Nobody saw him after that. Nobody saw him return.
“I picked up a shift tonight.”
I snap my neck up, unsure of how long I’ve been sitting, staring, sinking into my mattress even though it’s two o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Rutledge canceled class for the week, sent out emails encouraging students to sign up for free counseling, but as a result, every second since I stumbled across Levi has been spent in this house, what once felt like my sanctuary now more like a cell.
“I have to get out of here,” Lucy says when I don’t answer, clearly feeling the same. “I think I’m going crazy.”
I blink a few times, registering her in my doorway with the Penny Lanes logo pulled tight across her chest. Our conversations have been so surface-level lately, so stilted, a heavy silence settling over the four of us every time we find ourselves together, thick and impenetrable as we chew it over. The comfortable quiet we once had now accusatory and cruel as we wonder which rumors could be real, which could be fiction.
As we quietly develop theories of our own.
“Come by at close?” she offers, and I try to smile, even though it feels more like a snarl. “Margaritas on me?”
“Not tonight,” I say, registering the subtle hurt in her eyes. “Sorry.”
“Why not?”
She cocks her head, that same look of innocent interest I now know is anything but. It reminds me vaguely of a limping animal; something feigning weakness just to draw you close before whipping around and eating you alive.
“I’m just not up for it,” I say at last. “With, you know, everything.”
“Ah, yes,” Lucy says, crossing her arms. “Everything.”
“Rain check?” I ask, sitting up straighter and suddenly uneasy about the way she’s standing in the doorway, blocking my exit. Her eyes are drilling into mine like she’s trying to extract something from me, some buried truth I don’t want to give up, and I catch that little quiver in her lip like there’s something else she desperately wants to ask.
“Sure,” she says instead, though she’s still lingering there, drumming her fingers against the wall. She nods gently, finally, and turns to leave before suddenly twirling back around like whatever’s on her mind is still struggling to break free.
“You know, Margot, this is a difficult time for all of us.”
She’s choosing her words slowly, carefully, her mind soldering the sentence together before she reveals her thoughts to me.
“I know how you felt about Levi,” she adds.
I bunch my forehead, unsure of what she’s getting at. I hated Levi. She knows that more than anybody. There’s a temptation, once people are gone, to sugarcoat their qualities, inflate their attributes, all the other girls I used to see next door crying to their classmates about how he was such a nice guy—but not me, not Lucy. I literally told her I wanted him dead and I feel a rock lodge in my throat as it dawns on me, finally:
That’s her whole point.
“We should be sticking together, you know?”
She rests her head on the doorframe, reminding me of all the times she’s done the same thing to my shoulder, nuzzling her nose deep into my neck. The two of us on the couch, burrowing close in my bed.
“Yeah,” I say slowly. “I guess you’re right.”
“Okay, good,” she says, the darkness that settled over her expression before evaporating completely, flashing a smile that makes my blood freeze. “Because now really isn’t the time to turn away from your friends.”
CHAPTER 55
I wait for the slam of the front door before I spring out of bed, run to the living room, and peer out the window, watching as Lucy makes her way down the sidewalk.
I’m no stranger to her cryptic sayings. I’ve known from the beginning that this is who Lucy is, what she does. Like Sloane had said that morning in bed: she likes to play games. She’s drawn to the reaction, the risk, a kid with a magnifying glass angled just right. But this is the first time I’ve found myself directly on the other side of it. The first time I’ve felt the heat of her scrutiny creep across my skin, her gigantic smile amplified on the other end. The first time I’ve looked into her blue eyes not with comfort or curiosity but genuine fear, bulging wide as she watched me squirm.
I think about that last comment, her final line. There was a double meaning to it that I don’t like, an insinuation I can’t ignore. Was she trying to comfort me, a metaphorical hand squeeze as she sensed me backing away, retreating into myself the way I did on Eliza’s death day? The same as a gentle knock, a cleared throat, another invitation to Penny Lanes in an attempt to pull me back out?
Or was she trying to warn me, threaten me, somehow remind me that whatever happened that night on the island is something the two of us are in on together?
I watch as Lucy rounds the corner before I make my way to her bedroom, tentatively placing my hand on the knob. Of course, I’ve been inside her room before. I’ve fallen asleep on her bed, inhaled the essence of vanilla and smoke permanently pressed into her pillow. I’ve flipped through the hangers in her closet, tried on her clothes. Smeared her blush across my cheeks and grimaced in her mirror when the reflection staring back was still indisputably me. This house belongs to all of us now, every single corner of it sacred and shared, but with that kind of belonging comes an intrinsic understanding. An unspoken rule all roommates abide by—the good ones, at least.
I’ve never been inside without her permission.
That doesn’t mean I’ve never felt the urge. Like that night on the roof when I poked my head in, I could have done it so many times: a clandestine binge, secret and shameful, like sneaking into the pantry and gorging myself sick. She keeps her door closed but she never locks it. She’s at Penny Lanes for hours at a time. I’ve always wondered what kind of things I could learn about her by simply looking, observing, no different than flipping through Eliza’s planner or digging around in her dresser.
I could have done it, but I never did.
I suppose I wanted to see if I really could be different. If I could turn into someone who wasn’t probing or jealous but comfortably confident with the way things were. Someone who didn’t care so much about another person that I was willing to push away my morals, my pride, just to catch a glimpse of the things they wanted to keep secret.
Now, though, going through Lucy’s stuff doesn’t feel nosy. It feels necessary.
I hold my breath as I twist the knob, taking a quiet step inside. Immediately, I catch the familiar whiff of her, the whirring fan in the corner churning up all those conflicting smells. Sloane and Nicole are just upstairs and I think about shooting off a text, asking Sloane to keep watch, but at the same time, so many of the things I’ve come to learn about Lucy are things I’d like to keep secret for now. Things I want to understand myself first.
I start with her vanity, dragging my fingers across various bottles of makeup and hair products; foundation smudged on the chipped white wood and red streaks on the mirror, little doodles in lipstick. Her purse is resting on her bed, already opened like she flung it down in a hurry, and I wonder why she didn’t take it with her—but at the same time, Lucy carries more than one bag. Sometimes she has a backpack, another reason I always assumed she was a student. Sometimes a clutch, like when we go out. She could have grabbed a different one on her way out the door, so I start digging around, pulling out clumps of wrinkled receipts, a pack of Altoids. Lip balm, sunglasses, and finally, an ID. This is definitely a going-out bag, then, because the driver’s license I’m holding has to be a fake. I’ve seen her flash it at bouncers and bartenders; grocery store clerks while grabbing bottles of wine. I’ve marveled at how convincing it is, the birth year listed making her twenty-three years old … but then I see the address, that familiar town name.