“We met at the dining hall,” she offers, even though I didn’t ask.
“I’m sorry,” I blurt out, unable to take it any longer: the tiptoeing, the tension, even though I’m not sure if it’s really there or if it’s just me, projecting and paranoid. I rub my palms against my dress, trying to fight the deep, debilitating urge to keep blinking. “I’m really sorry, Maggie. About, you know—”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she says. “Really, I understand. It’s just good to see you out. Happy.”
“It’s not that I wasn’t happy living with you—” I start, but she waves me off, shaking her head.
“It’s fine,” she says. “You don’t have to explain it. You wanted a different life.”
We stand in silence for a second, the crowd around us humming like a beaten hive: too many bodies, too small of a space. The very air around us chaotic and charged. I can’t help but think about the contrast of this setting from the way she probably remembers me—frozen on the futon, eyes glazed over, nothing but Eliza’s face thumping through my mind like a heartbeat pulsing in an open wound—and I wonder what she’s really thinking right now, seeing me like this.
If she really understands it, if she’s really this kind, or if it’s all an act manufactured to avoid any more tension, any more hurt.
“Well, listen, I should get going—” I start, but before I can finish, I feel a hand on my shoulder, five long fingers curling their way around my neck.
“Oh my gosh, Mary!”
It’s her eyes that get me: the subtle bulge, that flash of pain, not unlike a character in a movie the second they realize they’ve been shot. I watch as Maggie looks back and forth between Lucy and me, disbelief and understanding settling over her at the exact same time.
“Is this—” she starts, looking at me, motioning to her.
“Roommates,” Lucy interrupts, nodding. “We live over there, just next door.”
Maggie swallows, nods, and I’m horrified to find the faintest prickle of tears magnifying her eyes. I’m sure she’s thinking it; I am, too. That day on the lawn. Maggie telling me about the apartment she found and Lucy sunning herself in her bathing suit as we gossiped, imagined, pretended we could possibly know her at all. The disdain in her voice, the skepticism in mine, as I listened to that unusually sharp hiss between her teeth.
“I heard she blinded her boyfriend in high school.”
Somehow, after getting to know her, it feels more believable now.
I watch as Maggie sputters out a good to see you, and then a goodbye, making her way back inside. It’s not lost on me that these two roommates of mine could not be more different—if Lucy is darkness, then Maggie is light; pure, clean, angelic light—and that’s probably what’s hurting her the most right now: the realization that I met Maggie, got to know her, and actively chose the opposite. But the truth is, this has nothing to do with her and everything to do with me. Maggie’s only flaw is that she reminds me too much of me: too mild, too meek. Like Sloane said that day in the yard: “You seem … I don’t know. Too nice.” I had tried that before. I had tried to be the watchful one, the protective one, the one that was always cautious and careful. Like Maggie coddling me in the dorm, always alert for some subtle sign that I was putting myself in danger, I had been that person for Eliza, too. I had been her voice of reason, trying my hardest to keep her safe. I had pushed back against her perilous urges and none of it ever worked.
She just pushed back harder, pushed me away.
So maybe that’s the reason I had to get away from her, this kind, quiet girl who not only reminds me of me, but of all my failures. Of everything I didn’t do.
Maybe that’s why I’m finding myself oscillating toward the opposite, toward Lucy, a swinging pendulum making my way slowly to the other side.
CHAPTER 25
I wait until Maggie is out of sight before Lucy and I join Sloane and Lucas sitting around a makeshift bonfire out back.
“How are you feeling?” Lucy asks, a smirk on her lips. I’m still a little rattled about the encounter, a little on edge, but the chemical concoction coursing its way through my bloodstream is making it impossible to feel too bad.
“Good,” I say at last. “I feel good.”
And that’s the truth, at the heart of it, despite the guilt still tickling for my attention. I do feel good. And it isn’t just the pill, either. Or the alcohol. Or the fact that I finally got in my apology to Maggie, albeit I can’t quite tell if it was actually accepted or if she was just being nice as always. It isn’t even the way every single person in this circle suddenly feels like family to me, the little shed between us a portal to another world. It’s because I’ve just now realized, whether consciously or not, that I haven’t been looking for Levi this entire time. We’ve spent the last two months tiptoeing around each other, attempting to coexist like two plants repotted into too small a container. Our respective roots trying to branch out, bury deep, but instead getting tangled together in the process. It’s almost felt like a competition between us—like one of us needs to wither in order for the other to thrive—but right now, sitting here, I’m not so sure it has to be that way.
“This is some party,” I say, turning to Lucas. He’s reclining in a lawn chair so ratty and worn he’s practically sitting on the ground, a cowboy hat tipped low over his eyes.
“This is nothing,” he responds, staring into the flames. “Just wait until January.”
“What’s in January?”
“Initiation,” Sloane says on his behalf. “The first party where the pledges aren’t pledges anymore.”
I nod, reminiscing on the last few months. The freshmen are required to spend every free second at the house during their first semester. I’m always seeing them coming over in the mornings and in the evenings after class, cleaning the house and running errands. Sacrificing Friday nights to be the upperclassmen’s designated drivers, chauffeuring them around town with no questions asked.
“There’s this little island a few miles off the coast,” Lucas continues. “An older brother found it years ago and it’s become a tradition, throwing it out there. No neighbors, no cops. Our own little slice of paradise.”
“How do you get there?” I ask. “By boat?”
I watch as Lucas tips a beer back to his lips, takes a long swallow before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I’ve learned by now that having access to a boat is the highest form of social currency at a coastal college like Rutledge, little skiffs and dinghies cluttering up students’ lawns. Center consoles and speedboats for the locals who are lucky enough to use their parents’.
“Their last task is to drive everyone out there, set up camp,” Lucas says, nodding. “Once we’re settled, their obligations are over. It’s their first real night of freedom.”
I try to imagine it: hordes of students making their way to the water, bow lights bobbing as we venture out and into the night.
“Doesn’t it get cold in the winter?” I ask.
“We have a fire, heaters for the tents. Liquor blankets,” he adds, grinning. “It gets pretty feral.”
Sloane suddenly perks up, twisting around to face the house.
“Where is Nicole?” she asks for the second time tonight, as if this conversation suddenly sparked her memory. I realize, too, that we still haven’t seen her. Not since this morning.
“She’s wasted,” Lucas says. “She’s been here for, like, eight hours.”
“Should we go find her?” I ask, turning around, too. Waving my hand through the air as the wind picks up, pushing smoke from the bonfire directly toward me.
“Trevor has her. She’s fine.”