notches of her spine.

“I don’t ever want to see you like that,” he says. There’s a tremor in his chest, a sort of base rattle. Can you break your own heart so young?

Stevie turns in his hold. Those like-ice eyes of his are limned a furious red, blotchy like his cheeks, and there’s blood stuck behind his ear. Stevie rubs it away.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She guides him down so that she can kiss it into his cheek, his forehead, both his eyelids and his wrinkly brow.

“Don’t be.” He shakes his head. “You could be gone, I could be—”

He cracks, right down the middle, and now Stevie’s the one squeezing tight, tight, tight, while Jay sobs into her neck.

“I’m never leaving you, Jay Cooper,” she swears. “You’re gonna have to pry me off with a crowbar.”

It doesn’t get a laugh, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Death’ll have a hell of a time taking Stevie from this boy.

Jay holds on until his ma gets back from the grocery store, until Stevie has to head home. He holds onto her again that night, after he’s snuck in through the window, as Stevie tells him about her condition. His eyes go flinty when she tells him about the man in the darkness.

“He lost his wife.”

“Doesn’t mean he can have you,” Jay mutters, and Stevie doesn’t know how to say she doesn’t think she’s what the man wants.

You are me.

Jay comes over every night for the next week, then Stevie goes over to his for the week after that, because Jay fibs that he’s okay more than he truths. But time heals all, and eventually Jay doesn’t wake up screaming so often that even his deadbeat daddy worries.

Life goes on. High school’s a bum place with a lot of bum people, but a lot of good ones too. Stevie’s first English teacher is an old man with a thick mustache and hair like a monk, who likes Shakespeare better than he likes his class. Leigh teaches them to drive, her dreadlocks twisted on top of her head, brown eyes sparkling when Stevie climbs the curb trying to parallel park.

She lets Jay handle the driving.

And, boy, does he. Jay’s truck is old and shitty and he loves it like he loves his mama, spends every free second under the hood and all the other seconds with motor oil under his fingernails. The Cooper’s garage becomes their spot—Jay on an old skateboard, Stevie hunkered down in the corner with a book or a sketchpad or whatever scrap paper’s on hand, scribbling and singing and shooting the shit. Stevie hasn’t died in three years, not since that stupid afternoon in Jay’s yard. She looks like she’s always looked: brown haired, brown-eyed. She’s taller now, but not by much—whip-wristed and lithe.

Meanwhile, Jay broadens in a flush of muscle and misplaced sinew, padding his birdcage ribs and rickety shoulders. His wings shoot out, the blue giving way to shimmering silver, molting like nothing Stevie’s ever seen. All his hokey, boyish charm sharpens into something purposeful. He takes Amy Lou Reed to a dance and spins around with all her friends, lets Rachel Carpenter down easy as pie and buys her an ice cream after. All the sweetness he hid behind rock wars and stubbornness comes bubbling to the surface in droves, a poster boy with a marshmallow center and an eye for trouble.

It all serves as a cruel reminder that they’re nearly grown. In their last year of high school, Stevie chops her hair off in a fit of pique, lets Jay take her anywhere he likes in his truck, spends more time with Mary Ann Harper than she’s done in years, all as if to dig her heels in and make it stop. Just for long enough that she doesn’t have to let it all go, long enough that she can find a piece big enough to take with her.

Jay offers that piece on a Friday night in October, on the last day before the frost sets in. They’re laying in the truck bed, staring up at the meteors that dash the sky, Stevie tucked under his arm, and she’s sad, she’s so fucking sad—the weight of it spearing her lungs like that bullet. Soon, they’ll be gone, and the neighborhood’ll go quiet and still along with Stevie’s heart.

But then Jay says, “Of course, we’ll have to make sure one of them’s big enough for your ma to stay over.”

Stevie shoots up. “What?”

“Your ma, she’s gonna want to visit us,” Jay shrugs.

There’s not much she can do but stare at that.

“What?” His mouth tugs up in this sweet little grin. “You didn’t think you were going without me, did you? Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on you.”

Then he tucks Stevie back under his arm and starts talking about all the constellations they can’t see in his dumb, radio announcer voice, and that’s that.

The next fall, they move into a shitty apartment in the city, where Jay wears shirtsleeves to his job at the garage, and Stevie lies around until her first class at noon. They’ve got their own rooms, but the AC’s shit, so it might as well not matter; especially in the summer, when it’s so sticky hot that the only way to sleep is pressed to the kitchen tiles with the windows thrown open; and in the winter, when it’s so cold they’ve got to huddle in the living room. Sometimes Stevie’s ma’ll visit, her arms loaded with freezer-packed stew and key lime pie. On those nights, Stevie and Jay’ll press close in his narrow bed, and Jay’ll stick his frozen toes to her calves to make her squirm, and they’ll giggle like kids.

They’ve gotten to that age where they’ve begun to sleep with people. For a few months, Stevie has a girl from Reno who wears fishnets and laughs wicked red as her nails. Jay has a girl, then a boy, then another boy, and a girl again. They slip in and out of the apartment like sexy wraiths.

“Gotta keep a big circle, Steve,” he winks.

But when the sexy wraiths and Reno girls leave, it’s Stevie and Jay like it always is. Stevie comes home most nights to find Jay cooking, shirtsleeves abandoned on the chair, sweat licking at his armpits. Most nights, she’ll wrap her arms around his waist, lean ‘til he complains that she’s too bony, and then lean some more. Then Jay’ll tell her about his day, and she’ll stare after his fluttery hands and twinkling eyes, and she’ll smile, because this is theirs. It doesn’t matter who they bring home, this is theirs, like cold feet and sticky nights on the kitchen tile. Stevie wouldn’t have it any other way.

She doesn’t understand what that means until she gets sick.

She’s twenty-two. It’s a bad flu and a bad winter, worse because Ma and Leigh can’t make the trip up to help on account of all the snow. Jay looks after her instead, wraps her up daily in his old long underwear and the warmest sweaters they’ve got. There’s always a pot of tea on the stove and a bowl of cold water at her side. Jay reads aloud from his book, and cries when he thinks she’s sleeping. The doctor from down the hall checks on her once a day, listens to her heart, and gives her awful cough syrup. His name is Matthias. He has kind eyes.

“If the fever gets worse, she’ll need a hospital,” Matthias tells Jay, and Stevie has to look away so as not to see him crumple.

That night, Jay runs her a cool bath and washes her hair, kissing her forehead when she shivers.

“You’re gonna be okay, Stevie,” he says. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

“You—you gotta—” Damn, damn it all, damn her chattering teeth— “g-gotta let me die.”

You are the dead.

“No.” Jay shakes his head, stubborn as a mule. “No, you’re gonna get better.”

“Jay—”

“I’m not losing you, Stevie. C’mon.”

His lake-ice eyes are wide and wild, big hands spanning her soapy neck. And yeah, she’s sick, she’s dying, again, but this is the warmest Stevie’s been in weeks.

You’re like a furnace, she thinks, then, I’m getting your sleeves wet.

It’s stupid easy to lean into that, into Jay, and sigh.

“I’ll come back,” she promises.

The hand at her neck trembles.

“We’re not talking about this, Stevie Ives.”

He says it with the conviction of the pulpit, the stubborn desperation of a prophet. It’s terrible to have him like this, dark-eyed and unshaven, worse when it’s for Stevie. She wants to reach out, wants to stitch herself to Jay however she can if it means he won’t be so damn sad.

“It’s the best bet.”

Smiling’s difficult, but she gives it a try. Jay doesn’t smile back. His lip twitches like it does when he’s determined not to cry. He spins away, fist pressed to his mouth.

“Jay?”

A little choking sound bounces on the tile.

“I’m gonna make you some tea.” He rises clumsily, shutting the door with a crash.

Stevie’s cold again.

She finds him when she’s dry again, wrapped up in one of their sweaters. He’s sitting at their little wooden table, head cradled in his hands. He looks small.

“I’m sorry.”

Jay gives a great sniff.

“Jay.” She kneels by his side. “I’m sorry.”

“Why d’you wanna go so bad, huh?” He asks, snotty and thick. “Why’s it so bad that I—I want you to—”

Then he’s sobbing, and it’s all Stevie can do to hold on. Jay pulls her onto his knees and buries his face in her neck like when they were kids, and there’s not a damn thing Stevie Ives wouldn’t do for Jay Cooper in this very instant. Fight a monster. Cut off her own hand.

“Please don’t go,” he says.

“Okay. Shh, sweetheart. Okay.”

So she tries her best—Stevie drinks the damn tea and listens to the damn book and drinks so much damn soup that she’s up to piss every hour, but it works. For one stupid second, it works.

Then, eight nights after she first began to cough, Stevie’s temperature rises, and that’s, well…

That’s that.

It isn’t all that different from when she was six, what with the fever and the bedrest and the claggy fire mapping her skin. Except this time, Jay’s got a sopping cold rag pressed to her forehead, and he’s begging “Stevie, come on, you gotta come back. Stevie, you gotta come back.”

She wants to say of course I’m coming back, what do you take me for? Because she can’t leave Jay, all right? She promised, she promised, she’d sworn to the stars and the dark and the tap of Jay’s heart to her shaking palm on the night Leigh almost died, promised again with her blood behind his ear. She can’t break that vow twice.

But she can’t say it. The fever’s turned her tongue to dandelion fluff. Jay’s more of a concept than a matter of fact, but Stevie finds him anyway and grabs on tight. She’ll keep this boy till the bitter end.

And that’s when she knows.

There’s a man in the dark.

“Who are you?” Stevie asks.

“I am you,” he says. “You are the dead.”

“I’m not the dead.” She shakes her head. “I’m not—”

“My wife’s gone where I cannot follow,” the man interrupts. “Will you follow? Will you follow?”

“Please,” Stevie says. “I don’t understand.”

The man stares his bloodless stare.

“You will.”

When Stevie wakes, the morning sun’s streaming through the window, and Jay Cooper’s head is on her belly. It’s like before, but without all the blood, and how could it take her so long to realize? Stevie thought she was smart.

“Jay?”

He shoots up in a mess of dark hair and sallow cheeks. His eyes are the brightest thing she’s ever seen.

“You’re up!”

He smiles so wide his lips crack, beading red on his teeth and oh, Stevie loves him.

“Couldn’t leave you behind, sweetheart,” she says—hopes it doesn’t come off as earnest as it feels.

But Jay just chuckles and nods, “Yeah, yeah alright.”

Then he leans in close, rough palm to her rough cheek, lake-ice eyes sparkling.

“Welcome back, sweetheart.”

And all the air shoots out of Stevie’s lungs.

Shit.

So she loves him. Big deal. Stevie Ives’s been walking around with a belly full of gasoline since she was fourteen years old—it was only a matter of time before it caught flame. And, Jesus, has it. She’s stupid for Jay, stupid for his shirtsleeves and his crinkly dimples and the scratch of his stubble on her cheek as he spins her through the living room in the dark.

Motherfuck.

It’s Stevie’s ma who clocks her first, fresh off an airplane, tucked into their bad couch while Jay and Leigh carve a ham in the kitchen. There’s a pretty ring on her finger that Stevie helped Leigh pick out, and she’s grinning like there’s no tomorrow. Happy is new and beautiful on her.

“How’re you doing, lovebug?” Ma asks as she cards a hand through Stevie’s hair.

“Good,” she says. “You wouldn’t know from how Jay hovers, but—”

“Oh, stop.” Ma rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning.

Jay’s been a constant shadow since Stevie died last, always half a step behind with a hand on her elbow or her back, and Stevie’s this close to snapping—only, not for the reasons Ma thinks.

“He only does it ‘cause he loves you.”

And boy howdy, if that doesn’t clear the air right out of Stevie’s throat.

“Yeah,” she laughs. It’s weak, damnit. “Yeah, I guess.”

But Ma, hawk that she is, catches it. Her eyes narrow, then widen.

“Stevie,” she gasps.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, Ma.”

She’s been caught.

“I knew it,” Ma says. “You never could keep your eyes off that boy.”

“Jesus Christ, Ma, say it louder, huh?”

Ma laughs and laughs, and Stevie wishes she had a hood or something to sink into.

“Everything alright out here?”

Speak of the devil.

“We’re fine, Jay, thank you, baby,” Ma shoos him back to the kitchen. Jay glances over at Stevie, all frown lines and puppy eyes, melting Stevie’s dumb heart.

“All good.” She nods, and only then does he go.

Ma turns slowly around, beaming fit for a sunrise.

“Don’t—”

“Stephanie Ives—”

“Ma—!”

“Oh relax,” Ma rolls her eyes and cuddles up to Stevie’s shoulder. She’s quiet for a moment. Then—“You should tell him.”

“Ma—!”

“I’m serious! Stevie, lovebug—” She reaches for Stevie’s chin— “I’m serious.”

They’re not playing any longer. There’s something sad in Ma’s eye, something old and true. It grabs at Stevie’s edges and holds her in place.

“Ma?”

Ma smiles, a wan, shard-sharp thing. “Leigh,” she says.

Stevie’s stomach bottoms out.

“She nearly died, before I said it.”

Stevie remembers—how can she not? The crash, the hours in the hospital, the firefighter that dragged her out and marveled at her till Stevie told them I died in there, and how they went white with realization.

“It’s not the same,” she says. “I don’t die.”

“One day you will.” Her ma gives her that same wan smile. “And when you do, I don’t want you to have any regrets.”

She kisses Stevie’s temple, and goes to join Leigh in the kitchen.

Stevie can’t take her eyes off Jay for the rest of the night. He gossips with Leigh, dances with Ma, beams so bright it’s nearly intolerable—but only nearly. And it’s amazing how he fits into their little family. But hasn’t he always? Jay’s always been Jay, and Stevie’s always been Stevie, and what are they, if not each other’s? Stevie mulls it over while Jay cheats at cards, his eyes twinkling.

By the time the night is over and Leigh loads Ma into a taxi back to their hotel, Stevie still hasn’t come up with an answer. She’s not sure she wants to, as Jay drags her off the couch.

“C’mon,” he says, “we’re dancing.”

“No,” she laughs, but gets up anyhow.

“I just spent the whole night dancing with your ma’s. And it’s great, I love your ma’s, but now I wanna dance with you,” he says, and pulls her snug against his chest.

“Well, maybe I don’t wanna dance,” she says, as she dances.

“Well, maybe you’re full of shit.”

Stevie snorts, and Jay grins, and this is right, this is good, this is as correct-feeling as giggling in a tree when they were eight, and Stevie—Stevie never wants to let it go. She sinks into the crook of Jay’s neck and shuts her eyes. Maybe she can fit all her love in here, line it up nice and neat like piano keys and leave it for Jay to keep so that she doesn’t have to. She sighs.

“What is it?” He says, because it’s Jay, and he knows her better than anyone else in the world. So maybe she should say it, just to have it out there. Maybe it’s not as ruinous as Stevie thinks.

“I—”

Oh, but then she pulls away. Then she gets an eyeful of that face, so dear; of that lake-ice stare that she adores. She stands there, in the circle of Jay’s arms, and wonders if she’s selfish enough to ruin this for them, for him. So she says, “Nothing,” and leans back into the dance.

Maybe one day she’ll say it. But for now, it’s dark, and Jay is still her best friend. They lean their heads together and sway.

Stevie can’t die. She forgets that Jay can.

The call comes in the middle of class, when Stevie’s got paint under her fingernails and a head full of fog. There are a lot of words, like car accident and brain damage and life support, that Stevie can’t really hear over the heart monitor or Jay’s still eyes.

She thought they’d have time.

Stevie can still picture it: how she was going to tell him, one night, the words slipping out in the orange glow of the reading lamp, their pinkies linked together. How he’d lean in right next to her face, and how it’d still take her by surprise when he kissed her. How he’d tease if she blushed, even though his cheeks would be just as red. And maybe they’d sleep next to each other, like they did when they were kids. And it’s hard, hard to believe that they won’t get to have that now, that the doctor’s took a piece of Jay’s skull like they took Leigh’s and it didn’t make a lick of a damn difference. It’s wrong, and it’s unfair, and it’s the worst thing ever, that Jay’s here. That’s Stevie’s spot, in the hospital bed. That’s her burden to bear. Except that it isn’t anymore.

They ask her what to do.

And see, the most selfish, brutal parts of Stevie want to tell them not to change a damn thing, to keep Jay like a princess in a fairytale, the tube down his throat like the glass of Snow White’s coffin, but she knows—she knows it’s not fair. She knows that this body isn’t Jay anymore, not really, that the least she can do is set his soul free.

Still hurts, though. Still feels like getting stabbed in the neck and bleeding out besides.

They call his mama before he goes. They call his daddy too, but he doesn’t show, ‘cause why would he? Stevie has to watch her say goodbye, holds her hand and holds Jay’s when they finally turn everything off. He goes quiet, at least.

The apartment is big when Stevie finally goes home, and empty. Their rooms are a little dustier than usual, but nothing is really that different. If Stevie forgets about the heart monitor beeping its’ last, she could believe that Jay’s gonna walk in here any second and make fun of her for standing in the dark. He won’t.

“Hey,” she says, to the bedspread, and the feathers on the pillow, and the framed photo of them from eighth grade when Stevie had those God-awful white braces that turned yellow when she drank orange juice, “hey, I love you.”

She thinks of the orange light and pinkies and how softly she would’ve kissed him if he’d let her, of his blush and their two heads on one pillow, thinks of how they’d always, always been each other’s and how she’s alone now, well and truly, for the first time in her life. She thinks of Jay, with his blue wings and rough edges and the way he smiled special, for her eyes only, and how he’ll never smile like that again. She thinks about Ma, and about Leigh, and about things she should’ve said when Jay lived in this dark room.

Then she thinks, fuck it. Because Jay’s hers. He’s hers. And Stevie’s not ready to let him go.

There’s a man in the dark.

“My wife’s gone where I cannot follow,” he says. “Will you follow?”

Stevie takes his hand.

“Yes.”

If you’d told Stevie that heaven was a meadow, she’d’ve felt better about going.

‘Cause that’s what it is—one big meadow. Fat bumblebees circle Stevie’s ankles, suckling on clover and foxgloves, their fur crusted with pollen. The sky overhead is bluer than anything Stevie’s ever seen, so blue it hurts her eyes, which have gone bloodless in the sun.

She hasn’t woken up—she knows, ‘cause she’s not sitting in a pool of her own vomit. Stevie flexes her hands. Her knuckles are heavy with rings, gold and rubies and emeralds. They match the phantom faces, shimmering patterns in the black on her dress. It looks just like what she’d worn to Ma and Leigh’s wedding, except that it’s darker.

Then Stevie blinks, and she’s not wearing a dress at all, but a suit—three piece, made of thick wool. Only the phantom faces and the rings remain, chunky, on fingers that don’t belong to her—they’re too long, too pale. She blinks again, and it’s just her hand, the very same one she was born with.

I am you. You are me.

Stevie takes a deep breath—

My wife’s gone where I cannot follow. Will you follow?

Yes.

—and begins to walk.

The meadow is truly colossal, bracketed by rolling hills. In the distance, dreamy, white-capped mountains stand sentinel. They look more like travel photos than any real thing Stevie could touch.

As she walks, she switches, from dress to suit, from chapped knuckles to ivory hands. The suit’s booted feet know a secret path her bare ones don’t—they lead Stevie across the pillowed grass, toward the center of the meadow, where a tiny vineyard stands. A few pails huddle already in the shade of the vines, bursting with dusky purple grapes. But it’s not until she’s ten yards away that Stevie sees the harvester, bent over a fallen branch, coaxing the green clusters from their mother with a Bowie knife. He’s abandoned his shirtsleeves on a nearby trellis for a white vest and sun-yellow pants. Sweat beads sweetly at his underarms; dark hair flops hopelessly into his lake-ice eyes, and Stevie loves him, she loves him, she’s swept away by the very fact of him, entirely devastated.

“Jay!”

He turns—but Stevie’s already sprinting. There’s too much space between them, between Stevie’s hungry palms and Jay Cooper with his eyes open and his skull in one piece.

And then, there’s not. And then, Jay opens his arms, and Stevie crashes right in, buries her face in the singular crook of his neck and doesn’t say a word when Jay lifts her clear off the ground from how tight he’s holding her.

“Stevie,” he says. Then, “Stevie, Stevie, Stevie.”

“Hi, love,” she says. It sounds like a sob.

Jay smells of salt, and rich soil, and something else, something new. Stevie doesn’t care. She’s too caught up in Jay, Jay, the warm line of him searing her front. When he sets her down, she can’t keep from touching him—throat, wrist, belly—as if to make sure he’s whole.

“It’s okay,” he tugs at her busy hands, threads their fingers together. “I’m okay.”

Except he isn’t, and ain't that just a kick in the gut?

“You’re dead,” Stevie says. Oh fuck it, fuck everything, she’s said it aloud now, and it’s the worst Goddamn thing she’s ever done.

“Stevie,” Jay smooths over her shoulders, leans forward ’til their foreheads touch.

“I miss you,” she tells him, and Jesus, it shouldn’t sit like a confession, like a plea, in Stevie’s gut, but it’s Jay, so it does. “I miss you.”

Stevie can’t stop looking at him—his trembling chin, his clicking tongue—cross-eyed from the effort. But then, just as Jay opens his mouth, something shifts, and suddenly, he’s not Jay at all.

A woman with long black hair and olive skin stands in his place. She’s small, and lithe, her dress the same sun-yellow as Jay’s pants. She’s not Jay, but her lake-ice eyes hold his sweetness. Stevie’s hands move of their own volition to frame her face—except they’re not Stevie’s hands anymore. They’re large and knobby and alabaster-white, carved from ivory.

“Hi, love,” the woman says, chest heaving. She traces Stevie’s cheeks. “This is new.”

“You’re one to talk,” Stevie says, only it’s not Stevie that says it. It’s her tongue and mouth and brain, but it’s not Stevie. Yet, it is.

I am you. You are me.

The man in the dark leans forward to kiss his wife.

When he pulls away, Jay’s mouth is red.

“What’s happening?” Jay says.

She’s gone where I can’t follow. Will you follow?

Yes.

“I followed you,” Stevie says.

And it’s Jay who gasps, who cups Stevie’s jaw and covers her mouth with his, but it’s the woman who kisses her, like a wife kisses a husband. Somehow, Stevie is that husband. And Jay is that wife. And they’re themselves, and not themselves, all at once.

I am you. You are me.

“Kore,” she whispers, and it’s Jay who looks.

“I’ve missed you,” he says. Stevie feels it—all that intangible time, cleaving her shared heart in two.

“Come home with me,” she says, the man in the dark says, they say. I am you.

Kore flattens her palms against Stevie’s chest, kisses her long and slow.

“Yes,” Jay whispers.

You are me.

Stevie smiles. “Follow me.”

There’s a man in the dark.

“I am you,” he says.

“You are me,” Stevie replies.

“You are the dead.”

She takes Jay’s hand.

“Not anymore.”

Stevie wakes up in a pool of her own vomit, to an insane knocking on the door.

“Stevie!” Someone shouts. “Stevie, open up!”

Stevie groans. It’s too early for this. She just died.

Jay just died.

That thought turns everything inside of her shivery and horrible.

“Stevie!”

The door. Jay’s dead, but Stevie still has to answer the door. That’s bullshit. That’s bullshit. That’s such bullshit. Fuck.

She drops her clothes in the tub with the rest of the mess, wraps herself in a towel, and answers the bullshit fucking door.

“Matthias?”

Matthias sighs, big and billowy—relieved.

“You’re alright,” he says. “I was worried. When the hospital called, they said you weren’t answering—”

“The hospital called?” Stevie cuts him off. “Why?”

But Stevie already knows, down in the small and secret cracks of herself. It thrums, alive, even though her mind hasn’t caught up, even though she can’t entirely remember—

—fat bumblebees—

—a tiny vineyard—

I am you. You are me.

Will you follow?

—she will.

The hospital’s a madhouse when Stevie arrives, wet-haired, in shoes that aren’t hers. Jay’s doctor is arguing with a harried mortician’s assistant, who’s berating the mortician, who’s looking to the sky like an answer will just drop out of the heavens. Jay’s ma is sat on one of the benches, unseeing, as a PA talks at her. She’ll be alright. There’s only one person Stevie wants to see right now.

She can hardly breathe as she ducks around the doctors, the nurses, the morticians and their harried assistants, into the hospital room. Because—Christ, what if she got it wrong? What if Jay’s still gone, Kore reunited with the man in the dark at last? What if Jay’s dead, really, truly dead?

Stevie nearly chokes. But then she rounds the corner—and there he is.

Jay looks up, and his eyes are open, and his skull is in one piece, and for a second, all Stevie can do is stare. Take it in. Then—

“You never told me how weird it is, this whole resurrection deal,” Jay croaks. “Did you know part of my head had to grow back? Stevie, I swear—”

But Stevie’s on him before he can finish, sobbing into his neck.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, it’s alright.”

“It was real. Was it real?”

Jay nods, slow and a little terrible. “I think so,” he says.

Stevie’s eyes are wet when she pulls away, thumbs at Jay’s cheeks.

“Kore?” She says. Jay melts in her hands.

“Hi, love,” he croaks.

Stevie sniffs once, twice, then she leans up and in, and kisses Jay like a husband kisses a wife. Because Jay’s that wife, and Stevie’s that husband, and what are they if not each other’s?

“I love you,” she says, into his mouth, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose and both his eyelids. “Come home with me.”

Jay smiles, grey and so dear in the hospital light.

“Yes.”