I stand, hoping I look the part of concerned fiancée or near-fiancée, depending on if you believed the “he would propose but didn’t get the chance” story I fed the EMTs. “Yes, that’s me. Is Nathan going to be all right? Can I see him?”
She nods. “Yes, and yes. Follow me, please. He’s asking to see you too.”
Nathan looks up at me through his dark bangs after I close the door and take several staggering steps toward his bed. Despite whatever you want to call what passed between us earlier, right now is awkward. Really, really awkward. There’re a million and two things I want to say, but not one comes to mind when I’m face-to-face with a wide-awake Nathan and able to say them.
“So, um, what am I supposed to call you?” he asks. “I want to say Mercy, but I know that’s wrong, even though it feels right somehow.”
I find the chair closest to Nathan’s bed and sit down. “If anyone at the hospital asks, I’m your fake fiancée.” I try to laugh, but no sound comes out. “It was the only thing I could say to get permission to ride along in the ambulance. Family only, so I became family.”
Nathan watches me, but I feel he’s actually seeing me and trying to figure me out, unlike Jay, who seems more into watching everyone else watch me so he can figure out who he needs to threaten for honing in on his trophy girlfriend. Not that I consider myself a good catch, but I am the headmaster’s daughter. That holds a lot of clout when you want to get something done or have someone look the other way on campus.
“I’d like to know your name.” Nathan reaches out a hand to me. “It’ll make our sham hospital engagement more believable if I know what to call you.”
I take his hand, careful not to jostle the IV taped to the top. “I’m Meredith.”
He closes his eyes, face pale beneath the bruises, before nodding. “I’m Nathan, but you probably already knew that.”
“I only know what the paramedics said. I know nothing else about you.” I let go of Nathan’s hand a moment to add an extra pillow behind his back before offering him a glass of ice chips. Nathan takes the glass and my hand again. “All I know is you fell, and I felt compelled to come up with a crazy story to get in that ambulance with you. I’m horrible at lying, by the way. I don’t know how I could manage that Oscar-worthy story, but I did, and here am I.”
“Here we are.” Nathan cracks an eye open and motions to the space between us. “Like it or not, we’re in this together now. Did I at least get you a good fake engagement ring?” He smiles, and I get that weird, tilting déjà vu feeling again. I see my bare feet running across the sand at Lake Menton near the school toward I’m not sure what. Or who.
I shake my head to snap myself out of the daydream or vision or whatever I’m supposed to call it. I need to answer Nathan. “I don’t know. You fell over the railing before you had the chance to give me a ring.”
He grimaces. “I think I like your fake version of events better than the real one.”
“So, what happened up there?” I ask. “Do you remember?”
“I remember the tour,” Nathan says. “I was looking at the cherubs and flower carvings on the banister when I heard my name.” He frowns. “At least I thought it was my name. I heard a girl call ‘Nate.’ When I went to look over the rail down to the rotunda to see if she was down there, someone pushed me.”
“Or something.”
I didn’t mean to just lay the paranormal entity possibility out there like that, but I did, and I can’t take it back now. I know people like to talk about Haunting, Colorado, and the school, especially. It’s big business. There’re books and TV shows and even a movie about the paranormal activity in town. Dad’s stance is the school is not and never has been haunted. I think if he were to just embrace the past instead of running from it, there would at least be a chance the living and dead could coexist with a little less restless energy in town and especially on campus. Still, if I told Dad what I think, he wouldn’t want to listen. The only person Dad listens to is himself.
Nathan’s dark brow forms a deep V in the middle of his forehead as he processes the meaning behind my two simple words. “Are the stories about this place really true? I thought calling the school Haunting Academy was just a wordplay on the town name. Is there, uh, more to it than that?”
“If you stay here long enough, you’ll see,” I say. “Everyone does, even if they write it off as a trick of the light or their imagination. Everything you’ve heard or seen on TV about Haunting is most likely true.”
“And it all centers on the school?”
I make a so-so gesture with the hand not holding on to his. “Kind of. The school building used to be a hotel in a gold-mines-turned-resort town. There’s a lot of unsettled history here. Unsettled history means unsettled energy. I’m a little surprised we haven’t had more ‘accidents’ over the years.” I bite down on my lower lip before adding, “Just be careful, okay?”
Nathan struggles to sit up higher in bed. “You should have warned me yesterday.”
I frown. How hard did he hit his head? “I didn’t know you yesterday.”
“No, not yesterday-yesterday,” he says. “When the school was a hotel yesterday.”
I pull my hand free of his. It’s shaking. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been having dreams that—no matter what I do—won’t leave me alone,” Nathan begins. “It’s like playing a song on repeat. I even wake up and fall back asleep, and the dream starts up right where I left off. In the dream, I’m me, but I’m not me. I’m in love with a girl, but there’s something standing in the way. I’m not sure what. A boyfriend or dad or something keeping us apart. We plan to be together but…” He trails off, lost in thought, before shaking his head. “I don’t know what happens next. It gets kind of blurry. Maybe I’m not supposed to know, or maybe I need someone else along before I can find out more.”
“Is that why you came here?” I ask. “Because of the dreams?”
“Yes, and no.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose with my thumb and index finger. “You’ll have to do better than that for an answer, Nate.”
“Nathan,” he corrects. “I’m not Nate. Not anymore at least, just like you’re not Mercy anymore. You’re Meredith. We’re us, and they’re them, but we might have been them. At least that’s what I think the dreams are telling me.”
I make a point not to look at Nathan, because if I look at his eager, sincere face, I’ll believe him about the dreams and everything else, and I don’t think I’m ready to do that yet. Instead, I play it off as a joke. It’s the only thing I can think to do. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head harder than the doctor thought?”
“The dreams led me back here, Meredith,” Nathan insists. “They led me back to you.”
The hospital gave me a coupon for a free bus ride back to campus. I considered calling Jay to pick me up so I could avoid the meandering public transportation route home, but that would mean more lying. He’d ask too many questions that I didn’t have answers for right now. Calling Dad was a big no, too. He didn’t like me going off campus without Jay to “protect me.” It wasn’t an official Dad rule, but enough of one that I didn’t want him to know I broke it. Ritzi didn’t have a car, or I’d call her. Bus ride it is.