She was seven the first time she thought about dying.
Not in a scary way. Not the way she was thinking about it now, lying on the cold ground of a half collapsed stone structure in the dark with two of her friends already gone and the forest outside doing whatever the forest was doing. At seven it was just a thing you thought about the same way you thought about what you wanted for Christmas or whether dogs could understand full sentences. Curious. Abstract. Completely disconnected from anything real.
It was Addison's birthday. The seventh one. The party was in the Parkers' back garden on a Saturday in late June and the kind of weather that only exists in memory — the specific gold of a childhood summer afternoon, warm enough for bare arms, a paddling pool on the grass that nobody was using anymore because they'd moved past the paddling pool stage approximately three weeks ago but Nicole Parker had put it out anyway and none of them had the heart to tell her.
There were balloons. Pink and yellow, tied to the fence, moving slightly in the warm air. A table with a plastic cloth and paper plates and more food than seven people could reasonably eat. Kris Derby was standing near the back door with a glass of something cold talking to Hannah Smith and Britney Hayes and Nicole, the four of them doing the thing adults did at children's parties which was stand together and talk about adult things while occasionally looking over at the children to confirm they were still alive.
The children were alive. Very much so.
Indigo remembered the dress she'd been wearing. Yellow, her favourite colour then before it became purple before it became the deep blue that matched her name. White sandals that had already been scuffed by eleven in the morning. Her hair in two plaits that her mum had done at the kitchen table that morning while Indigo ate toast, the two of them in the quiet of the house before the day started properly.
She remembered that specifically. The kitchen, the toast, her mum's hands doing the plaits, the radio on low.
She remembered it now because she hadn't thought about it once in the ten years since it happened and now lying in the dark at three in the morning she couldn't stop.
Addison had gotten a bike.
Pink, with white handlebar grips and a basket on the front and a bell that she rang approximately forty times in the first five minutes. She'd ridden it up and down the garden path in tight loops while the adults clapped and her face did something Indigo had rarely seen it do in the years that followed — completely open. Just happy. No calculations, no quiet distance. Just a seven year old on a pink bike ringing the bell because she had a pink bike and a bell and it was her birthday and the world was good.
Elizabeth had tried to ride it immediately and nearly gone through the fence and Addison had laughed so hard she'd had to sit down on the grass.
That was the thing about Elizabeth at seven. She was exactly the same as Elizabeth at seventeen except smaller and with less vocabulary for the things she was feeling. The same deadpan delivery. The same absolute commitment to whatever she was doing. The same way of laughing that started silent and then became everything.
Indigo pressed her eyes closed.
Not yet. She let the memory run.
They were sitting under the big tree at the bottom of the garden when it came up. The four of them in a loose circle on the grass, plates balanced on their knees, the adults a comfortable distance away and not paying attention. Anastasia was eating methodically, working through her plate with the focused efficiency she applied to most things. Elizabeth had already finished and was lying on her back looking up through the branches. Addison was pulling grass up in small handfuls for no particular reason. Indigo was watching a beetle make its way across the toe of her sandal and wondering if it knew she was there.
She couldn't remember now who said it first. She thought it might have been Elizabeth, because most things that came out of nowhere came from Elizabeth, but it might have been Addison or even herself. It arrived in the conversation the way things do at seven, with no preamble and no awareness that it was an unusual thing to say.
"I'm going to live to be a hundred and three," Elizabeth said, to the tree branches above her.
"That's really old," Anastasia said.
"I know. I want to be really old."
"I want to be a hundred and one," Addison said. "Because that's one hundred and one dalmatians."
Nobody questioned the logic of this.
"I want to be a hundred," Indigo said. "Because it's a round number."
They sat with that for a moment. The beetle reached the end of her sandal and dropped into the grass and disappeared.
"What if you only live to like thirty though," Elizabeth said. Still looking at the branches. Completely casual. Like she was suggesting an alternative flavour of cake.
"Thirty's still pretty old," Anastasia said.
"Not really. Mrs Patterson is thirty and she seems normal."
"What if you only live to seventeen," Addison said.
"That's our age basically," Indigo said.
"Not yet."
"Nearly."
Addison pulled another handful of grass. "My nan says you don't get to choose."
"My mum says you do," Anastasia said. "She says you make choices that affect how long you live."
"Like what."
"Like eating vegetables."
Elizabeth sat up. "I don't eat vegetables and I'm going to live to a hundred and three."
"You eat corn."
"Corn isn't a vegetable it's a grain."
"It's a vegetable."
"It grows on a stalk."
"So does broccoli."
They considered this.
"I don't want to think about how," Indigo said. "I just want it to be when I'm ready. Like I want to decide when I'm ready and then just — go."
"Where do you go," Addison asked.
"I don't know. Somewhere."
"My grandad went somewhere," Elizabeth said. Her voice didn't change much when she said it. Just got slightly quieter. "Mum says he's still around just in a different way."
"Like a ghost?"
"Not like a ghost. Just — around. Like when the wind moves something."
They were all quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that settles over children when they accidentally brush up against something true and large and don't have the tools for it yet.
Then Anastasia said "I think I'd want to go in my sleep" with the same tone she used to discuss what she wanted for lunch and the moment passed.
"Girls." Nicole Parker's voice from across the garden. She was looking over at them with the expression adults got when they'd caught the edge of a conversation they weren't sure they wanted the rest of. "What are you all talking about?"
"Dying," Elizabeth said.
The four adults looked at each other.
"Come have some cake," Kris Derby said, with the specific brightness of a parent redirecting a situation. "The candles are about to go."
They sang happy birthday around the table and Addison closed her eyes before she blew the candles out, wishing hard, her face scrunched up with the effort of it. Seven candles and one for luck, all of them out in a single breath. Everyone clapped.
"What did you wish for," Nico asked. He was there too — had always been there, even then, trailing after them with the easy confidence of a boy who'd decided these girls were his people and that was that.
"Can't tell," Addison said. "Or it won't come true."
"Nothing comes true anyway," Elizabeth said, cutting into her slice of cake with the side of her fork.
"Elizabeth," Britney Hayes said.
"What? I'm just saying statistically—"
"Eat your cake."
Elizabeth ate her cake.
Indigo remembered the end of the afternoon most clearly. The light going golden the way it did in late June when the day had been long and warm and was finally admitting it was over. The adults clearing up around them. Balloons being untied from the fence, paper plates going in the bin. Addison still on her bike in the last of the light, slower now, just rolling up and down the path, the bell occasionally ringing for no reason.
Her mum had come and sat beside her on the garden wall while they waited for her dad to pull the car round. Kris Derby. Still young then in the way parents seem young when you're young yourself — not old, not fully formed, just mum. She'd put her arm around Indigo's shoulders and Indigo had leaned in without thinking about it.
"Did you have a good day?" her mum asked.
"Yes."
"Good." She kissed the top of her head. "My Indigo."
Indigo had pulled a face. "Mum."
"Sorry. My extremely cool and normal child whose name is definitely not a colour."
"It is a colour."
"It's a shade. Very different." She squeezed her shoulder. "You know why I named you that?"
Indigo had heard this before. She let her mum tell it again anyway.
"Because indigo is the colour right at the edge of what the eye can see. Right at the edge of the visible spectrum. One step further and it becomes something else entirely — something the human eye can't even process." She paused. "I always thought that was a good thing to be named after. Something right at the edge of remarkable."
Indigo hadn't known what to say to that at seven. She still didn't really.
Across the garden Elizabeth was trying to get back on Addison's bike and Addison was trying to stop her and both of them were laughing and the light was gold and everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.
Present.
The stone structure. The dark. The cold ground under her back and the open sky above the collapsed corner and Jett's breathing slow and even beside her.
Anastasia was asleep on the other side of the shed, jacket pulled up over her shoulders. Addison was against the far wall, still, face slack, somewhere else entirely.
Indigo lay there and let the memory finish draining out of her and felt the weight of what was left behind when it was gone.
She thought about the garden. The gold light. The balloons on the fence.
She thought about Elizabeth sitting up in the grass saying thirty's still pretty old with absolute certainty, completely unaware, completely alive, the whole long length of her life still ahead of her like a road she hadn't started walking yet.
She thought about seven candles and one for luck.
She thought about Addison closing her eyes and wishing.
Outside the forest was quiet. Somewhere far off something moved through the undergrowth and then stopped. The darkness pressed in from every direction and held its shape and said nothing.
Indigo stared at the ceiling that wasn't there and breathed.
In.
Out.
Elizabeth was going to live to a hundred and three.
She'd said so herself.