“Margot, what the hell?” she asks, her eyes flicking back and forth between my face and her room. Her keys are stuffed in my back pocket and I try to angle my body away from her, attempting to hide them. “What were you doing in my room?”
“Just grabbing my book,” I say, holding up Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s pure dumb luck that I spotted it sitting there, right on top, so easily within my reach. “I need it for another class this semester. I wanted to get it before I forgot.”
“And the door?” she asks, gesturing back to it.
“I lock it sometimes,” I say, sagging my shoulders, acting ashamed. “I told you I don’t like leaving it open. I didn’t think you’d be back for a while.”
I stare at Lucy’s expression, maddeningly neutral like a lenticular image, her very essence changing depending on which way I look at it. It’s amazing how quickly she can morph in my mind from beautiful to menacing to something else entirely, the tiniest twitch of the eye or suggestive smile threatening to reveal something I’ve never seen in her before.
“Okay,” she says at last, posture loosening, though she doesn’t sound convinced. “Yeah, okay.”
She walks past me and into her bedroom, my breath held as she disappears inside. Quietly, I walk over to the wall hook and replace her keys, biting my cheek. Waiting for her to notice something out of place and come storming back out, demanding the truth. Instead, she reappears calmly with the bag slung over her shoulder and I wonder, for a single second, if this was another test. If she left her purse on purpose, maybe. If she somehow knew I would do exactly this.
“I’ll be taking these,” she adds, elbowing me as she walks past. I watch as she grabs her keys from the hook on the wall and shakes them in front of me, dangling like a carrot. “In case you decide to lock me out again.”
She walks back onto the porch and closes the door before I can respond, my head spinning as she skips down the steps. Then, once she’s gone again, I walk into my bedroom and toss the book on my bed before opening my laptop and beginning to type.
CHAPTER 58
According to Google Maps, Fairfield, North Carolina, is a two-hour drive from my house in the Outer Banks. It has a population of 226 and I can’t help but think about what Lucy told me that night on the roof, how she would go entire years without meeting a new person.
She wasn’t lying about that, at least. Fairfield is small, claustrophobically so, her entire town easily fitting into Kappa Nu during a particularly large party.
I grab my phone and navigate to the picture of Lucy’s ID again, zooming in first on her face. I look next at the book on my bed, little dots of sweat smeared from my fingers. The illustration on the cover showing the face of one person with two entirely different auras: good and evil, foreign and familiar. Some murky combination of right and wrong. I wonder, for the very first time, if the Lucy I’ve come to know is simply a mirage like this, an optical illusion. My own subconscious snapping its fingers and creating the very thing it thought I needed. If I merely imagined all her similarities to Eliza, those subtle little signs that they were the same, because, deep down, that’s what I wanted: another shot, a second chance.
Eliza reincarnated, the sudden and startling appearance of Lucy in my life allowing me to simply forget what happened and replace her entirely.
I zoom out of the picture so I can see her address again, typing it in and watching it load. The screen zeroes in on a little red pin plotted firmly in the middle of nowhere and I switch to satellite view, a single house materializing amid what seems to be acres of untouched land. I take in the algae-green roof, the dirty white siding. The haphazard shutters and rusted red pickup parked in the grass. I can’t help but feel a sting of something in my chest when I see it all, something I can’t quite name, because right now, taking in this house I can only assume to be Lucy’s, it’s impossible not to think about the ways we grew up, so glaringly different: me in my waterfront mansion with wraparound porches, oyster tabby driveway, and luxury cars. The nearby beaches and long, winding docks that we used to run down barefoot, so untethered and free.
I switch out of Google Maps and navigate to the county website next, over to the tax department, and finally, property records. Then I type in her address again, fingers drumming against the keys while it loads. I’ve always wondered why tax records are made public like this—why any curious stranger should be able to simply search an address and learn everything there is to know about its owner—but right now, I’m just grateful for the opportunity to finally find some answers. After a few seconds, a single link pops up on the screen and I click it, holding my breath until the result appears—but once it does, confusion pummels me, the name glaring back looking strange and out of place.
I stare at the computer, then back at the picture, wondering, for a second, if I typed in the wrong address. If my subconscious is playing tricks on me again, making me see people from my past like they’re right there in front of me, fleshy and solid and undeniably real. I was expecting to find Lucy’s mom, maybe. A person to pair with the stories I’ve heard. Another name I could google or a phone number to call, any morsel of information I could add to my pile—but finally, I’m beginning to grasp the truth, the answers coming to me one by one like the steady drip of a faucet, filling me up with a sense of sick understanding. All the things I thought I knew are suddenly different, warped, like staring at my own reflection in the water and barely recognizing the face that stares back.
I’ve been wrong about Eliza, about Lucy, about Levi.
About everything.
CHAPTER 59
I read the name on the screen again, blinking my eyes, head swimming with the implications of it all. These last nine months and the little crumbs Lucy has dropped like she was trying to get me to follow them all along. Like she was daring me to put it together, figure it out. Finger curling before running back into the dark, waiting patiently for me to find her at the end.
I think about her stepping into my dorm on that very first day, diamond necklace cinched tight around her neck. How she zeroed in on Eliza’s face on the mantel, jealousy radiating as she picked up the frame and asked me those questions.
The two of us on the roof, the stub of her cigarette glowing like an ember. That final drag before she flicked it from her fingers and sent it sailing into the night.
There’s a reason why Lucy and Eliza are so similar. There’s a reason why they share the same habits, the exact same tics. Why every time I look at Lucy, I see her. I didn’t make it up. I didn’t imagine it, my subconscious trying to replicate her completely. My guilt trying to scribble her back into existence, paper tearing beneath the weight of my frenzied mental strokes, so desperate to see her again. It didn’t matter how wrong it all was, how deformed, this Frankenstein version of her I had cobbled together and brought back to life. I wanted it so badly I ignored all the signs and I picture Eliza again, back in her bedroom, the two of us stomach-down on her bed. Her legs kicking in the air, dainty chin cupped in her palm. The way she rolled over to the side and glanced out the window, her voice a whisper only I could hear.
“I think he watches me,” she had said, twirling that diamond between her fingers before lifting it slowly, kissing it to her lips. “I think he’s out there right now.”