“What a perv,” Sloane said, her hand wringing the bottleneck, mindlessly twisting. I watched as Nicole shivered, long fingers pulling my duvet tight around her shoulders. I didn’t tell them about how Eliza had picked it up, though; that curl of a smile as she rolled it slow between her fingers. The way she lifted it higher until her lips grazed the spot where his had been. I didn’t want them to blame her, somehow, but I also couldn’t help but feel a little thrill about the way we had all started to settle in so seamlessly together—though the irony wasn’t lost on me. The fact that Levi Butler was the thing bonding us all together when he was also the one who tore Eliza and me apart.
“Yeah, just stay away from him,” I said, turning toward Lucy next. I expected to find her nodding along, eyebrows bunched in the same cloak of concern, but she seemed more fascinated than frightened, drawn to the danger just like Eliza.
The more I talked, the more I watched, the more I realized how alike they really are.
It was the little things, at first. Things that made me do a double take every time Lucy walked into a room, my mind believing, for a single second, that it was Eliza instead. It doesn’t matter that they look so drastically different: Lucy is dark, dangerous, a blur of black curls and bronzed skin compared to Eliza’s fair hair and freckles. Lucy has blue eyes, Eliza had green, but beneath the surface, they’re so much the same: the way Lucy walks with an acute awareness, swaying the important parts of her in a way that causes heads to turn, throats to clear. The decibel of her voice, loud enough to command attention before dipping into something more intimate in the moments that matter. Making you feel like the only one in the room. But then those things got even sharper, clearer, and I couldn’t tell if they were really there or if I was just imagining them, overlaying Lucy over Eliza like a sheet of tracing paper, my subconscious trying to copy her completely. Every last curve. The little tics that no one else seemed to notice: Lucy tugging twice on a hunk of hair before pushing it behind her ear. Rolling the diamonds of her necklace between her fingers when she was deep in thought or gnawing on a pencil, dreamy and deliberate, leaving little bite marks behind in the wood.
I roll over in the dark now and grab my phone, limbs slippery and duvet damp. The last few weeks have stretched by without incident since that confrontation at Kappa Nu, Levi going back to the Outer Banks and leaving me in a strange state of quiet unease: I’m happy he’s gone, but at the same time, I know he’ll be back. I try to tell myself that maybe he’ll change his mind, go to another school or at least pledge another house. I tell myself that I can handle it, that this time will be different.
I tell myself, but I never believe it.
I tap my phone now and watch as it glows in the dark, eyes squinting as I search for the date. I’m hoping to find it flipped over to tomorrow. Hoping to learn that I’ve slept straight through it, spent the worst hours of my life entirely unconscious. Hoping to feel the relief of a new day flood into my chest, release the unrelenting pressure from my lungs—but of course, it’s still today. Eliza’s death day.
One year since the night it happened. A full rotation since she’s been gone.
They don’t know when she died, exactly, though the coroner estimated it was sometime just before midnight, about two hours from now. I roll back over, eyes trained on the ceiling, a single bead of sweat snaking down my spine and the gentle sound of rain on the window numbing me into oblivion. The storm gave me a plausible excuse to stay in bed—to refuse to turn on the lights, peel myself from the covers—though everyone seems to instinctively understand what today is, why I’ve locked myself in here without explanation. I’ve heard the muffled sound of footsteps as the others approached from down the hall and stopped in front of my door. I’ve felt them hovering, waiting, before giving up and leaving again. I’ve ignored their gentle knocks, their throat clearings, allowing myself this single day to slip back into the person I was last year. This cracked-open shell of a thing I never wanted them to see. If I were a stronger person, I would have gone home for this. I would have spent the day with the Jeffersons, cozy in their living room as we swapped stories about her, laughing and crying and licking our wounds. I would have visited my parents, maybe even the spot where it happened, laying flowers on the ground in memory of her.
Instead, all I can do is lie here, counting the hours until it’s over. Until today turns into tomorrow and I can finally breathe.
I hear another rumble, but this time, it’s not coming from the sky. It’s coming from my stomach, gaping and hollow beneath the covers, and I remember with a sense of curious detachment that I haven’t eaten all day. I sit up and attempt to turn on the light, only when I twist the switch nothing happens, so I fling the covers from my legs before walking across my room and stepping into the hallway, following the familiar hum of voices upstairs.
“There she is,” Lucy says when I step into Sloane’s bedroom. The three of them are sitting on the floor in the dark surrounded by candles, Lucy flicking a lighter so close it looks like the flame is coming straight out of her fingers. “I was about to do a wellness check. Make sure you were still breathing.”
“Sorry,” I say, wincing a bit at her choice of words, though she doesn’t seem to notice. I walk over to join them, eyeing a skillet on the floor before glancing up. There’s a steady drip of rainwater erupting from a damp spot in the ceiling, each drop landing on the cast iron with a rhythmic plink. “Is the power out?”
“Has been all day,” Sloane says, a sheen of sweat across her upper lip.
“Next door, too?” I ask, sitting down, wondering why they aren’t over there. They’re always over there, all four of us are, especially on gloomy days like today.
“No, but Nicole and Trevor are fighting.”
“When are they not fighting?” Lucy adds, and I can see Nicole’s jaw clench in the dark.
“I told you you could go without me,” she cuts in, but Sloane just leans over and nudges her shoulder, smiling, before turning back toward me.
“We didn’t want to go anywhere without you,” she says. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” I say, a little bubble of warmth blooming in my chest.
“We could go to Penny Lanes,” Lucy suggests, her eyes still trained on the flame.
I had learned about Lucy’s job earlier in the summer and something about it caught me off guard. Admittedly, Nicole and I don’t have to work. Our parents provide our rent and tuition, and while Sloane spends most afternoons doing admin for the registrar, Lucy devotes four nights a week to a hybrid bar and bowling alley downtown. It seemed so strange the first time she told me; I couldn’t picture her gliding around in retro roller skates with plastic cups of beer balanced on a tray, her skin slick with French fry grease as she cleaned up other people’s messes. Sneaking into the walk-in freezer, maybe, dragging her finger around the rim of a Jell-O shot before popping it into her mouth. From the outside, it always looked like the world was just given to Lucy—like she was owed it all for simply existing—so the mere suggestion that she had to actually work for something like everybody else was a contradiction so jarring it left me unmoored.
“It’s ten o’clock on a Sunday,” I say at last, looking around for confirmation before remembering all the clocks have stopped. Nobody answers, the room silent other than another crack of lightning followed by a low, slow rumble. “Isn’t it closed?”
Sloane smirks and I watch as the three of them exchange glances, something unsaid traveling between them, before Lucy leans over and purses her lips, a stream of breath extinguishing the last of the light between us.
CHAPTER 16
We sprint the four blocks to Penny Lanes, our feet damp and dirty by the time our sandals slap against the puddles in the parking lot. It’s only drizzling now, but my skin is still clammy beneath my raincoat, my hair wiry from moisture. The outside air musky and vegetal, smelling of wet grass and churned-up dirt, and I inhale it slowly, a welcome change from the stuffiness of my bedroom.