“It’s fine,” I say, waving it off. “But maybe she lived on another hall or something. A different floor?”
“That’s what I thought at first, too.”
“When did you start thinking otherwise?”
Sloane sighs, rolling her neck, and I can’t help but dart my eyes over to my closed door again, always aware of the possibility that Lucy might be listening.
“After finals were over, when it was time to move out of Hines and into the house, Nicole and I couldn’t find her,” she says at last. “We were calling her phone, looking in the lobby. Even if she lived on another floor, she should have been there, too, right? Moving out with everyone else?”
“Right,” I say, nodding, remembering the swarm of girls with their campus-owned carts. The metal corners crashing into our ankles; rickety old wheels and neon numbers stuck to the back.
“We finally figured she was at work or something and was going to get her stuff later, but when we pulled up to the house, she was already here unloading shit out of her car. Where did it all come from?” she asks, leaning forward. “If she didn’t move it out of Hines, where was she keeping it?”
I chew on the inside of my cheek, thinking. Remembering that night on the roof; Lucy’s admission that didn’t feel like much at the time suddenly looking different in this strange new light.
“I left right after school, figured I’d just come here and get a job and a cheap apartment.”
“Did you ever ask her about it?”
“Yeah,” Sloane says. “She shrugged me off, said she moved out early because she wanted to avoid the crowds, then acted like I was the crazy one for questioning her about it.”
I think back to my first day in this house, the very moment I met the others. Lucy calling me into the living room and the harsh hostility emanating off Sloane. The way she had been glaring at me, snapping at her.
“Where’d you find her?” she’d asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
“She lived on our hall.”
I still remember the inflection in Sloane’s voice when she responded, incredulous: our hall? I always thought she said it like that because she couldn’t believe I’d lived there, too. Like it was their hall, not mine, that humiliating sting shooting through my chest when I thought about all the days I’d wasted tucked away in my room.
But it wasn’t that; it was never that. Sloane wasn’t doubting that I lived there. She was defying Lucy because she didn’t.
“That’s why you were so upset,” I say now. “The day I moved in.”
“She was gaslighting me,” Sloane says, and our entire conversation outside the shed flares up to the forefront of my mind again. I play it back, scene by scene: Sloane, eyes darting, afraid of being watched. The venom in her voice, like somebody scorned: “She’s a fucking liar.”
“There has to be an explanation,” I say at last, trying to tread lightly. I don’t want Sloane to think I’m brushing her off, siding with Lucy, but at the same time, it doesn’t make sense. “If she didn’t live in Hines, how was she always getting in and out of the building? Wouldn’t you constantly have to be buzzing her in if she didn’t?”
“Nicole’s keycard,” she says. “You’re the one who made me see it.”
I think back to the two of us in Sloane’s bedroom, just after Thanksgiving. Talking about Nicole and how skinny she looked. The way I had demanded we start locking the door even though she could never keep track of her key.
Sloane opening her mouth before closing it again, looking concerned. Fingers working at that seam for so long the thread started to fray.
“She lost it—” I start, but already, Sloane’s shaking her head.
“She didn’t lose it,” she says. “Nicole still swears it was stolen. We just never figured out who took it.”
The thought of it makes my skin crawl: Lucy wandering up to Sloane and Nicole in the courtyard and talking her way inside. Swiping Nicole’s keycard so she could let herself into the dorm as she pleased before drifting down the hall, into the common room. Convincing us all that she belonged.
“Before I left for Christmas, I stopped by the registrar,” Sloane says. “Right before they closed for the holidays. I searched Lucy’s name.”
“You can’t just look at student records,” I say, eyes widening. “You could get expelled—”
“I know,” she says, holding up her hand. “But after realizing she was the one who took Nicole’s key, I had to know why.”
“What did you find?”
“Nothing,” she says. “Every time I searched her name, nothing showed up.”
“What do you mean, nothing showed up?” I ask, though I can see it now: Sloane sneaking to her computer, an empty office just before the holidays. Booting it up, glancing over her shoulder. Confirming she was alone. Pulling up records and typing Lucy’s name; brown eyes widening when it came up blank. “Are you sure you spelled her name right? Sharpe with an e?”
“Yes, I spelled her fucking name right.”
“Okay, sorry. I just don’t understand—”
“What is so hard to understand, Margot?”
I can tell she’s biting her tongue, trying not to scream, those ravaged fingers tugging at her hair as she begs me to just put it together. Figure it out. Her frustration is mounting, leaking out of her eyes, and I brace myself to hear the thing that, deep down, I’ve known was coming all along. All those little moments are bubbling up to the surface now. Moments with Lucy when someone asked about her major and she shrugged them off; when they mentioned never seeing her on campus and she just smirked and walked away. She never studies. Sure, she reads, but they’re books I’ve lent her. She was like that last year, too, jealous girls speculating about all the terrible things she must be doing to get by. She’s always coming and going out of the house like the rest of us, but she works, too. She’s the only one of us with somewhere to be that isn’t on campus, so how do we know she isn’t just grabbing her backpack and taking off to Penny Lanes instead of going to class like the rest of us?
The answer is: we don’t.
“Nothing showed up because there is no Lucy Sharpe enrolled at Rutledge,” Sloane says at last, and I feel the twist of something sharp in my chest: fear, cold and hard, plunging in deep like a knife to the heart. “Lucy Sharpe doesn’t exist.”
CHAPTER 47
AFTER
I walk inside to find Sloane and Nicole in Lucy’s bedroom, tired eyes drinking it in. The place is destroyed: floor to ceiling, wall to wall, drawers thrust open and clothes disheveled. Shoes kicked out of the closet and books splayed out like a bomb went off.
“Did you check under the bed?” I ask, joining them on her unmade mattress. I can still smell her here: vanilla and cigarette. Musky and delicate. Radically both.
“Yeah,” Sloane says. “Her phone’s not there.”
I nod, pulling my legs up under me. “How about in the desk?”
“Gone, too.”
I put my hand on Nicole’s knee, squeezing gently. This is the hardest for her, I know. The performance, the lies. She’s a good person.
“I’m sorry—” she starts, but Sloane shakes her head, cutting her off.
“I already told you, it’s not your fault.”
“What did Frank say to you out there after we left?” Nicole asks me next.
“Nothing,” I say. “Don’t worry about it. You’re doing fine.”
“God, I hate this,” she says, sinking farther into the bed. She lays her head on Lucy’s pillow and I notice a black curl there, long and coiled, resting delicately on top. A little piece of her still stuck to the sham.
I bet, if we looked hard enough, we’d find pieces of her everywhere.
“It’ll be over soon,” Sloane says. “Give it a couple days. They’ll find the stuff on her phone.”
“How long until you think it all comes out?”
They both look at me and I just shrug, attention drifting around the room. I feel a bit dazed, seeing it like this, sort of like taking in the ruins of a place you once loved. Her room the epicenter of the earthquake that shook our lives apart.