“Girls,” he says, tipping his hat.
Rutledge has finally settled back into a strange sense of normalcy, although everything still feels a little bit off, a little bit strange, like the world got knocked off its axis and we’re all struggling to stand up straight, staggering around, wondering if we’ll ever feel normal again. Downtown is filling up slowly, cautiously, the streets coming alive with students who are starting to trickle out of their houses. Our mandatory time of mourning complete. The sidewalks are crushed with lines again, elbows jostling to get into bars, Levi’s face starting to fade from the posters that were hung up around town as a somber reminder to drink responsibly.
It’s funny: I’ve spent my entire life being anonymous, but now I finally know what it’s like to be them. To be Lucy, to be Eliza, to be the kind of girl who attracts stares. The one who elicits whispers, rumors swirling around me like a thick mist of perfume. No longer a castaway or a sidekick but a part of the pack, a piece of a whole. We’re a unit now, inextricably linked. A clique that feels a little bit jarring, a little bit off, when one of us tries to venture out on our own, Lucy’s aura still clinging to us like a spider’s thread, sticky and strong. Something we can feel more than we can see. And that’s what I had wanted in the beginning, what I would have given anything for, but now I understand the strange feeling I got when I used to see the three of them walking down the hall together, arms attached like a chain of paper dolls.
Rip one of us away, and we’ll never feel whole again.
“Moving day?” Detective Frank asks, and I blink back into the conversation, his toe kicking at a box at my feet.
“This is the last of it,” Sloane says.
“And Lucy’s things?”
“Still inside,” I say. “We locked up so nobody would take them. We assumed her parents would be coming.”
Frank looks at me, chewing on the inside of his cheek.
“The fraternity isn’t using the house for anything until the lawsuit blows over,” Sloane adds. “They said we can just leave it for now.”
“Well then it’s going to be sitting here indefinitely,” he says, shifting his weight. “The lawsuit isn’t blowing over and those boys aren’t coming back. What’s this?”
He gestures to the porch and we stay quiet, watching as he walks up the steps, peels our note from the door and holds his finger out, a blue Post-it stuck to the pad of his pointer. He skims it quickly, then looks back at us.
“Your new address?”
“It’s for Lucy,” Nicole says. “Just in case—”
“In case she comes back,” he interrupts, understanding settling over him slowly.
“She won’t have our numbers anymore,” I say. “Not without her phone.”
“We didn’t want her to think we just left—” Sloane adds, but Officer Frank interrupts her, holding his hand up.
“Girls.” He says it gently now, his eyes squinting like this is the first time he’s really noticed us before. The first time he’s ever seen us at all. “She’s not coming back. You understand that, right?”
We’re all silent, sheepish and embarrassed, staring at the piece of paper in his hand like kids getting scolded after our parents found something salacious hidden beneath our beds. Nicole looks down, rubbing the sole of her shoe against the concrete, because we know how childish this looks, leaving it behind like that. Such a desperate and deluded show of hope.
“Lucy Sharpe … she isn’t your friend,” Frank continues. “She’s not who you thought she was. You understand that.”
We stay firm, fierce in our commitment to her, our solemn vow, and I can see the slow shift in his face. The gentle softening as suspicion recedes and pity takes over.
We watch as he sighs, sticking the note back on the door for us and walking down the steps before planting himself on the sidewalk again, shaking his head. Eyeing the three of us now, a slow scan down the line before his gaze stops on me and I see him swallow.
“The two of you can go,” he says to Sloane and Nicole, refusing to avert his eyes from mine. “You and I need to have a talk.”
CHAPTER 61
BEFORE
It’s dark by the time Lucy comes home, the scuff of her shoes ascending the porch steps alerting me to her presence.
I’ve been in my room this entire time, all eight hours, my door bolted and my laptop open and dead on my comforter. My thoughts on Lucy, on Eliza, on how the two of them have more in common than I ever could have imagined. I hear the front door slam as she makes her way into the living room, her feet heavy as she stomps through the house.
“Hello?” she calls, her voice echoing through the empty living room. “Where is everyone?”
She can be so quiet when she wants, so catlike and contained, but now, I feel her radiating through the walls, the floor, her very being pumping hard like an organ deprived of oxygen. Something atrophying slowly, a transplant suddenly rejected by its host.
I hear a banging on my door that comes out of nowhere: a hard, closed-fist pounding that makes the bones of the house rattle in place. I eye the knob jiggling back and forth, the door jerking wildly on its hinges.
“What is with the locked doors today?” Lucy yells, slamming her palm against the wood. “Margot, get out here. We need to talk.”
I stay rooted on my bed, frozen with fear, a million different scenarios running through my mind.
“All of us,” she adds, and somehow, I can tell she’s making her way back to the living room, waiting for me to follow.
Knowing that eventually, like always, I will.
After a few more seconds of silent debate, I stand up and walk to the door, twisting the dead bolt and opening it wide. The hallway is empty in front of me, the overhead lights all clicked off, and I creep into the living room, rounding the corner to find Lucy sitting on the couch. Her hair is frizzier than normal, her skin shiny and a little too damp, and I glance out the window, into the inky black night. Noticing, for the first time, that it’s started to rain.
“What’s going on?” I ask, a little tremor in my voice as I try to see through those sparkling eyes. They’re impenetrable, like always, tough as diamonds and just as rare.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” she says, glancing to the staircase just as Sloane and Nicole come creeping down. “Everyone, sit.”
Sloane looks at me, eyes wide and unusually afraid, before she and Nicole walk to the second couch and sit down in tandem. I stay standing at the edge of the room and Lucy turns to me next, willing me forward. I can feel the pull of her like a rope around my waist; I can feel the tension, the physical tug, and I let her gaze guide me farther into the room, though I stop short at the coffee table, refusing to get closer.
“There are clearly some things we need to get off our chests,” Lucy says at last, leading us like a meeting, and for the very first time, I see little glimmers of Mr. Jefferson in her face. I see those same faint lines around her eyes I never noticed before; the slight upturn of her mouth, his pointed chin. But it’s the hair, mostly, that charcoal color. As deep and dark as a bottomless hole.
Eliza took after her mother completely, bright-skinned and honey-blond-haired. At least that’s one thing Lucy got for herself.
“Come on,” she says when no one speaks up.
Sloane looks at me again, her lips pursed shut, and I wonder why she’s being so uncharacteristically quiet right now—until I think of that first conversation outside the shed. Me questioning her loyalty to Lucy and her shrinking back, revealing her truth.
“Maybe I’m being harsh,” she had said, suddenly doubting herself. “Or maybe I’m afraid of what would happen if I stopped.”