“No,” he says. “But people blamed her for it.”
“How could people blame her if she wasn’t there?”
“They were at a party the night he died and got in an argument. A bad one. People saw her slap him before taking off and he tried to chase after her. Got behind the wheel after he’d been drinking and ran into a ditch.”
“That’s not—” I start, my mouth hanging open when I can’t find the words. Imagining Lucy’s sad smile at the dinner table; the way she averted her eyes, like she was ashamed. “People can’t blame her for that,” I say at last. “That’s not her fault.”
“You know how rumors start,” he says. “First, she provoked him, then she slapped him. Then the slap turned into her actually mauling the guy, scratching his eyes so it messed with his vision. Then people started speculating that she fucked with his car so the brakes wouldn’t work. All kinds of stupid stuff.”
I think back to freshman year, Maggie and me on that lawn. The stories about Lucy that were swirling around, ever-present, practically invisible like dandelion seeds getting swept up in the breeze. But all you really need is one to settle in your mind and plant itself there, growing slowly until it takes over everything.
All you need is one person to believe it until the others do, too.
“Sometimes people can’t accept the randomness of it,” Danny continues, with a gentle shrug, like this isn’t the first time he’s thought about death. “Sometimes, people just die.”
“Yeah,” I say, remembering that night with Mr. Jefferson on the porch. After the funeral, his brown-liquor breath, both of us dropping crumbs of doubt as we glanced at one another, silently hoping the other would follow. Both of us looking to ease our own guilt, for someone else to pin it on. Some stupid reason to make it make sense.
“You know, you’re the second person today to ask me about Lucy,” Danny says, turning to look at me like the thought just occurred to him. “I had forgotten the girl even existed until three months ago and now she’s all I talk about.”
My head jerks back in his direction, another bomb I wasn’t expecting.
“Who else was asking?”
“Levi,” he says. “Just before we left the house.”
I can feel it again: that pinch of envy, of greed, even though I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how I can still feel this protectiveness over her after everything she’s lied about. How I can still find myself wanting to step between them like I did with Eliza, every little stolen look feeling like a personal betrayal? A knife to the back?
“Did he say why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Danny laughs, jerking his head back to the fire. “Look at them.”
I twist back around, squinting in the dark, the two bodies I assume to be theirs huddled so close they’ve melted into one inky black spot and I wonder, for the very first time, if I need to just swallow my pride and talk to Levi next. Ask him outright the things I’ve been thinking; see if there’s something more that he knows.
“Anyway,” Danny says, standing up from the driftwood like he’s suddenly decided he’s had enough. “You’re a good friend for worrying about her, but there’s no need. Lucy can hold her own.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I say, standing up, too. Trying to mask the disappointment I feel in leaving our talk with more questions than answers. “I’m sorry for bothering you.”
“You’re not a bother,” he says. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t blame her for leaving. Fairfield’s too small a town to shrug off rumors like that.”
“Fairfield,” I repeat, the familiar name pulsing through my mind like a budding headache as I try to place it. “Fairfield, North Carolina?”
“Yeah, you know it?” he asks, a surprised smile like this is the most interesting thing to come out of our conversation. “That’s our hometown.”
CHAPTER 51
I feel my fingers trailing their way across Eliza’s clothes, folded tight and undisturbed. That worn envelope stuffed in the back and my hands sensing the bulk of it, notably out of place.
Pulling it out, opening the flap. All that money stuffed inside and an address on the back I didn’t recognize. The picture of it on my phone I had forgotten all about ever since Lucy showed up, commandeering my attention.
“Where have you been?” she asks me now, plopping down in the sand beside us. Sloane, Nicole, and I are sitting cross-legged, side by side, observing everyone else’s slow descent into madness. The party is still going, still raging like the fire around which we’re gathered, though the crowd is beginning to dwindle now, people starting to stagger into their tents. Exploring the island, maybe. Couples sneaking off and into the trees.
“I had to pee,” I say, turning to face her. Her cheeks are flushed and pink from the fire and I see that envelope again, so clear in my mind.
Fairfield, North Carolina.
I watch as she turns in the direction of the foliage behind us, a cluster of untamed shrubs and long, sharp grass. Swaying cattails and barren trunks with branches like brittle bones stripped of their skin. I wonder if she really did see Danny and me walk off in the opposite direction together. I wonder if she knows, on some subconscious level, how close her secrets are to suddenly slipping away. If she knows that I’m lying.
“I got lost,” I add, grabbing the bottle of wine beside me and tipping it back, swallowing too much. For the heat, the courage. The numbness I know it’ll soon provide. I can already feel the whiskey from before filling my limbs up slowly, pushing down on my eyes so they feel heavy and hard. “It’s dark out there, away from everything.”
I look at Sloane, nursing her beer, a tension in her jaw that calcified the second Lucy showed up. Nicole right next to her, cheekbones angular and harsh in the shadow of the flames. She looks sunken-in, hollow, like someone jabbed her with a needle and she’s been deflating slowly, losing her shape, and there’s something so desolate about it. About all of us, really. Sitting here, side by side, trying to pretend that everything is fine.
Trying to convince ourselves that nothing has changed when really, everything has.
“Huh.”
She says it in a tone that’s painfully unconvincing and the entire thing reminds me of Eliza and me in those final few days. Of graduation, bumping into each other outside the auditorium, our parents pushing us together without even registering the stiffness in our arms or the lies in our smiles. That picture still tacked to the wall in my bedroom, framed on my mantel, the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. In that moment, we knew something big had fractured between us, something possibly even permanent. We knew, after that argument, that we would never be whole again—but still, we tried. We tried to look happy, normal, Eliza’s fingers hovering behind my back like she couldn’t stand the thought of touching me. Her mom counting down, camera in hand, and the sigh of relief that escaped from her lips as soon as the flash went off and we could peel ourselves apart. We hadn’t spoken a word since that fight in my bedroom. It was the longest we had ever gone without talking, an entire decade of friendship whittled down to nothing but stone-cold silence, but neither of us wanted to be the first to crack so instead we let it grow between us like a tumor, getting bigger, denser. As if ignoring it completely would make it go away on its own.
“Oh shit,” Sloane mutters and I look up now, tracking her gaze, watching as Trevor trips in the sand. He goes down hard, dangerously close to the fire, limbs like rubber as his legs splay out in two opposite directions.
“I’m fine,” he slurs, waving off Lucas as he tries to pull him up. He’s still clutching that stupid bottle, fingers wound tight around the plastic neck, refusing to let go even to break his fall. Everyone glances over as he struggles to find his footing and I look over to Nicole next, wondering if she’s going to help him. Silently hoping she won’t.