Absent (Katie Williams)

Kelsey’s pulse in my neck and wrists, starting up a flutter faster than when I was dancing. I pinch the edge of the drop cloth, the warp and weft of the fabric between my fingers. “No, I saw. Usha painted over it. It’s just a blank wall now.”
    Wes shakes his head. “It’s a mural. She’s been working on it for over a month.”
    Then I remember something: Stumbling down the hall after I’d seen Lucas with the burner girl, I almost ran into her, Usha up onher ladder. I’d been so upset that it hadn’t registered. I press a hand to my neck. There it is, my pulse, a little under-the-skin creature beating its wings.
    “She kept painting it?”
    “Of course.”
    “But I saw her painting over it. She said, ‘Maybe we should be trying to forget.’ ”
    “Here. See?” Wes steps past me and yanks the drop cloth free. My eyes follow it as it floats gently to the floor.
    I don’t look at the mural right away. First, I look at Wes looking at it. He scans the wall, floor to ceiling, his eyes lit up like they were when he broke through the trees to the burners’ circle and found me scratching my designs into the ground.
    “Will you look at that?” he says, voice awed.
    So I look.
    The mural reaches from floor to ceiling, a maze of lines and curves.
    Birds.
    The flocks of birds from Usha’s notebook, not inked centimeters across, but painted meters high, beaks pointed, wingspans unfurled, feathers all colors and speckles, delicate necks stretched toward the sky. And, parachutes, the calmly floating parachutes, their passengers tied safely below. Airplanes with whirring propellers. Bunches of helium balloons, hot-air balloons, too, with wicker riding baskets. Clouds of insects—monarchs, wasps, bluebottles, and dragonflies. Dragons, griffins, other impossible creatures, flying horses, and angels with trumpets as slender as their wrists. And there at the bottom, tiny in its corner, my contribution to the mural, my fuzzy little moth.
    Usha has painted things that can’t fall.
    She’s painted things that can fly.
    I feel it again, that dissolving feeling, the feeling that happens whenever I inhabit someone. But this time it’s different, stronger, warmer . . . wider? And then I hear the voices, dozens of them, a whole crowd, whispering to one another. I can’t make out the words, but the tone is warm, like how you might whisper I love you to someone who’s sleeping. I place my palm against the slick shine of the dried paint, the tiny furrows of brushstroke, the wall beneath. The wall that will last for years.
    “Hey,” Wes says softly.
    I turn to face him.
    “Hey,” he says again, taking one of my hands in both of his and holding it to his chest. “Why are you crying?”
    “Because.” I shake my head. “Because I feel alive.”
    Wes leans down and kisses me. I kiss him back. His lips taste like cigarettes, like paper burnt until it’s cinders, but then the cinders glow softly, rekindling with the warmth of his mouth. After seconds and years and eons, we part.
    He grins, and I let out a little burst of laughter.
    “So that was funny to you?” Wes says, but he’s still grinning.
    I shake my head. “What are you even doing here, Wes Nolan?”
    “Nothing much,” he says, “Just being here. With you.”
    Footfalls behind us. We break apart, and Usha stands there in her dandelion of a dress, lipstick on her front teeth, rhinestone crown pulling away from the pins that hold it to her hair. She looks perfect, by the way.
    “Sorry,” she mutters, backing away.
    “Usha!” I call.
    She turns, an uncertain expression on her face.
    “You painted this.” I point at the mural.
    “You shouldn’t have taken that off.” She gestures at the crumpled drop cloth. “It’s not ready yet. I still haven’t really—”
    “Thank you,” I interrupt.
    “For what?”
    “They’re flying,” I say.
    She nods.
    “Now people will remember her as something other than . . . I . . . I’m sorry that I lied, that I said she jumped.”
    Usha’s brows draw together. She pulls the crown from her head, holds it in her hands, running her fingers over the fake gemstones. “You don’t have to pretend.”
    “I’m not pretending.” I put a hand to my chest. “I really am sorry. I’m sorry I lied.”
    “You don’t have to pretend to . . . I know it wasn’t a lie.” Usha looks up from her crown. “Paige stepped off the roof.”
    “Usha. No.” My hands fall to my sides, the silky fabric of