“He’s not passed out—”
“Yes, he is,” Trevor says, nudging him harder. The toe of his shoe pushing deeper and deeper as he tries to rouse Levi awake. We’re all still, too afraid to move. To breathe. Just like last night, watching Trevor and Levi fight in the dark. Like if we just stand here, statue-still, we might blend into the trees and disappear.
“Butler!” Trevor yells, kicking his side, and before anyone can even realize what’s happening, he charges toward Levi and grabs his shoulder, rolling him over so he’s flat on his back.
“Trevor, what are you doing?” Nicole screams, lunging forward, but Sloane holds her back before she can get too far. “Don’t touch him! He’s dead.”
I look down at Levi, that word—dead—hovering above us like a storm cloud, blotting out the light. We all knew it, deep down. We all thought it, feared it, but nobody else had been brave enough to actually say it out loud. Now, though, it’s impossible to deny: Levi is dead, and he’s been dead for a while. The entire front of his body is covered in thick brown mud. It’s in his eyelashes, his nostrils, his mouth, his hair.
I have a sudden flash of Eliza again, the way she must have looked splayed out on the ground beneath that old burnt building. Maybe it’s the position of his limbs that suddenly reminds me of her, both of their bodies lifeless and limp like marionettes simply tossed to the side.
“Fuck!” Trevor screams, the sound of it echoing around us, making me jump. I hear a few birds flap in the distance, too startled to stick around, and I’m suddenly so jealous of their ability to just leave.
“We need to call the police,” Sloane says, quiet, before shooting a look at Trevor. “Nobody else touch anything.”
“God, I’m fucked,” Trevor mutters, pacing now, his hands pushed into his hair. “I’m so fucked.”
“Trevor, he’s dead,” Nicole repeats, disbelief in her voice and fresh tears springing up fast in her eyes. “Do you not understand that? He’s dead.”
“I’m the president,” he snaps back, flinging around so he can finally face her. “This happened on my watch. This piece of shit drank too much, couldn’t handle his liquor, and now I might go to jail for it?”
“Nobody’s going to jail,” Lucas whispers, trying to calm him, though his voice sounds anything but certain. “It was an accident.”
“That wasn’t an accident,” Sloane snaps back, her voice suddenly too hard. “You saw his neck.”
We’re all quiet, thinking of those bruises that looked eerily like fingers. Almost as if someone had been holding him down.
“You’re disgusting,” Nicole mutters, her gaze still on Trevor, and we all turn to look at her now, a quiet hatred festering in her eyes. “It’s impossible for you to think about anyone but yourself, isn’t it?”
“Okay, come on,” Sloane says, grabbing Nicole’s arm and ushering her away. “Back to the beach. I’ll get my phone and we can call for help.”
My feet stay planted as I listen to the slow retreat of the others; their ragged breaths and stifled cries now that the initial shock has worn off and everyone has finally realized what’s happened. I vaguely register Sloane calling my name, trying to nudge me along, force me to follow, but I still can’t move. I still can’t speak.
I still can’t peel my eyes from his, from Levi’s, wide open and blinding white against the thick, dark mud covering the rest of his face.
I feel a touch on my arm and jump again, expecting to see Sloane right back beside me—but instead, it’s Lucy, her expression hauntingly calm. I don’t even remember seeing her show up and I look back and forth, trying to decipher how long she’s been here. Where she came from. Thinking about the last full memory I have of last night: her and Levi together in the sand. Lucy’s hand on his thigh and the way Levi had pushed it, standing up with that look of disgust on his face. Her voice in Penny Lanes as she talked about murder with a cool indifference; the two of us in the kitchen, my chattering teeth. Her head cocked and curious as I muttered my confession, that inky black truth.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” she says at last, her voice so low I’m not even sure if it’s real or if I’ve somehow imagined it. Imagined it all. “To finally get what you want.”
CHAPTER 54
The rest of the week is nothing more than a blur: all of us sitting in the sand, eyes wet and red, watching the coast guard appear in the distance. The police crawling the island, spinning cobwebs of yellow caution tape as a bloated man named Detective Frank pulled us to the side, one by one, scribbling notes as we gave our statements.
It was a chaotic scene, frenzied from the start. None of us were able to answer his questions, not really, the details of the night fuzzy and fading. Conflicting accounts of who was where, and when, and why. The mud had swallowed our footprints; the shifting sand made it impossible to retrace anything. The tide the night before had been higher than normal—the full moon tugging at the water like it had tugged at all of us, the gentle pull of gravity like a curling finger daring us to indulge in our own intimate extremes—and as a result, any evidence, murky as it might have been, was washed away as it fell. Destroyed by Trevor flipping over the body; the grime covering Levi’s skin masking any prints, any clues. Any indication, other than those bruises, of how exactly this might have happened. Of what could have gone so horribly wrong.
By the time we made it back to land, I was shivering with shock, a trauma blanket wound around my shoulders despite the fact that I was still sweating. We were brought to the station next, every single one of us, where we were asked to repeat our statements again, and again. And again. Our hair crusted with salt; sand still stuck to the crooks of our arms, the bend of our knees. The hidden spaces tucked between our toes. Clothing damp and the smell of pluff mud permanently stuck to our nostrils so no matter where we went or how far we ran, we were still back there, back on that island. Looking down at Levi as it swallowed him whole.
By Monday, the news was everywhere: freshman Levi Butler died over the weekend at a fraternity-sponsored function. There was alcohol involved, dozens of empty handles collected from the beach and bagged as evidence. Crumpled cans bobbing with the waves and whispers of hazing, everyone remembering the way Trevor had treated him. That scary aura as he puffed his chest out. Officially, the boys swore pledgeship was over and Levi must have just drunk too much before stumbling away and passing out in the trees. That maybe he fell in the mud, his head too leaden and floppy to lift back up. Maybe he was smothered by it, thick and sticky as it lodged in his windpipe. Gagged him to death. Still, Kappa Nu was suspended indefinitely. The boys are still next door for now—most of them don’t have anywhere else to go—but the parties are over and the shed doors stay closed, that pathway between us irrevocably shut. They’re strangely quiet when they do venture out, eyes cast down and tails tucked tight. All of them afraid of attracting unwanted attention in a way that reeks of irony, oddly refreshing—but at the same time, we keep to ourselves now, too, because while the unfolding news is one thing, the rumors are another beast entirely. From the second we stepped off that island, they spread like wildfire set to a parched, hungry place: powerful, uncontrolled, ripping through campus with a speed that was startling.
Each one somehow both outlandish and believable and most of them, as always, revolving around Lucy.
She was with him, after all, splashing him in the water. Sitting next to him by the fire and trying to console him after Trevor humiliated him in front of everyone. Like Nicole had said as the night was just starting: “She’s not exactly subtle, is she?” People noticed the way she touched his leg and how he recoiled, flinging her arm back onto her lap. People noticed how he walked away and she stood up and followed.