My mother leaves my dad to the dishes once we’re finished and the two of us walk to my bedroom together, like she’s positive I must have forgotten the way. I open the door to find they’ve left it virtually untouched, the entire space like a time capsule preserving the person I used to be.
“You know, you can donate this stuff,” I say as I flip on the lights, scanning it all. The stuffed animals I used to sleep with are still propped on my bed like they’ve been waiting for me this entire time, disappointment stamped across their fuzzy faces at how long I’ve stayed away. The clothes I didn’t take to college are still hanging in my closet, by now outdated and most likely too small, and there’s even a picture of Eliza and me tacked to the wall: that one in our graduation caps, stiff smiles in the auditorium, the edges curling in on themselves like a ribbon of shaved wood. “I don’t need it anymore.”
“I would never,” she says, crossing her arms in the doorframe.
“You could make better use out of this room, too,” I say, taking in the faint lines of the vacuum on the carpet, the chemical smell of Windex on the windows. Imagining my mom coming in here, week after week, cleaning it for nobody. “Turn it into an office or something.”
“Why are you so eager to move on from us, Margot?”
I turn to face her, the comment taking me by surprise. I never really thought my mom registered the way I’m always shrugging her off, pushing her back, letting her adulation slip away like salt water on sunscreened skin. I never considered myself worthy of such praise—I know I am, and always have been, painfully average—so I always assumed she was doing it for her own benefit: inflating all my attributes, reciting them in the mirror like an affirmation, a prayer. Like if she said it often enough, I might actually become the daughter she always wanted me to be.
“I’m not,” I say, cheeks burning.
“You are. You never come home. We missed you on Thanksgiving.”
“I’m busy at school—”
“You’re avoiding us.”
My mother gestures vaguely around the room and I know what she’s saying, the silent insinuation: that I’m not only avoiding them, but this. Her. Eliza and the memories of the two of us here, in this very room: faded pencil lines etched onto the trim, marking our growth spurts. The pictures we ripped out of magazines and taped to the wall. There are reminders of her everywhere, and I drop my bags on the floor and sit on the bed.
If only she knew the reminders were even stronger at school: between Lucy and Levi, Eliza is everywhere now. There’s nowhere safe.
“You should go see them,” my mom says, walking over to sit next to me. “I bet they’d love it.”
“Yeah,” I say, although the thought of visiting the Jeffersons is almost too much to bear.
“They’re bulldozing it, you know. Where it happened.”
I look at my mother, eyebrows lifting. Just like I’ve been avoiding home, I’ve been avoiding the thought of that place, too. Like a pothole in the road, a puddle in my path, my mind skirting around it if only to make myself more comfortable. I saw it on the news in the days immediately after, of course, that old, abandoned building with caution tape stretched tight across the ash-black entryways. Little red flags stuck in the grass, plastic flapping in the breeze.
“When?” I ask.
“Three weeks.”
“That’s good.”
“It is good,” she says. “They should have done it a long time ago. It’s completely unsafe, not to mention an eyesore.”
I nod, my mind on those videos again. On Eliza stumbling her way up the steps, one by one, the empty beach roaring beneath her and the glow of the moon high up above. That’s why they had been there: the moon. What a strange, stupid stroke of bad luck. If it wasn’t full that night, the party wouldn’t have happened. If it wasn’t so clear and cloudless, she wouldn’t have gone.
If she hadn’t been there with Levi, of all people, howling at it like a lonely wolf trying to find her pack, she wouldn’t have gotten so sloppy, so drunk.
She wouldn’t have fallen. She wouldn’t have died.
CHAPTER 39
It takes a few hours for me to finally fall asleep, my childhood bed feeling more foreign than my room back at Rutledge. Nestled between bursts of deep dreams that always startle me back awake—scared and sweaty, eyes darting madly around the room like my own body can’t remember where I am—I come to realize that my mother is right. She’s right about all of it.
The reason I haven’t been back is that I’m avoiding them, her. Here. The last conversation that took place in this very room.
I knew it the second Eliza started seeing him again. It was like an intuition, barely there, my eyes picking up on the subtle way she would smile when her phone chimed at night or how she’d started getting dressed up again any time we ventured out onto the dock. She had kept her distance for a while, the breakin spooking her just enough, but it didn’t last long, the pull of his attention stronger than anything I could say to convince her to stay away. And I’ll admit it: I liked the fact that I had been right. All along, I had been right about Levi. I had been right to be wary of him and it was always so tempting to remind her of that, the ever-present urge to pick at the crust of a scab before it could fully heal. I don’t know why I did it. I was boasting, I guess, reminding her in my own little way that I was useful, necessary.
I had seen something she hadn’t—but Eliza, she hated it. She resented me for picking up on what she didn’t.
“How can you just forget about him breaking into your house?” I asked one night, hands on my hips, the anger surging out of me as she tapped away at her phone. Even though graduation was approaching, only a handful of days left before we were set to walk across the stage, I had to ask her about it. I had to know. I knew it would only be temporary—only one more summer spent with Levi lingering and then we would both, finally, be free—but I couldn’t handle the thought of her keeping something from me, something secret. Something as big as this. “Eliza, that is such a violation. We should have called the cops.”
I realized, too late, that I was mirroring the way my mother sometimes stood when she was berating me about a mediocre test score, her judgment like a physical thing between us, sucking the very air out of the room. Even my tone was the same, harsh and grating, so I dropped my hands to my sides, suddenly unsure where to put them.
She looked up at me, a beat of silence before she dropped her phone onto my bed.
“He said he didn’t do it.”
“What do you mean—” I started, then stopped, my eyes growing wide as understanding dawned. “You asked him about it?”
“Yes,” she said. “I asked if he came into the house while we were gone.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said he would never do that. That there had to be some other explanation.”
“Well, yeah, of course he’s gonna deny it—”
“I could have misplaced the picture, Margot. Maybe my mom took it to use in the yearbook or something. We never even told my parents it was missing.”
“That’s stupid,” I said. “You didn’t misplace it.”
“Levi also suggested that maybe you took it.”
I stared at her, a wave of disbelief washing over me, trying to process what she just said.
“What?” I asked, although I heard her fine. I just wanted her to repeat it. I wanted to give her a second to reconsider what she just said; the opportunity to apologize, take it back. “He said that?”
“He suggested it.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said it made sense.”
I blinked—two, three times—a substantial silence settling over us. It had been almost an entire year of Levi trying to weasel his way between us, break us apart like a splinter in dried wood, but that was the very first time he had been so deliberate about it. Like instead of just sitting back and waiting for the crack to travel, growing slowly, naturally, until the fissure was complete, he decided to take a sledgehammer to it. Smashing us to smithereens.
“You’ve done it before,” she said, averting her eyes, like she was suddenly embarrassed for me.
“What do you mean?”