“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, taken aback.
She just scoffed, shook her head, and I took a few steps forward, the two of us suddenly close enough to touch. I could feel the wind whipping off the water in the distance, a welcome relief from the hot summer air, and I could tell she wanted to say something then. I could feel some big explanation for the way she’d been acting so close to barreling right out and I wanted to hug her, to slap her. To tell her I hated her and tell her I loved her—but at the same time, the wall we had built between us was too tall at that point. The stones too solid to tear back down.
I was exhausted, just so exhausted. I no longer felt that there was a point.
“Let’s go home,” I said at last. “You need to go home.”
“I’m staying,” she said, swaying some more.
“It’s late, you’re drunk. You need to go to bed.”
“No,” she said, her voice quivering a little. “I mean I’m staying.”
I looked at her, still not understanding until I felt a stab of something sharp in my chest: rejection, pain, a terrible comprehension settling over me as I stared at her in the dark.
“What?” I asked, taking a step closer. “What do you mean you’re staying?”
“I’m not going to Rutledge,” she said. “I’m staying here with Levi. He’ll graduate in a year and then maybe we’ll go together. His dad was a Kappa Nu there—”
“Eliza, this is crazy,” I interrupted. “You’re being crazy. What happened to you?”
I felt the claw of tears then, their sharp nails scraping their way up my throat. I tried to swallow them down, push them away, but they sprang to the surface faster than I could contain them, gliding their way down my cheeks.
“We were supposed to go together,” I said, my voice fragile and wet. “You can’t just leave me—”
“I love him,” she said with a finality that cut deeper than any lethal weapon, any sharpened blade. I could practically feel myself bleeding out then, the life leaking from my body as she watched it pool.
“I’m your best friend,” I said at last, my voice barely above a whisper. “You’re supposed to love me, too.”
I noticed a little tremble in her lip, maybe a flash of regret like that day in my room, but before she could say anything, before she could respond, I spun around fast, ready to walk away and leave her there. So tired of caring about her more than she cared about me.
“Margot, wait—” she started, reaching out to grab my arm. I remember feeling the clasp of her fingers, her touch sending a surge of rage through my chest. In that single second, our entire life flipped through my mind like a movie as I thought about everything she had done to me, everything she had said. Every time she had left me, abandoned me, made me feel like I wasn’t her equal, and before I could think twice, before I could relax, I whipped my arm away—violent, hard, way too fast—knocking her back with too much force. “Margot!”
I turned around just in time to see her stumble, eyes wet and wide as she reached out her hand like she was asking me to take it—but I didn’t. I didn’t take it. I don’t even know if I could have reached her in time. I don’t even know if it would have mattered, if I would have gone down with her, the two of us holding hands like we used to, fingers clasped together as we fell. But instead of trying, instead of helping, instead of swooping in to save her the way I always did, I simply stood right there, feet planted in place, watching in shock as her body tipped back.
The flutter of her dress and the wind in her hair making it seem, for a second, like she was flying.
CHAPTER 63
“I told you you had it in you.”
I whip around at the sound of her voice, the silhouette of Lucy between the open shed doors making my stomach turn. I hadn’t heard her follow me out here, hadn’t registered the slap of the back door above the roar of the rain. The rumble of thunder masking her steps as she approached me slowly, a predator slithering up silently behind their prey.
Fresh tears burn my eyes as I remember the two of us on the beach again, me muttering about how I wanted to be bolder, braver, different than I’ve always been. Not the kind of person who let other people walk all over me, and Lucy’s voice in my ear like a challenge, a dare—or maybe it was a reminder. Another little clue that she had been there, always, watching me in my lowest moments.
“I know you have it in you to be different. I’ve seen it.”
“It was an accident,” I say, shaking my head, the same thing I’ve been telling myself for the last two years. “I didn’t mean to. I swear I didn’t—”
“She never appreciated you,” Lucy says, walking closer. “I saw the way she treated you before you even saw it yourself.”
I imagine Lucy witnessing all those times Eliza rolled her eyes as I tried to help her, the way she and Levi hushed into a nasty silence as I approached them on the dock, and feel a shard of shame lodge in my chest at the thought of Lucy seeing me like that: so malleable, so weak. A rubber dummy that simply sprang back for more after taking a punch, ready and waiting to get hurt again.
My own words echo in my ears now, the four of us sitting on my bed on that very first night.
“The thing you need to understand about Eliza is that everyone loved her,” I had said, thinking only I knew the real truth of it all. “But just because you loved her, it didn’t mean she loved you back.”
“You deserved to know,” Lucy says, and I remember the sound that had alerted me to their presence: a kicked can followed by Eliza’s low voice. The only reason I rounded that corner and even found them at all. I always assumed Eliza, Levi, and I were the only people up there, the only ones left, but I realize now: that noise had to have come from somewhere.
“It was you,” I say, a sudden shudder cutting through me, quick and vicious, like swimming through a cold spot. The thought of Lucy pulling my puppet strings even then, even before I knew she existed. “You wanted me to see them like that.”
“I wanted you to do something,” she responds.
“Why?” I ask, imagining Lucy watching as I roamed. Knowing what Eliza was doing just around the corner and spotting that can, kicking it hard. Making a noise so I would find her.
“Because we’re the same,” Lucy says. “You and I are the same, Margot. Spending our lives wanting people who never wanted us back.”
The sound of the rain turns to white noise in my ears as a flash from outside illuminates us both. The thought comes to me quick, before I can stop it, as fast and fleeting as the lightning itself: Lucy is right. We are the same. We were both rejected by the very people who should have loved us the most: her father, my best friend. All we wanted was acceptance and belonging. A chance at being a part of something bigger than ourselves.
“I know you know who I am,” she says, taking a step closer. “I heard you and Sloane talking in your room. I know she looked me up at work, I saw you walk off with Danny at the party. I know you’ve been putting it together.”
I think about how Lucy is always there, always listening, always hiding herself in plain sight. I guess she wasn’t at Penny Lanes that day like we thought, instead creeping home early and listening to our whispers. Pushing her ear flush against the door. I guess she really did have one eye on me on that island after all and she had simply been biding her time with Levi, giving me space while she waited for me to figure it out.