I am filled with hatred. The thought comes before everything else. It always does. The academy gymnasium is louder than I remember it. Students pour through the open doors, calling to one another after months apart. They laugh, shout, compare schedules, and complain about instructors they have not even seen yet. No one looks at me. No one ever does. I lean against the wooden wall and watch them reunite with people they missed. A pair of girls walk toward me. They are talking, they do not notice that I am standing directly in their path. I do not move. There would be no point. One passes through me. Cold rushes through what remains of me. She shivers and rubs her arms. “Did it suddenly get colder?” “No? Why?" Her friend replies. They continue walking. Neither looks back. I close my eyes. Years ago, I might have shouted after them. I might have begged. Now, I barely notice. It has been years since anyone living acknowledged my existence. Perhaps decades. Time is difficult to measure when you never sleep and nothing around you changes for your sake. The academy admits new students. They study, grow older and finally graduate. Some return as instructors. Others send their children here. I remain. Only one thing has endured with me. Hatred. The memory returns. It always returns. Rain strikes the road. A little boy screaming for his Papa. Men flee into the darkness. My father lies beside the wheel of an overturned carriage, one arm twisted beneath him. Blood spreads through the rainwater and runs between the stones. I fall beside him. I press both hands against the wound in his stomach. I tell him he will be all right. I tell him help is coming. I tell him every lie a frightened child tells because the truth is too terrible to speak. His eyes find mine. His mouth moves. I lean closer, but I cannot hear him over the rain. Then his chest stops moving. The memory shifts. Years pass in an instant. Now, I am the one lying on the ground. Older now, Stronger. Yet still helpless. Every breath drives something sharp deeper into my chest. Blood fills my mouth. Someone stands over me. My uncle. My father’s brother. He looks down at me with the same patient expression he wore at the funeral. He says something. I no longer remember the words. I only remember his smile. Then darkness. And then nothing, yet the hatred remains. “Hey.” A voice interrupts it. I open my eyes. A girl stands in front of me. She has dark auburn hair. Freckles scatter across her cheeks, and her eyes are the blue-green of shallow seawater beneath sunlight. She is looking directly at me. “You looked like you were hurting,” she says. I stare at her. Perhaps someone is standing behind me I turn. There is no one there. When I look back, she is still watching me. Not through me. At me. “Can you see me?” Her eyebrows rise. “Of course.” She tilts her head. “Shouldn’t I?” My thoughts stop. Someone can see me. After all these years, someone is looking at me as though I am real. “What’s your name?” she asks. For a moment, I cannot remember. No one has asked me that question for years. “Vincent.” “I’m Lynne.” She smiles. It is a bright, effortless smile. The sort of smile people give before they understand what the world is capable of doing to them. “Everyone, find a partner!” The instructor’s voice carries through the gymnasium. Students begin dividing into pairs. Lynne glances toward the center of the room, where brass spheres hang from ropes attached to the rafters. Chalk circles cover the floor beneath them, each marked with lines, numbers, and symbols representing the movement of the heavens. The instructor raises her voice over the conversation. “Today’s practical concerns the first principle of astronomy: the relationship between bodies in motion. One partner will chart the course. The other will release the suspended body when instructed.” Astronomy. The art of knowing where something will be before it arrives. An idea begins forming. It is small at first. Ugly. Impossible. Then I look at Lynne. She can see me. She can hear me. More importantly, she has no idea what I am thinking. “Would you like to be partners?” I ask. Her smile returns immediately. “Sure.” So trusting, no suspicion or hesitation. Perfect. Another boy approaches. He has a dark complexion and hair, and an academy name tag much too long to be bothered to be read. “Hey,” he says to Lynne. “Do you need a partner?” He never acknowledges me. His eyes pass through the space I occupy without slowing. Normal. He cannot see me. Lynne points toward me. “I already promised him. Sorry.” The boy follows her finger. His expression changes. He looks behind me. Beside me. Then back at her. “Oh.” I step closer to him. Nothing. His eyes move straight through my face. “Right,” he says carefully. “I’ll find someone else.” He walks away. Lynne watches him go. “I think he thought I was strange.” “He’s the strange one,” I tell her. That makes her laugh. The instructor begins explaining the exercise, but Lynne turns back to me. “So, have you attended the academy long?” Longer than she has been alive. “I'm a super senior.” Her eyes widen. “Really? What path?” “Astronomy." It is not entirely a lie. I attended the lessons. I merely hated them. At the time, I could not understand why anyone cared where distant lights would be a hundred years after we were dead. Now, I understand the value of knowing where a body will stand at a particular moment. Behind Lynne, the instructor warns the students not to release any weight until she has inspected their calculations. Lynne does not hear her. She is still looking at me. “Then you probably already know this exercise,” she says. “I do.” Another lie. “Actually, the beginner stations are outside.” She glances at the hanging brass spheres. “I thought we were using those." “Those are for students who haven’t chosen partners yet.” “Are you sure?” I smile. “Weren’t you listening?” She looks toward the instructor, who is now surrounded by students asking questions. Lynne scratches the side of her head. “I might have missed part of it.” “I know an observation point nearby.” “Outside the academy?” “Only a few streets away. I used it when I was a student.” Her uncertainty remains. For one dangerous moment, I think she will ask the instructor. Then the boy from before looks in our direction. Lynne does not seem to realize that he sees her speaking to only empty air. Her face reddens. “All right,” she says. “Show me.” I lead her out of the gymnasium. She follows just like that. We pass through the western gate and descend toward the harbor district. Lynne talks as we walk. She tells me this is her first year. She tells me she nearly arrived late because she stopped to move a beetle out of the road. She tells me her mother packed too much food because she is convinced the academy does not feed its students properly. She tells me she likes the sea but is frightened of deep water. I listen only enough to respond when she pauses. Everything else passes through me. Ahead, the warehouse district rises beside the harbor. The building is exactly as I remember it. The lower floor once belonged to my father. Men met there to drink, gamble, and settle disputes that could not be discussed openly. After my father died, my uncle took it. He took the men, the money, the business, our family name, everything. The building beside it is under construction. Laborers have been adding an upper floor for weeks. Bricks and bags of powdered cement rest on a wooden platform above the narrow alley separating the two structures. The platform is supported by beams, but a thick rope keeps it level. I have watched the workers. I know which rope carries the tension. I know what will happen when it is severed. More importantly, I know where my uncle will be standing when it happens. Astronomy teaches that heavenly bodies move according to their courses. The sun rises. The moon changes. The stars return to their appointed positions. My uncle has an orbit of his own. Every afternoon, he leaves the eastern door. He takes seven steps into the alley. He lights a cigarette. He stands beneath the construction platform, where the awning shields him from the sun. Always at the first afternoon bell. Always in the same place. For years, I have watched him repeat the motion. A body. A path. A time. All I lacked was force. Until now. I stop beside the ladder fixed to the unfinished building. “The observation point is on the roof.” Lynne looks up. “That’s high.” “There’s a ladder.” “I can see that.” She grips the first rung and begins climbing. I follow beside her, allowing my feet to repeat the movements they remember even though I no longer require the ladder. At the top, Lynne pulls herself over the ledge. The roof is crowded with timber, coils of rope, and discarded tools. She brushes dust from her uniform. “Should we be up here?” “It’s where the old eastern hour line passes.” She looks across the rooftops toward the academy clock tower. A long shadow stretches from it across the district. I point to a faded line of white chalk on the roof. It was left by the builders. She does not know that. “There,” I say. “When the tower’s shadow touches that line, the two positions are in conjunction.” Lynne crouches beside it. “So, we’re measuring the shadow?” “We’re measuring the relationship between the shadow and the suspended body.” I point toward the thick rope tied around a timber post. From where Lynne stands, the edge of the roof blocks her view of the platform below. She can see the rope. She cannot see what it supports. “The builders use that rope as a practice counterweight,” I tell her. “When the hour line is reached, one partner releases it while the other observes the descent.” Her brow furrows. “Wouldn’t the builders be upset?” “It only drops into a lower cradle. They reset it every day.” I speak without pausing. Confidently. As though I am surprised she needs this explained. Lynne looks toward the academy. “The instructor didn’t say anything about leaving the grounds.” “You weren’t listening.” Her cheeks color again. “No, I suppose I wasn’t.” She kneels near the rope. “How do we release it?" “It has to be cut.” “Cut?” “The exercise is called the Falling Star.” I almost smile at the absurdity of the name. “The release has to be immediate, or the observation will be inaccurate.” Lynne touches the rope. It is thick and rough, strained nearly to its limit beneath the platform’s weight. “This seems important.” “It is.” That, at least, is true. She looks over her shoulder at me. “Do you have a knife?” I pat the pockets of clothing I no longer truly wear. “I must have left it behind.” “Oh.” She raises one hand. Light gathers around her fingers. The glow stretches, flattens, and hardens until a small translucent blade rests in her palm. Basic materialization. She is more capable than she looks. “This should work,” she says. Below us, a door opens. My entire being tightens. My uncle steps into the alley. Older now. His hair has thinned, and his stomach strains against the front of his gray suit. Still alive, comfortable, surrounded in a lap of luxury, and everything he stole. He places a cigarette between his lips. One step. Two. Three. I move closer to the edge. Four. Five. My hands begin trembling. Six. Seven. He stops beneath the platform. Exactly where he always does. The academy clock begins to ring. One deep note rolls across the rooftops. My uncle strikes a match. “Now,” I whisper. Lynne looks at the clock tower’s shadow. It has reached the chalk line. “Now!” I shout. She cuts. The rope parts with a violent snap. It whips past her face and tears free from the post. For a single heartbeat, the platform remains suspended. Behind me, Lynne gasps. The wood groans. My uncle looks up. Our eyes meet. He cannot see me. But I see him. I see the moment confusion becomes fear. The supporting beam cracks. The platform tilts. Bricks slide first. Then the bags of cement. Then the entire wooden structure tears away from the building. The crash shakes the rooftop. Dust explodes through the alley. People scream below. Lynne drops the blue knife. It dissolves before touching the roof. “What was that?” I move to the edge. My uncle lies beneath the wreckage. One arm protrudes between shattered bricks. His cigarette burns beside his motionless fingers. Blood creeps across the stones. He does not rise. He will never rise again. Behind me, Lynne stumbles toward the edge. I know what she is seeing. I do not turn around. A laugh escapes me. Small at first. Then another. It rises from somewhere hollow inside me until I can no longer stop it. “I did it.” The laughter breaks. My face twists, and suddenly I am crying. Not only for my father. For the boy kneeling in the rain. For the young man dying beneath his uncle’s smile. For every year I remained while the world continued without me. The hatred that has filled me for so long begins to loosen. Memories of my father’s blood spilling into the road, washing away in the rain. My uncle’s smile as I died. The years spent watching him live inside the world he stole from us. All of it pours out of me. Warmth enters the hollow place inside my chest. I had forgotten warmth. “Papa,” I whisper. For the first time since my death, I can believe he might be waiting. Light gathers around my hands. My fingers disappear into it. Then my arms. The rooftop begins to fade. “What did you make me do?” I turn. Lynne’s face is no longer cheerful. She is staring at me with wide, terrified eyes. For the first time since she saw me, she understands what I am. Not a lonely boy in need of a partner. A vengeful soul filled with hatred. “You helped me,” I say. Her face crumples and she shakes her head as if to say no Below us, men rush into the alley. Someone begins shouting orders. Another calls for a physician, though it is far too late. Lynne shakes her head. “You lied to me.” The light reaches my face. Perhaps I should feel guilty. Perhaps I would have, once. But my uncle is dead. My father might be waiting. And the hatred is finally releasing me. “Thank you.” Those are the last words I speak. Then I am gone. … Lynne stared at the empty space where Vincent had been. She looked down at her hand. The blade was gone, but her fingers still remembered the resistance of the rope, the feeling of the fibers separating. The sudden release of tension and the violent snap which followed Her stomach lurched. She bent forward and nearly vomited. She had cut the rope. She had released the platform. But she had not known what would have actually happened. She forced herself to approach the edge. The alley below was filled with dust. Men in dark suits dragged bricks away from the collapsed platform. Others stood frozen around the body beneath it. A hand protruded from the wreckage. Blood pooled beneath the broken wood. Lynne covered her mouth. A man looked up. Their eyes met. He saw her beside the severed rope. “There!” He pointed toward the roof. “She cut it!” Every face below turned toward her. Lynne stumbled backward. “I didn’t know.” No one could hear her. Even if they could, what would she tell them? A ghost had asked her to do it? A dead boy had claimed it was an astronomy exercise? Vincent was gone. The only person who knew the truth had used her and disappeared. Men began climbing the ladder. Lynne turned and ran. She crossed the rooftop, nearly tripping over scattered timber. Her vision blurred as she reached the far side. Behind her, someone shouted for her to stop. She climbed down the opposite ladder too quickly. Her foot slipped from one of the rungs. For one breathless instant, she hung by both hands above the street. Then she found her footing and continued. The moment her shoes touched the ground, she ran toward the academy. People shouted as she pushed through the harbor crowd. She did not stop. She could still hear the crash. She could still see Vincent laughing through his tears. Most of all, she could still feel the rope separating beneath her blade. She had wanted to help him. She had looked at the pain on his face and believed kindness would be enough. Instead, she had placed herself in the hands of a vengeful manipulative soul. And someone was dead for it.

Chapter 5